We live in a world of bumper sticker catch phrases and acronyms. So, it would be easy to dismiss the term STEMinism as a concept that is too cute by half. A trending pun combined with a well-known acronym – how could anyone take this seriously? But this one term describes the movement to address a very serious problem in the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics – the dearth of female professionals in that universe. And while the numbers for total women are dismal, it is even worse for Latinas. According to the National Science Foundation only 2% of Latinas held science and engineering positions in 2015, according to a report from the National Center for Women and Information Technology, Latinas made up only 1% of the computing workforce in 2017.
Research published by Lehigh University entitled, “Want More Women & Minorities in STEM? Address Social Oppression in the Classroom,” offers this startling data point, “Ninety-nine percent of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs in the U.S. require some form of postsecondary education. Yet, degree holders in science and engineering fields remain predominantly White and male. This results in the exclusion of a large portion of the U.S. workforce which consists of 29% underrepresented minorities, 46.9% women and 16.9% immigrants from participating in these high-paying, high-growth fields.”
According to a University of Washington article, “Astronomy fellowship demonstrates measures to dismantle bias, increase diversity in STEM” even well-meaning efforts to increase STEM diversity has unintended consequences.
They report, “In 2017, the Heising-Simons Foundation – a family foundation that works in climate and clean energy, science, education, and human rights – established the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship to support early-career astronomers engaged in planetary research. Just over a year later, the Foundation announced that it would overhaul the selection process for the program because, out of 12 fellowships awarded in the program’s first two years, only two – one each year – went to female scientists.
“‘Even with our good intentions, we find ourselves part of a system that drives to less rather than more diversity,’ said the Foundation in a statement on its website. ‘We commit to working to change our Fellowship and that system for the better.’”
Now the Foundation is working with Joyce Yen, director of the University of Washington’s ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change, an NSF-funded body to promote female STEM faculty on campus, to modify the application and evaluation process.
And time is of the essence to correct this problem. If we wait until young women are preparing for college to encourage interest in STEM careers, it’s already too late. According to Rachel B. Vogelstein, Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program in the podcast series “Why It Matters,” hosted and produced by Gabrielle Sierra and conducted for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), young girls are attracted to these professions at an early age, but interest falls off a cliff as they get older.
Vogelstein told Sierra, “Today 66 percent of female students aged 6 to 12 are enrolled in some type of computer science program. But only 32% of girls are enrolled once you get to ages thirteen to seventeen. And by the time you get to college, you have only 4% of college first-years who are female enrolled in these programs. So, you can see there’s a dramatic decline from the earliest years, that obviously affects, who ultimately participates in these fields, which are not only the fields of the future, but they also happen to be some of the most well-paying fields.”
But let’s be clear, these women aren’t snowflakes afraid to take on challenges. They lack a support system, and have been sabotaged by false assumptions that dissuade them from STEM careers.
In the same CFR podcast Meighan Stone, Senior Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy explains, “I think that girls and women have been told that STEM means you have to be good at math, and you hear a lot of girls or women saying, ‘I’m just not good at math.’ What does that mean? And it turns out STEM, coding, you know, building tech, creating apps does not require that you like high school algebra; we have to understand that the field is so much broader than just am I good at math or not. That’s just not true. And it might be because we’ve been looking at STEM from the wrong angle all along. It’s not really about technical skills, it’s about recognizing and solving problems in new ways.”
Excluding women presents an even greater emerging problem for the world financial markets than for women, alone. Vogelstein notes, “STEM skills are really required for the workforce of the future. There are new technologies that are dramatically transforming work and the global economy. In fact, many of the children who are starting primary school right now, this fall, will eventually work in jobs that do not even currently exist. Seventy percent of garment manufacturing jobs in Southeast Asia are held by women. And these types of jobs are very likely to be taken over by machines. That means that without new skills these women may not be able to work. Women are also already at a disadvantage in terms of access to and use of technology. There are about two hundred million fewer women than men with access to mobile phones in the developing world. And there are about three hundred million fewer women than men who are actually connected to the internet in the developing world.”
Even when a strong support system for STEMinism exists, women also have to be aware of the possibility they are sabotaging their own efforts. A recent article, “Why women select college majors with lower earnings potential” published by The Ohio State University (OSU) states, “Even when both male and female college students say they want to pursue a major with the best earnings prospects, the majors men choose are higher paying than the majors women choose.”
In a new study, sociologist Natasha Quadlin of OSU found that “the logics of major choice” may lead women to select different majors from men, despite having similar preferences.
“Even when women place great emphasis on earnings, other preferences may ultimately win out for them,” said Quadlin, assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State. One possible competing preference: finding a field that’s a good fit.
“The pattern was clear: The majors men choose are associated with significantly higher earning than the majors women choose - regardless of men’s and women’s major preferences,” she said.
The study appears online in the journal Sociology of Education.
There’s another important reason to start getting more girls into STEM – money.
Stone on the CFR podcast presents an inescapable reality. “If you want to make an economic argument, it’s fine if you don’t agree with us on the human rights argument. We’re ready with an economic argument. And that’s that, you know, this is going to foster serious economic growth, which any world leader should be seriously interested in.”
Vogelstein concurs, “I think that’s exactly right. The link between girls’ education and economic growth is quite clear. The World Bank has found that women and girls could add up to $30 trillion in the global economy if girls completed secondary education. This is an area, gender inequality, that is often thought of as deeply rooted and intractable. And in fact, looking back to the 1995 U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, which was the first time that 189 countries came together to agree with one voice, at long last, that women’s rights are human rights. Fast-forward twenty-five years to today, we see that we have gone from a world where it was a foregone conclusion that boys would go to school before girls, to a world in which the gender gap in education at the primary level has virtually closed globally. We have gone from a world where, half a million women were dying from largely preventable conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth every day to a world in which that number has been cut in half in record time. So what does that tell us? It tells us that when we come together as an international community, and set goals, and there’s political leadership, and adequate resources, that we can change these outcomes.” •
Sources: National Science Foundation, National Center for Women and Information Technology, Lehigh University, University of Washington, Heising-Simons Foundation, “Why It Matters” Council on Foreign Relations, Ohio State University, Pathways Through College Study
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