#WOMEN AND STEM CAREERS SERIES#

Educators can look at the effect their biases can have on their teaching, and can work to create an environment that counters gender-science stereotypes. As girls’ achievements and interest in maths and science are shaped by the environment around them, parents and educators must commit to: The recommendations are simple, but useful.

#WOMEN AND STEM CAREERS SERIES#

In this, they make a series of recommendations, several of which are pertinent at school level.

The American Association of University Women produced a report on women in stem careers, entitled called ‘Why so few?’. How do we help more girls to pursue these types of jobs? census, only 1 in 7 women with a degree in STEM actually works in the field. But do we need to do more to help build resilience, and not just get girls into university, but equip them with the resilience to take their involvement in science through university and into a career? According to the latest U.S. And we are right: there is a gender imbalance, and getting more girls into STEM degrees is critical. We, quite sensibly reason that, if we do that, we have played our part. (And to boot, numerous studies have found that women in STEM fields publish less, are paid less for their research and do not progress as far as men in their careers.)Īs educators at school level, we often think of it in terms of getting more girls into university. This anecdote is backed up by UNESCO stats: fewer than 30% of researchers are women. My friend pointed out that, as undergraduates doing a biology degree, it had been around 70/30 in favour of women (of course over in the physical sciences, the opposite was true and there is much to be done to encourage girls into physical sciences), at PhD level this trend reversed in favour of men, and of the 20+ lecturers, we only remembered two women. This hadn’t been shaped by our university experience, but was always something we’d felt about ourselves. Discussing it, we both realised that we’d had that broad sense of not being good enough to turn it into a career. Knowing I was writing this article, I broached the subject. But neither of us are in science careers directly. We’re both in what I would loosely term as academic careers hers is very numerate, and I have been fortunate enough to be able to use my science background in leading on the redevelopment of our science GCSEs and A levels. She’s a financial director, and I work for Pearson. Recently, I was having coffee with a good friend from university. He quite openly mused on the role of women in science, a world he clearly thought should be for men alone. What followed was somewhat odd: Watson dwelled, as he did in his book, on the ‘difficult’ Rosalind Franklin, the scientist working at Kings who produced the X-ray crystallography which Watson and Crick used to help them make their discovery. I was keen to hear his story about the discovery, and to get his autograph (this was long before the advent of the selfie). I had devoured the story (both the book and the film starring Jeff Goldblum), a daring tale of two scientists who, with the help of a stroke of genius, deduced the structure of DNA.

Several years later, they shared the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery.Īs a young, aspiring biologist, I was starstruck. Fifty years previous, he and Francis Crick had walked into The Eagle pub in Cambridge, a stone’s throw from the lecture theatre in which I was sitting, and declared, ‘We have found the secret of life’. He gave a guest lecture during my first term studying natural sciences at university. Tackling unconscious bias and building resilience in girls, to help them succeed in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) careers.

Women and stem careers