Humans are always striving to become better. We develop new ideas, create groundbreaking innovations, and discover new things every day, all in the hope of advancing our society. We do this in a lot of ways, but no matter what we need STEM fields so that we can grow. STEM is a anacronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics; which are fields of study that are constantly making progress and recruiting new people. In 2010 there was over 7.6 million STEM field workers in the USA, and with expected growth rates around 17 percent, it will only get bigger (Langdon et al.). Yet with all the growth expected in STEM fields the ratio of men to women is not equal at all. For every 19 men in STEM fields there is 6 women (Beede et al.). This number probably doesn’t mean much to some people who ask why does it matter? It matters because we are doing a disservice to our society by not having equal representation. Men and women have been scientifically proven to think and work through problems different ways, and when you only have one half of our society trying to solve problems that will change the world, there can be a lack of innovations. What keeps women from becoming more involved in the STEM field is gender stereotypes, failing education system, and apathetic authority figures. 

Most societies are patriarchal, meaning that makes ruled the households and be the leaders. It pretty telling that our society are still stuck in these values even if women do have more rights. Gender roles are commonplace in our society, even if it doesn’t seem like it. One common type of gender stereotypes that effects society is toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is used to describe behaviors encouraged in men in western societies and European regions. These behaviors can have negative impacts on society because they encourage harmful effects on society such as homophobia, misogyny, and violence. Some common toxic traits include aggressiveness, domination over women, showing no emotion, and self-reliance to the point that it hurts them and people around them. With having men in place as the seemingly ‘breadwinners’ of the family because they are in charge and must protect, women are considered less intelligent because they allow their emotions to rule over them and are weak for understanding that it takes a village to get something done. Women are encouraged to go into careers involving children such as teaching and daycare establishments. If they are interested in science they are influences towards the sciences such as psychology, nursing, and sociology; which are theoretical and not that important as careers in engineering for example. Females from a young age are taught enjoy feminine things such as Barbie’s and makeup kits, while males get toys such as Legos and LinkedIn Logs which stimulates the brain and inspires future careers in STEM fields. Debbie Sterling in a TEDx’s lecture talks about how this engineering toy she made for young girls have been such a success. She starts off her talk about the different reactions people had to her going to Stanford and getting an engineering degree, most of which were negative. She talks about how she felt lonely as one of the few girls in her classes, and how halfway through her degree she had to take an engineering drawing class. She mentions how she worked so hard and the other guys in the class didn’t seem stressed or finding the material hard. Her professors humiliated her in her class when she didn’t do as good as the other students and she debated quitting. Instead she stayed in the library constantly until early hours in the morning, and she said that she saw a lot of guys from her class in there working hard too. Later in Debbie’s life she researched how girls have less spatial awareness than boys, which is part of the reason she did so bad in her engineering drawing class. She researched and found that those children who grew up playing with Legos and LinkedIn Logs had greater spatial awareness. She quit her job to develop this building toy called Goldibloxs, an interactive story with a toy that helps develop spatial awareness skills for young girls. When she went to toy companies and engineering firms they all rejected her. So, she partnered with a factory and went to Kickstarter to raise money. She doubled her goal in only 4 days. She got tons of calls asking for more, and of parents giving her such support for making their young girls more than pretty princesses (Sterling). Little girls are encouraged by society to be into how we look and to obsess over boys. This toy that Sterling created is essential because it shows that there is a demand for toys to engage girls in STEM fields without being classed as ‘boy toys’. 

You would think that teachers would encourage girls to be into STEM fields and make class encouraging and engaging, yet that is not the case. Young girls look up to other women who they consider successful, and while both male and female teachers can recruit girls to STEM fields, girls with female role models tend to stay in STEM fields because they see that they are not alone. Women that research about who graduated before them in the same degree “rated themselves higher on success-related traits when the role model was female compared to male” (Drury). Though the gender biases are not that obvious in elementary and middle school, in high school and postsecondary school they are apparent. Girls are ridiculed by peers if they are not seen as “pretty” and made fun of if they express an interest in STEM fields. The teachers are just as bad if not worse. Eileen Pollack has a master’s degree in gravitational physics, but she never studied in her field because she was tired of not feeling good enough in a male dominated field. In 2005 she came to Yale, her alma mater, to have an afternoon tea with some undergraduate girls to interview them about being a female in a STEM field, and it was not at all encouraging. They didn’t think that many girls would come to the tea, but over 80 girls came as well as some curious men. Many of the girls talked about how their high school experiences were disappointing because their own teachers were the ones making the jokes. One young lady, who took a lot of advanced classes, signed up for the hardest classes When she was unable to follow along with the first lecture, as well as being the only girl, asked a professor if she should be in that class. He replied, “If you’re not confident that you should be here, you shouldn’t take the class.” (Pollack) In a study 

 As I am a STEM major I can completely relate to the fact that I experienced gender bias all throughout high school and the short time I’ve been in college. I was in an engineering program in my high school because I always knew I liked science and I thought I would enjoy it. I struggled hard in it because the teachers did not believe that girls knew what they were doing. The desks were in groups of four, so that you could work in teams. He sat all the girls at one table, and for the whole year we would do the more craft like projects while the boys got to do the more exciting projects like building robots. When we asked him why we couldn’t do it, he responded that he knew that “girls just couldn’t keep up with the hard stuff like the boys could”. The thing that frustrates me the most is that it isn’t just male teachers that hold these views. I had a female teacher for my Principles of Technology class, and she made it so that every girl would drop out of the program. She often commented on the clothes I was wearing telling me that I was ‘too feminine’ to be a scientist. She told me that the only way I would ever be respected as a scientist is if I “stopped acting like a slut and became one of the guys”. I understand that she was trying to help me, to prepare me for the injustice I would surely face that because I am a female that I will not be respected. Even still, these are not words you should speak to a pubescent teenager, no matter how grown up they act.

I am not the only female STEM major to experience these discrepancies in classrooms. Molly J. Dingel took a survey of a beginning calculus course at a research college in the Midwest. This class was chosen because it really is the jumping point for STEM majors into their college careers. She then interviewed 21 students from this class; 11 girls and 10 boys. She acknowledged 3 common themes that came from the interviews: 1) women are an irregularity in classrooms by both teachers and students; 2) women are less likely to be an expert/authoritative voice in classrooms; and 3) women’s insecurities and lack of encouragement leads them to expect perfection from themselves and their work. In all the interviews she had the students noticed that it was considered strange for women to be in a science program. The female students in the interviews were quick to point out that the teachers and parents thought it was strange, but they did not, while the male students just said it was strange to have that many females in a class. In one interview with a sophomore named Amanda, Amanda points out the peer discouragement she often gets. “You’re crazy, there is no way you are going to make it through all of those courses. You’re going to drop, you’re going to drop” she commented that it was often she got this discouragement from male peers than females. If it isn’t girls getting shat on for being a STEM major, it’s the idea that women won’t like STEM fields. One interview with a student named April said her teachers often told her that even though she was good at math that they didn’t believe she would like it because “most girls don’t like math and science”. (pg. 168-169) This is hard for girls in STEM majors, because being on the outskirts and seen as an oddity for a while can have negative impacts on their mental health. Being on the outside looking in, not fitting in, is hard for anyone to endure. Feeling like an outsider makes girls question whether this major is good for them and generally self-doubt. When interviewing students, Dingel acknowledges that guys give themselves a larger margin of error when doing homework and classwork, whereas girls expect themselves and their work to be perfect. Their idea of perfection is because they do not have an encouraging support system with professors who just don’t have enough time for them and for feeling stupid to ask questions about lectures or research they come upon because the guys in the classes seem to know what they are doing. Girls, because of being outsiders and are unsure if they should even be a STEM major, let every failing grade, every bad mark, every time they have a hard time grasping concepts wear them down until finally they through theirs hands and are done with STEM. In similar ways, girls have a harder time dealing under pressure. In a series of math competitions at an elementary school, it was proven that girls performed matter when there was no time limit (Kahn).

I do not assume that all teachers, parents, and males are out to stop girls from being a part of STEM majors, nor do I think that all males have toxic masculinity. I do think our society puts too much pressure on both men and women to fit into perfect boxes that define women and men. We need to change the way our society views gender boundaries and reshape our education system to help all students. If we do not start to change things now, our future children will suffer. 
