Reading 04: The Token “Girl in STEM”

Sorry for yet another late post. After an overwhelming weekend this unfortunately got set to the back burner, but I really think that the class discussion today helped me gather my thoughts and make a more informed stance on this issue that I spend a lot of time thinking about but haven’t really reached an internal consensus on. Luckily I faced essentially 0 resistance to becoming a female engineer. I decided in 8th grade after taking a very basic robotics/engineering class with icon based programming that I wanted to be an engineer and I never considered anything else or have anyone question this decision since. However, I know for so many girls this isn’t the case, and they face a lot of backlash to pursuing stem. These biases can come in the form of direct hurtful words, or even just in an assumption that a girl will study nursing, education, or psychology — leading them to question if they are right for engineering at all.

I really relate to Olivia’s (I think, sorry if I don’t remember her name correctly) comment about how her sister is feeling pressure to be a woman in stem even if it isn’t something that she really wants to pursue (the difference being that I always did want to pursue stem, but still pressure is there!) Even though I never really cared enough about their opinions to have them influence my choices, I could tell that many teachers and staff at my high school were impressed that I was going into a stem field, especially engineering. Out of the number of kids from my high school who went to college, which was surprisingly few, I don’t think any went into a non-healthcare stem field, and certainly no girls. I honestly felt some pressure to break that stereotype, to do things that no one else from my high school had done before, to be a woman in stem. Even still talking to people from high school, I feel the need to point out that even though I switched my major I am still in the College of Engineering, even though I think that kind of distinction is kind of dumb and we are different enough from other engineering majors that I wouldn’t be upset about a reclassification. I just want to point out that I am still filling that token “Girl in STEM” role.

I recognize that there are serious unethical workplace practices relating to gender and these need to be fixed. What’s happening at Uber (and I’m sure many other places) is not okay and needs to be changed. However, I think a much bigger problem exists in education. Making sure that young girls understand that stem fields are an option for them is important, and that can be done without pushing girls into stem, but just making them aware that there are people like them in stem careers and they can do that if they want. In computer science in general, I think we should push computer science as a critical thinking skill, more than just working with computers (because for me, and I’m sure many other girls the idea of working with computers sounds terrible, but once I started coding I realized I loved it.) I definitely think that the world is moving in the right direction, and that in 20 years these kind of problems will be dramatically reduced. We just need to keep pushing for equal rights and equal opportunity for everyone.