Science: The Gender Dimension
On Friday, October 25th (1-3PM), there will be a discussion about the challenges and opportunities for women in STEM careers held at the Allan Yap Biodiversity Theatre. This event is FREE to attend.
“Women remain underrepresented in many fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Join our esteemed panelists, planetary scientist and NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal winner Dr. Laurie Leshin, zoologist and MacArthur Genius grant winner Dr. Sally Otto, and Vice President, Response Biomedical Corp and UBC Science Alumna Dr. Barbara Kinnaird-Steen, with our moderator Dr. Simon Peacock, Dean of UBC’s Faculty of Science, as they discuss the STEM gender gap.
Learn how we can encourage more young women to embrace science, listen to practical advice for women pursuing STEM careers, and discover what factors may affect young women’s careers in the sciences.
To register and for more information, please head over to http://ubcsciencegenderdimension.eventbrite.ca/. Space is limited.
I hope to see you there!
If you are able to attend, you should definitely go!
In fact, women do not REMAIN underrepresented in STEM. Women have BECOME increasingly underrepresented in STEM. Did you know that in the early days of computer science, women outnumbered men in the field? And the vast majority of the best, fastest and most precise coders were women. But ever since, that percentage has steadily gone down, and continues to decrease.
I have no idea where I put the link now, but a couple of years ago I came by some really fascinating breakdowns from a survey off around 5000 women in various STEM fields like computer science, mechanical engineering, and so on. It showed things like, in most STEM fields that were studied, men had a lower perception of female harassment in the workplace than men (no surprise), but also that both men and women in worker positions had a significantly lower perception of sexual harassment in their workplace than EITHER men or women in management positions—because the managers are the ones who hear the complaints, right? They’re MADE aware.
And it turns out that the percentage of male/female in most entry-level STEM positions is actually not all that skewed (60/40 or thereabouts, usually), but what happens is that somewhere in their 30s-40s, a lot of women bail out of STEM and change careers. Only about a quarter of the women who did the survey said that this was because of having kids. Quite a few more said it had to do with the lack of advancement opportunities, and a LOT (like 40% of them) said it was because the work had ceased to be enjoyable or meaningful to them. (Why this was, exactly, the survey didn’t get into.)
Also, interestingly, of all the professions surveyed, mechanical engineering turned out to be the one with the best performance for women.
My professors in my program, some of whom have been working in IT for upwards of 40 years, say that in the early days, the MAJORITY of computer scientists were women, and almost all the best coders were women. They simply dominated the field. But starting in the 1950s, the male/female ration simply started slipping, and has continued to do so even today. And the truth is, nobody’s really sure why this is. Glass ceilings, male-biased work cultures, and sexual harassment may drive women *out* of those fields once they get into them (and from that survey, you can infer that they do have some effect), but this is partly due to the lack of women being *interested* in these fields to begin with. Fewer women study them in college; even fewer women pursue advanced degrees. Even *fewer* American women do. If you have a STEM undergrad program that has 40% women, then there’s a good chance that under 50% of those women will be American. In graduate programs, you see something more like 25-30% women, and probably about 20% of those women are American.
And yet, productivity on STEM teams comprised of a balanced mix of men and women has been shown in studies to skyrocket. Women perform better at teamwork; women are proven to be better at negotiating compromises that all parties are reasonably happy with, and offices with more women see a disproportionately lower percentage of ego-driven shenanigans.
I’ve seen quite a few articles recently talking about how this is not as big a deal as it’s made out to be, but if you ever get the opportunity to ask an employer like JP Morgan or IBM or Ernst & Young—I mean physically walk up to a recruiter or a senior manager and talk to them about it—they will tell you that they’re seriously concerned about this. They NEED women in these positions, both for legal reasons and profit-driven ones, and they are not satisfied with the performance they see out of offices and teams where men are a vast majority of the employees.
But the thing is, their problem is not in HIRING women. That they can do; there aren’t as many women as men on the market, but there are enough talented women applying for these jobs. The problem is in retaining them once they’re hired. And nobody can really figure out why they can’t. The women themselves know that they become dissatisfied, but when asked they usually say they can’t put their finger on just why.
So. Something to keep in mind when you go to events like this. What’s going on in schools or in the greater culture that women believe these degrees wouldn’t be interesting to them? And what’s going on in the workplace that women simply…leave? It’s not the obvious answers; those are easy to point at and deal with, and it’s been tried. There are quieter, more insidious things going on.