In a TED talk given by Debbie Sterling, CEO of “Goldie Blox”—a company that creates “award-winning construction toys for girls,” (About GoldieBlox) — she addresses a trend she noticed while attending Stanford University. She was an Engineering major and quickly realized there were very few females enrolled in her courses. Females make up a mere 14 percent of the total number of engineers worldwide (About GoldieBlox). This lack of women spans further than just the engineering sector of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) related fields. Women comprise only 24 percent of the country’s STEM jobs (9, Williams 2014). This low representation of women in these fields makes me wonder if there is some kind of invisible non-physical barrier that is preventing girls from successfully integrating themselves into these occupations and if there are barriers, why are they in place? Could girls possible be just be uninterested in STEM-related professions? In “Girls at 11: An interview with Carol Gilligan” (1992), she investigates the difficulties faced by girls as they enter their early teens, including the patterns of how a girl “loses her voice and connection with others” (19, Gilligan 1992) as she ages. I wonder if there is a correlation between these girls’ lack of confidence and support with the societal pressures to be the perfect girl who “give[s] up [her] own experience [in order to] tune into the way other people want [her] to see things” (20, Gilligan 1992). Do these standards contribute to the low number of women in STEM-related fields? In researching this topic, I found answers to these questions along with others, that may be contributing to the low numbers of females in STEM jobs.
The fact that women are underrepresen...
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...ldberg machines and conveyor belts, along with other working machines (About GoldieBlox) —two ideas closely related to engineering and STEM—in order to spark a curiosity in the subject that will hopefully continue to grow as the girls get older. Adult women must also recognize that young girls are looking to them for guidance in navigating this crazy thing called life. They need to encourage girls to ask questions and be curious about the world in which we live. Although “America is not [yet] as equality-minded as we would like to think” (19, Williams 2014), there is still hope for the future. If we realize that the lack of women in STEM professions is a reality that should change in order to make our society better, we can start the conversation and be the revolution that is necessary to get the next and future generations of girls to be the transformation we need.
“In the United States and several other countries, women now actually surpass men in educational achievements” (Josh, “Harvard Summer School”). Some women are more educated and qualified for most
...roblems of integration. If the science world takes advantage of undiscovered female talent, science as a whole will benefit greatly. For example, the original group of ENIAC programmers consisted of 6 women. In 1946, these women helped to develop the first operating stored-program computer.6 If female talent such as this goes to waste because of social neglect, the science world will never know what possible discoveries that could have been made with the help of women. If Dr. Djerassi is accurate with his examples of discrimination, the science world should take note of these problems and attempt to solve them.
In an excerpt titled "The Feminist Face of Antitechnology" from his 1981 book Blaming Technology, Samuel C. Florman explains why he thinks so few educated women in modern society are engineers. The excerpt was written shortly after he had visited an all-female liberal arts school, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, to convince a few young women to become engineers. His mission failed and his essay makes clear why he had such trouble.
In the working environment, there is focus on females having unequal salaries with males or where women are lacking. Sociology Professor of University of British Columbia, Neil Guppy, reveals statistics that point out males are more likely to become engineers; “. . .men with lower mathematics test scores are significantly more likely to enter and graduate from STEM degree fields” (Guppy 248). Additionally, “. . . domestic labor continues to be segregated into blue and pink jobs, with women disproportionately doing routine housework and childcare, and men concentrating most on non-routine domestic labor (e.g. fixing things)” (Guppy 251). Feminists have every right to argue for female inequality in the working environment; if women are able to score higher mathematics scores than males then they should have every right to obtain a STEM degree and enter fields of engineering. If women are able to prove throughout the course of the feminist movement that they are strong, they should be able to perform careers when they fix things. However, the perspective this writing takes doesn’t address how males fall victim to such careers; males are discriminated into performing non-routine domestic labor because they are supposed to be the “breadwinners” or perform physically demanding jobs. Just as females are disproportionately forced into domestic labor, so are males in STEM and engineering fields; if
Finally, our company should find some ways to boost gender diversity. In the third article “How to boost gender diversity in STEM”, using gender ratio statistics of 14 major tech companies Abby Perkins (2014) showed how serious of the gender diversity. Using ethos, Perkins (2014) mentioned the current trends in U.S. that only a few women are interested in STEM field. Consequently, to increase the diversity for real, it should be taken much earlier – in the education. Then he suggested several specific methods to achieve the gender
In brief, this article presents a view that women in engineering must enter the field as “conceptual men”. This means that in order to succeed in a male dominated field, women must essentially “become like men”. The article goes on to interview women in the engineering field. In particular, Ranson (2005) interviews women with and without children. This provides differing views of how women in engineering with and without children in engineering have approached their jobs.
Reading an article about the “Glass ceiling” triggered my curiosity, and I began to think how this could affect my daughter and her goals and aspirations. According to the Department of Labor, females account for 43.99% of the workforce as of May 2001, but only a small fraction of women have succeeded in attaining senior level positions. This fact makes it difficult to discount the allegations of inequality between men and women in the workplace, and proves that the effects of the glass ceiling are still prevalent.
There has been a study assessing the career preference of men and women, the study found that men are more attracted towards masculine job while women show no preference. This study also shows that men are more sensitive to gender stereotyping (Barth & Guadagno & Rice & Eno & Minney, 2015). The results of this study supports that men experience heavier social pressure and expectations to conform to society’s standards of masculinity. In addition, Current outcomes of studies highlights the underrepresentation of women in the field of STEM. Interestingly, while many women show interest in this field, only few would consider pursuing this option (Beede et al. 2011). This may be caused by women’s tendency to prioritize factors such as marriage, family, and helping others in choosing a career option, as jobs in the field of STEM are less accommodating to employees that are family oriented (Ceci et al. 2009). Expected themes seem to manifest in these data. There is a trend showing that both men and women’s career choice are somehow influenced by gender expectations and roles.
Plato once said “If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things” (Ferrari & Griffth, 2000). However, in today’s world women are more educated than men, bigger risk takers, and more adaptable to our modern socioeconomic trends. Yet women in the workforce still face daily struggles in acceptance. In this essay we will explore gender in the workforce, the changing nature of that workforce, gender inequalities and what measures are being taken in correcting and modelling a new working environment. We will see that more than often women are faced with the choice of maternal instincts over career options. Moreover we will see that when faced with this choice and electing the career path, women will face obstacles including bias and traditional roles.
“Sexist discrimination in STEM is such incredibly old news that it is a serious wonder we have not discovered the words “Women cannot be trusted to add” in cave paintings.”(JR Thorpe)
Over the years there have been many changes in the work-place. Since the second World War there has been a steady increase of women on the workforce across all the different types of careers there are in the United States. Some careers have seen more of a rapid change than others, a few of the career fields that have not really had much growth in gender diversity have been Engineering and Technology. Both of these fields have always been more male dominate throughout the history of their existence. The problem is that both of these careers demand a constant stream of new innovative ideas to fuel advancements in different types of technology. Those advancements are also very important to the public’s day to day life, as both of these fields are all around us every day. There is no better way to get new ideas than to bring in someone who has a different thought process than you. That is why colleges and companies need to try harder to bring in women to these careers rather than overlook them. With that being said if someone is not right for the job, then they’re not right for the job, the problem is that many companies are choosing male engineers over female engineers. If the careers in these to field want to keep having great advancement, they’re going to need all the great minds that we can get, and stop turning so many away. There has been a lot of research done over this same subject over several years but the results do not seem to be changing, and again and again they always seem to so that men are favored over women when it comes to getting a job in the engineering and technology fields. The problem all boils down to the companies and colleges, both of which need to change so those who desire to excel in these fields, get ...
Rosser, S. V. (1998). Applying feminist theories to women in science programs. Signs, 24, 71-200.
STEM is best known as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM for many years has been primarily seen as and stereotyped into a masculine work field. But as of recent years, while it expands, more and more women have been rising in these fields. However, there is still a tremendous gender gap between men and women in these fields and areas of work. The gender gap between men and women in STEM is alive and well. There is no denying that the gender gap between men and women in STEM is immense. But there instead are many sufficient reasons as to why there is such a huge gap between men and women within in fields. Some probable causes for the lack of women seen in these areas are biased towards women, unconscious bias girls receive
Within living memory, young women who have wanted to study engineering faced such dissent that in 1955, Penn State’s dean of engineering declared, “Women are NOT for engineering,” asserting that all but a few “unusual women” lacked the “basic capabilities” necessary to succeed in this profession (Bix par. 2). Although the number of women in social sciences and humanities has grown steadily, women remain underrepresented in science and engineering. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “women remain underrepresented in engineering constituting only 10 percent of full-time employed engineers and 7.7 percent of engineering managers...” Although this is the case, social norms, culture and attitudes play a significant role in undermining the role of women in the aforementioned fields in addition to the gendered persistence and their individual confidence in their ability to fulfill engineering roles.
Girls are seen as caring, nurturing, quiet, and helpful. They place other’s needs above their own. Girls get ahead by hard work, not by being naturally gifted. Boys are seen as lazy, but girls are seen as not capable. In class, teacher will call on boys more than they call on girls. Boys are seen as better at math and science; while girls are better at reading and art. This bias is still at work even out of the classroom. There are more males employed at computer firms than women. The ratio of male to female workers in STEM fields is 3-1. In college, more women major in the humanities than in the sciences. In education, women are often seen as lesser than; even though 65% of all college degrees are earned by women. Women are still often seen as needing to be more decorative than intellectual, as represented by the Barbie who included the phrase, “Math is hard!” and the shirt that JC Penneys sold that said, “I’m too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.” While there was a backlash on both items, it points out that there is a great deal of work to do on the educational gender bias to be