Empowering Girls to Take Their Rightful Place in STEM

By Jill King

November 5, 2014

We’ve come a long way as women. We can vote. We can wear pants. We can do pretty much whatever we want. Women in the United States have many freedoms and opportunities that those who came before us were not afforded.

Why then, are we falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)? The numbers are in, and they paint a grim picture: Currently women comprise only 24 percent of the STEM workforce. And women earn only 18 percent of computer science degrees, which is down from 37 percent in 1985. India, especially, is washing the floor with us, with women earning 31 percent of engineering degrees.

We as women are holding ourselves back, not taking Sheryl Sandberg’s advice to “lean in” and limiting ourselves in the opportunities we allow ourselves to have.

Perhaps the problem lay in having a dearth of role models for girls to look up to. All too often, children are only exposed to the jobs they see around them most immediately, which, depending on what a child’s parents are involved with, could severely limit the possibilities for a child. We should be exposing children to careers of all kinds — including jobs in engineering, mathematics and computer science.

We must increase girls’ exposure to STEM careers.

We can expose women and girls to STEM careers in myriad ways. Some of these ways include school visits to a variety of work environments, especially those in the STEM fields. There are also opportunities to attend conferences that feature women in STEM or getting involved in mentoring programs. One example is LinkedIn has partnered with MentorNet to connect all STEM students with access to top-notch mentoring experiences with professionals in the field. I have had the great opportunity of speaking with girls and women about getting involved in STEM careers as I’ve attended conferences all over the country. Most recently I visited the University of Oklahoma during the Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium. I had the opportunity to sit down with young ladies from the college as well as from Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts which is a specialize charter school.

Several other nonprofits have cropped up in the past few years to get girls more involved in STEM careers. One of those is Girls who Code, which works to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering sectors by giving girls hands on experience coding.

Another approach to getting girls more involved in STEM is through engaging girls in problem solving, experimentation and building. A popular tactic today is designing toys specifically aimed at girls that have been traditionally geared toward boys. These companies, such as LittleBits and Roominate and even Legos with Lego Friends, use pastel-colored, girl-friendly design to engage girls in left-brain activities. Even Barbie has hopped on the bandwagon, creating a set of Lego-type sets called Mega Bloks aimed at girls.

Whether toys influence future career goals has yet to be seen, but exposing girls to different ways of thinking and learning could lead them to feel themselves capable of pursuing a career in STEM.

We must increase accurate, robust media portrayals of women in STEM.

There has been significant research committed to analyzing the effect of the media on viewers. This research has consistently found that the media influences how we think and the worldviews that we have. Right now the media portrayals of women are steeped in stereotypes, which put them in boxes based on categories. Putting more female characters in STEM careers in media portrayals will help to influence girls to see those jobs as a possibility.

If you want to find what stereotypes of empowered, successful women look like, you need look no further than to the stereotype-rich realm of stock photos. It shows photos of women being nurses, teachers and homemakers. Fortunately, LeanIn.org partnered with Getty Images to create a repository of authentic portrayals of women in all settings — including STEM-friendly careers. These photos help eliminate the stereotypes that tell women they aren’t welcome or capable to be in STEM fields.

While there has been some positive movement away from these stereotypical depictions in these photos, the TV and film industries still perpetuate the stereotypes that women in STEM are unattractive, shrill and anti-social — or that they are absent altogether. Such popular shows as “The Big Bang Theory” and “Silicon Valley” have been received with critical acclaim, yet they continue to perpetuate these stereotypes. Although they sometimes try to provide the token women that defy the stereotype, such as Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz.

We need a more robust and accurate portrayal of women as they actually are: strong, kind, intelligent and capable — and beautifully imperfect.

We must act quickly.

This is not a small problem or one that can be easily ignored. As a nation, we are lagging behind the rest of the world in how girls are scoring in math and science. Along with this lag, we have an alarming lack of qualified computing professionals with an estimated 1 million vacant jobs in computer science by 2020. With the increase of data collection and storage positions, solving big data challenges will likely become the hottest job opportunities in the coming years. A data scientist could be the cool new “it” title versus a lawyer or stockbroker.

To all these problems, I see inspiration as an answer.

About the Author

Jill King is responsible for driving market awareness and demand for Adaptive Computing’s products and services. With a professional background that spans more than 20 years in Telecom, Networking and IT, Jill King brings a wealth of marketing and leadership experience to her Adaptive Computing role. Prior to Adaptive Computing, Jill has held several senior management positions, including, CMO for Cierra, VP of Marketing for Asita, Director of Marketing for CAIS and Marcom roles for Nuera and others where her efforts significantly contributed to sizable revenue growth. As a portfolio entrepreneur, Jill has launched several startups, raised substantial capital and has been on the leadership team during three acquisitions including the acquisition of CAIS by Cisco. Jill has also launched new industries such as VoIP and VPN. It is her plan to do this a third time with the launch of Big Workflow, an industry term coined by Adaptive Computing to describe the acceleration of insights for IT professionals through more efficient processing of intense simulations and big data analysis.

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