The Importance Of Gender Disparities In STEM

Malcolm Forbes describes diversity as “the art of thinking independently together.” In today’s society, thinking independently together is how we create solutions to imminent problems, especially in STEM fields. However, diversity of opinion requires a diversity of race, culture, and personal experience- characteristics that cannot be achieved if STEM workers are not representative of the demographics of our country. While great strides have been made to diversify the STEM field in the past 50 years, they have not been enough. More governmental programs must be implemented to give minority children in marginalized communities a fair chance at being successful in STEM fields, resulting in a more skilled workforce that is able to create diverse

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

Women have always been viewed as the weaker sex, and society will continue to view them that way unless they do something about it. In the essay “When Bright Girls Decide that Math is a Waste of time”, the author Susan Jacoby discusses the problems women steering clear of math and science subjects because of the traditional view of a woman. She focused on what causes high school girls to focus on arts courses instead of STEM courses and what are the effects of it on themselves. The underlying discrimination amongst boys and girls, stereotypical thinking of parents and teachers that girls are not good at math eventually decreases the self-confidence among girls to solve science and math problems.

It's is written in history that the field of Math and Science seems to be a more male dominant field. The evidence shows that years ago women were discouraged from pursuing the field. We learned about the Darwin theory which is based on the fact that men were inferior to women. A theory that to a point made society actually believes that because men's brains were bigger they were smarter than females. This matter on top of a society that already didn't treat male and female equal created more challenges for women to succeed. Another main reason was that education for women wasn't as accessible as it was to men. Women didn't have the resources and at times weren't allowed to attend the schools available to men.

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

In a speech in February 2013 President Barak Obama said, “One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being encouraged the way they need to.” It been three years since President Obama has made that statement and the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and math as known as STEM majors is still a big problem today. The STEM workforce is crucial to Americas global competitiveness and groundbreaking capability. The people who work in the STEM field make up nearly half of the United

(Hill). The reasons behind why the numbers of women in STEM may be lower than men can be due to stereotype threat and implicit bias (Hill). A stereotype threat can occur during situations which a negative stereotype relates to evaluating performance (Hill). For example, if a female student starts thinking about the stereotype that women are not good at math, the emotional worry about this stereotype may affect her performance while taking a math test (Hill). Even if a person denies gender and science stereotypes they still can have them as unconscious beliefs, which are implicit biases (Hill). The "Implicit Association Tests (IATs)… indicate strong implicit association of male with science and female with arts… among both women and men of all races and ethnicities" (Hill). The stereotyping whether done unconsciously or consciously still affects the number of women pursuing an education or career in STEM. Recently, in my introduction to psychology II course I took and IAT on gender and science and the result suggests that I have a slight automatic association for Male with Science and Female with Liberal

Women remain an underrepresented minority in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classes and careers. A concerning disparity emerges between girls that express interest in a STEM field, those who major in them, those who continue into the field, and those who stay in their career. When the National Science Foundation conducted a survey of fourth graders, they found that 66% of girls said they liked

In his article, “Does Gender Matter?”, Ben A. Barres writes about the apparent absence of women in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. He starts out the article by informing the reader about a few of the hypotheses that aim to explain this difference in presence, hypotheses that Barres aims to disprove. Barres explains, and at a few points depicts with charts and graphs, the significance of the gap between the amount of white men in the STEM majors and fields of studies and the amount of women and minorities in these same areas. He tell the readers the misconceptions such as the idea that women are inferior in these fields are untrue, and the fact is that woman and minorities are discouraged from entering into these areas

Stereotype threat was first defined by Steele and Arson as the “social-psychological threat that occurs when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one’s group applies. This predicament threatens one with being negatively stereotyped, with being judged or threatened stereotypically, or with the prospect of conforming to the stereotype” (Steele, 1997, p.614). The biggest stereotype when we talk about STEM fields is “Why so Few [women]?” Then comes the cultural stereotype that boys are innately better than girls at math and sciences, which is inescapable in the U.S. and apparently at the fault. Recent trends in achievements by girls and women compare to their counterparts, as well as years of scientific research, demonstrate that this notion is simply incorrect. Although the number of women still lags behind the number of men in many STEM fields, the reasons for this gap are cultural biases and institutional barriers that hinder the advancement of women.

To begin, we will be talking about a topic of worldwide intereset, Gender and Racial inequialities in STEM(science,technology,engineering and mathematics) fields in the EE.UU. The United States of America has a high gender gap and racial inequialities in STEM fields. Black People have a low degree completion rate and low representation in STEM fields; This makes it more complicated for them to join STEM fields. That is why I think that as a person we need to be aware of the injustices committed by the system and our society.

Elizabeth S. Spelke investigates several cases of cognitive sex differences which support reasoning for higher numbers of men employed in math or science related careers. First she discusses the theory that males are more focused on objects from birth, and as a result are more mechanically inclined. The author evaluates this claim and discovers that a large number of studies carried out over three decades have provided no support for male mechanical superiority; they have shown no evidence that males are more focused on objects and that females are more interested in people. However they do reveal that male infants and female infants, learn, perceive and reason about objects in different ways. Secondly, she dispels the reasoning that males have a greater capacity for math because of their superior abilities with respect to objects, numbers, and space.

Women are often seen as incapable to do careers in STEM. The widely held belief that boys are generally smarter than girls at math and science has lead to several studies in favor of girls’ abilities in math and science. Evidence delineates that girls are as skilled as boys in taking up careers in math and science. The fields in STEM are not only for boys. Unfortunately, girls do not believe in themselves and put themselves down to boys. Women have not been given a fair chance in STEM fields and certain societal beliefs need to be reformed. In a study done by J. Scott Long, a professor at Indiana University, who researched and examined the gender

In the past, boys were at the top of their classes. However, in the 21st century, this is no longer the case. In recent years, girls do better in the school and achieved higher grades than boys, despite the stereotype which is males are better in science and math than female. There is a particular saying in Arabic that says, “girls have stolen the march from boys” when it comes to excelling in classrooms. This means females have gained a strong interest in studies, received higher grades, and had better attitude towards education. Literacy skills have mainly increased the gender gap between girls and boys in education, which has led to the difference in the performance for all the subjects in the school. However, the gender gap between girls and boys is negligible in Science and Math.

In the last few decades, our nation has seen a modern day revolution in women’s participation in the workforce. Today, women are independent breadwinners for their families. In education, modern day young women have pushed through boundaries and are doing just as well if not better that their young male counterparts in educational achievements and earn advanced degrees. Regardless of these advancements, women still trail behind their male peers with respect to education and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).