Thesis: There has been a shift in the past decade women believe that they are deserving, and have the right to the same positions in the workforce as men because of this push to get women involved in the STEM, to get women involved in the workforce and into those leadership positions these are all the steps to shatter the glass ceiling.
This information sets up women’s role in stem fields now
I feel like the shift started to really come to the light as important with the NASA hidden figures, I think that this is what signified to a lot of people that there not only has been a shift but that it is here to stay like this that women now have and will continue to have an important role in the workforce particularly in the STEM fields.
Shifts I want to Talk About:
-Began with Take Your Daughter to Workday
-Women entering the workforce in the past decade
-Women in Stem
-Hidden Figures
Paragraph Topic:
Why Science is Important to the Future
“these young scientists and engineers teach us something beyond the specific topics that they’re exploring. They teach us how to question assumptions; to wonder why something is the way it is, and how we can make it better. And they remind us that there’s always something more to learn, and to try, and to discover, and to imagine — and that it’s never too early, or too late to create or discover something new.
That’s why we love science. It’s more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world, and to share this accumulated knowledge. It’s a mindset that says we that can use reason and logic and honest inquiry to reach new conclusions and solve big problems. And that’s what we are celebrating here today with these amazing young people.”
Getting Girls Involved in Stem
Evidence:
“As a country, we stand to gain a lot by exposing young girls to STEM fields and encouraging those who are interested to follow their hearts and minds. Simply focusing attention on one age group cannot cure all societal issues that influence career choices among females. Correcting the negative perceptions that girls develop at a young age can, however, lead them to embrace math and science when they reach high school, rather than avoid the subjects. Administrators and educators must strive to create environments in high school and college math and science programs that are inviting to females if we want to prevent the likelihood of their choosing a different direction. As long as young boys and girls are exposed to science and technology and are equally encouraged to study those disciplines, those with talent and a genuine interest in those fields will be able to develop that interest. Science and technology are and will continue to be important factors in what we are able to accomplish in our lifetimes.”
Pioneers, past and present: From top left (clockwise), Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Mary Leakey, Mae Jemison, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin
This story was updated on January 21, 2015, to include a video of the author addressing the Rosalind Franklin Society, a women’s leadership group, about the experience of reporting and writing this story.
James Gross, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has a 13-year-old daughter who loves math and science. It hasn’t occurred to her yet that that’s unusual, he says. “But I know in the next couple of years, it will.”
“I know as time goes on, she’ll feel increasingly lonely as a girl who’s interested in math and science”—and be at risk of narrowing her choices in life before finding out how far she could have gone.
Women now make up half the national workforce, earn more college and graduate degrees than men, and by some estimates represent the largest single economic force in the world. Yet the gender gap in science persists, to a greater degree than in other professions, particularly in high-end, math-intensive fields such as computer science and engineering.
According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, women in fields commonly referred to as STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) made up 7 percent of that workforce in 1970, a figure that had jumped to 23 percent by 1990. But the rise essentially stopped there. Two decades later, in 2011, women made up 26 percent of the science workforce.
It’s not that women aren’t wanted. “I don’t know any institution today that is not trying to hire more women scientists and engineers,” says one science historian. But many cultural forces continue to stand in the way—ranging from girls being steered toward other professions from an early age and gender bias and sexual harassment in the workplace to the potentially career-stalling effects on women of having children.
“Where did the idea for Take Our Daughters to Work Day come from?
WILSON: [It came from]Carol Gilligan’s research looking at how adolescent girls started to lose their sense of who they were — thinking, talking and saying what they felt. You weren’t supposed to question boys. You weren’t supposed to know anything, so to speak.
[The Ms. Foundation] hired a great consultant, Nell Merlino, who told us a story that she had heard about a girl who was at a school that made arrangements for her to have an internship at a wonderful place in downtown New York. The girl went to the building, and she couldn’t go in. She was really intimidated, and she went home. They sent her a second time, and she got there, got a little further [inside the building], but she just couldn’t [go upstairs]. Finally, the person who had been working with her at the school just came with her and took her up to see the woman, and she got a great internship and lived happily ever after. Gilligan knew that it was important for women’s voices to support girls in keeping their sense of self in adolescence.”