What Really Keeps Woman Out Of Technology Summary

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.

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.

The part of woman in today's general public is some way or another questionable. Why there are so few women in science written by K.C. Cole, the author discusses the role of woman in our society in different domains. The author used personal experience to discuss and give more credibility concerning this topic. Also, K.C. Cole insisted that we are still living in a society where women are not taking all their right. In addition, women have the ability to achieve their goals if they do not give up and get influenced by others (Cole, n.d). If we give women the chance to show what she’s thinking and planning of, it can end up with a very high achievement. In my opinion, women are still less than men in some critical positions although the primary subject these days is gender equality and rights.

In addition, there exists an unconscious bias that science and math are typically “male” fields, while arts and hospitalities are primarily “female” fields.

Gillian Goodman’s article “A Girl Who Codes” attempts to spread awareness of importance of Computer Science among girls. The author condemns the less involvement of women in the growing field of Computer Science and advocates that women should also start coding instead of inclining towards streams that don’t pay well. In the beginning of the article, she introduces Nikita Rau who started ‘XX Hackers’, a high club for girls interested in learning Computer Science. Then, gradually Goodman expresses her dissatisfaction with the performance of women in Computer Science industry. She talks about various factors about this situation and steps that are being taken to improve it. She tries to convince women to join Computer Science industry because of its immense growth potential and promote more initiatives like ‘Girls Who Code’ throughout the country.

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

Men are the people who have the most rank in technical skills. There has not been any growth in jobs in STEM since 2000 for women. It has been said that the pattern may begin in early education. Females may not be encouraged to study math and science as much as males are encouraged to do so. Very few of females who earn bachelor’s degree do so in the area of STEM. However, slightly over half of bachelor’s degrees are earned by women. Many people believe that females lack the intelligence to be successful in STEM. Others believe women do better in skills such as education, and humanitarian roles such as doctor’s an lawyers. Sometimes women themselves believe that men have what it takes to be successful in STEM. Sometimes females have “self-esteem”

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

Although computer industries have grown exponentially, there still remains a shortage of quality computer science graduates to support this growth. This is more pronounced amongst female graduates who are less attracted to this field. The challenges in computer science are well documented, with studies suggesting that female’s attitudes about computer science are set early on, where they find computer science to be boring and characterised as geeky and uninteresting (Cheryan et al., 2015). The declining interest means that fewer students are being drawn into undergraduate computer science courses. Despite, a wide range of initiatives to encourage females in computer science, this still continues to be a challenge (Computer Science Online,

In her 1977 essay, How can a little girl like you teach a big class of men?, Naomi Weisstein discusses her experience of sexism in science. Weisstein is an experimental psychologist who specialized in vision research. In her essay she gives background on her high school and undergraduate college she attended where she never faced discrimination based on her sex because of the competitiveness of the two schools. However, when she reached graduate school, at Harvard, she soon realized that the men in her classed believed women did not belong in psychology. One professor went as far as to say, “Women don’t belong in graduate school.” Her peers were no different; the men in her classes even said, “No man is going to want you” or “You’re out of your natural roles, you are no longer feminine.” This discriminatory thinking led to women being shut out. This went as far as the women being denied access to necessary research equipment, yet, they were determined to collect data anyways. Weisstein went as far as Yale to do her research to graduate from Harvard; despite graduating at the top of her class, Weisstein could not find a

Engineering is a field dominated by men in today's society, for many reasons. When people think about engineering they think about men with glasses and never does a women come to mind. However, there have been many studies on the skills that keep women out of engineering as a career yet there is no proof that women cannot or do not possess the skills needed to be a successful engineer. Therefore, it is thought and stereotyped that women do not have the skills to have an engineering career. Due to the studies and stereotypes the questions then arise as to what makes a good engineer. Many have the same response to the question but not one skill can a women not posses. Women are stereotyped as being dumb just because they are pretty. If a

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,

Society’s entrenched views of gender and identity are unconsciously shaped by a continuous changing platform of time and space. From the assigned literature of the first half of the class, I was exposed to ideas of how gender and identity influences a place, and how western society projects their ideology through minuscule details, all of which I never took into consideration but soon later began to analyze in my day-to-day life routine. Overall I truly appreciated and enjoyed the readings and in particular, Linda McDowell’s literature, Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. While I agree with McDowell’s significant acknowledgement of the importance of how gender and identity interconnects with different spheres of power and adverse places, along her empirical analysis of gender and identity in various social settings, she fails to thoroughly acknowledge the relevancy of technology, a huge component of today’s culture life and spaces. As it is McDowell’s purpose to reveal the interconnectedness of gender, identity, and geography, I believe she should have recognized how technology associates with numerous geographic aspects, especially in today’s rapidly advancing technological time and place. McDowell’s empirical evidence of gender and identity interconnecting with places of the home, the community, and the public, all exercise a degree of

Gender and technology has become a very important factor within today’s society, as it reflects upon the overlaps between gender, digital technologies and democracy. Technology has presented both genders in provocative ways that tends to lead to sexual harassment and then for political action to end gender based violence. This then becomes essential and fundamental to the working of and towards a healthy democracy. The term Cyberfeminism has been developed throughout the previous years as feminists who are interested in exploiting with technologies, such as the Internet and cyber-space think it is a vehicle of freedom from the dissolution of sex and gender. An example of online digital media that illustrates the case of gender of Cyberfeminism is the online media campaign called “Free The Nipple.” This essay will firstly describe this cyberfeminism campaign and how it is relevant towards gender and technology. Then it will examine how digital media can be used as a form of resistance against stereotypes and ideological assumptions in relation to the role of women in contemporary society. Thus the difference between men and women become relevant to these media phenomena and is of importance for gender patterns when considering it in relation to the Internet. (Bimber, 3)