STEM Women Education: The Modern Equality Frontier
Nagsen Torne is a graduate in Bioanalytical Sciences from Ramnarain Ruia College and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Public Policy Analysis. He is a kickboxer and also a bibliophile who loves learning. He believes that a pen, a few words and an idea can bring about the greatest of social revolutions.
STEM Women Education: The Modern Equality Frontier
Long ago, when cell phones were being invented, a team of male engineers at a leading tech company designed an algorithm to encode and decode the bits of information (or voice) at sender and receiver ends respectively. The team was happy with its work and tested the algorithm several times, at different locations to make it work perfectly. The team decided to test the algorithm one last time before sending it to mass production and releasing it to the public. So each member of the team got a cell phone with the algorithm embedded in it. When they went home, one of the guys X called up another person Y in the team, however, it was Y’s wife who picked the call. While the Y’s wife was able to perfectly hear what X was speaking, X couldn’t hear a word of what Y’s wife was speaking. The algorithm had filtered all of the female’s voice which is pitched higher than her male counterpart as high frequency noise! The result was that the entire algorithm had to be re-designed and the process of getting the product to customers got delayed significantly. Similar cases are found in many other industries. For instance, a predominantly male group of engineers tailored the first generation of automotive airbags to adult male bodies, resulting in avoidable deaths for women and children. Had the team had just one female engineer, all of this could have been avoided!
As modernity dawns, and the world adopts for itself Sustainable Development Goal 4: To ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, the gender disparity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, especially in developed countries cannot be overlooked. According to the most recent UNESCO Science Report, women account for only 28 percent of researchers across the world, with the gap deepening at the higher echelons of decision-making. Women have less access to funding, to networks, to senior positions, which puts them at a further disadvantage in high-impact science publishing. Girls’ and women’s access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) cannot be envisaged when girls and women remain the majority of out-of-school children, youth and illiterate adults. This gap throws a shadow over entire societies, as no country can move forward with only half its creativity, energy, and dreams. Another sustainable goal underlines the power of science as a driver for human rights and dignity, poverty eradication and the protection of the planet. This new agenda will not meet its promise without investing in women’s and girls’ empowerment through and in science. More than ever today, the world needs science and science needs women.
Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley. In his book Geek Sublime, Vikram Chandra points out that 30% of programmers in India are female compared with 21% in the US. Although gender ratio in science and technology is far better in India than developed nations like the USA, statistics for women STEM education is next to none in our country. Not only does India have a lack of statistics in this matter, but organizations focused on female empowerment within technology, activists, and advocates do not recognize much need for them. Also, the GDP spending on STEM education for women shows that we spend far less than the developed countries.
Identifying Barriers: Why the current state of affairs?
A logical mind will find the argument that women are more passionate toward Non-STEM careers ludicrous. Several key social and structural factors influence girls’ participation in research, often deterring them from choosing future education or careers in STEM.
In most cases, good education requires good investment from families. Children would need to be admitted to good schools, bought necessary books and supplements, and also be supported while they study, preferably with little distractions. In a family with limited resources, the education of the female child isn’t that important. Also, a girl’s primary role in our country is assumed to be that of a home-maker, and hence she is trained to fulfil that role foremost. The pressure to marry and procreate at an “appropriate” age gets women out of the STEM field as it takes more educational years to complete the courses. There’s also the mistaken belief that certain sciences are “difficult”, and hence not for women as they cannot afford to give more time to studying after the household chores. There’s also the media portrayal of nerdy girls as unattractive- Bollywood films and daily soaps -the bookworm almost always needs to get a makeover to be with a potential love interest, affects the psyche of a college female student. Besides few girls are brought up with the expectation of being ‘The Bread Winner’, and so, are not considered worthy to be imbued with the drive to kill off the competition for jobs, and especially jobs with high income potential, such as in the tech field and software.
Besides, our society has grown unconsciously with biases about who has “innate” talent or who has a “flair” for computing and handling, which has a profound effect. Boys are considered more adroit with computers and technology while girls with humanities. A male child is exposed to computers far earlier than a female child i.e., computer games, etc.. Also it is seen that peer influences can be a burden when a girl gets into “majority male” STEM classroom. The physical environment thus has a profound effect on girls’ comfort in the classroom. PhD Comics has good comics that distinctly depict this. When there aren’t a lot of people around like you, there is a lot of social pressure that you are burdened with, pressure of a societal responsibility to positively represent your group.
Addressing the barriers: What can we do to change the current state of affairs?
There is no single, easy answer to increasing girls’ participation in STEM. Reform requires multiple kinds of change agents taking a multi-faceted approach. The approaches can be individual approach, parental approach and policy-maker approach. Individual approach involves talking about overcoming stereotypes. Recognizing and talking about stereotypes is the first step towards overcoming them. Providing encouragement for educating a girl child can also go a long way. One must never underestimate the power of this simple effort. Parental approach involves providing early exposure of a female child to technology. Parents can also keep a girl child close to science by not practising superstitions. Besides parents can have discussions about media representations and unconscious biases with their children. This should be supplanted by educators as soon as the child comes under their wing. Besides, educators and legislators can work out appropriate pedagogy to support a female through STEM education. They can make the case for improving STEM education and make sure that this is an important component of educational policies.
Several social projects have already lifted a foot in the direction mentioned above. An important one among them is the National Girls Collaborative Project. The aim of the NGCP is to bring together organizations throughout the United States that are committed to informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A NGO called Ignite does the same work in the USA.
One of the success stories in Asia, as an answer, may lie in Malaysia, where women make up between 50 and 60 percent of the computer industry’s employees and many hold mid- and upper-level management positions. The country’s burgeoning technology industry has brought about dramatic changes to women’s roles in society, changing traditional perceptions of class, ethnicity and gender.
Indian Girls Code, a free program in India led by robotics education company Robotix, is inspiring girls to become involved in computer science and technology. It focuses particularly on girls who come from underprivileged backgrounds. The movement is closely tied to the Indian Robotix League, which hosts an annual robotics competition and training event dedicated to young innovators. The first iteration of the Indian Girls Code program was held at an all-girls orphanage in Trichy, and led 25 girls between the ages of 7-12 through a series of workshops, helping them learn to code and create “real-world applications for real-world problems.
Conclusion:
As the world economy moves ahead, we need the best brains to work on it. And if we leave out the potential female best brains, we are leaving out an opportunity which is more than beneficial. Women need to be involved in all types of decision, research and development processes. Women bring vital life experiences and viewpoints to research questions, methodology and interpretation of data. Research and its resulting technology affect all members of the human race, not just the half that traditionally work in the field. If we want to get science in improving people’s lives, then we need to improve everyone’s life, and that needs to have contributions from both men and women. More women is science: good for science, good for women, and good for everybody.