Girls who DON’T study STEM

[Ippagoggy]

As a woman in STEM (I work as a quant for a hedge fund and I studied maths for my undergrad and computer science for my phd), I am often dragged into discussions at work about “why there aren’t there more women in our field?”

while there are a number of hypotheses put forward (I won’t bother repeating them), one thing that is generally acknowledged that the phenomenon starts early, with fewer girls taking these subjects at school (at least in the west) and this then leads to a “pipeline problem”.

I therefore would love to ask the women on here — both of their own experiences from
their school days and what they might observe of their daughters. Why have you or your daughter NOT chosen a study path or career in STEM? Was it simply that there was never any interest (and fair enough! Different people like different things)? Was there a lack of exposure in some way? Or maybe their interest in your part was but you felt discouraged from pursuing that interest for one reason or another? And what would those reasons have been?

By the way, to be clear, I am not passing any judgement on the value of STEM subjects versus non-STEM. We need both. I am just genuinely curious to understand how people are wired.

for me, when I was about 11 years old and has access to a computer that I was allowed to play with — I could not believe my eyes. This box was basically like magic and the thought that I could actually learn to make it do things was intoxicating. I became a nerd overnight.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow this would have been exam year 1989 - 1991 that I did textiles (the 4th cohort to take gcses). There wasn’t an exam. It was just all coursework.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow my school called it “textiles” but it was sewing really. No idea what the exam board would have been.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow it came under the Art Department. Not even sure if DT was called that then. I think your Textiles was totally different to the one I did. Yours sounds more interesting to be honest.

My answer - I quite liked some stem options (it/maths but hated science) but preferred, was really good at humanity subjects and found them much easier.

Careers advice was shit and i was the first person in my extended family to go to uni so I didn't get anyone suggesting I did anything other than what I wanted or what influence the type of degree would have on my future career- to be fair this was in the mid 00s when they were still peddling the "any degree at all will make you significantly more employable than not having one", "transferable skills" etc.

Now I think that actually I might have enjoyed a more stem based (something like coding maybe) career more than what I actually do and it would probably be better paid. I'm currently happy enough in my job but have considered retraining. I would absolutely try to deter someone in the same position as me nowadays from doing a humanities degree unless they had a proper passion for the subject and intended working in a very closely linked field -i.e. publishing/teaching or whatever for an English degree - at least mine was comparatively cheap and there were enough people without degrees that you stood out a little bit.

It doesn’t sound like you did DT textiles. It became a core subject in 1996. There was always an exam.

Well…you could argue that it’s not really in my remit as a teacher to include childcare and housework in careers advice. But my point was (as another poster has pointed out) it is easier to keep up arts subjects as hobbies or with evening classes than it is sciences: most (not all!) people who don’t pursue a science course will never go back to it. But I’d only advise that to someone who was torn about which way to go - I’ve just spent two years teaching someone Chemistry who blatantly preferred History and really should be doing a degree in that instead of the biomedical course she’s applied for…

This is incredible. Have you never throught to google it?

Engineering is a vast discipline - mechanical engineering, software engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering. The list goes on. The number and types of jobs involved is almost limitless.

@ThePianists yes but what IS “mechanical engineering “? As in what does the person actually do in their job when they are at work?
I have googled/talked to people etc but it’s still just vague. If someone starts work at 9am as a “mechanical engineer “ and finishes at 5pm what do they actually DO in that time? That’s what I mean.

I did a science based degree but I feel I would never have understood Mathematics further than GCSE which is why I never pursued it.
DD1 did a Maths and Physics A-level alongside English and Law. She was quite keen on both engineering and Law. She ended up studying Law.
DD2 no interest or aptitude for STEM subjects but DD3 I believe will definitely go into STEM as a career as she’s very mathematically minded and enjoys it!

What on earth makes people think that encouraging more women into Engineering and Tech will close the gender pay gap? We’ve had women outnumbering men in Medicine and Dentistry for over 20 years and there’s still a gender pay gap. And I’m pretty sure Medicine and Dentistry are more lucrative than Engineering.

The gender pay gap is predominately driven by women taking more time off than men when having children. It doesn’t matter what we ‘promote’ for women to study, if they take more career breaks than men there is always, always going to be a gender pay gap.

You’re right, they do, but they’re not getting me into a STEM work field are they? Saying I know how to work out the right amount of flour to use if I use three eggs instead of two isn’t going to get me into an engineering degree course in the same way that physics, maths and IT A Levels or GCSE’s would.

An interest in home economics means you could either go down the food technology route - which is STEM though you would need to take science A levels/relevant Btec - or the hospitality route.

Problem is as a 16 year old you wouldn't know about food technology unless you knew an adult working in that area as school careers advice is rubbish. (One of my many sibling's good friend worked in food technology so at 16 I had an idea such careers existed.)

Who knows?

I studied with, worked with and talked to women who have worked in different types of engineering. Due to the way industry works in this country many decided they were safer job-wise e.g. would have a job in 5 years, going into another field if they wanted to stay working in the UK and even Europe.

@Needmorelego Next time you meet someone who says they are a mechanical engineer or whatever engineer (or in fact any job) ask them "What do you do on a typical day?"

However as a PP point out it is worth knowing the basics of their job by looking online before asking them this question.

@Reugny I’m not sure when it might come up in conversation anytime soon 😂
However I would hope someone who is attempting to encourage young girls (and boys) into “STEM” careers by doing an assembly or whatever will actually bother to take the time to say “this is the typical things you could be doing day to day” - because no one on these types of threads ever bothers 😂

In simplistic terms, I always think that engineers build and fix stuff

I did maths A-level plus three arts subjects. I nearly did physics, but decided on the arts subjects as I found them more interesting and thought I was more likely to study one of them at university. I did indeed go on to do a degree in an arts subject, followed by law conversion (which I could have done following science A-levels/degree, so not a deciding factor), and am now a lawyer working in private practice. So the short answer is that I was more interested in the arts than the sciences. Haven't regretted it (though I did do a whole A-level of pure maths which I maintain was useful to me despite being of limited practical application...!).

To me engineers design and fix the infrastructure needed to put a concept (developed by somebody else?) into application. No idea if that's right!

...so build and fix stuff

Which is why I would have been a shit engineer. For someone who ex very good at art, I am utterly shit at practical solutions to anything physical. Often taking a much more convoluted route to fix something very simple.

@TheMoth sounds like you would fit right in where I work 😂

But “build and fix” stuff is still a bit vague. You can do apprenticeships in building, plumbing, electrical works from age 16 but threads like these are all about going to university and doing STEM degrees.
I don’t understand why everyone simultaneously wants to encourage girls into STEM and at the same time is all secretive about their jobs.
It’s all so weird 😂

I said it was simplistic but that is what they do...the words before tell you what they use to build and fix stuff eg mechanical...physical objects...chemical...well chemical reactions...etc There used to be a push to call everyone an engineer as a fancier title eg waste management engineer...bin man or sewerage worker and I guess if they built and fixed stuff then it is an appropriate title.
Your plumber maybe known as a heating engineer if he deals with boiler installs and fixes them, pipes and radiators.

It's not that it's secretive, it's more like saying "but what does someone who works for the NHS actually do" and someone relying "help sick and injured people". Because otherwise it would be an incredibly long answer to explain everything from a consultant in cardiology through to a porter

So an engineer might be designing parts for a coach air conditioning unit, or they might be assessing the quality of those parts in the air conditioning until, or they might be installing it, or fixing it.

Engineer isn't one size fits all. You can be a design engineer, a quality engineer, an engineer with a mechanical bias or an electrical bias.

Then there is the fact that the term engineer is somewhat butchered. So some of what I described above could probably be done by someone more accurately described as a technician rather than an engineer.

So for example the person who fixes a washing machine may call themselves an engineer or they may call themselves a technician.

Some engineers climb up towers to fix broadcast equipment. Others run tests on equipment to check it works properly. telling you one or the other won't really tell you what all engineers do though

People are often unclear when they think you aren't actually interested in what you are asking.

There a few videos on YouTube where people explain what they do as different types of engineer. There are also comments below some which simply talk about wages that explain what people do.

Though in the UK unlike in some other countries e.g. Germany, anyone can call themselves an engineer when they are in fact a technician.

Engineers do more than simply build and fix stuff - they do more like @Finlesswonder say as they need to ensure the the product or infrastructure e.g. building, lift, tunnel they are working on is safe for the proposed use. So they ensure buildings and bridges don't fall down, tunnels don't collapse, etc They do this with calculations sometimes with tests.

So I dated a structural engineer and one of the things he did was check that commercial buildings that were being renovated for change of use where safe for what the owners wanted them to be used for. For example if a stationary shop on the first floor was being changed into a restaurant, he checked whether the floor could take the weight of the fridges and other cooking equipment. He did this by getting the building plans plus any other documents, visiting the building while it was a construction site to see how it was constructed and seeing what was around it e.g. another business of the same proposed type in the same building then doing calculations. (Obviously he did other stuff.)

There as the guy who came to fix my boiler when it had a fault did no calculations in his job so isn't an engineer but a Gas Safe registered plumber. He just got the fault code, looked it up and then phoned the boiler manufacturer for a fix when what he tried didn't work.