Women in STEM

[scotsheather]

(Science, Tech, Engineering and Maths)

I have worked in computing, mostly software for many years and the gender balance has hardly changed. I should be surprised, but keep thinking its down to stereotypes and nothing really to do with ability. Girls outperform boys in at least maths and often science at school level yet the numbers going further than that are low, to university and then actually into these professions is scarce. About 10% give or take, and don't start me on proportions by pay grade or seniority. How is it going to change? And of course I've had to be thick skinned to take the inevitable sexism and misogyny that prevails in male dominated environments. It can even be as simple as having a female name on your CV, that can still happen in these jobs.

Can anyone point to positive work being done do prove to girls and young women that these are viable careers? Tides do turn.

BobbinThreadbare123

So many girls in bloody biology A Level

This is actually fantastic! The next decade will see biology transformed into a computer and bigdata-based science with massive opportunity for some of the girls now doing A-Level biology. Being a professional biologist without computer-programming skills will be considered highly unusual. Bioinformatics, systems biology and personalised medicine will see many women being able to move into important STEM careers. There are many women currently studying bioinformatics in UK universities.

I'm just going to leave this here (warning: not good for high blood pressure)...

Olennas I actually really like this toy. Why so dismissive?

“secondary is too late”

I see what you’re getting at here, but really it’s never too late. Particularly in technology - there’s this received wisdom that we have to teach 5yos to code, and it’s the end of the world that barely any girls do computing GCSE (which IS shit, not saying it’s not). But I recently met some of my company’s software engineering apprentices, which was really interesting ... So, the bad news, we met two young women and three young men from a cohort of 15, and when I asked how many of th female apprentices we just met - all bar one. So 20% female. Not great. But what was fascinating was those two had no prior programming experience, and had caught up with, and in some cases overtaken, their bedroom hacker’ male peers. Alas I didn’t get to ask how on earth, age 17 or 18 with no coding experience, you decide you want to do an apprenticeship in software engineering ... I must try to track them down and ask them.

Further down the road, DH has just been telling me about a speaker at work from Amazon Web Services - degree in political science, sales background, now in fairly hardcore technology (she was definitely not just doing a sales pitch from his description).

Terf - because it's pink plastic and Nikki (not Barbie herself) gets to make a sodding washing machine and clothes rack

This science lab set is better, though again it's not Barbie herself who gets to do the clever stuff. Barbie does, however get to be a baby doctor (with Serious Glasses), a bakery owner and paleontologist in Very Short Shorts

(I love the ethos behind the Barbie career dolls, but they do fall down in the execution IMO)

I'd forgot about flexible and part time work as well. I was lucky as I got that without major ructions from my employers, some are not so lucky.

Heartening that things are being done, but I fear the old 'not what my Sophie will like' attitudes will pervade for years to come.

I think making children both girls and boys take Science at GCSE goes a long way to putting them off.
Most girls I know through my dd and older ds's weren't the slightest bit interested in STEM subjects, weren't geeky and didn't want to do Sciency subjects.
Leave them alone and let them choose what they do want to do instead of taking up a min of 2 GCSE's on something they have no interest in.

Then concentrate on the kids that do want to take Science past KS3, rather than wasting time on those who hate it.
Encourage the interested girls, give them opportunities, spend the budget on those who want to do it.

The RAF are doing a huge amount of STEM work this year as part of RAF100. My base is running monthly events for local schools and all the national events will have a STEM
presence

There's a whole load of stuff.

First - it's a cultural problem. It's a problem for the UK, the USA, Australia, NZ, Canada, northern Europe. It's less of an issue in the other parts of world, though obviously, some areas have different problems to deal with. But, being a cultural problem which isn't global means it's not biologically innate, and therefore, can be fixed.

One of the cultural aspects is popular culture. The main STEM examples we see in popular culture are the Big Bang Theory and the IT Crowd - very stereotypically socially awkward geeks. Or films about Alan Turing and the like, where they are so very mathematically minded, their work is way beyond what most of us can conceive. It's important to know those stories, but only a few people will ever reach those heights of academic maths. (But if you haven't, everyone should watch Hidden Figures because it's brilliant.)

We need a soap opera character where she just happens to work in IT because that's an entirely normal, obtainable job - which for the bulk of STEM jobs it is.

Olennys Omg I adore the science lab set! I love pink and lilac. I love science and I love fashion. What some wrong with pink.

Parents are important. A lot of people I was at school with are in similar fields to their parents - teaching, nursing, law. We know of acting dynasties. It's easier to get into a field if you know about it, how it works. If you never even talk about STEM careers at home, you're reducing the chances of your children considering it. If you don't know about the vast range of STEM and STEAM roles available - and none of us knows some of the careers which will be open to today's year 1s, because a lot of those jobs don'the exist yet - but if you don't know, there are tons of STEM-related resources available these days.

Get them curious. When I was about 8, I remember my grandmother showing me she could bend a knife in a glass of water. I didn't understand about reflection and refraction for a few years, but she was introducing me to that.

My parents instilled skills of research and fact-checking, because their answer to my questions was invariably "go and look it up!" I realised in later years that half the time this was also because they didn't know the answer, but we all learned. You don't need a house full of reference books these days, because we all have Google in our pocket. Don't tell your children you were "never any good at that stuff", and make it sound like it's socially acceptable to be rubbish at maths or science - fob them off with finding out things!

We specialise way too early in education in this country. Not everyone knows what they want to do when they're choosing their GCSE options. But we can be too rigid in our expectations in the workplace, too. A degree in computer science is useful, and I do use it in my techy job - but I would say I use the skills from my history degree far more - critical thinking, analysing lots of data, questioning the validity of data and so on. It's the computer science degree which gets me interviews; it's the history degree which makes me better than many of my colleagues who have had the same technical training as me. But my manager and others thinks history is a complete waste of time. But we need a wide range of skills in STEM careers - obviously there are roles where you need degree-level physics or biology or maths or chemistry or engineering - but not all of them. Most jobs involve working with other people, and if hard science is the only thing you've got, that may hold you back, too. (I am biased - I have degrees in history and computing, and I was always an all-rounder at school.)

I do think teachers should get more training in technology. I have heard tales of primary school teachers who have said to their class, "oh, I don't really understand how that works." What message does that give out, when their not confident with using their own tech? And there are still some teachers who find it acceptable to believe that girls just aren't as good at maths and science. Well, no, they won't be, if they have that sort of attitude and all the unconscious bias and stereotyping to deal with.

There are also brilliant teachers out there, but it shouldn't be a question of luck that you get a good one.

I don't have the power to change education in the next year, though.

And history - women have almost been written out of history in technology (I focus on computing more than other areas of STEM, because it is my job.) But early pioneers in computing were all women - men mos just muscled in when they saw there was money to be made.

Make sure people learn about Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Grace Hopper, Stephanie Shirley, the ENIAC women, the Bletchley Park women and many others, as well as they learn about Alan Turing, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and so on. (And as I said, watch Hidden Figures.)

The other sciences all have their female pioneers, too. Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Rosamund Franklin, Dorothy Hodgkin and so many more. There are resources online to make sure we don't forget them.

And finally, workplace culture. It is still a barrier. One thing which pisses me off is that I don't know a woman working in STEM who hasn't been asked to do some sort of outreach work. All my male colleagues - far more numerous in number than we are, and therefore, by default, form the culture - most of them have never been asked to do anything like that (unless they're my immediate colleagues.) It's just not on their radar - they're not against there being more women in IT, but as long as they're not actively groping female colleagues, then they're not part of the problem, so they don't need to do anything. But while they are in such a majority, they do need to do something, because women are not the problem. But men don't see the drip, drip, drip cumulative effect of all the little things which don't mean anything on their own, but together add up to contribute to the high attrition rates of women in their 30s and 40s in tech (don't know about other STEM areas.)

I know they aren't deliberately excluding me with signs saying, "beware, men working behind doors" - but it's no less dangerous when I am lifting floor tiles in the datacentre to work on cabling. It does show that men are the default and it's just unthinking. I doubt any of my male colleagues have been assumed to be a secretary (like anyone has secretaries these days...) None of them will have had visiting field engineers commenting on how unusual it is to see a man in the datacentre. And I suspect most of them don't stop to think, why aren't there more women in datacentres, why did I assume she was a secretary rather than a Unix systems administrator?

Someone asked me today if our company ever goes put to schools, because his child will be going to a school specialising in STEM, which works with local businesses - I reeled off a load of local schools we've done STEM events with, mock interviews, careers fairs, all sorts. Men aren't interested (we've put stories up on the intranet about it,) and don't it think about it until it affects them. Women in STEM are forced to think about it all the time. Men need to step up and do their bit - it has to involve them because they are the majority.

Actually, it has really pissed me off that the men I work with don't even know all the things the company does to promote STEM careers with schools and so on, let alone get involved themselves. I am going to think about which senior managers to take this up with next week.

My DD is in her second year at uni studying aerospace engineering.
She is one of three girls (out of 50+) in her year.
It's really depressing.

@polynerd I found it in my school from talking to girls who were qualified to take maths A-level but didn’t, that they said they weren’t confident in their maths and preferred other subjects that they were just as good at or better. I couldn’t talk to boys who qualified to take A-level maths but didn’t, because there weren’t any!

The national picture for GCSE is that boys underperform versus girls in all GCSEs except maths. Someone will usually point out that there is a focus on getting girls into STEM but not on getting boys to take English lit A-level. The thing is that there are two entirely different problems causing lack of uptake. For girls it’s that they are good enough to take maths but choose not to, for boys and English, it’s because way fewer boys than girls actually get good enough results to take it. I think that boys are to some extent over-represented in maths because of lack of choice in taking other subjects.

Plus what is a lack of English Lit A-level going to mean? You might not have a fairly general management career ... no, plenty of men there. You might not write your own books ... nope, absolute oodles of men doing that.

When I was in 6th form, I went on a residential course called "Insight into Engineering" at Birmingham University, aimed at getting girls into Engineering. It was a nationwide scheme and I had great fun and met loads of like-minded girls.

I think the Inspire courses might be the modern version, but not sure? I also noticed that there is a charge. I can't remember if I paid for it or if my school supported it (too long ago!).

I can't help thinking that A levels don't help. Our children have to specialise too early. Dh has female students who get an easy A in maths GCSE but don't take it at A level because they are getting A/A - okay now 9s and 8s - in all and their subjects and their dominant interests lie elsewhere.

My own DD will take maths A level and 2 sciences but she also excels in humanities and it is a shame she will have to drop one or both of those at the early age of 16.

I think that boys are to some extent over-represented in maths because of lack of choice in taking other subjects.

^Yes to this.^

EBearhug I attended a careers event with my dd and we went to listen to an engineering presentation. The man who gave the presentation was an ex-pupil. He spent 30 minutes droning on about his company. He wasn't even an engineer. A mother asked if he had anything to say about women in engineering and it was clear he hadn't given it any thought prior to that moment. STEM outreach for girls? Not even on his radar. It was disappointing and not the inspirational presentation the female (or male!) pupils deserved.

Half of my close school friends and two relatives have careers in STEM, the only thing I can think of that ties them all together is that they all had the same male Chemistry teacher. It was an all girls school, he was an excellent teacher, totally passionate about science, encouraged those who showed an interest in STEM to persue it. iirc our school had a high amount of pupils who not only went on to do a STEM degree but at Oxford and Cambridge too which for an ex coal mining town which still has crippling unemployment was remarkable. Sadly he’s retired now so I don’t know how well the school does now.

I work in STEM (computer science/math area). It was an area that I'd always had ability in, and something I had a general interest in (as opposed to social studies, medical, etc).

I was almost alone in my peer group of friends in choosing subjects, and felt a lot of social pressure as a result. Luckily my parents were able to influence my subject choice, more than my friends, so I'd been fortunate. I personally sensed a lot of negatives from peer group as a result (geeky girl, etc).

Careerwise it all worked out for the best by far, opportunities and a helping of luck and good timing.

Many companies are very support of women in tech, they actively support it, some other don't. Bottom line is that there are plenty of opportunities for women in tech, if they want to take take them...

Did the parents introduce the bias (not the sort of thing my little Sophie would be interested in)?

Ime it is parents. Or a significant influence. They pick the childs activities- they pick dance, drama, crafts. Boys are sent to sports or football.

Dd’s school ran free after school ballet lessons. Hugely popular, massive take up, 100% girls. Lots of boys wanted to, but no slips returned from parents. A couple of boys got told point blank it was “for girls”.

I do think parents worry about their child being the only boy/girl. Dd does a mixed sport, so equally for either sex. There are two boys, three girls in her squad. One boy is leaving, so the other parents are thinking of taking theirs out, purely because they don’t want him to be the only boy.

I went into STEM, and it was extremely hard choosing those subjects. It was basically walking into classrooms where i knew no one, the boys all knew each other, the teacher was male and treated me like some sort of oddity. I had no friends in class, i gradually found female school friends pulled away as they had friend in their own classes, went to each others houses to do homework etc, would talk about teachers and lessons i was no part of.

On extracurricular stuff - DD’s school put on a computer club for her year one year. Quite early primary, maybe year 2? Great. They prioritised kids who’d not done an after school activity yet that year - entirely reasonable. Only the previous clubs had been gymnastics, country dancing and similar - not exclusively girls, but far more popular with the girls, to the extent that every girl had done at least one of them. End result - all-boy computer club. Fortunately the coding club they started for year 6s was evenly split, supervised by a reasonably competent female teacher, and run by a mixed group of volunteers (male-heavy, but at least not exclusively male).