Educators, leaders, and industries continue to be puzzled
why, despite over 50% of students attending universities are females; technology and
engineering sectors are still reined by the Y chromosome.
From a very young age, boys will sit with their fathers in
the garage and learn to differentiate between a crescent wrench and an
adjustable wrench, while girls will learn to distinguish basil from bay leaf. And
boys will ask their fathers whether that car is a V-8 or inline four, and
daughters will ask their mothers whether the pot has carnations or
chrysanthemums. And boys will learn when to top off the oil and girls will
learn when to water the vegetables. And when it comes to classes in high school
and university, boys will understand torque outputs and oil viscosity in their engineering classes and girls will understand why flowers bloom and how they
pollinate in their biology classes.
Yet we still stand in university graduations and wonder why
more of these girls are not graduating in engineering and technology, instead
gravitating towards chemistry and biology.
It seems like the STEM movement's focus on including females still plays on feminine stereotypes, and makes only SM accessible to women. I think we will soon find ourselves in a situation where we must promote the T and E for ladies. I just hope that, rather than playing to a girl's prior knowledge of kitchen biology and environmentalism, it promotes an early introduction to the garage. There is still a part of the female mind and genius that is suppressed when we fail to leave our mother’s garden and venture into our father’s garage.
Links:
It seems that you are arguing that women are lacking in STEM because they are taught at an early age that their place is in the kitchen or the garden and not in the garage. I do not agree, however. Home economics and sewing classes are no longer required for high school girls, just like shop class or mechanical studies is no longer a requirement for boys. I think the bigger issue is women being forced out of engineering because of how they are treated at school and in the work place.
ReplyDeleteIn Nicholas Fleur's article, "Many Women Leave Engineering, Blame the Culture," he outlines that the male dominated work environment is driving women away. They feel that they are on the outside of the "old boy clubs" and they feel no confidence that they will advance in their careers, as most management is dominated by men. So maybe women need to be encouraged at a young age, but they also need to be nurtured and energized in the work place.
Article Link:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/08/12/339638726/many-women-leave-engineering-blame-the-work-culture
Sorry for my lack of clarity. A lot of what I am arguing is actually in line with your understanding of women feeling awkward engaging with the good old boys "club." STEM promotion programs seem to draw on women's past training in the kitchen and garden to make them feel welcome into sciences like biology and chemistry. However, women lack the past experience to feel confident in physics and engineering classes to confront the male dominated industry because their early introduction to science does not include the garage.
DeleteI do agree that women already in industry need to be nurtured and supported to ensure that they recognize their own aptitude, but to terminate that need in future generations, they need that early introduction into engineering specifically.
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ReplyDeleteLast year I became fascinated by this very topic (and wrote my second paper on it). In my research I personally found that many women are pushed away from STEM because our culture trains our girls to think commonly in the sense of the community around them while teaching our boys to be very independent. The way science and math are often taught cater to the independent and individually minded thinker, while psychology and English are taught to the community minded thinker.
ReplyDeleteWhen you think about any student at Mines, aren't they overwhelmingly independent thinkers? And isn't this strange given how communal science and engineering are in practice? Interestingly, Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core Math focus a lot of new energy on the conversation and idea sharing side of math and science in our schools nowadays (the only problem being that teachers are rarely being taught how to teach this way, but that's a whole other problem).
I think that is a very interesting point regarding communal versus independent thinking. That could be a contributing part of the "leaky pipe" scenario in the sciences in which women enter, but do not remain in pure science for long, usually gravitating to a management type track (this is my understanding, not a specific study/article). It will be interesting to see how a new introduction to STEM topics as communal studies alters the ratio of female interest and involvement
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