Underrepresentation In STEM

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.

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.

Until high school, I never knew there was a gender gap in the STEM fields. I thought female scientists were the norm and males typically entered the humanities, because that's what it is in my house. My mom holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology and genetics while my father has a master’s degree in education. I was never raised in an environment that dictated what roles each sex could play in society; if I wanted to be a scientist, I would be a scientist.

The first problem that we have focused on is the “stereotype threat”. The stereotype threat is defined as “A large body of experimental research has found the negative stereotype to affect women’s and girl’s performance and aspirations in math and science” (Why so Few? p.38). What this does to women and girls is that they believe to perform at a lower performance than boys. They consider that men and boys are superior in math and science and therefore they avoid pursuing in these fields. They rather avoid liking or expressing any interest in the STEM programs so that they are not

The technology field has always been dominated by men. There are not in the STEM field, but a very important women inspires a lot of the ones that are. “She was a visionary, and an inspiration to boundary-breaking women everywhere.”1 Ada Lovelace inspires so many women in technology today especially since she was a woman from the 19th century. Ada Lovelace proved that it is possible to overcome the long history of gender barriers. She is an example or even a hero to other women, that high levels of success are undoubtedly reachable. - talk about “Ada Lovelace Day”

Men have been known to be the gender that dominates in the field of Science. The science industry is something that is perceived to be manly, and not pursued by women. This is an unfortunate assumption of the science industry. The only reason women are not the face of science is because the field is biased. Biased in 2016? Absolutely.

What builds a society and its perspectives? The way we are expected to act and live our lives has been constant. Traditional career roles and life choices for women have always been a non-technical, housemaker-kind. As a result, women have stayed to be underrepresented in various fields. One of those fields is STEM. Over the past years, women’s participation in STEM fields has been largely lower than that of men. There have been various reasons and implications behind this. The strongest one is that women stay undermined and are assessed incapable when compared to men. Women who have not yet entered science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields underestimate how well they will perform in those fields (e.g., Correll, 2001; Meece, Parsons, Kaczala, & Goff, 1982). They are forced to underestimate themselves and thus they kill the breakthroughs they could be a part of even before they even try to accomplish them.

The number of women who are currently in STEM careers seems to be growing, yet men are still outnumbering women greatly in these kinds of professions. “A 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce found only one in seven engineers is female. Additionally, women have seen no employment growth in STEM jobs since 2000.” (Forbes.) Many qualified women are striving to reach new heights in their professions; yet the number is quite limited. In today’s society women are seen just as qualified as men when It comes to careers in the STEM field. However, only seventeen percent of chemical engineers and twenty-two percent of environmental scientists are women. With this being said, why is there a predominantly large gender gap between men and women in STEM fields today? What measures can we take to close this gender gap and make the number of women hired for such jobs proportionally equal to the number of men.

Gender disparity in the science field has grown to become a widely recognized matter. Though the number of women involved in the science field is gradually expanding, many areas in science, technology, and mathematics still currently remain entirely male-dominated. This is especially evident at the professional level for women who have already earned a bachelor degree in science and wish to further in their career. Gender disparity is not only concerned with the lack of women involvement in science but the retention within science as well. There are various possible explanations as to why women are widely unrepresented in science not only in the United States but globally as well.

Although some may deny it, as societies grow, the underrepresentation of females in educational fields, specifically science, technology, engineering, and math, is gradually increasing. There simply aren’t enough women in STEM.. There are many factors that supplement the repetitive ignorance of the intellect of women as well as perpetuate the concept that women are academically inferior to men. As seen throughout a substantial portion of history, society tends to underrate the cognitive and academic abilities of women. This lowers their confidence to achieve in academic fields and limits their ambition to pursue STEM education. Many credible sources reflect that women feel incapable of excelling

The STEM fields - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - have always had a problem with women. Men tend to dominate in the engineering field and for women, the number is not growing. Is it because of the fact that there is a lack of role model in the field or the lack of motivation to be in the engineering field? Judging from the statistic, there are about 20% of women in the engineering industry and that number is not growing, because women have seen no employment growth in STEM jobs since 2000. From the studies that were conducted from the articles that i found, here were a very surprising outcome. though some of the outcome were expected.

The hard sciences (science, technology, engineering, and math) are important to the advancements of a country because they encourage the development of new and creative progress that can keep their country sharp, and a force to be reckoned with, which gives them power. Although STEM fields are crucial for countries to get ahead, there is a societal belief in America, that women are less capable and less qualified then men in these fields. It appears that this societal belief has led to a gender gap in STEM courses and careers between men and women. The lack of women in these fields could be hindering our countries advancements.

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a rapidly growing educational and job field in this technologically advancing world. It is also starting to include more women, though not as many as one would consider “equal”. Although women make up 48% of the overall work force, they only fill 24% of STEM jobs (Beede et al. 1). Additionally, there is a lower amount of women than men graduating from colleges with degrees in STEM fields. Why is the man to woman ratio so drastically uneven in college STEM programs? Why do women have a higher rate of changing from a STEM major to something else? How can this be a problem for development in the field? How can this be remedied? For the sake of simplicity, all statistics apply to white men and women unless stated otherwise.

Marie Curie... She is best known for her discovery of radium and polonium and her work with radioactivity. She encountered times of adversity in her career just because she was a woman, but she met her challenges and overcame them. Marie Curie exceeded the barriers put on women in her time to become one of the world’s most famous scientists and used her knowledge to the benefit of humanity.

As a science major who once attended a University where the distribution of men to women was about 40:60, it was odd to look around and see that most of the students enrolled as science majors were men. So why is it that the majority of people who decide to pursue a science education and continue on in their professional career as scientists are men? Job growth in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is rising and continues to rise, but women hold very little of the available positions. Girls are no longer falling way behind boys in their math and science performance and the amount of jobs are increasing, yet girls are still discouraged from going down STEM paths.