Since the time of early hominids, humans have been striving to make advances in knowledge. They made tools, learned to pass along stories, and paved the future for mankind today. The STEM field has played a crucial role in getting us to where we are, which is why many people research and work in one of the STEM areas.
However, not all people are treated equally in this field. In many cases of both the past and present, women have been held back from opportunities that could make men feel effeminate, and the STEM field is no exception.
Fast forward through the struggles women faced even trying to work at all, and you’ll find many women majoring or working in language arts, business, or other non-STEM fields. While choosing a path that calls to you is perfectly fine, this isn’t the reason that less than 25% of women in the workforce have a job in the STEM field.
Women haven’t been encouraged to pursue STEM fields. In fact, we are often heavily discouraged, and sometimes by other women! We’re told that a man’s brain and a woman’s brain are wired differently. They tell us that women are better at English because we are emotional and can connect to literature, and then they shun us for wanting to learn more about planets or hydrocarbons. Men are supposed to be superior in math and science because their brains are bigger (sexual dimorphism is not a factor in determining the better sex, by the way).
Even in my own community, sometimes I am met with “YOU want to do THAT?” and “Shouldn’t you pick something easier to do? Why make it hard on yourself?” We are often given examples of how men have discovered and invented most of the things that we know and use today, but we are not told of the way women were treated when those discoveries were made.
“There’s a growing mountain of evidence that women in the STEM fields face gender bias. This August, for example, female platform engineer Isis Wenger participated in a recruiting campaign — only to face ridicule based on her appearance and disbelief that she was actually an engineer. She then launched the #iLookLikeAnEngineer hashtag on Twitter, which went viral as women and minorities in STEM tweeted to combat stereotypes.
Earlier in the summer, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Tim Hunt made headlines when he said that the “trouble with girls” was that three things happen when they are let into the lab: “you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.” These are egregious examples — but the empirical evidence backs them up. One landmark study found that science faculty at research universities rate applicants with male names as more competent, more hireable, and more deserving of a higher starting salary than female applicants, even when the resumes are otherwise identical” (Raymond, "Even with hard evidence of gender bias in STEM fields, men don't believe it's real").
This bias hurts the limited chances that we are given to be in this field, and it is even worse for women of color. Not only do they have to overcome the hurdle of being a woman, they must also deal with the negative stereotypes associated with their race. Likewise, women from poorer areas or rural areas are less likely to be encouraged or accepted into this field. Overall, this leads to only 6.7% of women in college graduating with a STEM degree.
As a woman doubling majoring in the STEM field (chemistry and anthropology), I’m hoping to be part of the wave of women who change the way the world sees women in the STEM field. Not only does this bias hurt the women currently in the STEM field, but it also encourages the notion that men are above women.
In this era, mankind shouldn’t be focused on secluding and discriminating against anyone that could potentially benefit our future. Instead, we should be encouraging each other to advance in fields that could unlock discoveries that our ancestors couldn’t begin to dream of. After all, we’ve come a long way from bifacially flaked tools.
