Promoting Women
in STEM Careers: A Trendsetting Experience
Why
are women not advantaging their position in society and bettering their
communities by contributing deeper within STEM (science, technology,
engineering, and math) careers? Opportunities for women in science and
technology fields abound yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM
disciplines, creating “a gender gap to innovation” (Beede). Access to higher
level education is not responsible. Women
now outnumber men in college enrollments: 12 million college students are
female compared to 8 million men (Fast Facts).
While women occupy 48% of all jobs in the United States, less than 25%
of STEM jobs are held by women (Beede). The
fault for this inequity has been attributed to toymaker’s paradigms (Blake), teachers’
biases, and the lack of role models (Huhman).
However, toys and teachers are not solely culpable – popular culture and
media hinder women from the sciences. How?
It’s
because Americans learn more from media than from any other source. Advertising, which represented a $235.6
billion U.S. industry in 2012 (Newsom), hyper-stresses femininity to sell
products using the Internet, television, and magazines and, thereby, substantively
influences how women evaluate their self-worth:
based on their bodies, not their minds or capabilities. Rosalind Gill’s article “SuperSexualize Me!” reinforced how “the body
is portrayed in advertising and elsewhere as the primary source of women’s capital”
(Dines 280). Also, Sut Jhally asserted in “Image-Based Culture” that the foundation for “gender
(especially for women) is defined almost exclusively along the lines of
sexuality” (Dines 245). In addition, gender
socialization, which was persuasively portrayed in the 2012 documentary Miss Representation, revealed how America’s
media (mis)shapes women’s perceptions using appearance as a measure of value,
explaining why women gravitate to media’s definition of femininity (Newsom).
Insomuch
as conforming to media images of beauty and sexuality begets societal acceptance,
pursuing STEM fields translates to being unfeminine. For example, popular television sitcoms, such
as The Big Bang Theory, emphasize how
female scientists are embarrassing misfits, such as the comically awkward character,
Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. Adhering to gender
rules, women more typically pursue social sciences and humanities where being
creative and nurturing coincides with society’s norms. According to research published in January
2015 edition of Science Magazine, women
earned “70% of the Ph.D.’s in art history and psychology” but “fewer than 20% of
all Ph.D.’s in physics and computer science” (Leslie, Cimpian,
Meyer, and Freeland). The authors asserted that because women are
stereotyped as lacking the innate intellectual talent required to succeed in physical
sciences, “The emphasis on raw aptitude may activate the negative stereotypes
in women’s own minds…If women internalize the stereotypes, they may decide that
these fields [STEM] are not for them” (Leslie 262).
The
objective of my social media project was to show that women in science are ‘in
style’ – meaning that being a female scientist, engineer, or programmer is fashionable. College women involved in STEM-related
college curricula, the target of the challenge, were asked to pose for and post
photos on FEMS 4 STEM, a Facebook community, showing their stylishness – wearing
high-heeled footwear or fashionable clothing.
While we were not successful with endearing our fellow students to
participate, my partner and I linked web content to the page to make it
more robust, including articles we had read to complete this Trendsetting assignment. Then, we encouraged fellow
students to read and "like" the content.
While we were not successful in utilizing ethos, pathos and logos, creating social currency, or a memory-inducing trigger to get others to share our Facebook page (Konnikova), I think this project was still a success. We learned that soliciting attention in a world crammed with media messaging is challenging and that the ability to start a trend, evoking our peers to get involved in what we think is important, requires effort. Most importantly we now realize that social media, which is accessible to everyone, can be used to breakdown gender barriers because, as stressed in a 2014 article in Everyday Feminism, “We shouldn’t have “male-dominated” and “female-dominated” fields that separate us into gender-specific jobs that don’t correspond with our actual aspirations” (Valoy). This assignment educated me that the power of social media is in my hands and can be used in reverse of media trends
that objectify women. I think this trendsetting project was most valuable because it allowed me to project my beliefs instead of merely being a consumer of what others want me to believe. We may not have “gone viral” but we did learn that we have the power to “infect” others through social media.
While we were not successful in utilizing ethos, pathos and logos, creating social currency, or a memory-inducing trigger to get others to share our Facebook page (Konnikova), I think this project was still a success. We learned that soliciting attention in a world crammed with media messaging is challenging and that the ability to start a trend, evoking our peers to get involved in what we think is important, requires effort. Most importantly we now realize that social media, which is accessible to everyone, can be used to breakdown gender barriers because, as stressed in a 2014 article in Everyday Feminism, “We shouldn’t have “male-dominated” and “female-dominated” fields that separate us into gender-specific jobs that don’t correspond with our actual aspirations” (Valoy). This assignment educated me that the power of social media is in my hands and can be used in reverse of media trends
that objectify women. I think this trendsetting project was most valuable because it allowed me to project my beliefs instead of merely being a consumer of what others want me to believe. We may not have “gone viral” but we did learn that we have the power to “infect” others through social media.
Works
Cited
Beede,
David et al. “Women in STEM: A Gender
Gap to Innovation.” U.S. Department of
Commerce. ESA Issue Brief #04-11. 2011
August. Web. 6 March 2015. http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/womeninstemagaptoinnovation8311.pdf
Blake,
Tanya. “Toy Story.” Institution
of Mechanical Engineers. 6 March 2015. Web. 1 October 2014. http://www.imeche.org/news/engineering/toy-story
Dines,
Gail and Jean M. Humez. Gender, Race, and
Class in Media. Boston: Sage
Publications, 2014. Print.
“Fast Facts.”
The National Center for Education Statistics. U.S.
Department of Education. Web. 6 March 2015. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98
Huhman,
Heather. “STEM Fields And The Gender
Gap: Where Are The Women?” Forbes. 20 June 2012. Web. 6
March 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/06/20/stem-fields-and-the-gender-gap-where-are-the-women/
Konnikova,
Maria. “The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe
Infuriate, You.” The New Yorker. 21 January 2014. Web. 12 April 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-six-things-that-make-stories-go-viral-will-amaze-and-maybe-infuriate-you
Leslie,
Sarah-Jane, et al. “Expectations
of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines." Science. 20 January 2015. Web. 4 April 2015. http://www.unh.edu/sites/www.unh.edu/files/departments/unh_advance/PDFs/science-2015-leslie-262-5.pdf
Miss Representation. Dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Virgil Films, 2012. Film.
Valoy,
Patricia. “6 Reasons Why STEM Outreach
is a Feminist Issue.” Everyday Feminism. 18 April 2014. Web. 9 March 2015. http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/04/stem-outreach-feminist-issue/
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