Throughout my life, I have always been eager to work towards some sort of STEM degree and land some job working with medicine. However, going through numerous science classes, we encounter that many theories and discoveries were made by men. Where do women come into play? Surely, there are many great female scientists such as the esteemed Marie Curie or Jane Goodall. But in school, we are not familiarized with many female scientists beyond these ones.
Our society focuses on males as it has for many many years. Women have always been viewed as more fragile, less ambitious, and not capable of being as intelligent as a man. Also, for some reason, the wage gap lingers even if a woman has proven herself to be more successful than a man. Our society would rather credit a man for his accomplishments even if a woman was able to do it better. Women's accomplishments in STEM fields have been horribly overlooked recently.
Firstly, there is a potential to close the wage gap if women are to pursue careers in the STEM field. STEM jobs are high-paying and highly sought after. Women are made to feel as though they should pursue jobs like teaching or journalism rather than engineering which society views as a male's job. For example, I attended a STEM Camp at WVU Institute of Technology over the summer. The boys heavily outnumbered the girls that attended the camp. Additionally, less than 20% of women hold computer science/engineering jobs. However, computer sciences is one of the fastest growing STEM fields. That means there is plenty of room for women to pursue a career in it.
It is pertinent that we do whatever we can to shoot down the stigmas that exist around females who love science and math. Society considers them "nerdy", "geeky", or perhaps not even smart enough and make them feel incapable. Women have a lot to add to the table. If females only make up 12% of engineers, we are missing out on new ideas and possible innovations. If women are shot down by male scientists because of their low numbers and stereotypes, we may never discover things important to the science world and their ideas may never be considered reliable science. For example, airbags were originally designed by men and they only thought of how these airbags would protect a male body. They hadn't even considered how airbags would affect more petite, feminine bodies at all. That is enough to say that women deserve to be heard in STEM fields.
We need to increase our awareness of this issue most definitely. Many programs and opportunities have opened up to young girls to motivate them to try out STEM options. Female minds are just as capable as male minds when it comes to science and math. We no longer wish to be underrepresented because of stigmas that are held against us. We need to wipe out the stigma that women are destined to be teachers and secretaries. It is our choice. Many women are brilliant and many men are brilliant, and we deserve to feel comfortable to work in the fields we wish to work in.
Statistic Sources:
