Recent statistics show females are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math fields in the United States. There are many proposed reasons and fortunately none of the serious studies conclude that females are not smart enough. Despite millions of dollars spent on gathering female talent, STEM jobs are still dominated by men. Most studies over the last few years point to a reason that should be a wakeup call for every parent.
Major companies including Google, Microsoft, Oracle and many combined spend billions of dollars funding STEM programs. Many of these programs target young girls specifically. Schools use grant money to fund classes as well as after school activities for girls. Websites are funded to reach children to the ends of the internet. Why is everyone so interested in targeting girls? Why do they spend so much money for girls as young as 5? According to a study published by Microsoft, we are doing it to ourselves. We are teaching our young girls to like fields other than STEM (Our Future)
A recent study also shows that we discourage girls by continuing to propagate Parson’s sex role theory (Conley, 293) .“ Parents of girls think they would be most interested in Education and Childcare,
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the Arts, Healthcare and Hair and Beauty. Parents of boys think they would like to go into Information Technology, Sport, Engineering, Science or Public Services” (Inspiring). Advertising, media and toy manufacturers start pushing gender rolls from the moment their first pink spot or red striped blanket is wrapped around a newborn (Lambert). Although the studies mentioned do not go so far as to place blame on the parents, but rather try to undo the parents teaching while the child is in school. The study goes on to show how early in life children decide to go into stem programs. Nearly 4 in 5 STEM college students (78%) say that they decided to study STEM in high school or earlier. One in five (21%) decide in middle school or earlier (STEM Perceptions). Encouraging women to enter STEM careers also helps lower gender inequality in the workplace.
The report shows that the gap in pay between males and females is 14% in the STEM field overall, and as low as 9% in engineering specific jobs (STEM Perceptions). The report does not mention roles within the company and whether women are able to advance to the highest positions and challenge the glass ceiling, as that is either outside the scope of the report, or my suspicion is that encouraging STEM education and jobs, still does nothing to address the problems at the top end. Money spent on programs to encourage girls to enter fields that are generally underrepresented is not all bad despite not addressing some critical concerns of longtime held gender
rolls. If the United States wants to continue state of the art research, development, and lead the world in STEM fields, then more needs to be done to teach parents the dangers of continuing to propagate outdated theories like sex role theory. Not only does it hinder the growth of our young children, it destroys the future of our country. Women consistently make up slightly more than fifty percent of our population, so as a country we are missing the point of view of more than half our citizens. Education does not start in school, it starts at home with the parents.
The gender diversity is a serious problem in most STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) industry. In our company, iNova, there is a serious lack of gender diversity that we only have 24 percent female in the workplace.
According to Hom (2014), “STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications” (p. 1). STEM and ethics share some commonalities. Steele (2016) describes “ethics simplistically as dealing with “questions of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, and justice and injustice” (p. 365). After reading more about STEM and ethics it is evident that one commonality they share is they both have a common decision making process. “STEM disciplines to make ethical decisions and to have the moral conviction to adhere to those decisions” (Barry, 2012, p. 5). With that being said, ethics and STEM could go hand in hand since ethics focuses on values and morals. Along with having a common decision making process, both ethics and STEM, focus on problem solving. “Ethics
Women are overrepresented in low-income service sectors and public sectors, while underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and high-income private sectors, especially in top managerial positions. In other words, the concentration of women in the lower-income workforce contributes greatly to the overall gender wage gap.
To say that girls are different from boys is an understatement. Boys and girls are treated and raised differently while growing up in a patriarchal environment(Chesney-Lind & Sheldon. Chapter 6); the diverse ways in which they mature physically and emotionally, boy’s and girl’s involvement or path that leads to their potential delinquency are worlds apart. In addition, bombardment by role models and advertisements of society plays a large aspect in the differences between boys and girls. The majority of female role m...
Pollack, Eileen. “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2014.
Also, the majority of women have been able to secure employment from traditionally female occupations such as teaching compared to male-dominated careers like engineering. Moreover, democratic country like the United States of America has recognized gender inequality as a fundamental issue and espouse equal right between men and women in contributing to social, economic and cultural life. Despite this improvement, gender inequality persists as women are not represented and treated equally in the workplace (Michialidis, Morphitou, & Theophylatou, 2012). The increasing number of women in the workplace has not provided equal opportunity for career advancement for females due to the way women are treated in an organization and the society. Also, attaining an executive position seem impossible for women due to the glass ceiling effects which defines the invisible and artificial barrier created by attitudinal and organizational prejudices, which inhibit women from attaining top executive positions (Wirth
But why? Girls can be intimidated by many things in STEM. Without support and education they can quickly lose interest in STEM. There are many things that can discourage girl from entering STEM. Girls lose interest because of “socialization and lack of exposure and access”. (Danae King, 2)The funny thing is girls and boys are equally interested in STEM until middle school. (Danae King, 8) One of the main reasons for this is STEM is a male dominated field. Girls can be very uncomfortable being the “only girl”. Girls often don’t think that they are smart enough to work in STEM fields. Words like rigorous and advanced can turn girls away from STEM fields because they feel intimidated.(Girls Scouts of America, page 10) African American and Latino girls can be even more discouraged because they have fewer support, low exposure, and low academic achievement than their white peers. As a result they are less likely to be involved in STEM fields. (Girl Scouts of America, page
Toys, literature, media, and films also encourage sex roles. Males are depicted as "doing", while females are always "receiving." In this paper, 5 articles focusing on sex roles were used. The articles look at the damaging effects of sex role stereotyping, and some ways the sex roles are accentuated in the schools.
Sex Role Theory–expands upon this assumption and proposes that women and men learn appropriate gender roles through socialization within the culture of the family and wider society (Isaacs,
Over the years there have been many changes in the work-place. Since the second World War there has been a steady increase of women on the workforce across all the different types of careers there are in the United States. Some careers have seen more of a rapid change than others, a few of the career fields that have not really had much growth in gender diversity have been Engineering and Technology. Both of these fields have always been more male dominate throughout the history of their existence. The problem is that both of these careers demand a constant stream of new innovative ideas to fuel advancements in different types of technology. Those advancements are also very important to the public’s day to day life, as both of these fields are all around us every day. There is no better way to get new ideas than to bring in someone who has a different thought process than you. That is why colleges and companies need to try harder to bring in women to these careers rather than overlook them. With that being said if someone is not right for the job, then they’re not right for the job, the problem is that many companies are choosing male engineers over female engineers. If the careers in these to field want to keep having great advancement, they’re going to need all the great minds that we can get, and stop turning so many away. There has been a lot of research done over this same subject over several years but the results do not seem to be changing, and again and again they always seem to so that men are favored over women when it comes to getting a job in the engineering and technology fields. The problem all boils down to the companies and colleges, both of which need to change so those who desire to excel in these fields, get ...
Rosser, S. V. (1998). Applying feminist theories to women in science programs. Signs, 24, 71-200.
STEM is best known as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM for many years has been primarily seen as and stereotyped into a masculine work field. But as of recent years, while it expands, more and more women have been rising in these fields. However, there is still a tremendous gender gap between men and women in these fields and areas of work. The gender gap between men and women in STEM is alive and well. There is no denying that the gender gap between men and women in STEM is immense. But there instead are many sufficient reasons as to why there is such a huge gap between men and women within in fields. Some probable causes for the lack of women seen in these areas are biased towards women, unconscious bias girls receive
Carol B. Muller, “The Underrepresentation of Women in Engineering and Related Sciences: Pursuing Two Complementary Paths to Parity.” National Academies Press (US); Web. 2003.
Girls are seen as caring, nurturing, quiet, and helpful. They place other’s needs above their own. Girls get ahead by hard work, not by being naturally gifted. Boys are seen as lazy, but girls are seen as not capable. In class, teacher will call on boys more than they call on girls. Boys are seen as better at math and science; while girls are better at reading and art. This bias is still at work even out of the classroom. There are more males employed at computer firms than women. The ratio of male to female workers in STEM fields is 3-1. In college, more women major in the humanities than in the sciences. In education, women are often seen as lesser than; even though 65% of all college degrees are earned by women. Women are still often seen as needing to be more decorative than intellectual, as represented by the Barbie who included the phrase, “Math is hard!” and the shirt that JC Penneys sold that said, “I’m too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.” While there was a backlash on both items, it points out that there is a great deal of work to do on the educational gender bias to be
Despite government regulations to promote equality within the workplace, women’s salaries continue to lag behind males in similar career with similar experiences. According to research performed by Blau & Kahn (2007) “women salaries averaged about 60% of men’s until the 1970s and rose to nearly 80% by the 1990s” (as cited in Bendick, Jr. & Nunes, 2012, p.244). Today, women on average earn approximately $.81 for every dollar that men earn in the United States (Guy and Fenley P.41 2014).