Bridging the Gender Gap with Optimism

By Guest Blogger: Tess Gallacher
School Programme Assistant at EDT Scotland. Author, Poet and Journalist.

“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Her words represent a refreshingly optimistic new perspective on the weary, dog-eared subject of sexism in the workplace.

Over-analysis of women’s behaviour is nothing new. In nineteenth-century Britain, for example, a moral panic was sparked by women’s increasing propensity for drinking tea. This most sedate of beverages was believed to cause all manner of physical and mental ailments in women, fomenting social revolution and even acting as a “gateway drink” to alcoholism.

Sociologists have long recognised this tendency to place any activity increasingly practiced by women under the moral microscope. In the world of work, this phenomenon translates into what is known as the gendered pay-drop: when women begin to dominate a professional field, the average wage in that field begins to decline.

Puzzled critiques of why women still find it difficult to “break into” STEM fail to understand one important fact. Despite the stereotypes, women have always been present in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths. In fact, they continue to make some of our most important STEM breakthroughs and discoveries.

The six ENIAC programmers- all women- programmed the world’s first computer in 1947. Fabiola Gianotti, the Director-General of CERN, co-discovered the Higgs boson particle. Dr. Maria Telkes developed the first solar-heated home. Women invented Kevlar, the windscreen wiper, the circular saw and the medical syringe. Anthropologists believe that early womankind may have been responsible for inventing pottery, the first carrier-bag, and even small-scale agriculture.

Despite these stellar achievements across history, STEM fields’ continuing male majorities are so obtrusively lamented that our next generation of scientists and engineers could surely be forgiven for thinking that no woman has ever so much as picked up a spanner in her life.

Aside from the stubborn fact that women remain a numerical minority in STEM workplaces, the Engineering Development Trust reports swelling numbers of female participants in their school programmes. Why, then, does this trend fail to survive the transition into STEM industries?

In speaking to the young people involved in EDT schemes such as Go4SET and EES, one of my abiding impressions is that the notion of gender discrimination rarely enters their heads- until it is placed there.

“From my experiences, I haven’t really had many problems [with sexism]” said EDT Year in Industry alumnus Amy Douglas. “I think boys nowadays are very aware, because they’ve grown up in an era when sexism is talked about much more and is seen as unacceptable, that they don’t want to come across as sexists themselves. The guys I’ve worked with have been very accepting and I think, or I hope, that as we become more aware of sexism as a society, the problem might just ‘die out’ on its own.”

This attitude that sexism is a phenomenon experienced by a different generation of women could be interpreted as naive. It is possible to argue that women already situated in the STEM workplace have a responsibility to warn and prepare girls for the discrimination they may face. However, it is also possible that in our attempts to prepare girls for the sexism we remember facing, we do nothing more than reopen the scars of our own youth.

“Ask what do you want now, to free yourself from thinking about the limitations of the technology and let your imagination take you to what things do you want to have done, what problems do you want to solve.”

-        Andra Keay (MD, Silicon Valley Robotics)

It seems that whilst we educate young people on the possibilities of a career in STEM, we could stand to learn a lesson of our own. Rather than framing lack of diversity in STEM as an intimidating obstacle, perhaps more could be achieved by harnessing young people’s sense of excitement and optimism in the face of a challenge, instead seeing problems as opportunities to develop solutions.

Boclair Academy Go4SET team member Megan was critical of the way gender bias in STEM is currently discussed in schools.

“I think the act of saying that STEM is male-dominated all the time can make people think that it’s more male-dominated than it is, if that makes sense.”

Teammate Amber had a similar view.

“We’re told lots of statistics about [the shortage of women in STEM], but we haven’t actually had a chance to see it.”

The prevailing perspective amongst these girls is one of sexists as figures akin to the wolves of cautionary tales, dressed in sheep’s clothing or sleeping in grandma’s bed: faintly ridiculous, and too far-removed from their own reality to be true. Instead of shattering that reality with the spectre of discrimination, one option available to us is to protect it. Children, of course, have a very idealistic conception of how the world works. However, instead of teaching them that ‘life isn’t fair’, would it really be so fantastical to say ‘okay, let’s work together to make it fair! Why don’t we teach one another?’

“You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers and you have to live the message. What I have learned is that people become motivated when you guide them to the source of their own power and when you make heroes out of employees who personify what you want to see in the organization.”

-Anita Roddick (The Body Shop founder)

Girls see nothing inherently groundbreaking about enjoying maths and science. Patting them on the head for getting involved in STEM projects is not only patronising; it introduces them to a distinction between themselves and their male friends that many will have been entirely unaware of. By singling out girls in certain subject areas as ‘special’, we run the risk of developing a mentality that girls who study STEM are ‘not like other girls’, reinforcing the very gender segregation we are seeking to abolish.

‘Being a black woman, being a woman in general, on a team of all men, means that you are going to have a unique voice. It’s important to embrace that.’

-        Erin Teague (Director of Product, Yahoo)

That’s not to say that the systemic problems within STEM workplaces should be ignored or glossed over. The attitude that women should ‘just get over it’ when it comes to sexism is a false stab at positivity. Choosing not to discuss sexism openly may reduce conflict between colleagues in the short term, but shutting down discourse and denying learning are practices which fly in the face of true scientific principles. However, certain battles are for women to fight, not girls.

When it comes to the classroom, perhaps it’s best to simply let young people get on with the business of learning. It’s our own attitudes we should look to when tackling sexism in STEM. We must be aware that as educators, we have a choice over what information young people are exposed to and- perhaps more importantly- how that information is presented.

STEM is about observing the world clearly and honestly, recognising that bias exists and taking account of our own. If we cannot fully remove our own biases, then we should at least be consciously aware of how they affect the developing worldviews of our young participants.

“Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.”

-        Sheryl Sandberg (Chief Operating Officer, Facebook)

We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to pretend that sexism hasn’t affected us, or that today’s workplaces are utopias of gender equality. We don’t even have to agree on the best way to move forward. If we can accept that our differences make us stronger through the sharing of varied perspectives, diversity becomes a powerful asset. Listening, teamwork and fairness are core STEM skills, just as vital to our young scientists and engineers as analytical thinking and good research practice. By teaching these skills, we can give young people the tools to eradicate sexist limitations without introducing those limitations ourselves.

"Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them."

-        Rita Levi-Montalcini (Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist)

STEM is solution-focused. It’s about seeing problems as opportunities to improve the way our world functions. Pupils should be solving puzzles and equations, not the STEM skills crisis: that’s our problem. The young people themselves are the solution.