A few weeks ago at Starbucks I saw a headline of a newspaper article that said "Two Dozen Women Open Up About Harassment In Technology" and I'd be lying if I said that I haven't thought about that headline every day since seeing it.

Now, I'm in Technology, and I'm a female. I even landed my first internship at a pretty big corporation for the summer where I work with all guys (there's another girl intern that works under my boss as well but we don't work together). Before I even got my internship I knew STEM fields had very few girls in them so I wasn't expecting anything less. And if I'm being honest, I was expecting the men in STEM to be older, and close-minded when it comes to accepting a female into their field. However, the guys I work with are all young, and are all incredibly nice to me and took me in with open arms. I can gladly say I've never once felt targeted in a bad way - which is why I'm so thankful for my internship and the guys I work with every day.

But not every single woman in STEM has a good experience.

I think it's very well-known (disregarding political views for a moment) that women are discriminated against when they're placed in a workplace with men. There have been studies done and articles written that prove this fact (google around a bit and you'll certainly find something other than the pay gap source I provided). And yes, I've seen the memes on Facebook that say "if you want to be paid equally, then get the same jobs as men", but before anyone says anything like that I and many other women ARE in the same jobs as a lot of men and there are still problems!

STEM as a whole is not kind to women. It is not used to women being equal or sometimes better than men at doing the same, thought-provoking job. It's been shown time and time again that women don't want to come off as rude when it comes to their male coworkers, so for example, if a woman is asked to cover her male coworker's shift, she is more likely to say yes than her coworker. Women are also expected to be more conservative than men with their demeanor, dress, etc.

So while it's great that more women are going into STEM and not letting gender roles affect them, women do not have nearly as good of an experience in STEM as men do. They have to work harder in every aspect of their job to prove that they deserve to be in the field. I know in my experience, with the guys being nothing but nice to me, I constantly feel stupid and am afraid to ask any questions because I feel like that would discredit my education and they would have all the reason to laugh at me and tell me I don't belong in IT.

In case you want to read more, here's a good article about women being underrepresented in STEM (and if you don't like the source, google "women in stem" - there are thousands of articles.)