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Sahana Balaji

Ms. Noyce

English 9

17 January 2018

Gender Inequality in the STEM fields

In society, men and women have certain roles that they play. These roles have imbedded

themselves in society even before a girl or boy realizes it. Statements like, “You scream like a

girl!” or “Your hair makes you look like a boy,” often categorize the roles and the actions that

the genders play and take. This idea is also imprinted in the STEM fields and careers. Articles,

“Bias Persists for Women in Science, a Study Finds” by Kenneth Chang, “Why do so many

women who study engineering leave the field?” by Susan S. Silbey, and “Why the STEM gender

gap is overblown” by Denise Cummins look into the examples of bias against women in the

STEM fields and further investigate whether there is a problem of gender inequality. Women are

treated unequally and underrepresented in the STEM fields even though they are capable of

doing the same things as men. Women are also not paid the same amount as men and are usually

paid lower.

Gender inequality is a problem because women are degraded and excluded the sciences

even though they can do the same things as men. Susan B. Silbey performed a study where she

followed 700 engineering students through for schools, such as MIT, UMass, and others. She

asked these students throughout the four years of their college to record their experiences in a

diary. Through this study, one student named Kimberly wrote, “ ‘Two girls in a group had been
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working on the robot we were building in that class for hours, and the guys in their group came

back in and within minutes had sentenced them into doing menial tasks while the guys went and

had all the fun in the machine shop’”(Silbey). These two women were working on the robot and

when the guys came back in; they excluded the girls and sent them off doing other boring tasks.

The men were excluding the women because they did not think that the women were capable of

doing this. When they sent them off, they were not sending them off to a job that would help in

the completion of the robot. They were sending the women somewhere else so that they could

finish the robot. The women had been working on the robot for a very long time and it seems as

though that they were doing a very good job. Because they were girls, the guys seemed to think

that they were not capable for finishing the robot. Another example of this is when another

student in this study that experienced a comment of sexism while she was touring for an

internship: “Jennifer described how she was ‘seriously offended’ when a supervisor spoke to her

about appropriate dress, reminding her ‘No tank tops, now. We wouldn’t want to distract the

guys’” (Silbey). The supervisor is blaming the woman for something that the guys should

actually take the blame for. It is not the woman’s fault that guys are checking her out. The men

should be blamed because they are not keeping the working environment professional. A woman

should not be restricted on what she wears if it doesn’t have to do with her safety. The supervisor

is not asking her not to wear tank tops because it might be unsafe. He is asking her not to wear

the tank top so that the guys won’t be distracted and check her out.

Another reason that there is gender inequality in the STEM sciences is that women are

often under paid even though they do the same work as men. Yale researchers did a study trying

to see if gender had an effect on the pay offered in a job. They created fake resumes for two fake
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students, one named Jennifer and another named John. The only difference in the resumes was

the names of the two applicants: “When regarding the resumes, with the same qualifications but

one a female and one a male, the male got offered $30,328 and the woman got offered only

$26,508” (Chang). The two applicants had the same qualifications which would mean that they

would get offered the same pay but here the man is offered more. For whatever reason, the

woman does not get paid the same amount as the man and is actually paid a significant amount

lower. They have been qualified to do the same job but the people offering the job seem to think

that the man should paid more and the woman less. Why should that be the case? The people

offering the job have never seen the two people work, so how should they know who to pay less?

The woman apparently gets the shorter straw. Another instance of this was when observing the

gender pay gap in nursing, the same thing happened: “A gender pay gap in the field of nursing.

In 2011, the average female nurse earned $51,100, 16% less that the $60, 700 earned by the

average man in the same job” (Cummins). Nursing is often a woman’s profession and even then,

they are paid less than the man. They again still do the same thing and should be paid the same

amount but the woman significantly gets paid lower. What asset does the man have that gives

him that 16% advantage to the woman? Even if it had to with how the female nurse worked, the

16% advantage is an average of the pay. It cannot be true that all the women do mediocre work

which causes them to be paid less.

Some argue that there is not inequality in the STEM fields because women choose to go

into other areas and have a wider area of jobs to go into. A study was done to find out whether

girls liked the ideas of science and engineering. They did a study with newborn girls and boys

and saw which gender gravitated to what toys: “Women who are very, very good at math also

tend to be very good verbally so that their career options are broader than men. Men aren’t very
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good at verbal, so the options are less” (Reporter Examines Gender Gap in Math and Science).

Since women have more options for jobs, they may not be as interested in the STEM fields

because they have other jobs that they can do, while men may not have that large amount of

options because of their abilities. Women should not be forced into the STEM fields and it is

their own choice not to go into the jobs. They may have other opportunities that interest them

more than engineering and computer science. Women have very good assets for all jobs so the

absences of women in the STEM fields are there because of choice.

However, is it really choice that decides whether women would want to join STEM?

Women may not want to join STEM because of the sexist environment foisted upon them. They

may like engineering, but they may not be treated equally which causes them not to pursue a job

in STEM. Susan Silbey conducted a study where engineering students (both men and women)

documented their experiences. What she noticed is that the women were often reporting negative

experiences: “For many women engineering students, however, their first encounter with

collaboration is to be treated in gender stereotypical ways, mostly by their peers. While some

initially described working in teams positively, many more reported negative experiences. When

working with male classmates, for example, they often spoke of be relegated to doing routine

managerial and secretarial jobs, and of being excluded from “real” engineering work” (Silbey).

Women in engineering do enjoy the idea of working with mechanical stimuli. They do make a

choice to pursue a job in engineering. The problem is, they are not treated equally and often

experience negative experiences while working, while the men seem to be fine with the

environment. It does not have to do with the things that they do in class, but how their classmates

(especially men) treat them. This negative experience may make them change their minds.
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Women may not join STEM fields not because they have other choices but because they

experience sexist environments, which cause them to leave.

Women do face stereotypical bias when they are working in the STEM fields and it is a

significant problem in society. Articles, “Bias Persists for Women in Science, a Study Finds” by

Kenneth Chang, “Why do so many women who study engineering leave the field?” by Susan S.

Silbey, and “Why the STEM gender gap is overblown” by Denise Cummins look into the

examples of bias against women in the STEM fields and further deepen the understanding of bias

in the STEM fields. What these articles show is that women are often excluded from doing actual

jobs and sent to do small, menial tasks. On top of that, they are not paid the same as the men

pursuing the same job as them. Although some say that women do not go into STEM because

they have the choice to go into other fields, the women who do go into STEM fields, such as

engineering, are faced with biased environments that exclude them and cause them to leave the

field.