Stereotypes Of Women In Education Essay

Improved Essays
Children in every country discover the world through science and engineering. The United States is known around the world for its education system, but compared to many other countries, we fall short in educating scientists and engineers. One important reason that we are so behind is that we do not persuade our female students to pursue career paths in (STEM) Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Females do just as good in their grades as boys do, but girls lose self-confidence as they progress through school and begin to do more poorly than boys on timed tests, in spite of getting good grades. The stereotyping that girls are exposed to in school, the media and even at home that portrays boys as more gifted in math leads to a loss of confidence.
This situations needs to change drastically. The need for women in STEM will keep on to plaguing our country until every pupil, no matter the sex, has sufficient opportunities to discover math and science in every stage of education. The United States must move forward if we expect to compete with other countries in the future. We can’t afford to sit back and continue to push males in the fields of math and science if we want to attract the best and smartest people into the fields. Everyone from teachers to parents can help break down the stereotypes that plague female students
…show more content…
Males internalize these ideas about being better at math at an early age, so it affects them in a positive way. A large number of girls suffer from math anxiety because of the insecurities that are forced on them throughout society. These negative stereotypes have made a lot of females stay away from math dominated careers such as engineering and computer related fields. When girls are told that they are just as if not more capable in math than boys their scores increase. This proves that the environment plays a big role in girl’s achievement in

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    In 2016, the Democratic party nominated American politician Hillary Clinton for President of the United States in the upcoming election. Senator Clinton became the first woman to achieve Presidential nomination, validating the growth in women equality. Though we see maximum feminist achievement in the political arena, the oppression of women is still prevalent in fields such as math and science. While some Universities and large corporations fund attractive programs for women interested in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), social prejudice pressure continues to stifle equality. Lois Tyson claims traditional gender roles convince women that they are not fit for careers in such areas as mathematics and engineering…

    • 1563 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Misogyny In The Odyssey

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages

    However, statistics shows that pieces of Ancient Greek ideologies still remain. According to The National Girls Collaborative Project, women make up half the total U.S. college-educated workforce, but only 29% of the science and engineering workforce. The numbers show that men and women are equally intelligent, and capable of going to college and educating themselves, but only fourth of people working in science-oriented jobs are women. In modern day society, science and math are often seen as a jobs for men, and not women. Even though it is not talked about very much, the norm for women is stay home and raise the family, and if women have jobs, stereo-typically, they have jobs that don't involve science and math.…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Female Education Jon Spayde, said, “What sort of society do we want? What is the nature of humankind? How do we learn best? And – most challenging of all – what is the Good?” author of the article, Learning In The Key of Life.…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Girls Get Curves: Geometry

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Many believe that the way to help girls become more interested in math and science is to “pinkify” them. They believe that girls are interested in fashion and boys and make-up and that is what program should relate math and science with, in order for girls to become interested in the topics. But what these people fail to take in account is that not all girls are interested in make-up or dating or even fashion. Girls have different interests and programs should take that into account when trying to help girls become more interested in math and science. Also, parents should encourage their children to take interest in the subjects.…

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Introduction Women currently hold roughly 25% of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) jobs in the United States, despite a roughly equal representation in the workplace as a whole (Beede 2011). It seems as though our society has accepted the presence of women in the workplace, on the condition that women only occupy jobs deemed suitable for their gender. Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers made a speech in January of 2005, claiming that the reason women are underrepresented in scientific higher academia was due to innate biological differences. He claimed that socialization and expectations of women “didn’t explain the differences between the sciences and mathematics and other fields” (Hemel 2005). Summers colleagues also…

    • 1626 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    America is losing its competitive edge in math education; we are now the 32nd nation in the world in terms of math education. Only 40% of children in the fourth grade are even considered proficient in this area of study; only 35% of 8th graders are considered proficient or above proficient. Not only are science, technology, engineering, and math teachers scarce, but out of the ones that are practicing, few have the resources to inspire students to pursue the STEM field, or even apply the knowledge. However, this is not the only issue. Women and minorities are groups that are simply not identifiable within the STEM field.…

    • 1867 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    STEM Stereotypes

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Women make up 47 percent of the United States workforce, but only 27 percent of the people working in STEM-related occupations are women. The percentage of women working in STEM has grown exponentially over the last century; however, the stereotype that women are not as good as men at math and science is still being perpetuated through a variety of ways. This stereotype, though it may be inadvertently preserved by parents, teachers, and employers, affects society and women themselves in a number of negative ways. The untrue stereotype that men are more proficient in STEM fields than women leads to parental bias, a decrease in women’s confidence in their ability to understand math and science, and employment disparity and discrimination.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee as of 2012, only 14 percent of engineers of women (Casey) but yet women in America as of 2016 are 50.6 percent of the united states population (Countrymeters). Ideally in every field the male to female ratio should represent the population of the area but yet there is a 36.6 percent difference between the ratios of women in the population and women in engineering. That means there should be about 732,000 more women in engineering (NSPE). Within these 732,000 could be the newest car, the first successful man on Mars, ways to restore our planet, or even a brand new device that has not even been thought of yet for various reasons women are driven away from a career in engineering. A major…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Jacoby discusses an unreasoning belief in young girls that math and sciences are "masculine" subjects. She states that an adolescence girl’s fear of choosing science and math in high school that makes them have "unfeminine braininess" to boys. Jacoby brings up a recorded incident: “in early schooling, some boys, experience this syndrome a form of panic, akin to a phobia, at any task of involving with numbers” but it is not in girls. However, in high school, boys outpaced girls in solving math (122). She compares the two incidents and explains the illogical reason: brainy girls appear as unappealing to boys so girls downsize their interest in professional courses.…

    • 1102 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One of the ways these stereotypes can negatively affect women is through stereotype threat. Gender-STEM stereotypes can artificially decrease women’s performance during evaluations (Hammer 2016, 169). Hammer states that these stereotypes are present, but they may not have the same effect on all women. In the study, Hammer looks at European-American and African-American women in order to determine if gender stereotypes have an effect across all races. Through an intersectional approach, Hammer determined that African-American women were more likely to pick STEM and had weaker implicit gender-STEM stereotypes.…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Stereotypes that girls and women lack mathematical ability persist and are widely held by parents and teachers” (dericbownds.net), this persistently holds girls back from pursuing their dreams. Before they have even started to work towards their goals, they have people looking down upon them and lacking faith in their abilities to perform as good as a male can. Many women worry that they’ll not enjoy their job choice in the STEM field, but Katherine Johnson who worked with NASA, stats that “I loved going to work every single day,” she continued to love her job after working there for thirty three years…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    What’s Wrong with Gender Gap in STEM Fields? Now close eyes and picture an engineer or a scientist. How many people have a male in the picture and how many people have a female? U.S. Department of Commerce (2011) reported the data that “Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs.” The gender gap in STEM fields is a long-existing problem and obviously, this gap won 't disappear in a short time.…

    • 1020 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Discrimination In STEM

    • 386 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The idea that women do not belong in STEM or are not good enough to be in STEM has to start somewhere. Discrimination starts in the classroom and carries over into the workplace. Education is essential for STEM related jobs, and women are not as likely to go into STEM because of the experience in the classroom or the lack thereof. Studies have shown that high school is not too late to introduce an interest in STEM, to girls specifically. “..science education in the United States is not tapping the potential of many diverse groups… of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans - as well as White women…”…

    • 386 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Women make up 47% of the overall workforce, but only 27% of the science and engineering (Kelly 35). This statistic has stayed the same for several years and needs to be change. There are currently many initiatives on the university and workforce levels that encourage women to enter STEM fields. The gender prejudice…

    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Gender Gap

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages

    According to a poll conducted by the American Society for Quality in 2009 of people ages eight to 17, “24 percent of boys but only 5 percent of girls said they were interested in an engineering career” (qtd in “Why So Few?” 21). Since even in childhood and adolescence young women demonstrate a lower interest in engineering, an initial obstacle in increasing female participation requires promoting the appeal of engineering and accumulating traction with the rising demographic. Amongst high school students, for example, the gender divide in engineering related courses can be observed through data complied by College Board, the powerhouse company of all projective testing: “Fewer girls than boys take advanced placement courses in STEM-related subjects” (cited in “Why So Few?” 5). With both a lower articulated interest, and data displaying lower participation, female adolescents exhibit a total evasion from engineering, and courses in its wake. Therefore, in order to combat the gender divide, effective means of encouraging women to be open-minded to, and additionally actively pursue participation, the study and profession of engineering is absolutely…

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays