You may have undoubtedly heard of the Gender Gap in STEM before, but even though we’ve made considerable progress in bridging the gender gap in STEM in recent decades, there is still continues to be a vast gap in STEM that needs to be bridged. Women hold less than 25% of the total jobs in STEM. Make up less than ⅓ of the jobs in STEM, across the world. And hold less than 20% of high-tech jobs. Women continue to remain unemployed in the world. What’s more to say?
STEM is the acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. When someone refers to STEM majors and career they’re talking about the degree programs and career paths related to such topics. Although the STEM acronym was not created until 1980, empowerment in STEM – is, was, and will continue to be- an important aspect in our lives. Every year, billions of dollars are invested into encouraging students to study STEM fields and programs, just to ensure that the country would not lack in the huge technological race, and ensure they are going to become a preeminent technological power. Even by this simple fact, we can easily understand that STEM is truly a key way to bring change into our world, in order to solve inevitable challenges like climate change, food crisis, and the current pandemic.
Even though STEM holds such a value, this key aspect of our lives has a lack of female representation. This holds up markets, research, and the entire economy and change in the world altogether. Activists advocating efforts to bridge the gender gap in STEM fields prove to us that this gender gap not only reflects unfair conditions and unprivileged treatment of women in STEM fields, but this also reduces the quality of work and innovation being done around the world. Bridging the gender gap will make STEM fields more diverse which would help to ensure that scientists are approaching problems from a variety of different perspectives, from different genders, and ethnicities.
In order to understand more about the gender gap in STEM, let us scrutinize each part of the STEM acronym and the statistics that back up the fact about the Gender Gap in STEM. You will notice that in almost every part of the STEM acronym, there is a gap that separates the minority of women, from their male counterparts in work environments.
- Science: Data shows that only 21 % of bachelor’s degrees in physics were obtained by women in 2017. Women had only earned 37% of Ph.D.s in chemistry. National Science Foundation data shows that women made up approximately only about 28% of all workers in science and engineering jobs, which truly shows us that the environment in science-occupied fields in STEM is dominated by males.
- Technology degrees are primarily in fields of computers and computer science. These can include more specific areas in technology including programming, web development, or cybersecurity. Unfortunately in this growing field in our world, the gender gap is known to be especially pronounced. Women hold only 18 % of computer science degrees. 25% of computer scientists are women based on US statistics. And to top it off, women jobs in computer science are seemingly decreasing; 31% of women were computer scientists in 1993.
- Engineering is another key component of STEM that seems to have an unprecedented minority of females, increasing the gender gap. In 2015, 20% of engineering undergraduate degrees were obtained by women. Nevertheless, this percentage changes drastically depending on the field of engineering. Women obtained only 13% of mechanical engineering bachelor’s degrees, while almost 50% of environmental engineering graduates were women. 23% of doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to women in 2015. And in 2010, fewer than 13% of working engineers were women. While that number has improved quite a lot, there’s still a long way to go to reach gender parity in engineering.
- Mathematics also faces a drastic amount of gender parity. 42% of bachelor’s degrees in mathematics were obtained by women, in the year of 2014. While this number may seem comfortable, only 29% of doctoral degrees in mathematics were earned by women in 2014. More or less, only 15% of teaching jobs in mathematics are known to be held by women. This can be compared to the 18 percent of women in computer science and 14 % in engineering, which shows a serious gender gap problem in the branch of mathematics part of STEM.
These numbers part of each component reveal the unfortunate circumstances of the gender gap, that is still present in the world. This not only shows the gender parity present in our world today but also reflects the inevitable truth that we must face and fight to make a change. Dating back to the 1900s, we have a long history of women in STEM who had huge contributions in STEM areas, and we need to learn that if women were given more of an opportunity, excluding the stereotypes, in more STEM industries, we would gain more profit in our world. Statistics reveal that the Global GDP would gain at least 12 trillion in profits if we invest in women empowerment.
Research even goes further and explains the importance of creating a more inclusive environment in STEM. As mentioned before, even though individual women would obviously benefit from the creation of more inclusive atmospheres in STEM fields, it is proved that these fields would also see a benefit. As heard many times before, science functions best when it considers a wide range of diverse perspectives. When scientific fields exclude women, they exclude a wide range of extremely talented future minds, as well as perspectives that could be used to approach scientific problems.
Not only can bringing more women into STEM fields improve the quality of work being done in those fields, but it will also open up great career opportunities for many women, supporting the global problem of gender discrimination and parity, even to the extent of abolishing the ‘gender pay gap’ which establishes a direct connection to STEM.
By now, we understand that there is undoubtedly a huge “Gender Gap” in STEM. Bridging this gap is a proven contribution to humanity and the global economy. But the main question remains unanswered: “How do we do it?”
The answer has remained in our society for years now and the answer will remain the same: it is awareness and action of our human society.
Action is often noted as the foundational key to all success. And even the smallest of the keys will make the door of success and women empowerment in the world open. Believe it or not, this smallest key can be you! Understanding the series of intangible reasons women remain underrepresented in STEM, can become the small key in fighting the “Gender Gap ahead of us.” I hope you would understand this and work towards raising awareness in your family, relatives, and yourself in understanding the gender gap, so we can work towards a world without parity, one person at a time.
To keep you thinking, I will leave you with a quote:
“When we invest in women, we are investing in the people who invest in everyone else.”-Melinda Gates
How are you going to help women in STEM?