Stop Ignoring the Little Things To Keep More Women In STEM
We Can’t Keep Waiting For Top Down Structural Change
Thanks to organizations such as Girls Who Code, young women are making strides in STEM more than ever before. Nonetheless, droves of men have decided to crash the Grace Hopper Conference last year. It was a clear example that despite such spaces existing and being impactful for women to see themselves in tech, there are still men who view these conferences as artificially lifting women rather than increasing accessibility. That has a lot to do with how we push for change.
In school, we’re surrounded by the communities in organizations we founded that help us feel a sense of belonging and propel our academic excellence. But what happens after we graduate and enter the working world?
In new cities and new jobs, we are thrust into an unruly social atmosphere of strife with unspoken misbehaviors that most of us were only exposed to through studies until now. We’re unprepared to navigate it and it shows.
50% of women leave STEM in the first five years and just 30% of women who earn a degree in engineering are still in the field 20 years later. That’s a loss for pretty much everyone involved. Women have less money. Their families have less money. Companies lose talent and spend a hot minute (and a lot of money I’m guessing) trying to figure out why.
Current Initiatives Ignore the Micro-Aggressions That Lead to Macro Impacts
Current efforts have been largely focused on getting women into STEM by preventing them from falling off the middle school cliff. While they’re effective at their target, they aren’t enough to sustain us as we start our careers or until we’re well in them.
During the pandemic, women left the workplace in large numbers, and workplaces suffered. Years later, their numbers still haven’t recovered. These are senior leaders with valuable experience and there’s no denying that there are obvious structural issues at play such as paternal policies, lack of role models and mentors, lack of flexible work options, and culture. They’re rooted in a deeply flawed structure and require institutional reform.
But I think the magnitude of the problem also prevents us from enacting change however small it may be. McKinsey dispelled one of the myths that micro-aggressions have a ‘micro’ impact. In reality, micro-aggressions have a larger, more cumulative impact that drives women out.
That pushes us to consider how we approach the problem and what role we think we should play. Structural change is quite necessary, no doubt. But it also hinders how well we can hold individuals accountable for all the little things like mistaking some for a junior, confusing them for someone else of the same ethnicity, and commenting on how “emotional” they may be.
It also underestimates how positively impactful the little things can be such as accommodating schedules, crediting ideas, and providing space for one to perhaps bring their most authentic(and effective) personal and professional self to work.
I’ve been lucky to have had some solid supervisors and supportive teams in the past few years. But like everyone else I know, I’ve had a couple of instances that led to an eyebrow raise.
At one point, I went weeks in regular meetings where my name was being mispronounced. Luckily, I’ve gotten better at correcting and helping people use it correctly the first time.
So I don’t think waiting for top-down change is enough on its own. It has to start with us. Being more authentic, being more adamant about pushing our needs and wants, and illustrating how our identities make us better contributors. How we show up and respond to all the little things makes each micro-aggression more raw and more direct.
Sometimes, it does change the little things, and perhaps little by little, we can eventually chip away at the big ones.
