HOW GENDER IMBALANCE HAPPENS IN STEM
Hopefully, we convinced you that gender diversity in STEM is important. The goal of this page is to give some background on how we have ended up with such a demonstrable gender gap in the STEM fields. While the true root causes of social inequities are complex, interconnected, and difficult to tease apart, we present here some core results and observations from case studies and research literature that highlight some reasons why there are fewer women than men who initiate and complete degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We start by addressing some common misconceptions of gender-based ability in math and science, before discussing some more complex personal, societal, and institutional barriers to STEM education and we finish up with a discussion of stereotype threat.
OVERT DISCRIMINATION: PAST TO PRESENT
Women's individual and collective agency have been actively oppressed throughout history and into the present day through institutional policies and social conventions. Women were not allowed to vote in the United States until 1919. Harvard University was closed to women until 1977 and Columbia University did not award degrees to women until 1981. Although the sentiment has become more rare, we still encounter the myth that "girls are bad at math." Yet, despite this suppression, women have made groundbreaking contributions to science.
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Sophie Germain, began writing mathematical letters to the world's top mathematicians under a male pseudonym, afraid of "the ridicule attached to a female scientist." The recipients of her letters were so impressed by her results that she could not be ignored by the community, and eventually she revealed her identity, despite the risk involved. Carl Friedrich Gauss commented,
"How can I describe my astonishment and admiration on seeing my esteemed correspondent M. leBlanc metamorphosed into this celebrated person... when a woman, because of her sex, our customs and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in familiarizing herself with number theory's knotty problems, yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates that which is most hidden, she doubtless has the most noble courage, extraordinary talent, and superior genius."
This was not an isolated case. Many extraordinary women have overcome serious resistance to their historic participation in scientific discourse. You may have heard of Emmy Noether, Marie Curie, and Ada Lovelace to name a few. (Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey (1990). Women in Science: Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century: a Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography, Osen, Lynn M. (1974). Women in Mathematics. MIT Press). It is inspiring to know that these courageous women were able to succeed with the odds stacked against them, but it is sobering to consider that we only hear about theme because they were eventually successful. Imagine how many other women were not able to participate in science!
This history of sexism and hostility toward women in science has extended into modern times. Rather than just take our word for it, you can hear some personal stories about direct experiences in tech companies from some of those who have been affected in the video below.
Discouraging women from participating in science and technology has lead to a shortage of women science and engineers, subconsciously reinforcing a misconception that women have lower aptitude than men for these subjects. Things have certainly gotten better over time, as can be seen on our statistics page, but negative attitudes towards women in STEM persist. The thing is, these attitudes are unfounded. Numerous studies have been conducted which demonstrate that women are just as well equipped to make important contributions to science as men. As can be seen in the figure below, there is not a statistically significant difference in childhood ability for math and science.
SUBCONSCIOUS BIASES
Even if overt sexism becomes less common, there are still much more subtle ways that women are disadvantaged in STEM fields.
Recommendation Letter Bias. Several studies have shown that recommendation letters strongly favor men over women for college applications, job applications, and academic positions, despite having equivalent accomplishments and qualifications (Madera, et. al., 2009, Trix, et. al., 2003).
Application Rating Bias. Similar to recommendation bias, people exhibit both conscious and subconscious bias when selecting candidates for college admission and job positions (Moss-Racusin, et. al. 2012, Reuben, et. al. 2013).
Implicit Bias. Implicit biases are judgments about people that happen without even being consciously aware of them. They may influence the behavior of groups or individuals without realizing it. (Devos, et. al., 2008, Greenwald and Banaji, 1995).
The third point regarding implicit bias is particularly interesting, as it demonstrates that people often have subconscious biases that contradict their conscious beliefs and people can even have implicit biases against their own group. Becoming aware of your own implicit attitudes can be an enlightening experience and help you to actively overcome them. You can discover your own implicit biases by taking one of the Harvard Implicit Attitude Tests.
GENDER AND STEREOTYPE THREAT
A study by Spencer et al. (1999) examined stereotype threat for women and mathematics. First, a group of men and women were given a moderately difficult math test and women were found to underperform the men. Next, two new mixed gender groups were given the same math tests. One group was told that men perform better than women on the test while the other was told there was no gender gap in test performance. Women in the ‘threat condition’ group performed significantly worse than the 'non-threat condition' group, and furthermore, there was no statistically significant gender gap in performance in the 'non-threat' group. The study concludes that gender-based performance differences can sometimes be eliminated by lowering the stereotype threat potential with non-threat framing.
SELF-EFFICACY
Studies on children have shown that praising effort (“you tried so hard”) increases propensity for working on “risky” problems of unknown difficulty compared to praising personal characteristics (“you are so smart”), which increases propensity for attempting tasks of known difficulty. In addition, boys are more often praised for effort and girls are more often praised for personal characteristics. This differential encouragement as a young age leads to stronger growth mindsets for boys and stronger fixed mindsets for girls. In the end, boys are more willing to step out of their comfort zone. (Gunderson et al., 2013.) This idea is illustrated in the figure below (Franklin, D., 2013).
The chart below shows gender gap for different fields. Note that the gender gap is better for fields that have a corresponding high school equivalent. Why does this happen? The author posits that there is less risk in majoring in, say, math or biology, if you are a woman and have demonstrable evidence that in those subjects you have performed just as well as men. On the other hand, there are no electrical engineering courses in high school, so for a woman, there is greater risk in trying to compete for an electrical engineering degree if you do not already have some objective measure of your comparison to men in an already heavily biased system.
WHAT TO DO??
On this page we discussed several possible reasons why women are not well-represented in STEM fields including a history of overt sexism, more subtle forms of sexism that persist today, stereotype threat and implicit attitudes, and notions of self efficacy. We have come a long way, but we still need to play an active role in dismantling gender-based barriers to STEM education. For some concrete techniques for creating a more gender inclusive classroom and world, see our page on how to promote gender equality.