In an era where modern feminism helped woman reach the equity that they’re searching for in all different fields like medicine, business and law, it’s surprising that in the STEM fields, this equity has a long way to go before it’s achieved, fields like technology, science, barely have more than 20% of female students on the contrary of medicine & business who have surpassed the bar and achieved 50% and more.
In Europe, less than 7% of tech positions are filled by woman, even though woman have found their way and proven their capacity in the workplace, a small percentage of computing jobs are held by woman and in some countries, this percentage is decreasing every year.
Girls achieve better grades than boys at an early age, yet in college and while they pursue science at university, they’re surrounded by mostly boys. There’s a big gender gap in the higher studies of science & tech, in this gap keeps getting bigger by every year until it reaches the workplace.
Are there some hidden reasons that block women from achieving the same thing as their male counterparts in the STEM fields ? That’s what will be revealed throughout the article.
Chapter Overview
Is it a cultural problem ?
This gender gap begins early as boys keep being pushed to take risks and take certain career paths and risky jobs, while girls are expected to take safer choices, since childhood, female & male are surrounded and raised according to stereotypes, girls wear pink, boys wear blue, girls are doctors, boys are engineers, girls play with barbies, boys with spaceships and so on. These stereotypes keep being marketed for children until they turn to reality in an older age.
Are woman less competent ?
There’s a stereotype who’s been promoted since an early age for both males & females, and it’s the fact that men are more rational that women, and that women are more emotional than men, this stereotype has been wildly promoted until it became embedded in the society’s mind.
No wonder why women are considered less competent and less smart than men to pursue technology or science.
However, is it true?
In a recent study, it’s been showed that 70% of 15 year old girls surpassed their male classmates in science & math subjects. On top of that, an analysis that has been done on 1.4 million GitHub users shows that women surpass men in their coding skills.
Now that this stereotype has been debunked, what’s preventing women from achieving the same thing as men in the STEM fields?
“I think we as a society have done a terrible job of encouraging young girls to engage in STEM at an early age… our actions show that boys grow up to become whatever they want, while girls are encouraged to take “safer” paths”. Says Christina Morillo, the co-founder of women of color in tech chat!
Discrimination
There’s no denying that for a gap to be this big, discrimination must be involved, in the STEM fields job’s interviews, woman are perceived less competent than their male counterparts just because of their gender, they might have the same resume, yet the man will have the job she deserves based solely on gender, this gender bias is even more prominent in interviews.
What leads to this discrimination to be bigger, is the fact that women are considered are less productive than man, because they’re ought to be mothers at the end of their journey and take a mother leave, and score less hours of work because of this responsibility, employers expect from employees in these fields to give their all or nothing at all.
All their time and effort should be preserved for work and taking a chance of hiring someone who’d take a parental leave and block work flow is a risk that they’re afraid of taking.
Pro-papers writers certainly feel this struggle as well, and do their best in showing this through their articles.
Why should there be more woman in the workplace ?
Gender diversity is a great step for the enterprise to take to have higher valuation, and increase their financial performance, it has been proven that diversity & performance are highly tied together, and so, the more an enterprise is accepting of diversity, the better it performs.
Firms that went for the diversity and are more accepting have scored one percent increase in net margin; which means 15 percent increase in profitability, women have different approach to problems which help relatively for the enterprise to tackle all sort of problems.
The more women take directory position, the more they take part in taking decision and the better these decisions are, diversity in management leads to a happier workplace and to much more creative solutions.
A higher diversity means having different perspectives and thinking strategies in the workplace that will help in pinpointing all the pain points of clients, and thus a higher chance of solving problems.
What should be done to remedy this problem?
This problem isn’t just a matter of choice, it’s also a matter of perspective and mindset, enterprises should promote the gender diversity in the workplace as it is a great booster for their performances, whether in terms of management or in term of finance & margin.
Stereotypes should also be debunked and avoided when raising the next generation so as to avoid pushing girls or boys into paths that they’re not passionate about and avoiding fields that they actually want just because they need to avoid risks.
A lot of measures should be taken from now on, but hopefully in the near future, that equity we’re looking for will be reached. Women are competent and smart creatures, a lot of technological inventions were created thanks to their bright ideas and it can be denied. That is why in the nearest future this border between women and science will be totally eliminated.