International Day of Women and Girls in Science
I’m starting up this blog on International Day of Women and
Girls in Science. For more details about this day, see:
Why? Because it’s a good place to start and because there aren’t
enough women in Science. Detailed statistics on women’s participation in STEM
subjects at all levels are not easy to find, although easier than in Philosophy
but, it would appear that despite initiatives such as WISE they have not quite
made the impact they expected to have by now. Why this is the case is unclear.
Certainly outdated, sexist attitudes towards women play a large part. Girls
still do not have enough role models in the sciences, often being taught by men
rather than women at GCSE, A Level. Teaching both sexes at the same time in the
sciences has been observed to be detrimental to girls who may well leave it to
the ‘pushy’ boys to carry out scientific experiments. This lessens confidence
and creates the image in their heads that science is not for girls.
Having said that, there are initiatives for girls to
encourage them into the sciences, such as, Science Grrl, available at: http://sciencegrrl.co.uk/
Not all sciences, however, have the same low level of
participation as each other. Physics (my favourite science) has considerably
fewer girls/women than Biology. So when looking at statistics, I think, we have
to be careful to take this into account! Otherwise, if we think too generically
about how many women participate in STEM subjects, we can get an artificially
positive picture because when the lower percentages combine with the higher
percentages, it gives an average which is much higher than is representative of
the situation for many women in STEM. If we look at the chart in the link below,
we can see how poorly Computer Science (15%) fares in comparison to medical
sciences (81%) where women are concerned. Engineering and technology are the worst
with women making up only 14% of total UG’s.
For this chart and some further recent statistical analysis
of women in STEM in the UK see:
It is also not enough to just look at how many women are
taking the sciences at UG level because, quite often, by PhD level there are
even more men than women. This is not just due to women leaving STEM subjects but
the gap in participation can also widen due to an increase of men taking those
subjects.
In the USA, the situation is not more favourable. If you
look at the graph in the link below, you can see that in the period between
2005-15 in the USA all STEM subjects show a decline in the number of women
actually gaining degrees in these fields!
However, women are also not translating their education, qualifications
and talents into acquiring jobs in the field of science and technology, as can
be seen in this article in the Guardian:
This following article paints the same dire picture and
shows the lack of translating girls’ achievements in STEM subjects at school
into degrees and success in the workplace:
Much the same is the case in Philosophy. Interestingly
enough, when it comes to Philosophy of Science, I’ve noticed the women who are
in this field are usually those who have science degrees but have left science
for philosophy!
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