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?

StormBringers

I was applauding ivy for trying to get more girls into STEM, because it seems she's facing an uphill battle, but never the less she persists. Of course, I'd applaud any woman who is successful in any field, and I certainly wouldn't say teaching was not feminist - after parents, teachers can be the next biggest influence on the expectations and life chances of girls. That can be the very definition of feminism.

I can see the point you are making, I think my opinion would be that girls should be free to choose what they do with their lives, but those choices should be informed, they should be aware of the full range of options open to them. It's tragic to think that by year 8, many girls think certain career choices are only for boys.

Unfortunately there has been a push to get more women into stem for at least 25 years. But not so much interest in keeping those women in stem. Constantly refilling the pipeline if women are choosing to leave / go part time / take a role with less travel / difficult clients etc around the age of 30 isn’t really solving the problem. As pp said policies such as free childcare and men only parental leave would make more difference that more presentations in schools.

I used to work in a stem company (in a non stem role). We had women on our recruitment ads and did open days for school etc. But I was told by a senior HR person that a women’s network wasn’t needed.

I’m sorry that the post is long, or that it might not be relevant, but it’s my experience.
I studied S and then went into the ‘other’ M afterwards, and have worked in that discipline for 20 years, 14 of which have been in a male-dominated specialty.
I went to all-girl secondary schools where the atmosphere was that sex was not a barrier to achieving any career you desired. So I did, until it hit me that between my husband and me, I was the one who had to have the child.
The best piece of advice I received from a more senior female colleague was to employ ‘staff’ to do the bits that yielded the least family reward; that we (as women) needed to understand that we could achieve, but at a cost as there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fulfill all the roles required to work (and progress), bring up young families and plan for caring for ageing parents, and run a household.
Our son can see that both parents work, and either one of us might finish late. I tried the mother-surgeon problem on both my husband and son separately, and my son got it straight away. My husband was all over the place with wild ideas as to what the relationship was with the child that needed the operation.
So, perhaps with young boys seeing their mothers succeed in male dominated areas there won’t be so much future prejudice. I only hope.
In the meantime, I wear an invisible Teflon jacket.

It’s good to see a woman at the helm of this tech charity - have a look:

www.organise.org.uk/

I think the careers advice in schools, colleges and universities needs to improve substantially too. By employers and schools, colleges and universities working together.

Ladyspratt - interesting post.

YABU. I've worked in IT for more than 20 years, it's definitely male dominated but my work places always had family friendly policies, good maternity packages, flexibility on tap. Much more so than traditionally female jobs like nursing or teaching. It's a crying shame that more girls don't pursue stem careers, anything that encourages them to can only be a positive thing.

I live in Cambridge so we are saturated with STEM - students, research and long term careers!! I don't work in that industry but know many who do and generally I think the workforce generally are well looked after and things are flexible, not just for women.

DH would have done it, but I wanted it more I guess than being the career half of the family so nothing to do with the work environment or being treated differently as a woman, is was you and your DH’s choice!

I feel like you are saying (and I’m simplifying): don’t encourage girls to have a high demanding STEM carreer because they will struggle to do it at the same time as doing most of the childcare/housework.
But why do you assume that their DH or partner won’t do their fair share?

It is our job as women to teach our daughters that they should expect their partner to do half, not «help them». And this start by looking at ourselves: is your DH doing half? If not, why??

In England (I have no experience in the rest of the UK) my experience is that many primary teachers are of the opinion that girls are good at Literacy (especially writing) while boys are good at maths. I've been told many times not to worry about my DD's lack of maths confidence or my son's lack of stamina and ability to write. In both cases secondary school helped hone ds' essay writing and DD's maths confidence.

STEM careers can be lucrative so we should promote it to girls and boys.

I've worked in STEM and so did my ex and working from home was encouraged. My job involved lots of PowerPoint and emails so can be done remotely.

I am not particularly optimistic about ever attaining a 50:50 male:female split in STEM careers. I just don’t think the female half of the population has, collectively, as great an appetite and enthusiasm for STEM subjects and careers.

@JustTwoMoreSecs I think you’ve over simplified and extrapolated my point to the point where it is an entirely different think to say-so it’s silly to respond

Thanks Ivy44, and I agree with your post. The information does have to be improved, but it’s practically a cradle-to-grave shared problem.

For the record, my dh did a fair share, it was still a bitch with us both out the door working long days ft and having kids. Even if you have a nanny, they’re emotionally there and need attention. I’ve said this so it’s pointless to spend time prattling about half/ half

I’m not saying not stem, I’m saying:

• a balance in education, better careers advice and education. Not this token stem push of role models/ having someone in/ a computers for girls stuff etc and evangelicals going on about the wonderful ness while not fixing the issues that cause women to leave. Actually quality teaching, an understanding of the validity of different options for girls and not at the expense of deriding other routes for boys and girls. I did maths a- level, one of the main reasons I went off it was having 9 teachers in my 2 years of studying it. Paying a decent wage to teachers would help waaaay more than this constant fluff of stem days/ clubs/ posters/ articles

-the workplace realistically is not reflecting those studying stem numbers wise still. My Dd did stereotypically male degrees, ranging still nowadays at 30-50% female. The numbers going into jobs and staying in them is a fraction of those studying in the area

-honest options and reality for girls. Is every woman in stem, even the majority, honestly working family friendly hours, working from home, carving there own career paths. Why aren’t they staying? Why is the area amazingly devoid of the old boys club? Sounds so magical, I think girls are better prepped with reality.

Stem career. Part time working, which changed from 3 days a week to 5 days in term time and less in holidays , now full time with flexitime and work from home whenever I want , no pressure to travel, no pressure to work more than contracted hours. Good wages. Good holidays. Interesting work that can make the world a better place.

But at best almost everyone , adults and peers, thought I was a weirdo for liking maths and science and that would be enough to put off all but the most stubborn of children.

It doesn't matter how much you try and split childcare and housework 50/50 if you are one of the 50% of couples who divorce.

Then quite often the woman ends up as the resident parent and doing everything anyway.

Interestingly at work we do have a couple of male resident parents and they seem to have no qualms about refusing to do stuff because of their childcare role. And when they do it's accepted without grumble and doesn't seem to impact on their career at all. I do think single parents are judged more harshly both at work and home if they are women.

The science side of stem is very family friendly too. I work from home and reduced hours. Obviously when in a laboratory home working isn’t possible but most scientists male or female can work flexible hours.

Really we should be encouraged our daughters to not marry cock-knockers who leave them with all the shitty jobs and child care.

This have it all thing is just nonsense, it depends on what you think all is. Male or femal You can’t dedicate your life to your job and not expect your children to feel that or vice versa you can’t be there at every play, day trip, match of your children and expect to climb the ladder or invent the next internet. You can though share parenting with your partner and both manager to so a little of everything and still have a happy fulfilling life with good kids and a good career.

This is such a complex subject. I have to go now but I’ll come back and read later. There are some good and useful opinions and stories on here.

Research somewhere suggested that for women moving into stem careers to easily overcome feelings of being unusual ( and so being uncomfortable and treated differently ) you need to have about 30% of the workforce female. Hit that and you are likely to hit 50%. Before that, the women need to value the job more than the men to have the same comfort level.

IMO, It should also be said that there are areas of STEM that by there nature are not going to be family friendly.

I echo @Ivy44 comments. Also work in tech and my employer has been very accommodating with flexible working including working from home and reduced hours. I've worked there for a few years and slowly but surely the number of women has been creeping up.

I think women are lagging behind in the workplace due to a few issues:

• doing all the wifework at home
• having less confidence than men
• any work that a woman does being devalued just because it is a woman doing the job.

There needs to be more of a cultural shift towards men pulling their weight at home.

I earn a lot more than DH. We shared mat leave. He works less hours than me but does more childcare. Chores are more or less equal.

But I know that I’m lucky; his father was also taking his equal share of the “wifework” when DH was growing up.

My father did none of it. When DS was born my mum said I was lucky to have a man that “helps out”. My husband corrected her: he was doing his share of the housework and child rearing: not “helping out”

Not all female people want to have families.

I’m more disgruntled by the idea that if you are choosing to pursue a creative subject/ the arts you are letting the female race down. Surely true freedom is to be able to pursue whatever area you wish. It feels to me that an arts subject is somehow ‘less’ than a STEM one. Yet when robots rule the future, It’s the creative jobs that will still exist for humans. If my daughter wants to be an engineer or a scientist or an architect then by all means she should go for it. If I had to hazard a guess now what she will choose to do (she is 11), it is most likely to be an arty creative subject as she has tea talent (she is also good at maths by says she’d hate not to be able to do art daily). My husband is an architect - he sees first hand that he has only got to his senior position today because I wanted to stay at home and be a mum (I also run my own PR and marketing consultancy but that’s another story). In his line of work, 14 hour days are the norm. He says there is a real plummet in the number of women still with the company once they have kids because reality is, you can’t do the long days if you’ve got childcare collection obligations. I am one of those who say women cannot have it all. Not without killing themselves...and then they really don’t have much at all other than guilt that they’re not giving their kids or their jobs the attention they should.