With men highly dominating STEM, people are used to attribute science discoveries to this sex. Professors in top universities, successful scientists - we do not even use “male” after these words, as this is by default for our society that only men have such kind of achievements. But, science revolution has not only been brought about by men. All genders have greatly contributed to the victory of progress.
Nowadays society puts big efforts to make such a confession visible. It gives women in STEM special scholarships, one-sex university, places in internships, separate science courses and competitions. Due to this, the amount of females in STEM is increasing. According to statistics on Built By Me, “the number of women who are awarded STEM degrees every year has increased by over 50,000 in the past decade.” Has this change resulted in more women in science being celebrated?
To talk about main STEM branches, the field of formal science is staying infrangible by men. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education), “women earned 57%, 60% and 52% of all Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in the U.S. in 2013-14 … women earned only 43%, 41% and 29% of the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in mathematics and statistics in the same year.” Many prestigious universities like UCLA, MIT or Harvard have a colossal gender disparity in formal science with, according to statistics from Women in Engineering and Science in Canada, nearly 23.2% of women in Bachelor’s degree at Mathematics Departments.
Revealing another two branches of STEM, the statistics do not oppose females, and so may be called predominantly women led fields.
Natural science: Despite physics, which remains popular mainly between one sex, biology shows a progress. According to Statistics Canada, more than 60 percent of biology majored undergraduates are female.
Humanities: While many people blame discrimination for women minority in science, the statistic says the opposite. There are both ‘women’ and ‘men’ fields in science. This separation is not because only one exact group can be good at something, as both have similar brain structures and physical abilities. The parenting, education and the surrounding of a person greatly inclines one to choose a specific field. There is a widespread stereotype in schools that boys are better in formal science than girls. Teachers pay more attention to tasks to boys than girls. Thus, many girls lose confidence in the subject and pursue other subjects. On the contrary to the formal science, natural and social sciences are mostly obligatory subjects in the USA. It means that females can take them up despite any prejudice. There are two main factors which incline women to choose the fields, predominantly held by them.
To support females who suffer from the lack of confidence and stereotypes, there are different scholarships that encourage them to get involved in science. The most popular between them are Aysen Tunca Memorial Scholarship - $2,000, Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship - $2,500, Women Techmakers Scholars Program - $10,000, BHW Scholarship - $3,000, Scholarship America’s Dream Award - $5,000-$15,000.
Based on the statistics below, the conclusion is that despite the stereotypes and prejudices about women in STEM, our society successfully strives to support females in science. Special scholarships, liberalism and feminist are the ost import factors that facilitate this. The extreme growth of women in maths, physics or programming in the near few years is the expected impact of this.
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