Women in STEM. An Endangered Species?
Why women abandon careers in tech despite having the required skills at their disposal.
Women on aggregate have habitually found themselves at a numerical handicap when it comes to STEM subjects as a whole, but this predicament often shows trends for the worse when we isolate ‘Engineering’ as a major, and when we do so as a profession, the situation only seems to exacerbate.
Since the industrial revolution that marked the unofficial beginning of engineering as an occupation, the number of women taking up careers in STEM is gradually increasing, but at a rate so feeble that one cannot help but question the very nature and mnemonics of this trend and make an attempt to draw much-needed attention to the predicament of the industry becoming increasingly male dominant, with gender-based preponderance occupying the centre stage and unfeigned academic flair being shoved into the backseat.
Statistics reveal that currently, for every hundred guys in engineering there are about forty-five females, but what statistics fails to shed light on is the fact that there is also a boatload of sexism and prejudice that either drives women away from the profession altogether or makes them want to abandon engineering as a discipline and look for other career alternatives. Hence, even in this self-proclaimed ‘contemporary society’ of ours, female retention in engineering still remains a gargantuan problem.
While the motivation to improve the representation and retention of women in STEM-based careers has always been strong, it must also be highlighted that many of the underlying discipline-specific causes have not been fully examined and explored, attributing to which, one is often kept devoid of the complete picture of the sorry state of women in STEM-based fields. We as a people, love seeing how high a woman can rise in STEM-related careers, be it Susan Wojcicki (CEO- YouTube), Ginni Rommetty( CEO- IBM), Sheryl Sandberg(COO- Facebook) or Safra Catz (Co-CEO, Oracle) but we, as a scientific community have done virtually nothing to raise the floor. That is the hypocrisy, and that is the first thing to be deracinated if we are to start taking baby steps towards ameliorating the state of women in STEM-based professions and vocations. Because none of this happens in a vacuum, it happens in a system.
Academic misogyny is due its fair share of credit when it comes to the conspicuousness problem women face. Like women in any other male-dominated field, they are commonly perceptible as women, but are turned a blind eye to, when it comes to their technical prowess and expertise; often leaving them with an impending feeling of anguish and desolation, when the contributions of their male peers are given paramount importance over theirs, because of the roles in the industry becoming increasingly gendered. This sort of dejection on a daily basis can be mentally draining in the long run.
My motives are not to instigate altercations of any kind or to join the bandwagon of popularizing the generalization of one particular gender and the victimization of the other, but to the all and sundry male engineering students, mentors and recruiters out there, who still refuse to see and treat their female peers as equals; you are right, because we are not.
You may be in the same academic institution right now, enrolled in the same program and even in the very same class as them, but does that strengthen your case as equals? ‘No’. Because you did not grow up in a world where you were belaboured by social media and advertising campaigns telling you your true worth was decided by how you look and dress. Neither were you subjected to the assumption that the reason you couldn’t grasp a perplexing mathematical or scientific concept, was in fact, your gender. You weren’t discouraged or branded as ‘bossy’ when trying to pursue leadership roles, and if and when you experienced success, the general public opinion was always inclined towards the notion that you earned it owing to your hard work and qualifications and not because of your gender.
The reasons divulged above are just the tip of an iceberg compared to what our female peers have faced and conquered to reach where they are today. So, we can never really be ‘equals’ in the true sense of the word, because they have already triumphed over more in this field just to stand on the same pedestal as us, that we will ever get to grips with.
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Anmol Pant is the Editorial Head of CodeChef-VIT Student Chapter, a front- end web development & Machine Learning Enthusiast and an upcoming freelance writer who takes a keen interest in technical, social and web content writing.
