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.

DH is an engineer. He spent several years working for a company manufacturing turbine blades for aircraft engines. His specialism is investment casting.

I loved STEM at school, but back in the 80s there were not many non-degree options for teenaged girls in any related industries. I wrote several letters and applied to various companies but didn’t get anywhere. Looking back I can see it was just good old-fashioned sexism. So I pursued easier job roles and have been very successful so can’t complain too much, and I still get to do cars/plumbing/electrics, and try to encourage my daughter to enjoy sciences.

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

This is true. You need to work out whether describing systems administration means explaining you do installation, monitoring and maintenance of enterprise level computers - or an in-depth discussion of your favourite flavour of unix, different storage options, and scripting languages. In most cases, people just want the one-line summary and then to move on.

@Reugny your structural engineer built a model and I'm betting fixed it if his calcs didn't match the parameters required...still building and fixing...just not in the obvious sense

@Insommmmnia people don’t generally say “I work for the NHS” they say “I work as a heart specialist doctor/midwife/intensive care nurse/hospital porter/paramedic/whatever”.
Anyway….the ship has sailed for me for having a career (too old with other responsibilities) so I don’t know why I am so curious 😂

STEM is almost fetishised at the grammar school my DD attends. Those that study and do well at STEM are constantly lauded and paraded.

DD wasn’t a fan and had to work hard to do well in her Bio Chem Phys and Maths GCSEs and was vv glad to drop them for Humanities A levels. She’s well aware it’s viewed as a bit “lesser” but doesn’t really care. They like what they like. She gets Humanities in a way she doesn’t STEM subjects.

So if you meet a younger person who wants to do x job or is interested in a particular area but doesn't realise there are jobs linked to it you can say - "I heard that x do things like this..."

I have a nose in what people do because the only decent careers advice I got was from my much older siblings and their friends.

@EBearhug sometimes peoples job titles can be meaningless to other people but I don’t see why someone can’t say “Oh I work for X Company” and a conversation about what that company does, what department they work for etc - which gives people a bit more of an idea of what someone actually “does”.

@PartsofKentareok If she goes further in humanities in most cases she is going to have to do statistics...

Sure but stats and graphs etc are hardly A level Maths ( aware of curriculum as DS did this).

@Reugny I don’t really know anyone who would need careers advice from me. My daughter is 15 but autistic so I have no idea what her future will bring (that’s a whole terrifying different conversation).
I just hope the experts are more helpful than many on this thread 😂

Depends what Maths you did at A level. I studied statistics with my pure Maths at A level and every bloody degree/course goes over the same introductory parts. Some go slightly further if you are doing research.

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.

That is an argument for equal parental leave, because other than pregnancy, giving birth and breast-feeding, there's nothing a man couldn't do, but in many couples, even if they wanted the man to take the time off, it doesn't make economic sense with paternity vs maternity pay. But it also affects women who've never had children, and there are a whole load of other factors feeding into it - things like, we'll put Pete on that big project, and then Anne can have the next one... but when the next big project comes round, Pete's got the experience and Anne hasn't, so we'll put Pete on it, and he'sgoing to deserve a payrise. Oh, and Pete's published three papers, which is great, but Anne's only published three papers... Besides, Anne is probably going to want children, so there's no point promoting her, but Pete's just got married, and his wife's pregnant, so that shows how responsible he is, so let's promote him. And in any case, Pete negotiated better when we took him on, even though we'd have thought that better-qualified Anne would have looked too ruthless if she'd asked for a salary that high, and wouldn't have taken her on at that, even though we don't publish salaries anyway, but obviously we know and could just choose to pay people equally for the same work (as is legally required, but salary secrecy means it's very difficult for anyone to find out.) Etc etc etc...

@Needmorelego I give up, your question was simplistic so I gave a simple answer that succinctly describes what an engineer does. if you can't understand that then don't bother looking into it further as you definitely won't understand the nuances of how each role differs. People are right go and Google the specifics for yourself.

Absolutely. My actual job title was "Ntwk Engr Cslt III" which meant nothing to anyone outside of HR, and certainly isn't what I put on my CV.

Russians learn mathematics using the pedagogical methods of Lev Vygotsky. There are a lot of Russians in the area where I live, and I've never met a single one who felt uncomfortable in a math class. Russian parents tend to teach their children at home according to the ways they themselves were taught, after experiencing horror at the way their children ate taught in schools. Explaining and defending your ideas about problem solving are part of the process of Russian mathematics education.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky

@Needmorelego you never know.

@TeknoPhobe I don’t wish to be rude but you haven’t explained at all what a “career in engineering” actually involves day to
day.
I give up too 😂

It depends on the type of engineer.

A friend of mine designs reservoirs, so she starts off by looking at the place and modelling it on a computer. Size, angles etc.

Then her best designs get made into models an couple of metres long and she fills them with water and sees if there are weak spots or if they fail in certain places are they likely to wash away a village or anything. If not, it can be built. Then she goes sometimes to supervise on the actual site.

The ones I work with are mostly mechanical engineers and seem to either mathematically model things on the computer (design engineers), or actually build the thing and test it (prototype engineers). And then they argue about why the results are different.

My undergrad is in humanities and my masters is in technology. For me, there was a block on maths. At some point I believed I couldn’t do maths or maths was my weaker subject. That translated into I can’t do physics because they’re so connected. I was OK at chemistry (small amount of maths) and good at biology because that had the least maths. I don’t really know why I got that block because I use maths all the time in my job. It’s really interesting because I attended a work event where they presented a maths GCSE question and straight away I was telling myself I couldn’t do maths but earlier that day I’d been doing something similar to the maths question for one of our reports at work: I can do maths. I do maths all the time but that block automatically made me panic and start thinking I don’t know how to answer this question but I clearly did. That block is still there and even though I’m aware of it, I still find myself saying I can’t do maths sometimes.

My brain was really geared up to humanities, particularly for exams. Learning the essay style, applying the learned facts and commentating. I found this style of exams really easy. I don’t know whether my brain was always wired this way or at the time the block on maths came in, my brain realised I was good at these other subjects. Maybe both. I didn’t always enjoy these subjects though. I was particularly good at history and law but both bored me stupid. My family were devastated when I didn’t continue law to degree level because I’d been getting such good grades but I just didn’t want to do it.

I crochet and knit. I saw something that knitting is just coding. It’s interesting because one is seen as a female pursuit and the other male. I did a bit of coding in my masters but I wouldn’t say I was good at it (before I learnt to knit and crochet). My brain is clearly capable of understanding that way of working but has coding being dumped in with maths and something that is a block to me?

I had to help my step son with maths and spent a long time looking on Instagram at videos from all over the globe, every so often someone would explain something that clicked. In my day I had my mum who learned in 1950's and the library so was limited but nowadays the Internet of global teachers is amazing. It takes some time but finding some social media accounts that just make sense to her is key. 30 years later I still remember my religious chemistry teacher explaining that to get magnesium chloride Malcolm magnesium has to be unfaithful and date a pair of twins called Clarissa and Cathy chlorine and that religiously he didn't agree with it but he had to accept it as chemistry is the truth. So the person who can't remember calculations can still remember that MgCl2 = Mg+Cl2 all because a teacher took the time to explain it in a way that made sense to me after class one day. (Thanks Mr Starling)

I just wasn't great at STEM subjects, had to work harder at them. And my dad is a physics teacher so I had access to a lot of help at home! But I chose stuff I was good at and studied law at university.

@LauraAshleyDuvetCover thank you - an actual answer that’s gives me an actual idea of what someone does.
Does she build the models or is that someone else?

😂there are millions of jobs with engineer in the title are you expecting Mumsnet to explain each and everyone of them or are you just going to accept the small sample provided as covering everything

Needmorelego

Small ones are 3D printed, so she does that herself.

I think the bigger ones (metre sized) might be made by somebody else from the drawings she's done, but I'm not actually sure.

She definitely does the testing with water bit.

Have a look at this for some more specific examples/a day in the life.