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.

Hmmm. I don't think it's that simple.
If someone has something they clearly want to study, 'enjoy and find interesting' then they should do that. However, it appears to me that many people don't. Or not at age 18 anyway.
They know that going to uni opens doors to good career prospects whether or not you agree that it's ideal, that's the world we live in. They just want a good job. Who knows, maybe they also want to experience the uni life?
So they just choose something they think looks fun, or their best A-level subject. They like it, but they're not so passionate that they wouldn't consider anything else.
I'd advise them to at least consider degrees with some component of STEM, like mine, compared to 'pure' humanities. In fact, not would, that's actual advice I've given to people, and it's served them well. If they were deciding between pure STEM and humanities, I'd say go for STEM, because while I've seen many 'any STEM' jobs I've not seen many 'any humanities'. When they do want humanities it's usually specific, for example people with an international relations degree at the Foreign Office.

Again, this doesn't contradict any of what I said before, which is some people's attitude of 'STEM or nothing'. As I mentioned in an earlier post many countries widely favour STEM, mine for example sees it as more rigorous than the humanities and so tends to favour STEM graduates even for jobs that have nothing to do with it. In the U.K of course graduate schemes are more open. Even so, STEM does have a bit of an edge, so if you need something to help make a decision that's it. But it shouldn't be forced, or override your true burning desire, if you have one.

Fair enough, @OleMioSole , I agree with that in the current system where university degrees are still looked for when the skills and knowledge required could easily be acquired on the job itself, regardless of degree choice. People are quite often obliged to go on to further study they have no great interest in to get them on to the next stage in their career. Three or more years is an incredibly long time to have to do that in order to acquire skills and knowledge that are neither of huge interest, nor even put to direct use in the eventual career, though, because few university degrees are actually intended to be vocational, unless you want to be an academic.

As for your comment “just because you need to academically 'study a subject' and be taught to think, doesn't mean that other people need such spoon feeding,” that is confusing wanting to be given the time and space to think about a subject of genuine interest in a context where that is supported with wanting to go to university for three or more years to be lectured at so that you can learn skills employers want, for which university is, or should be, unnecessary in the majority of careers - as you say, apprenticeships, day release schemes, open university, could all achieve this. So if you are going to spend three years of your life being given the time to think about your subject, not just learn useful skills for employment, you might as well do this in a subject you genuinely want to think about, or look for alternative routes to employment.

You were not talking about 'thinking about your subject', you were talking about STEM , ethics and free-thinking. You don't need to go to university to be a free thinker or have 'ethics' courses to think about the impact of your work on other people. In fact, given the increasing fuss university students are making about wrongthink a university is the last place I'd go to find free thinkers.

Despite what you say about university courses being 'academic' so many are not. You can get degrees in Tourism Management or Dance, for starters. While they, like the other qualifications that are NVQ Level 6 fulfil the qualifications for the level of education they're more vocational than say, a history degree.

I have also seen things like in Accounting degrees, modules where the majority of marks come from quizzes that are exactly the same as homework already discussed in class. Nothing intellectual there. In 2023 universities are a business and they want to keep the 'paying customer' happy.

Anyway that's not the point of this discussion. These days when hiring and interviewing candidates I ask them out of the box questions. It's very easy to tell who is a truly original thinker, and who isn't.

Really, universities' business should be academia. Undergraduates are a good way to get money in, pass on some of the research you've done and raise your profile by sending out graduates who can apply the skills they've learned during their degree to learn and progress in their career. You'd also hope to keep some of them on for further study and to become future academics.

Companies shouldn't really be expecting the universities to have trained their new hires up for them in their particular field (apart from specific examples like medical schools).

@EBearhug - I can understand the theory of that and think it worth trying. I guess I have been made cynical, however, by observing the influence the profit motive has over good intentions and the value that diversity should bring. We may be able to design more handy fitness apps which consider women’s menstrual cycles if more women are involved in designing them, because business can profit from that and is missing a trick, but the profit motive is ultimately just a means of working out how best to exploit, not help, each other. So at the end of the day, if it profits a business to abuse its power and to obfuscate what it is really up to, then women and men will behave similarly to further their business. I have not experienced women who get to the top behaving more ethically or transparently than men at the top of business or politics, so I don’t see more women getting into tech as being our salvation. I think a bigger change of mindset is required than arguing that everything would be better if women were involved.

I had humanities teachers with a genuine passion for the subjects who sparked a lifelong interest for me. I left school in the eighties and can still remember their names, in comparison I can only vaguely remember the STEM teachers and recall the lessons with a shudder.

Dd is similar, she scored highly in all STEM subjects at GCSE but has gone on to study humanities at A level because that is where her interest, and subsequently skills lie.

Good question. I studied humanities at a level despite being really encouraged to do science (luckily I had good grades in both). I think being honest I found the humanities easier - but I LOVE science and wish I had studied it for longer. Now I dream of going back to university and doing a physics degree, just for fun!

I went to an all girls school and 2/3rd of the year did STEM. A few did a mix eg Geography and Maths or Maths Physics and French. SO probably a quarter did no STEM at all. I was one of them. I'm afraid I just found science incredibly boring and dull and loved History Music and Classical languages. THe school had a(now) old fashioned view that all education was a good thing and that you should study what you had a passion for. I was on a different thread recently and found it so depressing that there were a few MFL teachers slating Latin as it was a "useless" subject. Education is so much better when it is inspiring rather that utilitarian (rather like you and the computer I was inspired by seeing a book ELizabeth I made for Henry VIII where she translated a text and then embroidered the cover -I was fascinated to see what made her tick - hence history music Latin and Greek).

@OleMioSole - you’re just proving the point that university is unnecessary for most careers and that renaming everything a university and inventing equivalences that are meaningless so that as many people as possible can say they have a “university degree” or “degree level qualification” does not change this fact. It does not change the fact that, eg, a history or law degree from Oxford is undeniably an academic qualification which does not rely on quizzes or learning by rote, but does require some degree of independent thought.

Universities were also traditionally used as finishing schools for the already wealthy and powerful, hence the link with better job prospects. There was nothing wrong with polytechnics and seven year apprenticeships and non-university based NVQs, and on the job training except snobbery, and that was not cured by renaming all and sundry a university and redesignating all manner of things degree subjects. We have lost a lot of expert technical and practical training methods by pretending everything can be magicked into an academic degree subject, rather than valuing non-academic technical, practical and caring skills and training appropriately.

I agree. I don't know why the UK is so snobbish about this when other countries have other more developed routes.

Apologies that I haven't read the thread, but for me, I started learning French at age eleven and fell in love with it. Good GCSE results, but languages were my calling.

I never really 'got' physics and found biology boring, but loved chemistry and managed to do it for A Level despite some resistance from school (it didn't work with the timetabling and they made me do GCSE physics alongside it... showing my age here!). But languages were and remain my passion, so there was no contest when it came to choosing a degree.

@Reugny - it seems a bit of a shame to me that you say that ethics is talked about in science degrees, but that you are not examined on it. It means you can just switch off if it doesn’t interest you, so I’m not surprised it is hard to raise ethical considerations in the workplace, if even at university they have not been given much significance (unless philosophy is your chosen, specialist subject).

I rather like the sound of computer science and philosophy at Oxford for the reason it combines more than one way of viewing an issue. If we want technology to be of benefit us, we ought to think about what we mean by that. Do we just mean to personally enrich ourselves, or something more? What do we think technology could and should do for us? What do we lose by relying on technology? Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I’d find a science degree a lot more interesting if was combined with an expectation that you consider those questions as an integral part of it.

Or, to clarify, you clearly felt able to raise ethical considerations at work, because they were significant enough to bother all of you (so must have been pretty dire!), but it did not change would you ultimately did, so raising them became more of a back-covering exercise to absolve yourselves of blame if it turned out the client could one day be sued after all. Their information, their choice. You gave the client the the information and then did as you were told by senior management, as there is no law controlling it and no obligation to think about it, even at university.

I have great difficulty with Maths and didn't understand Science even though my late DF was a Science Teacher. My sister taught Science at secondary, but obviously we are not all talented that way.

However my DD will be studying Chemistry at uni this year, she has great ability and gained A* at A levels. I loved English Lit though and studied that at university as a mature student.

Sometimes it's down to the subjects that not only spark interest but also what you're good at.

I enjoyed science at school, but my first passion was English and reading. My parents encouraged me to follow the sciences as they felt I'd have more job opportunities.

I took maths, physics and chemistry at A level, found it hard, found my social life and failed all 3! I also already had a job lined up with a well known paint company who had a trainee scheme.
I picked myself up, worked hard and after completing a one year HNC, 2 year HND and 3 year BSc all part time study I graduated with a Chemistry degree and a future husband (also a Chemist)!

However both my DC dislike science, particularly chemistry and are doing humanities subjects! DD about to go to Uni and study English Lit...I'm so jealous, lol.