“You Only Got in Because You’re A Woman”
The challenges of being a woman at a 70% male university and the unreality of shattering gender expectations in STEM fields.
“You probably got in because you’re a woman.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean you’re not smart, but you know, you’re probably not as qualified as most of the guys here. Everyone knows they need more women to fix ‘the ratio’.”
“Umm…”
It’s news to no one that being a woman in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) poses many social challenges, even today.
I can’t tell you how many derivatives of the conversation above I had throughout my four years in college, but it was certainly far more than I was expecting. And I never really understood why anyone felt the need to bring it up. But they did.
With the gender gap closing in at a mighty crawl, many women still feel out of place and uncomfortable pursuing careers and degrees in STEM fields. In fact, the gender gap itself serves as a deterrent for many women, who are concerned about feeling marginalized, lacking resources, and just being ignored.
It’s easy to say that you want to shatter glass ceilings and break the gender norms. What’s hard is actually wanting to do it.
Most students end up choosing their college based on a number of factors including cost, comfort, and prestige. In fact, making decisions based on “comfort” is encouraged, and diversity is a highly sought-after attribute in a school.
Studies have identified “belongingness” as a predictive factor in mental wellbeing among college students. The idea of finding belongingness in a community lacking diversity is certainly intimidating for students of minorities. And in many STEM fields, like physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics, women are still very much a minority.
The Challenges of Breaking Out of One’s Comfort Zone
“Don’t be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile come easily. Don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it. In my day I was told women didn’t go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn’t. “— Gertrude B. Elion
My high school physics teacher majored in biology simply because when she was young, “Girls didn’t get degrees in physics.” She encouraged us not to make the same mistake she did, and to instead follow our passions from the get-go.
I felt bad for her, but I always thought her story was a bit silly. She could have gotten her degree in physics. Who cares if she wasn’t expected to?
This was a rather naive mindset. Of course, she could have gone against the norm and gotten her physics degree. And she would have been a badass for doing it. But it’s not that simple.
It’s not that easy to break gender norms. If it were, we would have done a lot more of it by now. Women would undoubtedly make up more than 27% of the STEM workforce. But we don’t.
In 2018, more than 33% of college students were found to change their majors at least once and as of 2020, 61% of college graduates regret their final choice of major. That’s a lot of uncertainty for such a tremendous financial, mental, and emotional investment.
And we can’t forget that here in America, students are essentially asked to choose a career in their late teenage years. Going back to the importance of “belongingness,” we likely all remember the desire to fit in and feel like we belonged as teenagers. A recent dissertation on adolescent belongingness states:
School is an ideal environment to provide safety and support measures aimed to increase the sense of belonging for teenagers because school is such an integral part of an adolescent’s daily life. Such measures may very well be the key to reaching those students who do not feel like they belong anywhere.
How can we expect seventeen and eighteen-year-olds to go so far beyond the risk they are already taking and ask them to put aside their innate desire to belong?
Are Belongingness and Comfort the Keys to Success?
Many studies have shown that a lack of belongingness in the workplace leads to a greater likelihood of depressive symptoms. In fact, there are many recent studies focusing specifically on the link between women’s feelings of belongingness and their inclination to pursue careers in STEM
According to this 2016 study:
Interventions designed to lessen gender segregation in the labor market need to focus more on the social belongingness of students in the gender minority. Further, to specifically increase women’s interest in STEM majors, we need to counteract gender stereotypical competence beliefs and assure women that they have what it takes to handle STEM careers.
The truth is, despite what many trite, self-help types would like you to believe, success is not achieved solely by leaping out of your comfort zone and abandoning your support system. On the contrary; comfort can be key.
Although most studies have failed to find comfort as causation for higher incidents of success there seems to be a distinct correlation between comfort and success, found particularly in academic success among college women.
At the core of culturing belongingness and academic success in minority college students are minority mentoring programs. Career and college mentorship programs have been shown as a successful means of improving confidence and achievements for some time.
My university had a Women Mentoring Program. They would match upperclasswomen with female first-years with similar interests and majors and connect them the summer before attending. That way, when they arrived, they already had a friend to show them the ropes and give them advice before starting school.
This program was so in demand among incoming students that they would sometimes have to assign two or three proteges with a single mentor. The majority of incoming female students took part and ended up making connections they would keep throughout their time in college.
My mentor ended up becoming a good friend, introduced me to the club I would later become President of, and matched me with upperclassmen to buy cheap textbooks from. She wrote my sweet cards at the end of each semester and took me out for ice cream with her friends. This program gave me a sense of belongingness.
I believe that minority mentoring programs and support groups don’t serve to divide students, but rather support students who start out feeling “othered” until they feel comfortable and confident in the larger community.
How Should We Encourage Women in STEM?
“I used to not like being called a “woman architect.” I’m an architect, not just a woman architect. The guys used to tap me on the head and say “you’re OK for a girl”. But I see an incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it can be done, so I don’t mind anymore.” — Zaha Hadid
When I was in middle school, I despised activities that separated the genders. I thought it was an archaic and unnecessary practice. As a girl who wanted to go into STEM, I also found programs targeting girls in STEM to be silly. Why not just include everyone? If they find it interesting, they’ll pursue it. If not, they won’t.
What I didn’t realize back then as a young woman was how privileged I had been. I had been exposed to women in science at a young age. I had been encouraged in all my interests, in school and at home, in everything from science to literature.
I went to a Montessori school where I was exposed to and allowed to pursue anything and everything. I was part of a Girl Scout troop that regularly did science badges and took marine biology boat trips, studied small aquatic organisms in freshwater lake samples, and participated in engineering programs at Kennedy Space Center. I met female astronauts, engineers, and army generals.
I was never made to feel that women were excluded from anything. So I never felt excluded.
I don’t know what would have happened if I wasn’t encouraged to rock hunt as a kid or keep NASA TV on in the background all day. I’m not sure that I would have been inspired without seeing the passion that other women had for science and space. But I probably wouldn’t have ended up studying astrobiology in college. I probably wouldn’t even have taken the time to discover what astrobiology is on my own. I needed the encouragement.
You can’t force a passion on anyone, but you can inspire. You can set an example. You can help normalize women in STEM. You can make sure that girls and young women not only know that it’s something they can do, but feel that it’s something they can do.
You can help make girls feel comfortable pursuing their passions.
Did I Really Get into My College Because I Was A Woman?
Maybe.
College admissions are complicated. Many universities (especially mine, probably because they were trying to admit far more women and minority students to “fix the ratio”), are incredibly and intentionally vague when it comes to admissions processes.
According to this article from IvySelect:
As a woman, [you] will have a small but real admissions advantage over male applicants, especially as an aspiring engineering or computer science major.
However, I feel that it’s vital to note that even though STEM programs may be letting in more female applicants, these applicants do not seem to lack the intelligence and skills to succeed. In fact, according to this 2016 article:
Women typically obtain higher subsequent college GPAs than men with the same admissions test score.
During the academic year of 2011–2012, the average female GPA in the U.S. was 3.282, while the male GPA was around 3.041. This tracks with the very scarce data that my college has released, which showed a similar difference, although both were slightly lower. While admissions statistics for men and women were similar, the college GPA of female students was always a bit higher.
Another study from 2012 found that regardless of students’ high school mathematics curriculum and rigor, students were no more or less likely to succeed in college level math courses when completing a STEM major. This study did find the ACT as a valid predictor, while a study from 2020 found the opposite. This study from 2017 found the ACT to be a good predictor of undergraduate GPA, but not the SAT. Most of these studies did agree that high school GPA is a decent predictor of undergraduate success.
Meanwhile, this recent study concluded that the GRE is a very poor predictor of PhD program completion (weirdly, men who dropped out actually had higher scores).
As most of the studies mentioned above found, students’ test scores were more reflective of the preparedness of their high school than the intelligence or ability of the student. Conversely, high school GPA is a better measure of the student's ability to work. Makes sense to me.
All of this information begs an interesting question about whether admissions statistics are good enough predictors of academic success and, if not, then what makes a student deserve a slot? Hard work as shown in grades, extra-curricular activities, and work experience? Being a member of an underserved minority? Being a first-generation college student, with little guidance but a lot of drive?
So are these “extra” women being admitted into STEM programs actually less qualified than the men? Maybe. But does it matter?
Essentially, college admissions is a bit of a guessing game. If STEM programs want more women, it seems that admitting more women even if they have slightly lower test scores or GPA isn’t much of a risk if the goals are to gain prestige with a lower gender gap, higher average GPAs, a higher retention rate, and consequently better job placements.
“Science is not a boy’s game, it’s not a girl’s game. It’s everyone’s game. It’s about where we are and where we’re going.” — Nichelle Nichols
So how can we get more women involved in STEM, and how can we support them so that they want to stay in STEM?
Inspiration, support, and belongingness.
While going against the grain can be an incredible way to assert confidence and make a change, it isn’t necessarily the best approach when it comes to encouraging women (or other minorities) in STEM fields.
You don’t have to convince every girl to want to shatter gender norms. You just have to teach them not to be afraid to pursue their passions.
Don’t tell girls to go into STEM because they’re girls, tell them to go into STEM because they want to. But only if they want to.
Teach them about all the women who did break gender norms and led the way for them to pursue their dreams. Tell them about Rosalind Franklin, whose work led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Tell them about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman and twelfth human being to fly into space. Tell them about Ada Lovelace, known as ‘the first programmer’ or ‘prophet of the computer age’, who discovered back in 1843 that machines could be programmed with various algorithms to produce data.
Inspire them. Show them. Involve them. Make them feel like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are fields where they can belong.
Check out these organizations for women and girls in STEM:
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