The Current Situation Of Female Underrepresentation On Science Professions

As per research ‘gender’ provides a perspective from which one could examine the biases that exist in the larger society. Some believe that to arrive at a more eloquent understanding of the problems of women in science , one should begin by asking what is the nature of science space that leads to under-representation and marginalisation of women rather than questioning the situation of a woman’s life that makes it difficult for her to pursue science.

Throughout Gender and Race in the Physical Sciences, I have been struck by how rarely in STEM we shed a light on the women of color that already exist and thrive in the sciences. Often, when we discuss diversity in the sciences, we only discuss it in the frame of a problem. More specifically, we tend to focus on the problem of there not being enough of these women in the field. As a result of the lack of attention paid to pioneering women in STEM, many young people of all backgrounds are inclined to believe that there are no women of color doing great things in the field- that there are no role models. With this paper, and an on-campus event to be held in the spring, I hope to challenge people’s assumptions about what a scientist looks like, and inspire people through a discussion of innovative women of color.

51 percent of the United States is female but only 34.4 percent of doctors are women. While 90.4 percent of nurses are female (“Women in Medicine”; “Male Nurses Becoming”), the women who do become doctors earn an astounding 25 percent less than their male counterparts (Groves). These staggering figures are only a single piece in the larger overall lack of women in STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which has remained prevalent since the beginning of these fields. Although women are underrepresented in these STEM fields, this is not due to ineptitude, but instead it is a result of the force of societal stereotypes coupled with their wider range of abilities. The recent increase in women’s association with STEM seems

I found that changing how the media portrays them can help decrease discrimination towards women in these fields. To the studies that most correlate, maybe adding what viewers think could help a lot. That might help to pinpoint what others see and take it into account when doing the media study. By asking female science students of 21-22 years old, a better insight was gained about what it is like to be studying such fields, and what they saw in the media is different from what the general public sees. Martinot, Bages, and Desert (2012) describe how negative gender stereotypes do have an impact on students’ self-evaluations, which in turn influences their academic career choices (Martinot, Bages, and Desert 2012). From asking the general public, it was learned that not a lot of people have a straight opinion on whether it is negative stereotypes that drive young girls away. There might be a possibility that a lack of female scientist role models on TV cause girls to have less confidence that they can achieve great things. There is always going to be stereotypes no matter what in every part of society, but countering those stereotypes maybe the solution by having more positive female scientist role-models like Ms. Frizzle from Magic School Bus or Maddie Fenton from Danny Phantom, or even a more modern one a main character who is a normal teenage girl who loves engineering and goes through life like any other kid. If young girls see more brilliant, relatable, and great female scientist characters they might have more inspiration or motivation to be like those characters. This is affected when some TV shows put female scientist characters as main characters/supporting characters and make them ditzy like they do in Big Bang Theory or they have them be brilliant but show up once. What

Women have struggled in establishing their rightful place in the STEM environment because of this image of a family where the mother is the chief caretaker of the children. Society believes that a woman’s first priority

Being a woman in the sciences has already proven to be a struggle in some aspects. For instance, guys often double check my work or do not take me seriously because “girls don’t do science”. It makes it hard to feel confident in what I do and its sad that men often get all the credit. Shetterly’s story reiterated to me even more how men are those recognized, and even though the events of Hidden Figures were many decades ago, the same phenomenon persists

Even though some academics would say why use incentives to help better the underrepresentation of women in the STEM careers because government incentives can have a good cause and effect on the workforce of the STEM careers like they have in nursing and teaching. the cause would be the elevate women's interest in following the STEM paths and the effect would be an increased workforce that is more concentrated in STEM to fulfill the shortages in the workforce. Women

The stories of their academic and professional career trajectories served as a good example to the research I’m doing about career trajectories of women in STEM for my internship. The gradual loss of women in STEM as they pursued a related career is called the “leaky pipeline”. The “pipeline” into a career means that you would have to follow a certain trajectory into a career. It has been used as a way of tracking the drop-off rate from the earliest levels of exposure as a child through schooling and to gainful employment. The “leaks” in the pipeline represent that drop-off rate of women who go into STEM careers. The alternative model is the Pathways metaphor into STEM careers which has multiple routes. The different trajectories the panel

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. In a 2016 analysis of 500 U.S. companies, the National Center for Women & Information Technology found that organizations with more diverse teams in terms of race and gender had higher sales revenue, more customers, greater market share and greater productivity than their less diverse counterparts. According to the article titled, “Rewrite the Rules on Women in Tech,” only 24 percent of computer

Awards are important indicators of career success and are key in recruitment, hiring, promotion, recognition, and tenure decisions. Despite their critical role in shaping scientific career trajectories and attracting a diversity of young scholars to STEM fields, without careful attention, awards allocation processes may perpetuate gender stratification. According to the article “The Matilda Effect in Science: Awards and prizes in the US, 1990s and 2000s.” Social Studies of Science, women’s receipt of professional awards increased in the past two decades, men win a higher proportion of scholarly awards and women win a higher proportion of teaching and service awards than expected based on their respective representation in the nomination pool. Although these indications were found, women do not receive the same recognition as men. Therefore, the article researches on gender bias evaluation of research and analyze data from 13 STEM disciplinary societies.

Believe it or not, the old phrase, “A woman’s place is in the home” is still alive and well in the scientific community, as the dramatic gender-bias study published last September in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences shows. Today, it’s “A woman’s place is not in the lab.” The path I have taken over the past four years has proven to me that women can be just as comfortable in STEM careers as they were 75 years ago as housewives. My place – where I feel most content – is definitely in the lab.

Pollack explains that there are still so few women in science because of stereotypes and the effect they have on female students. She talked to many young women who were majoring in STEM programs and they all had similar stories of discrimination starting in the k-12 level. Many girls mentioned they were the only girls in the high level science and math classes in high school. One girl mentioned she was graded different than her male peers because the teacher believed she could not be judged as harshly as a boy. While Universities may brag about the high level of women studying STEM fields at their institutions, most of the professors and fellow students do not encourage the women to continue studying in the STEM fields. Women go into University

In the long history of sexism in science, technology, engineer and mathematics (STEM), women have been discrimination of being unfit or not ‘apprehensiveness’ enough for being a scientist or engineer by men who have high doubtful on women or mocking women working as an engineer that they would destroy something. Determining or judging the action of the gender in different position and the thinking of discrimination from the superior race or gender to the lesser is what it called sexism. Sexism is most common in science and engineer especially women is the most affected.

areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics employers are not getting enough women (Pozniak). High school girls only represent 17 percent of computer science Advance Placement (AP) test takers (O'Shea). The most significant group of minorities who are behind in earning computer technology degrees and working in science and mathematical professions are women. “Historically, women’s low representation in science and engineering was said to be due in large part of their lack of ability, interest, or both” (Horning 30). However, this is no longer a true fact according to Ward. Some suggestions to increasing the amount of women in sciences include introducing already present women faculty as mentors. Over the last three decades,

Sitting in my general biology class today, learning about amazing biological discoveries, my male teacher jokingly said “Did you know there are women in science?” then went on to joke about how these women who had just made an amazing biological discovery even had PhD’s. As he went on to talk about the amazing things these women did, he talked about the discovery like he had for the other ones made by men. If women can make biological discoveries like men can why are they looked at differently in their graduate fields of study. In this essay I will explore the gender issue in education through the lens of feminism by evidence shown in past decades and today. Education was primarily for men while women were not even allowed in some classrooms, while over time this has changed.