Advancements in STEM fields were off the charts in 2015, and the coming years are bound to bring together great minds and lead to even greater innovation. However, as we look to a future of self-driving cars and missions to Mars, there is one problem that time and time again seems to be falling through the cracks. Female involvement in STEM fields is still in the gutter and statistically continues to remain stagnant.
As a female engineering student myself, I could say that I’ve been incredibly lucky as I have yet to directly encounter conflict in this field due to my gender. However, the key word here is “directly.” Sexism directed towards women in science and engineering is everywhere, but often is so subtle that it’s easily pushed under the rug.
So, what really is bias towards women in STEM? It’s when a friend tells me her engineering project team refused to consider her ideas, citing her gender as their sole explanation. It’s when a male high school teacher earns a starting salary not much lower than that of a female teacher who has an advanced degree and years of teaching experience. It’s when the girls are told to stand by and “make the PowerPoint look pretty” for a technical project. It’s when I, a female engineering major, comment on a female professor’s “sassy” comments in class only to realize that if the professor were male, everything would be different. Put all of these instances together, and what we have is not a targeted problem but a full-blown pandemic.
Perhaps what is most toxic about this problem is that women begin to absorb this mindset that they encounter every day, and gradually are led to believe that a STEM degree or career just isn’t for them. It’s no wonder that female enrollment in engineering undergraduate programs is so despicably low and that women tend to drop out of these programs despite being just as academically qualified or even more qualified than their male counterparts. Reasons often cited by women for switching out of a STEM oriented field include pressure from peers, stereotypes, a lack of encouragement, and of course, gender bias.
How do we fix the problem? For one, many high schools around the country have been actively working to promote female participation in advanced science, math, and computer science classes. At colleges and universities, outreach programs designed to provide mentorship and a sense of community for female students in STEM are becoming more and more common. Here at the University of Maryland, the Flexus program is a living-learning community specifically for female engineers that provides support for all four years of undergraduate study. Many universities also offer summer internship and research programs focused on providing opportunities for underrepresented students in science and engineering.
While many great strides have recently been made, female enrollment in STEM still has yet to show any significant increase over the past decade. What this means is that we require not just a revamping of our attitudes towards women in science, but empowerment on a level not just related to profession or academic study. When women feel confident in themselves and their abilities, whatever they may be, they will be more likely to pursue their interests in fields of all kinds, from art to engineering to construction and everything in between. Only then can we begin to reverse these detrimental gender stereotypes, but this time from the inside out.
