Today is International Day of
Women and Girls in Science. For more details about this day, see:
A main reason why this day was
set up is because there aren’t enough women in Science, including the
environmental sciences/earth sciences. This is a feminist issue! For more on
this and what it’s like to be a feminist in science see:
Detailed statistics on women’s
participation in STEM subjects at all levels are not easy to find, although
easier than in Philosophy but, it would appear that despite initiatives such as
WISE they have not quite made the impact they expected to have by now. Why this
is the case is unclear. Certainly outdated, sexist attitudes towards women play
a large part. Girls still do not have enough role models in the sciences, often
being taught by men rather than women at GCSE, A Level. Teaching both sexes at
the same time in the sciences has been observed to be detrimental to girls who
may well leave it to the ‘pushy’ boys to carry out scientific experiments. This
lessens confidence and creates the image in their heads that science is not for
girls.
Having said that, there are
initiatives for girls to encourage them into the sciences and combat gender
stereotypes, such as, Science Grrl, available at: http://sciencegrrl.co.uk/
Not all sciences, however, have
the same low level of participation as each other. Physics (my favourite science)
has considerably fewer girls/women than Biology. Biology has always been seen
as a science for girls and girls’ participation in it has consistently been
higher than the other sciences. So when looking at statistics, I think, we have
to be careful to take this into account! Otherwise, if we think too generically
about how many women participate in STEM subjects, we can get an artificially
positive picture because when the lower percentages combine with the higher
percentages, it gives an average which is much higher than is representative of
the situation for many women in STEM. If we look at the chart in the link below,
we can see how poorly Computer Science (15%) fares in comparison to medical
sciences (81%) where women are concerned. Engineering and technology are the worst
with women making up only 14% of total UG’s.
For this chart and some further
recent statistical analysis of women in STEM in the UK see:
It is also not enough to just
look at how many women are taking the sciences at UG level because, quite
often, by PhD level there are more men than women. This is not just due to
women leaving STEM subjects but the gap in participation can also widen due to
an increase of men taking those subjects. Again, the higher up you go the more
men you encounter and this is true in education as it is in the workplace.
In the USA, the situation is not
more favourable. If you look at the graph in the link below, you can see that
in the period between 2005-2015 in the USA all STEM subjects show a decline in
the number of women actually gaining degrees in these fields! This includes a
significant drop in the number of women in America gaining degrees in Earth
Sciences. Worse still, Earth Sciences (40%) are well below related fields such
as Biology (60%), Chemistry (48%) and Maths/Stats (42/43%). Earth Sciences only
out-perform Physics and Engineering, which are languishing at the bottom with
only 20% of women gaining degrees in these.
However, women are also not
translating their education, qualifications and talents into acquiring jobs in
the field of science and technology, as can be seen in this article in the
Guardian:
This following article paints the
same dire picture and shows the lack of translating girls’ achievements in STEM
subjects at school into degrees and success in the workplace:
Much the same is the case in
Philosophy. Interestingly enough, when it comes to Philosophy of Science, I’ve
noticed the women who are in this field are usually those who have science
degrees but have left science for philosophy!
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