To be a bit cynical about the girls in STEM push?

[StormBringers]

It feels a bit like the ‘you can have it all!’ That my mum heard, wow you can do work! When the reality meant burnout for many women, still doing the housework and kids in most families/ culturally being expected to on top of ft work. Girls with good grades are being directed to STEM, riding on the guilt of all those tragedies of women who gave up on maths and science despite their capabilities.

I see lots of girls excelling in STEM, but I’m not hearing about the family friendly work environment that awaits them. It still seems to be a male advantage in the work place (well unless you make the perfectly valid choice to focus on career instead of children). Surely if we want women in STEM it’s not about targeting kS2 with clubs, it’s about changing the work place and legislating and supporting women to work and excel in STEM in a way that allows them realistic chances to also chose children?

It feels like we’re currently evangelising STEM to girls, telling them they can do anything and pouring them into a broken receptacle they’ll probably leave. Do we have too few women because they don’t follow the academic paths? Or because the workplace presents barriers. I’m dwelling from watching my eldest flounder post Maths phd ... something that I’ve never seen her do before.

Also, we seem to be forgetting debate, creativity etc in schools and the place for philosophy.

Aibu to be getting sick of it lately?

SaskiaRembrandt - I agree. It’s coming from somewhere but we can’t work out what age and why it’s starting. We have been invited in to so many schools to do presentations, we always take female members of staff as role models etc.

I agree re law and finance but you’re right, over the last 30 years ago a lot more women have entered those professions. Aren’t there more female trainer solicitors than male now?

Ivy44 cold it be that the schools themselves are not promoting those subject as open to all, and by the time you go in there is already a perception that they are for boys? On the other hand, the girls may be absorbing messages from home and wider society which is hard to overcome.

She’s excelled at the top of a male degree

Do you mean stereotypically male degree?

SaskiaRembrandt - we have joked about presenting to nurseries as it seems ingrained by the time it gets to year 8.

I don’t know if it’s the schools or home. I’ve never worked in a school so don’t know what their priorities are. Mine won’t be having that attitude ingrained at home though 😁. We’re doing what we can as an individual company.

I work in STEM (and always have so I have no comparison with non STEM roles). My employer is fairly family friendly, though not quite as good as DHs (also STEM). I can WFH for some tasks, for others I have to be on site. DHs role is the same (we work in different technical areas but at a similar level). Between us we try and schedule things so that we don't both need to be on site or on nights at the same time & mostly manage it.

I can't understand why you would want to discourage KS2 & KS3 kids from thinking about STEM careers, and I don't see why encouraging girls to take STEM subject qualifications is a negative. It's hardly like they are selecting 12 girls in every high school, then chaining them to lab desks and forcing them to study Chemical Engineering for the next 4 years on pain of death. (Personally I think the narrowness of A levels is a massive weakness of the English school system, but I didn't go through it so may be misunderstanding it - why shouldn't reasonably academic 17yr olds study a science subject and an arts subject and maths and English as a minimum? And why should anyone be choosing between Science & NotScience at 16??)

Ivy44 Nurseries might be an idea! By year 8 attitudes about all sorts of things seem to be pretty ingrained.

Good for you for doing your bit though! I applaud anyone who is trying to change things.

I think there’s a complex issue with work. DH and I reached a point where we were successful in careers, both at a very similar point and earnings. Our kids though we’re in childcare 7-6 and occasionally later in a daily basis, we were tired and ratty and the children weren’t thriving. One then had SEN and childcare was a struggle too, and she needed parent time even more. We agreed that with similar late nights and long childcare the family was cracking totally, even with sharing it was a struggle. We tried for years to work it, but one of us need pt and a step back. DH would have done it, but I wanted it more I guess than being the career half of the family. I stepped back as too ft parents with responsibility that mean some long hours in a job with very poor flexibility wasn’t working. It wasn’t about me doing shitwork, it was about everyone struggling to work it and kids only seeing us at weekends. A ramble I know- but I think there must be women like me that aren’t forced into it but chose family life instead of the male partner in the face of no flexibility at work. Not because their partner doesn’t help. The comment about having it all was a reference to my mum’s generation

I find myself saying this a lot: TV/Films/News outlets have a LOT to answer for for their continued insistence that STEM subjects and the jobs that follow are for socially inept, unattractive nerds. The subset of boys who are willing to put up with that social image is larger than the equivalent subset of girls, and that's the main reason why all the best efforts of engineering companies to balance their workforce is achieving very little.

@NoCryingInEngineering that was it though for Dd, an impressionable 15 yr old with good grades really really felt the pressure with narrow A levels (music/ art??? That’s too much time! Oh there’s a timetable clash. Stories of tragedies of girls in STEM, careers. It was laid on thick. Luckily she likes it but there was a fair whack of pressure, meetings etc and chats... I don’t think it matched the story later on

I’ve wondered if it’s because boys seem more likely to play computer games as teenagers too.

Hotchox makes a good point.

The work I did as an engineering graduate was intellectually interesting and the work life balance was not too bad. The everyday sexism though? Fucking disgusting. My confidence was destroyed. Relieved to work in an allied but non STEM role now.

The stats worth looking closely at are the destinations of women qualified in STEM who leave the sector. The "talent pipeline" as it was called.

Starting in a stem career after uni was a shock. The boys club was still very much in existence in a way I hadn't experienced at school and uni. A large proportion (maybe 50 per cent) of my female contempories married within the profession and have stopped work on having kids, myself included. I don't know what I will say to my children, I feel very conflicted. However I refuse to exhaust myself with guilt by trying to do it all. A significant proportion have decided against children, and really that probably feels like the most sensible decision if you want that type of career.

Also, it annoys me that there isn't the opposite push to encourage boys into taking on more caring roles.

@SaskiaRembrandt would you applaud a successful women in teaching or a similar traditionally women’s job? Or are less valid as feminists? I think that’s what I getting at, valuing women’s choices as equal and not evangelical about just one route. It’s swinging so far it’s both pressuring and even alienating some in schools.

@RednaxelasPony and @Thenextnamechange that’s DD’s view. She’s not found this nirvana of flexi happy working but proving herself in the boys club. Maybe it’s age? If you get through the early bit...? I appreciate she’s on the younger end of starting a family these days

I don’t think it’s about applauding women for going into more caring professions, laudable as that is - those jobs have their challenges.

It’s about exploring why women don’t go into STEM careers as often as men and what can we do as STEM employers to create a more equal workplace. Something is deterring women from careers in Tech and we can’t quite work out what it is. On another note, Technology roles can be quite lucrative, more so than caring roles (although I appreciate money isn’t usually the main motivator for people entering the caring professions), so more women in the Tech field may help with gender pay equality.

Things will change when it’s 50/50 in the workplace. Teaching used to be a male profession.
It’s did art subjects, it leads to less well paid jobs. My sister did IT and earns a lot more, we have the same experience of juggling childcare whatever field you enter.

It has changed even since I left a few years ago with the gender pay gap reporting. And it varies alot between companies and teams. Problem is that it is very difficult to tell who is just doing a good talk and who is genuinely a good employer for parents. As such I will not risk trying to go back anytime soon. If I had the answer I would be living it!

I think you are mashing several different issues together StormBringers and I'm not sure most of them have much to do with encouraging girls to take STEM subjects or think about STEM as a career option.

RednaxelasPony and thenextnamechange - when were you working in STEM and which part?

Someone else made a comment about A-Levels. I’ve also thought it odd that we tend to specialise in Arts or Sciences at a relatively young age.

All good things for me to ponder.

Nursing is shit for work / life balance due to the nature of working hours shifts etc but its still mainly staffed by women so i think that argument usnt valid

I still think the lack of professional stem women is due to a lack of interest in stem by women

Nobody will be pushing mine into STEM she hates all of it.
Whatever job you have if you have kids they need caring for, by both parents not just the mother.
I'm hearing a lot of women under 30 saying they aren't having kids as their careers will suffer.

It would be good to get to a point where more girls consider a career in STEM though. No one should be pushed into anything they don’t want to do, we just want to do what we can to raise awareness of careers in Tech for young girls.

I still think the lack of professional stem women is due to a lack of interest in stem by women

But that isn't the case in some other countries, so why is it that women have a lack of interest in stem?

I believe that culturally it starts really young, in nursery / infants. I read somewhere that parents point out rabbits to their children differently:

• to a girl 'look at the cute bunnies'
• to a boy 'look at the bunnies, lets count them'

and it goes on from there.

There may also be something in risk taking. STEM is seen as 'hard'. maybe boys are being more encouraged to take the risk (or more naturally risk taking) whereas girls are encouraged into 'safer' subjects?

I have an engineering degree and work in STEM. Work/life balance and kids didn’t enter my head when choosing a degree (in fact my other option was medicine)! I agree with a PP that there is something pre a-levels that needs addressing.

FWIW I have been very lucky to be able to mould my own career path to allow flexible working (it’s actually been a distinct advantage for two jobs where that flexibility works in both directions) but that’s been more down to market conditions where I’ve been able to ask for what I want. I know a fair number of men who work flexible hours to do some school runs so I think as a culture it’s generally not that bad.