Why is there such a gender imbalance when it comes to the science, technology, engineering, and math (or STEM) fields? What characterizes a career in math or in science that keeps them male-dominated even today, when women, at least on paper, share the same freedoms as men? What is it about, say, physics that attracts men and repels women? Is testosterone a required variable for understanding inertia or balancing the Schrödinger equation? Why are there so few women?
There is no easy way to explain why more women are not encouraged to follow STEM career paths. Some arguments assign blame to the media for fostering an image that scientists and mathematicians in our society are male. Other views place the blame on educators for directing men into those "manly" fields and women into traditionally acceptable "womanly" fields such as teaching and nursing, which supposedly fit a woman's nurturing nature. Whatever the reasons, and no matter how complex they prove to be, they cannot be justified. There is no legitimate excuse for anyone not being encouraged to follow his or her passions in life because of gender.
Studies that have examined test scores for both sexes at a variety of ages suggest that academic performance is not the greatest obstacle for girls who want to study math, science, or engineering. The gender stereotypes instilled in girls' minds at an early age are the real dream killers. By the time girls reach their teenage years, they have already formed opinions about which occupations are appropriate for their sex. Many young women decide to avoid science altogether without knowing its promise or the stimulating work it entails. That's because they are rarely encouraged by their parents, teachers, or peers to follow such a path and therefore are not exposed to it. While young males with average mechanical and mathematical abilities are likely to be encouraged to explore the STEM fields, it is only our young females with remarkable abilities who are thought to be prepared for the field.
As a society, we learn about the world and advance our well-being through science. The United States may be known around for its higher education, but there isn't as strong a focus on educating scientists and engineers as there is in many other countries. One significant reason for our falling behind is that female students are not being encouraged, as they are abroad, to pursue career paths in science, technology, engineering, or math. If we want to attract the best and brightest minds to the fields that will move us forward in the 21st century, we can no longer look to only half of the population for solutions.
For this reason, it is important to confront gender stereotypes head-on, and long before young people are faced with declaring their majors at the college level. Without making efforts to break gender stereotypes, we face the consequence of limiting the potential of our youth, both female and male, and equally important, the innovation potential of our country, as documented here. If careers in all STEM fields were truly open to both sexes, future generations would be encouraged to pursue the careers that best matched their interests and skills.
There is another issue with the STEM gender imbalance. By maintaining certain fields as male-dominated, we are also allowing the culture within those fields to be established and maintained by men. Therefore, the males in math- and science-related institutions and workplaces will continue to foster cultures that only meet the needs of men. These male-oriented cultures are not inviting to women, and as a result, they deter young women from choosing fields in math and science even if they have exceptional abilities.
Throughout history, women have achieved tremendous accomplishments in the traditionally male-dominated STEM fields. Women worked on the Manhattan Project, contributed to our understanding of DNA, discovered radium, and helped design and build the Golden Gate Bridge, just to name a few accomplishments. In addition to mastering difficult subjects and techniques of experimentation, however, these women also had to overcome the obstacle of a bias against their participation in and restricted access to STEM disciplines. Although that hurdle is less overt today, biases and restrictions still prevent women from choosing STEM career paths in large numbers.
Overcoming the lack of exposure is one of the main obstacles standing in the way of creating more gender balance in the STEM fields. So, what can professionals do to help? Act as a mentor. Especially for women, teaming with a mentor is a career strategy that can bring huge benefits in male-dominated work environments like science. The majority of successful women time and time again credit their participation in some sort of mentorship program for dramatically helping them to reach their career goals.
Although not everybody is cut out to play a mentoring role, many professionals will take on the opportunity to be a mentor if shown appreciation for their efforts. Those who are being mentored must put in the extra work in order to demonstrate that the guidance of their mentor is leading to success in college as well as on-the-job results. While the feeling of making a difference will be a rewarding payoff for mentors both on a professional and personal level, professionals will inevitably want those being mentored to reach professional goals and milestones.
Mentors for young women can be men or women. Men should not be viewed as monsters or enemies in the STEM fields. Rather, we should see them as partners, colleagues, and confidants. Women are not trying to flip the situation and dominate the fields in which men currently rule; women are merely trying to work in tandem with them and in more equal numbers to help advance the fields. After all, science is about critical thinking and taking risks in order to unveil knowledge; it is about learning all we can. Leveling the playing field will help crush the social stigma that says careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are for boys only.
By comparison, a field such as teaching (say elementary/high school) or nursing has a lower rate of knowledge obsolescence. Childbearing can take easily away a year in a woman's life. Thus, young female scientists often face a difficult choice between career and family. Upon return to the workforce, they know that their male colleagues and female colleagues without children would be a year ahead of them in knowledge and the career ladder.
If more women chose career ahead of family, we would automatically see an increase in the number of women in science. But, then we must ask, would this benefit society at large? The answer is no. The human race needs women to bear children, or we will be surely extinct. One way to solve this is to ensure that women returning to the workforce are given flexible working arrangements, while they catch up on missed knowledge. While this cannot simply bring back the lost time, it can at least make them feel more welcome to stay in science/engineering.
Toy stores often divide toys into what almost seems color coded sections with pink and other "soft" pastels for "girl" toys and the more strong colors for toys for the boys. This is not changing, especially in the toys imported from our "competitior" nations. You have to wonder if they know something and have a plan.
For far too long, entertainment has reinforced gender based "roles". That, thankfully is changing.
Traditional "values" are NOT all always a good guide for either the female part of the population or even society at large--at least not if they are of the "extremist" ilk.
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he shall not depart from it." ...including teach daughters that if they don't play the submissive, subservient homemaker role that an invisible all powerful being created them to play, then they risk burning eternally in a fiery pit of he[[.
Like other languages, it is likely that math needs to begun to be taught early. An emphasis on a good foundation in math and reading coupled with a joy of and desire for learning and making info easily available could help the self-starters but indoctrination is really difficult to "deprogram".
.
So it doesn't even make sense to ask whether people's foreordained passion is for STEM at equal rates among men as among women, let alone to take it as an unquestionable axiom.
It is beyond question that ordinary work in math and the natural sciences is within the potential of ordinary people of both sexes. But there's no way of knowing how many potential Isaac Newtons and Karl Gausses never found that potential because of being of a class, race, or sex that didn't have the opportunity. It's impossible to collect useful statistics about a human phenomenon that's probably much rarer than one in a million.
I found the following at The Huffington Post, but it presents a complicated counting too simplistically to make good conclusions: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/11/the-top-majors-by-gender_n_679175.html#s125313&title=1_WomenMen_Business. Computer Science is a top choice for men, and Psychology is a top choice for women. But Business trumps all the other fields, regardless of gender.
I published an article in Legacy about gender disparity, though it focused on the field of poetry. What fascinated me most about the research was that women have outnumbered men in college since the 1980s and also earn the majority of PhDs but that the gender disparity was reversed and more drastic when you looked at median salaries for PhDs, percentage of college presidents, and percentage of tenure-track job-holders. In fact, the percentage of women who've served a U.S. Poet Laureate is worse after 1960 than before.
I had a dream. I wanted to design lovely, saleable and inexpensive housing which looked traditional and appealed to the average consumer. Well, that guaranteed I would not be accepted into any school of architecture in the entire country. Nothing I believed in was edgy, commercial or radical in any respect. When I interviewed with one committee, they said "We don't need any more cookie cutter ticky tacky little boxes built for girls in aprons." No kidding. Wrote it down and still have the note.
Wow! Wouldn't we be farther ahead today if I had been able to design my small but traditionally beautiful--and regionally and culturally desirable--low environmental impact housing? But I was looking at the whole thing from a "female" perspective.
In any case... architecture is not even STEM. Architecture is, at its heart, an artistic discipline that just happens to require some technical skills. Most architects, by the way, have much more of the latter than the former. And we don't really need any more of those.
My mother didn't go to architecture school, just math and home ec. I hope you don't let lack of architecture school stop you. If you're in good health, you're still young enough to pursue that dream. And with the internet, it's feasible for you to work with customers everywhere.
Ladies, don't go into STEM fields for money. The money is in HR.
I'm female by the way. Ladies go into STEM because it's interesting, not because it is a huge payoff.