At the May intensive, we got to see a presentation from Team Tinkr for their idea to promote more women to enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. I wanted to write a bit of a follow-up to that, because it’s something I would love to see change.
They are attempting to encourage young women to stay interested in the tech fields through middle and high school in hopes that this will get them over the hump and stick with it into college. I think this is definitely an important issue to address, but it’s only one aspect of a bigger system.
Keeping the interest of young women in technical fields is one piece, and correcting the larger issue of why they lose interest in the first place is also important. There certainly seems to be some bias built into our culture to create the environment where women don’t want to stick with these fields.
In contrast, this isn’t a problem everywhere in the world. There are a couple countries that are near parity. After visiting Israel, it was quite an eye-opening experience to see no discernible gap in gender representation. So, there are areas where this isn’t a problem (or at least, much less so) which strengthens the case that the main drivers are culturally based as opposed to some more “natural” explanation (I can’t even hypothesize on what that might be as a plausible theory anyway).
I see at least two other major factors that contribute to the male bias.
Keeping Boys In
I don’t necessarily think there is some force actively trying to keep women out of STEM other than latent cultural stereotypes. This may be a prevailing force, but I think it’s better explained by actively keeping boys interested early on.
A great example of this is Lego, which has been marketed to boys almost exclusively for many years. After all, if Lego’s target market isn’t white boys named Zac[k], I don’t know who they’re after. And, it might be a little bit of a leap, but I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a correlation between playing with Lego and learning some core technical principles (I’m not alone on this thought: education.com).
Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency lays this out in her video on the subject far better than I do.
Reinforcing Culture, Current Tech Culture
It’s natural that any system with a bias will probably reinforce that bias in some way. The current culture in the tech industry is definitely male-centric, and could very well drive young women out of the industry altogether. This doesn’t seem to be on purpose, but a male-dominated field is going to have a misrepresentation through the ranks.
So, the superstars and role models in the field are going to push the bias onward, even when they don’t personally want to. I personally look up to Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson as prominent leaders and communicators in science. These are just two examples and there are countless more, but the prevalence of male STEM role models prevails, which isn’t doing any favors for trying to inspire young women. I wouldn’t expect this bias to just be gender-based. If, for example, all prominent STEM leaders were short or had hair, I’d probably feel like there isn’t a future for me.
Why Would This Be Better?
STEM jobs are some of the most useful, stable, high-paying jobs in the world (in my opinion, but c’mon, it’s true). So, there is that (hopefully) obvious benefit and rationale for wanting to change the system. But, there’s also the benefit of various viewpoints. I’m a strong believer in diverse viewpoints promoting better innovation. So, all those gender-based cultural differences can be used in a better capacity.
In my experience, the women I’ve worked with have shown a surprisingly different and creative thinking than most of the men (including myself). Most companies have figured this out and are promoting more equal representation, so hopefully this effect can help encourage more women to commit to a STEM career.
Disclaimer
I know this can be a sensitive subject. If I’ve said something offensive or insensitive, it was done completely out of ignorance. I’m constantly learning, so please bear with me.
