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.

I think pp made a good point. In an all girls school you get more girls going forward with sciences. I think there are a lot of environmental factors at play.

Interesting question, OP, however I disagree that we have a women in STEM problem.

What has happened is that subjects which are very STEM-y have been conveniently left out of ‘STEM’ to fabricate a problem about not enough women in STEM.

I am of course talking about Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science.

These courses are dominated by women and have been for over a decade. But if they’re included in the equation, so to speak, the ‘problem’ drops away, even though they’re so STEM-y you need a minimum of two Science A-levels at top grades to study them.

My DDs (and my DSs) all did STEM subjects at Uni.
I know both my DDs found the endless 'you are a girl but you can still do STEM subjects' agenda quite patronising and misjudged.

One of my sons does something to do with comp sci and although he does interact with other people he is largely working on his computer on his own. My girls (and my other son) prefer jobs with more social interaction.

I did humanities A-levels and first degree.
Then when older converted to Psychology and ended up with two MSc and a PhD. I can use inferential statistics, but I struggle with the underlying maths. My latter qualifications are in social science, and without being better at maths, I don't think I could be more STEM.
Better maths teaching at school might have helped, but ultimately the concepts don't stay in my memory. Unlike French vocabulary decades on.

This is really interesting! I'm a professional scientist. In my day to day job, the two main skills I use are creativity/imagination and writing, (which I'm not that great at). Maths probably comes a distant third. I guess the problem is you need a really good foundation in the boring stuff before you've got enough of the basics to start being imaginative, a bit like learning enough grammar and vocab in a language to be able to write. It's difficult to show that STEM is creative at school

I got straight As at GCSE except for maths which I had to work very hard to get a B in. I dropped maths, physics and chemistry and quickly as I could because I found them so difficult.

I know many people disagree, but I genuinely believe that some people are born good at maths and others aren’t. I can see it in my daughter’s year one class already. Out of 19 kids there are 3 boys who are extremely good at maths (and fit all of the stereotypes) and it doesn’t come naturally at all to my daughter. We practice maths with her every day just so that she can manintain her “meeting expectations”. However, she has always been greater depth for reading and writing which comes very naturally to her. She will read for pleasure for hours every day.

I think it’s great that girls are being encouraged to study STEM subjects, not least as a way of addressing the gender pat gap. But no amount of encouragement is going to make someone good at maths.

I'm very, very bad at maths, which affects chemistry and physics as well. I assume I have undiagnosed dyscalculia - it didn't exist when I was at school. It's like a brick wall comes down in my brain. My mum is the same.

I excelled at English Lit and and it was the obvious choice for me to study further. I also enjoyed languages but I found French at A level really hard, the teacher was only really interested in those who were already fluent (students who had French or Canadian relatives).

Computer science didn't exist when I was at school in the 90s. We did a bit of IT which was just using Word as far as I recall. I didn't have a computer at home until I went to uni in 2001. I suspect I would have been good at coding as I like detailed work and spotting errors, but I've never been exposed to it and wouldn't know where to start.

I've pondered on this question a lot. I went to an academic all girls school and plenty of people did STEM a-levels (including me) (eg ~20% of my year did physics a-level and 10% further maths). Outside of healthcare, not many are in STEM careers now 20 years on.

For me the reason I didn't go further in STEM was potentially teaching. I went into a-levels thinking I'd do a physics degree but had a teacher who had probably reached their limit at a-level and was told to stop asking 'why' and just learn the patterns because things just were (I was told that Newton's Cradle just was for example and no one knew why it worked that way). That led me to believe that physics at degree level would be boring. I also had a bad maths teacher who used to call us stupid when we didn't understand (this is a further maths set where 50% got As, and the majority went on to Oxbridge). Also, I was better at the non-STEM I ended up doing at university and I was more interested in it. In hindsight though that may have been because the teachers were better. It certainly wasn't because I was concerned about being a girl or going into a male dominated field.

Not sure that any of that would have been different in a mixed school but certainly my experience from an all girls school in the 90s is that girls do take STEM subjects at school if they're in an environment where that's a completely normal choice.

That may be true but at A Level, far fewer girls than boys study stem subjects.

I did STEM subjects up until GCSE (maths, physics, chem & bio). I got As in all but Honestly I wasn’t very good at them and languages came very easily so that’s what I did at A level and eventually went on to study law and become a corporate lawyer. I am secretly in awe of people who click with maths and physics. Absolutely mystery to me.

Just to add, according to UCAS, 64% of students studying Medicine or Dentistry at university are female.

I’ll try to find the stat for Vet Med.

Such an interesting discussion- thanks OP.
my 1st love was English but dropped it for STEM as that’s what the ‘clever’ girls were supposed to do. Was fairly useless at chemistry, but loved biology & physics. Didn’t quite get the grades for medicine so did a nursing degree (which was just getting going in the 90’s)& spent most of my career in ITU which I have loved, but I always wonder where I would be if I had stuck with English.
My DD is at a high achieving Grammar and is doing English, Psychology & Art A-levels with a view to reading Liberal Arts at Uni. It is constantly drummed into the girls that STEM is everything & I admire her determination to continue on her own path (whilst completely worrying about what she is going to do in life!)

@ThePianists I agree my DDs are exactly like that. We are all different and some people just have natural ability in certain areas. Of course good teaching and support at home also make a big difference to make sure that ability is nurtured. Leaving primary school with good foundations in the basics makes a big difference and the top table in year 6 will more often than not continue to too set maths in secondary.

The STEM problem isn’t just about A levels. It’s about university degrees and subsequent careers in STEM.

I don’t know why studying computer science then working at Facebook is considered more ‘STEM’ than becoming a gynaecological surgeon.

DD(18) is off to Uni to study Spanish and History. Science bores me but I really encouraged her to take an interest in STEM when she was younger. Was fine at primary school but got to secondary and it was "death by worksheets."

She applied herself in double science (got 2 x 7 and 7 in maths) but was desperate to be done with it so she could concentrate on humanities.

You can take a horse to water ...

Of course, but you can’t do stem degrees without first doing stem A Levels.

That's interesting, because I remember as a teenager the reason I loved maths was because you could get it right. If you wrote an essay, there was always something you could have done better. No one was ever going to give you 100%, even for a really good piece of English work. I also found the certainty of it reassuring, a fixed point in a changing world if you like.

However, I was home educated, so that might have been why I had that level of confidence? Certainly I wouldn't expect my feelings about subjects to have been exactly the same had I been in school.

I am Actuary - so not your target audience but I might have something useful to add!

But what made me keep up with maths, physics etc given I was good at it was:

• An all girls grammar where being good at maths was never seen as a bad thing
• A father, who as an engineer, took me to universities at 14 and showed me possible career paths from maths.

I love the subject and spent my sixth form and university in male dominated spaces quite happily. However, working in male dominated spaces has not been a great experience. I am not the only one who feels this way and I have seen much higher drop out rates of women who have qualified (so put in a lot of work to get there) than men.

I decided at uni that investment banks/quant work were not for me given I perceived that the culture in those places would be in in collaborative/aggressive.

I now have primary aged DD who has wanted to be a scientist since reading a book about Marie Curie ages 5. We will be looking at secondary schools and asking for the gender split in their Further maths/physics/chemistry A-level classes and considering all girls schools.

I may also ask about English, history et because as people have commented, more men need to take these subjects to balance everything out.

But they are doing STEM A levels if they make up two-thirds of certain STEM-y courses.

Like I say, Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine are conveniently left out of the equation to give the impression that there aren’t enough women in STEM. Let’s add them into the equation and re-visit the statistics and see if we actually have a ‘problem’.

I think one of the big problems is the non-STEM subjects are touted as "creative" in contrast to the boring, unimaginative STEM subjects, and people start developing an identity as teenagers and make choices that prop up their new identity. In reality there's nothing inherently creative about languages and English literature.

I studied languages and now work directly with all my languages but often wish I had studied STEM subjects.

The big problem for me is I was so bad at maths. I went through a school system that meant maths was compulsory until 18, and I needed a lot of extra help to pass my final exams. I got great grades in my six other subjects, but with maths, despite all the help and extra tuition, I only just scraped a pass.

The root problem IMO is how maths is taught. I don't remember ever having an engaging maths teacher. If you don't get kids hooked on to maths, all the STEM doors slam shut. Right from the very beginning when we started learning the very basics of algebra (was it aged 12?), I didn't get the core concepts. From there, it was just a direct train to dire straits: because I hadn't properly understood the basic concepts, with each passing year things got worse and worse.

Although I had this maths pass when I left school, it had been so hard wrestling to get this very basic grade, I just assumed all STEM jobs were completely beyond my capabilities.

Oh and if you want to fixate on A levels, I just looked it up and and this is the female representation at A level:

Biology - 64%
Chemistry - 54%
Physics - 25%
Maths - 40%

Looks pretty balanced overall to me 🤷‍♀️

Source: https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2021/09/which-a-level-subjects-have-the-best-and-worst-gender-balance/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20overall%20cohort,%25%20and%2054%25%20female%20respectively.

In my case, I think it was poor teaching and poor curriculum structure that made me rule out STEM subjects at an early age. I was extremely good at maths and science, I just found them very dull. Subjects like English, history and MFL seemed to offer so much more scope for creativity and actual thinking, whereas I perceived science to be more about rote learning and just regurgitating facts. I was a people person and science seemed to me to be about things, not people.

It looked like my very bright dd was going to go down a very similar path to my own, despite excelling in maths and science. She found science incredibly dull in early secondary school and actively hated it because she doesn't cope well with boredom, so it was inconceivable at that stage that she would ever consider a STEM career. However, that all changed with the arrival of an amazing new science teacher who somehow made her see things in a completely different way - she suddenly saw the dynamism in science, its creative potential and its potential to generate solutions for so many of the problems that people face.

She ended up choosing STEM subjects and is planning for a STEM career. When I talk to her about what she is learning, I can totally see the appeal and why she finds it interesting. I just never saw that side of science when I was younger.

Oh, and my incredibly sexist physics teacher probably didn't help either....

@Usernamen
You have missed Further Maths and Computer science - any reason why?

Plus it only helps going forward in STEM if backed by an additional STEM subject. A number doing Maths will be doing it to support things like Sociology.

I work in STEM and maths was boring as hell at school. So was chemistry, physics not farming behind. Agree with pp the problem is STEM doesn't appear creative or indeed even useful at sch level. What interests me is problem solving, learning new things, making things more efficient or effective. I do that in spades in my job. A job I stumbled into and in fact all meaningful jobs I've had so far were invisible before I got them - as in, no clue they even existed

Oh and to add, I did see the appeal of maths as a teenager in those awful classes. Sure there's some rote learning, but there's a lot of rote learning in languages too. I definitely saw the appeal of basically being given these puzzles or codes you had to crack. The problem is I just didn't have the keys to crack them and with every year that went by more keys were layered on to the basic keys.
It just goes to show that maybe the most talented maths teachers need to be put working in the early years.
The only reason I scraped the pass in that compulsory exam was thanks to the geometry and trigonometry which I still didn't master but could do some of.

We also had to do one science subject to be awarded our A Levels equivalent and I did biology, which as the figures somebody posted above show, is pretty common for girls: it's the science that draws the least on maths.