*Chanting* Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech! - Emily Sandford

STEM Representation

Emily Sandford

Hi guys today I’m going to talk to you about the F word. That’s right, Feminism. I know, I know, you probably already know “all” about it, but let me clear something up. Feminism is the belief that men and women are equal (Shire). It is not women are greater than men. This belief of equality stems through political and social equality. Politically by women getting the vote, done. And socially comes from what I’ll be talking about women’s representation in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, or commonly known as STEM.  

STEM  is one of the highest grossing job fields with a projected growth of 14% total from 2010 to 2020, the highest being biomedical engineering at 64% and the lowest with 16% in mathematics. It’s expected that increase in jobs attracts people to STEM, but if current trends continue women will hold less than 50% of the jobs in STEM the most being in computer sciences. This is depressing news for me, not only because I’m a feminist but because my future career goals involve STEM. I want to be an audio-animatronic Imagineer for Disney, a combination of both Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Fields where women aren’t prominent players.  

This can be attributed to beliefs about men v. women such as; smart v. airheaded; strong v. weak. None of these are set characterizations of either gender both men and women are smart and airheaded, both men and women are strong and weak. Gender stereotyping starts from a very early age, developmental Psychologist Dr. Christia Spears Brown even wrote an entire book on the subject titled “Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue: how to raise your kids free of gender stereotypes”. From the day we begin these stereotypes it pushes girls away from STEM.  Brown writes “Parents routinely assume that their sons are more interested in math and science than their daughters [and they] hold these assumptions regardless of how their kids are actually doing in math and science." This goes to show that people hold gender above capability, that gender defines capability.   

For me the most impactful finding from Brown’s book was a study on testing. Participants were a mixture of boys and girls; they took a standardized test involving mathematics. One half of the boys and girls filled out information before hand, including their gender and one half filled that out afterwards. I want you to think about which group did better. The boys performed the same in both groups, but not the girls. The girls who put their gender first performed much lower than the girls who put their gender last. This shows that on the subconscious level girls think oh right I’m a girl I’m not supposed to be good at math, and then they perform badly without being conscious of it. This idea can be linked back to any math class, when a good grade is earned boys will hear that their just good at math, whereas girls will hear that they had to work hard to earn that grade. You’re probably thinking that doesn’t affect us we have Mrs. Dewees, and she is amazing but  "Analyses of national AP Calculus tests shows that almost five thousand additional girls a year would have scored high enough to earn AP credit had they indicated their gender at the end of the test instead of the beginning. Simply pushing back those gender thoughts until the test is over can keep performance higher." (Brown 100)   

Many people just simply believe that women just aren’t as good at math as men, and I’ve shown you the consequences of this. But what many don’t know is about the Top Secret Rosies. I didn’t even know about this until I took an engineering class over the summer on computer science, and the teacher talked about them. The Rosies were women that were amazing at math and science during World War II, they would sit in the back rooms and double check these huge long math problems without calculators and Physics theorems that the male mathematicians and Physicists would do (Nielsen). At this point you’re probably wondering why this was mentioned at a computer science class, well I’m getting to that. These Rosies were computing, and thusly called computers (Nielsen).  As you can see not only are women just as good at math and science but they were essential to the modern computer. Don’t believe me yet, Ada Lovelace came a while before the Rosies and is just as important to modern computers. Ada wrote complex formulas, or codes, and has been called the first programmer because her coding is believed to have worked had there been computers (Nielsen). These are just two examples of women in STEM, and they were successful in what they did.  

Many of the beliefs about compatibility for STEM fields are out dated. They go into the beliefs of a patriarchy. One of the most prominent examples of these out dated beliefs is Tim Hunt. I'm sure you've heard of him, he was pretty big in the news in June. So Tim Hunt was a noble prize recipient, and he was talking at a convention to promote women in STEM in Korea. He said some very misogynistic things and word got out. It spread like wild fire, and Hunt was ridiculed for his comments, don’t be like hunt and hold these beliefs because times have changed, women aren't just pretty faces, they're not just objects to be pushed aside, they're people like you.  

Despite people like Hunt we’re seeing a huge push for Women in STEM. Many organizations are seeing the need to help girls get involved with STEM.  An example is a global organization, 4-H. One of the main goals of the American National 4-H STEM Youth Ambassadors is to “Advise National 4-H Council and Lockheed Martin on program and promotional tactics for sparking youth interest in STEM, particularly for reaching minority youth and girls.” (STEM Ambassadors) See girls, the 4-H recognizes the gap in participation in STEM from girls and believes in getting girls involved from an early age. 

STEM is in no way the only field where women are falling behind. Women don't often make it to the top of any field; this is because we underestimate ourselves. Or other factors outside of our control come into play. Data shows that "success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women."(Sandberg).  One good example is a study from Harvard Business School, "a woman named Heidi Roizen. She's an operator in a company in Silicon Valley, and she uses her contacts to become a very successful venture capitalist,"(Sandberg). Several years ago in 2002 a Colombia University professor took the case and changed it to  

"[Howard] Roizen. And he gave the case out, both of them, to two groups of students. He changed exactly one word: "Heidi" to "Howard." But that one word made a really big difference. He then surveyed the students, and the good news was the students, both men and women, thought Heidi and Howard were equally competent, and that's good. The bad news was that everyone liked Howard. He's a great guy. You want to work for him. You want to spend the day fishing with him. But Heidi? Not so sure. She's a little out for herself. She's a little political. You're not sure you'd want to work for her," (Sandberg).  

This emphasizes the belief about women, they're not as good. If we continue on with the same belief system of "boys are just better at math, and girls worked for the grade"(Brown) we are instilling into ourselves, our peers, and eventually our children to believe those things and push girls away from them.  

I believe if we make slight altercations to our way of speaking, thinking, and acting. If we cut out the "run like a girl", "go make me a sandwich", and "women are weak" we can change the gap in STEM. This doesn't just affect me, I've told about the 5,000 girls that took the AP Calculus Test, the Top Secret Rosies, and Heidi Roizen. It's a phenomenon that takes capable people away from doing amazing things. Rarely do we see women make history because they abided by the societal notions created by men. I say we change the way society sees girls and start by saying they're smart.

Thank you. 

  

Bibliography  

Brown, Christia Spears. Parenting beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender  Stereotypes. N.p.: Ten Speed, 2014. Print. 

Nielsen, Monica. "Computer Science Workshop." University of Kentucky. University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. 25 May 2015. Workshop.  

Sandberg, Sheryl. "Why We Have to Few Women Leaders." TEDxWomen. International Trade Center, Washington D.C. 7-8 December 2010. TED Talks. Web. 27 June 2015. 

"Science, Technology, Engineering and Math: Education for Global Leadership." Science, Technology, Engineering and Math: Education for Global Leadership. U.S. Department Of Education, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

Shire, Emily. "You Don't Hate Feminism You Just Don't Understand It." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 24 July 2014. Web. 27 June 2015 

"STEM Ambassadors." WVU Extension Service. Ed. 4-H Youth Development. 4-H Youth Development of West Virginia University, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.