Women continue to be underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) despite significant efforts from the Government and the academia. Why are there so few women in STEM fields? This article titled “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” describes some interesting research findings. Research indicates that gender bias, stereotypes, and the environment of science and engineering departments in the academia play as blocking factors to women’s progress in STEM. Definitely society and family play another crucial role. They say — gender stereotyping begins at home. I don’t know who They are but They seem to be always right. 🙂

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Purpose of this post

Around a year ago, we wrote a survey post requesting our readers to let us know their opinion about why should women join the STEM fields. The purpose of today’s post is not to find why there are so few women in STEM fields. Rather, the purpose is to report the findings of our survey on — Why should women join the STEM fields.

Survey process

We asked the survey participants to select four out of eight given reasons of Why should women join the STEM fields. We came up with the eight reasons listed in the survey based on some internet research. The eight reasons we listed can be questioned, as well as the survey mechanism. We received several email-comments regarding the process of the survey. In light of those emails, we should disclose that we are not statisticians. We do not have enough expertise to conduct a systematic survey. This survey was just our small effort to add a drop of water in the big ocean of efforts made by the Government and academia to encourage women in STEM.

Survey result

We received 37 responses. The following table shows the survey result. We have ordered the rows of the table based on popularity of the reasons the surveyors selected.

Winner answer

Clearly, most of the surveyors (89%) thought that women can choose any field including STEM and can be equally successful as men. There is no doubt in that.

Historians consider that the “first computer programmer” was Ada Lovelace. Who does not know Marie Skłodowska Curie — the first person in history to receive a Nobel Prize two times. Physicist and astronaut Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. She once said:

We can keep citing examples but examples are redundant in such an obvious topic. So many great women of last several hundred years in STEM already proved that stereotype about women in STEM was nothing but a prejudice.

Please let your daughter reach her full potential as a Mechanical or an Electrical Engineer, a Mathematician, a Physicist, a Computer Scientist, or any expert in any discipline, if she is interested. No specific field is for men; no specific field is for women. All fields are open to everyone. Let us stop making pink and blue prejudices in education. Let us mentor all our children in Science and Math regardless of gender, if STEM excites them.

Other answers

81% of the surveyors thought that “A woman can make as much positive difference a man can make when in a leading position in any area including STEM.” 78% thought that one of the reasons why women should consider STEM fields is, “Diversity improves productivity and innovation.” All the top answers make sense. We are happy that the participants selected these reasons.

If so many people really realize that increasing number of women in STEM is crucial, then why are there so few women in STEM? Please note that the survey was hosted in our blog. Most of the responses were probably from other bloggers, or from people who seek answers online. We did not ask for demographic information during the survey to ensure simplicity. There is another world outside this blogging and internet world where people might be thinking otherwise regarding women in STEM.

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