Women in STEM subjects: the root of the issue?

After attending a ‘Women’s Science event’ at a local university as part of celebrations of
International Women’s Day, I was rather unsettled to find that they seemed to have grasped what appeared to me to be completely the wrong end of the stick.

The intention of this event was to try to encourage more girls to get involved in STEM subjects and careers. With only 13 per cent of science, tech, engineering and maths workers being women (1), one would imagine that this initiative could only be a positive thing.

“You may think that people in STEM roles are all geeks, but look around this room, we're all normal
people!” the first speaker declared.

“You must be joking,” we all thought. “We ARE geeks. That’s why we’re here.” Evidently the audience they had invited didn’t exactly match up with the target demographic of the event. We are also ‘normal people’, and personally I was somewhat confused, verging on offended, that this woman speaking to us thought there was something wrong with being ‘geeky’ or ‘nerdy’. Although one can be a nerd or a geek regarding pretty much any subject, STEM subjects tend to have these connotations most readily, so if they’re trying to encourage more participation by girls in these subjects, I would have thought they would be telling us that being nerdy was acceptable - preferable even - rather than implying that it was only okay for men to be geeks and that we can do science without being geeks and therefore retain our femininity. I certainly believe that one can be simultaneously feminine and a geek, and I don’t think a single member of the audience thought otherwise. I’ve seen an increasing acceptance of nerdiness amongst teenagers over the past few years, but the adults don’t seem to have caught on, and thus by telling us we can do science without being nerdy, they’re actually alienating the very people they need to recruit.

Perhaps this wasn’t her true view and she was only saying this because that’s what she thought we thought. But while talking to other audience members afterwards, I discovered that we were unanimously agreed that we didn’t care about the lack of other girls in our science classes – with the majority of the audience between the ages of 15 and 18, we were all at an age where if we are interested in science, we want to do science, and we don’t care what other people think about that. Therefore if the reason for the lack of women in STEM roles is to do with girls being put off due to the perceived ‘nerdiness’ or masculinity of the subject, it’s an issue which arises at a younger age. I remember even at primary school people would think of English as a ‘girly’ subject and of maths as a ‘boyish’ subject. There’s a deeper societal issue that needs to be tackled in order to combat the imbalance in STEM; although I appreciate the sentiment, talking to teenagers who are already interested is a waste of effort.

Written by Jenny

Picture Credit: Ellen


1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11401344/STEM-Is-there-any-science-
behind-the-lack-of-women-in-science.html

Similar article on women in STEM subjects: http://adamandeven.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/pi-day.html