Discrimination Against The Engineering Field

Science, technology, engineering, and math are the four areas of study that make up STEM. These four areas all have one thing in common: they are all dominated by men. According to Lauren C. Williams, “men outnumber women 7 to 3 in tech jobs in New York City — and nationwide.”.7 Despite this, “women now earn more bachelor’s and master’s degrees than men”.6 However, “women are a minority”.2 Women are a minority in all STEM careers. The ratio of men to women in scientific fields has never been one to one. For some unknown reason very few women are choosing to become chemists, physicists, engineers, computer technicians, or mathematicians. There are many proposed theories for why women are extremely outnumbered in these scientific

The STEM fields are diverse and evolving constantly, with the advancement of civil rights in regards to women as well as the education of the public to this issue, it is likely that there will come a time when women and men can be equally represented in these disciplines. The importance of studying the gender gap between men and women in STEM is to learn how to confront gender biases in these fields. Conclusive evidence has shown that diversity in science will likely yield positive results. Findings from the Journal of the Royal Society Interface state that:

However, of that 48%, only 24% of them are involved in a STEM field. However, statistics are saying now, more than ever, women are pursuing STEM careers. Yet, what happens behind the scenes while earning your degree? My mother has experienced a prime example of exactly what happens when women attempt to pursue a STEM career. She had decided on taking a programming course in college. Long story short, she got to her assigned computer and began to design her screen like the creative woman she is. Her professor walked up to her found it unrighteous to have her computer screen pink when everyone else's where "manly" colors. He suggested that she goes to the counselor to change courses since technology was "manly" thing. Sadly, she listened along with many other women. I say that because "...nearly a third of women in science, engineering and technology (S.E.T.) fields say they are likely to quit within a year," (Sherbin, ...Bias in Their Labs). It's unfortunate that women all over feel that they are not worthy because of their gender or their lack of "manliness." STEM fields aren't a manly thing, they need to be identified as gender neutral profession, as every profession should

The force of societal stereotypes is a large part of this gap. Instead of joining STEM careers, the most common careers among women are secretaries, nurses, and elementary and middle school teachers (Mandell). This truly illustrates that when well-rounded, talented women have the choice, they are inclined to delve into the field in which society expects them to belong. In this way, the stereotype of women not being involved in STEM is forcing less women to be involved in these fields. The deficiency of women in technical fields, despite their well-roundedness and ability, can be directly related to unyielding cultural stereotypes that stigmatize women in supposedly masculine fields.

Before women to get more involved in the STEM fields women first have to go and get degrees in STEM undergraduate programs. One way to help change this is the lack of female role models. Girls need role models to show that they can be successful in STEM fields. If there are such strong gender stereotypes it might be discouraging women from pursuing STEM education and STEM jobs. It is complicated to get young women role models because the people who are part of the hiring team said that were less likely to say they would hire the female applicants overall and that they would offered them lower salaries and fewer mentoring opportunities. This is a problem because women will be less likely to want to get into these fields because they will have to work so much harder to get the same recognition as the males. Young girls will be more interested in getting into one of these fields where they fear comfortable. Young girls need a role model like Emily Roebling who studied math and science and became the chief engineer in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1860. Another reason that girls are less likely to pursue these majors is gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields. Across all STEM fields, female PhDs have lower rates of patenting and entrepreneurship than do male PhDs. This difference is most pronounced in physics, astronomy and the computer sciences, in which women earned only 1 in 5 PhDs. There is a need to encourage and support women in

As a woman who goes to a large university with an abundance of peers who are like me and are looking to enter fields like this, the topic of discussion is heavily important to me for obvious reasons. However, it is also important for the general public to become aware of such under-represenation in such fields because everyone needs to do their fair share of preventing this issue going forward from employers to professors to parents and all the way back to students who will eventually be workers in the STEM industry. Everyone needs to recognize the importance of including more women in these fields in order to make necessary progress occur.

STEM is the study of Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics. These subjects are stereotypical of male dominated subjects leaving the women in health sciences and the arts.

Since the beginning, men have ruled the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Which explains the huge gender gap in STEM jobs. As of 2009, women occupied 24% of STEM jobs. Many of these women work in the science field. Only about 12% of women occupy the engineering and computer science field.

In America gender is seen as a dichotomy, either male or female. Society has gendered everything from colors, to adjectives (strong for males, weak for females), to even occupations. Historically, science, technology, engineering, and math, also known as STEM, have had a masculine connotation connected to it. Which helps explain why elite white men have predominately occupied the STEM fields (Borum and Walker 2012). Eventually, women started to integrate into STEM, but not nearly in the quantities as men, this created the gender gap. The gender gap does vary based on which field you look at, and at more advanced levels in STEM, as well as race (O’Brien 2015). Not only is there a gender and race gap between men and women, but these ring true

Women in STEM are greatly underrepresented. STEM usually refers to an educational curriculum. Usually the curriculum focuses on science, engineering, technology, and math. The percentage of women in the STEM workforce has risen from seven percent in the seventies to twenty six percent in 2011. (U.S Department of Commerce)

Many institutions nowadays are trying to hire more female scientists and engineers. But it isn't as simple as that, cultural and religious misogynist beliefs stand in the way of women in STEM professions. Society can benefit greatly from a larger percent of women in STEM fields, it can increase the safety of civilians; therefore including more women in STEM is not only important to women, but the general public as

Nurses, counselors, teachers, wedding planners, interior decorators, and pediatricians are just some of the important positions women hold in the workforce, however, there has been a lack of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) related careers. Women tend to be drawn more towards careers dealing with secretarial work, health care and retail instead of engineering, chemistry, and technology. One of the biggest reason women do not enter these fields is due to cultural stereotypes. Another is due to the multitude of positions available to women that are not STEM related. Finally, women tend to look for jobs that are more flexible, hands on, financially rewarding and socially welcoming.

Society often views women as objects to look at, even after society has evolved not much has changed for women. Of course, over many decades women have been granted the right to vote, work outside of the home, and for now have control over our reproductive rights. Women were never handed anything on a platter, everything we have we’ve had to work for. In a way, one could say that throughout the years women have been made to feel lesser compared to men. This could potentially be the reason why many women don’t take jobs that are stereotypically said to be “more suited for men”, such as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The original reason being that they were once only a man’s job and now it’s more a matter of not knowing about

Traditionally, men take on the manufacturing, engineering, science occupations in society. Since the 1970’s women’s representation in science, engineering, mathematics, and technology, a group of subjects known as STEM, occupations has increased; but younger girls, under 40, remain underrepresented in these occupations (Census). Furthermore, within the group of few but strong females a part of STEM lies a huge discrepancy between employment of whites and Asians, compared to Africans, Hispanics, and native Americans. Although it is hard to identify the reason for the limited amount of girls in these subject areas, some specialist speculate lack of girls is due to stereotyping threat, stigmas of females lacking the intelligence to comprehend

Women have the qualities that are needed to become good engineers. The only way that women are different from men in the field is in the training. Women have all the capability to become good engineers as men if they can receive the proper/same training, employment and promotion as men. In receiving training women make up a extremely small amount of the student population in science related majors. Only 53% of the total students in Scotland universities are women. However bellow 19% are studying engineering, computer studies, and physicals sciences. Likewise, University students in Germany were only 48% women. Of the 48% of women only 20% of the engineering students are women. Women are the minority in engineering and like courses. In Bulgarian they limited women to only be allowed to make up 50% of engineering students.