Women's Role In Underrepresentation Of Women In STEM?

Not very interested in social and humanity courses, I delivered, even from the beginning, really convincing performances in most of the practical courses, especially in science and mathematics. As a secondary school student, subjects requiring many calculations and experiments seemed very exciting for me, for instance, math, physics, trigonometry, geometry, and so forth. In contrast, most female pupils were seemingly interested in humanity, literature, and social fields, for most of them did not have the means to flourish their talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects and existence of many social barriers prevented them to improve in these fields. To clarify why girls are not willing to participate in STEM fields and careers, …show more content…
A study performed by Joan C. Williams indicates that existence of gender discrimination keeps women away from STEM fields and the extent of the bias might differ depending on women’s race and ethnicity (The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM, 2015). Usually women, especially married women who have children, are less paid comparing to men which is a clear act of discrimination. Another study by Bruce Weinberg states, “Married women with children in STEM seem to be paid less,” also statistics show in the first year after graduation, women earn 31% less than man in STEM sector (Resnick, 2016). Besides bias, women’s attitude might be an important factor to encourage them toward less-lucrative social careers. Most women dislike STEM occupations, since they prefer to work in teams. As a psychologist in University of Michigan, Ann Arbor states, “Girls steer away from careers in math, science and engineering because they view science as a solitary rather than a social occupation” (University of Michigan,