Argumentative Essay On Women Engineering

The 21st century is marked and defined by rapid innovation in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. However, in a recent study by the US Department of Commerce Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation revealed that women only hold less than “25 percent of all STEM jobs” even though women constitute “47 percent of the overall workforce” . The astonishing statistic is that only “13 percent” of all engineers in the US are women. So why does this matter? Engineers, in particular, are making some of the prevalent advancement in our society. They are solving issues like global warming, medical breakthroughs and creating some of the biggest technologies that are changing our lives. These are things that we use every day as people and with half of the population being female it makes sense to have a female perspective. The interest in engineering and STEM fields will only continue to increase, and we need to realize that the lack of women’s interest in STEM fields is due in part to gender bias in certain education subjects, popular culture influence, and lack of professional women role models. The …show more content…
Many of the subjects are socially categorized as either “masculine or feminine”. Young women also tend to have less self-confidence because of these stereotype threats. According to the Youth in Transition Survey, statistics revealed that fifty percent of the young men perceived their ability in math as “very good” or “Excellent” compared with thirty percent of young women with positive opinions. This binary thinking that women and men are two total opposites is discouraging girl’s likelihood of cultivating an interest in math and science. It has especially detoured women from pursuing an engineering degree because of its heavy mathematical