Success STEMS from supporting women and girls
Success STEMS from supporting women and girls
Biases, stereotypes and a lack of spaces for women all play a role in discouraging girls from pursuing careers in STEM fields
Biases, stereotypes and a lack of spaces for women all play a role in discouraging girls from pursuing careers in STEM fields
Words by Alethea Ng, Illustrations by Laila Amer
Words by Alethea Ng, Illustrations by Laila Amer
R
ain patters quietly outside the window as Leigh Paulseth approaches the first-grade classroom. She’ll be taking the students outside for a science workshop, so she’s decked out in a raincoat and bulky rain boots; an outfit perfect for jumping into puddles. As she steps through the door, a dozen little heads swivel to look at her.
“It’s science,” a six-year-old whispers, pointing a small finger at Paulseth. “Science is here,” another says to her friend, getting up to get a better look. “Look, that’s science!” another child exclaims. Before long, Paulseth finds herself surrounded by a loose ring of curious children, peering up at her and whispering to their classmates. “That’s science.”
Paulseth is now the outreach coordinator for SciXchange, which handles outreach and communication for Ryerson’s Faculty of Science. She tends to run activities for older students these days, who range from grades two through 12. She laughs as she remembers the day she became “science” for a classroom of first-grade students. “Kids have a natural curiosity, and questions make science,” she says. “They generally don’t have a lot of anxiety or anticipation about, ‘Is that a stupid question?’”
So how did so many of us lose this curiosity as we grew older? Paulseth says the first adults in our lives, like our parents, tend to discourage children—especially girls—from pursuing this natural curiosity by perpetuating negative stereotypes about STEM and teaching us to question ourselves. Not only that, but Paulseth believes parents and other adults play a significant role in leading girls away from STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“Parents love their kids. I’m not questioning that,” Paulseth says. “But there is a bias within our society that says males have an aptitude for science and math, and so it’s really hard to break that.”
Discouraging girls from pursuing STEM at a young age has a major impact in the workforce and the way we teach young women in to build their future career paths. In 2015, the Council for Canadian Academics found that men make up 72 per cent of STEM graduates in Canada. According to the same report, women in STEM fields are consistently underpaid compared to their male colleagues—no matter what field of work they are in. At the university level, women tend to outnumber men in the life sciences, like biology, but they are significantly underrepresented in fields like engineering and computer science.
R
ain patters quietly outside the window as Leigh Paulseth approaches the first-grade classroom. She’ll be taking the students outside for a science workshop, so she’s decked out in a raincoat and bulky rain boots; an outfit perfect for jumping into puddles. As she steps through the door, a dozen little heads swivel to look at her.
“It’s science,” a six-year-old whispers, pointing a small finger at Paulseth. “Science is here,” another says to her friend, getting up to get a better look. “Look, that’s science!” another child exclaims. Before long, Paulseth finds herself surrounded by a loose ring of curious children, peering up at her and whispering to their classmates. “That’s science.”
Paulseth is now the outreach coordinator for SciXchange, which handles outreach and communication for Ryerson’s Faculty of Science. She tends to run activities for older students these days, who range from grades two through 12. She laughs as she remembers the day she became “science” for a classroom of first-grade students. “Kids have a natural curiosity, and questions make science,” she says. “They generally don’t have a lot of anxiety or anticipation about, ‘Is that a stupid question?’”
So how did so many of us lose this curiosity as we grew older? Paulseth says the first adults in our lives, like our parents, tend to discourage children—especially girls—from pursuing this natural curiosity by perpetuating negative stereotypes about STEM and teaching us to question ourselves. Not only that, but Paulseth believes parents and other adults play a significant role in leading girls away from STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“Parents love their kids. I’m not questioning that,” Paulseth says. “But there is a bias within our society that says males have an aptitude for science and math, and so it’s really hard to break that.”
Discouraging girls from pursuing STEM at a young age has a major impact in the workforce and the way we teach young women in to build their future career paths. In 2015, the Council for Canadian Academics found that men make up 72 per cent of STEM graduates in Canada. According to the same report, women in STEM fields are consistently underpaid compared to their male colleagues—no matter what field of work they are in. At the university level, women tend to outnumber men in the life sciences, like biology, but they are significantly underrepresented in fields like engineering and computer science.
W
hen she was younger, Melissa Jane Alconcel enjoyed her English and history classes, but didn’t care much about math or science. So when she entered high school and found herself actually enjoying her science classes and wanting to pursue a career in STEM, it surprised everyone—including herself. Now in her fourth year of biomedical sciences at Ryerson, Alconcel thinks she would have liked science more in elementary school if her teachers had been more supportive. “I didn’t really have encouraging teachers to push me to be interested,” she remembers.
Alconcel felt her teachers had high expectations for boys in science and math but low expectations for girls, which she thinks led her female peers to believe that boys are better at those subjects. As a result, she and her peers would lose their sense of self confidence.
“Boys are expected to excel and do well in subjects like math and science because they’re considered ‘boy subjects,’” she says, but for girls, “teachers didn’t really care unless they were actually failing.”
These biases continue to exist in higher education. After graduation, Alconcel is considering pursuing her masters in biomedical engineering, but the reactions she’s gotten have been less than encouraging. She’s told the job market will be harsher to her.
“Someone [once] told me that ‘they’re not going to hire you because you’re a girl,’” she says.
In the fall of 2019, according to Ryerson’s enrolment statistics, women in Alconcel’s program outnumbered men by almost three to one (which Alconcel thinks is “pretty cool”). But in a program like mechanical engineering, men outnumber women by over seven to one. Alconcel believes popular culture is partially responsible for the lack of women in these fields. She thinks of the way female engineers and coders in TV shows and movies are “presented as someone awkward and lanky with no friends, kind of like the stereotypical nerd that everyone makes fun of,” she says. “No girl wants to be made fun of because they like computer science or they’re into engineering.”
These high levels of women in biomedical sciences aren’t unique to Ryerson. The National Science Foundation notes that women made up 53 per cent of biological and medical scientists in the United States in 2015.
Vanessa Vakharia is the founder of The Math Guru, a math and science tutoring centre, and is also creator of the Math Guru award for women in math at Ryerson. She believes that shows like Grey’s Anatomy have helped to show young women that they can be skilled doctors and still have a life outside of work.
“We don’t see shows like that for engineering, or for coding,” Vakharia says. Nor do we see many female mathematicians on the big screen. “Honestly until Hidden Figures came out there was basically no female mathematicians or cool scientists in movies.”
Think of the scientists you see onscreen. The Big Bang Theory features one smart but awkward woman, one unintelligent woman and one woman who pretends to be unintelligent to save her boyfriend’s feelings. Silicon Valley, a show about the California tech industry, has only two female main characters, in contrast to its 11 main male characters. In Mean Girls, kids who like math are, by definition, uncool: “You can’t join Mathletes. It’s social suicide,” Damien tells Cady.
While doing her masters of arts in mathematics education at the University of British Columbia, Vakharia wrote her thesis on how media affects girls’ ideas of math. She argued that the media and popular culture present math as something that makes you boring, friendless and stereotypically nerdy, which makes girls shy away from pursuing math. “What young girl is going to be like, ‘Yeah, I really want to be like that when I grow up’?” she asks.
Vakharia says that the media also sends girls the message that they have to choose between beauty and brains. “You don’t have to strip yourself of your personality to be good at math for a guy,” she says. “You don’t hear anyone say, ‘Oh my god, he’s good at math and he’s so hot.’”
The lack of media representation of women in STEM leads girls away from pursuing STEM fields, even if they have an interest in them. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” Vakharia says, explaining that the lack of these role models can stifle a girl’s curiosity or love of math and science.
Not only are women underrepresented in STEM fields, they are also widely underpaid. For workers in tech with a bachelor’s degree or higher, the Brookfield Institute estimated that in 2019, women made on average $19,600 less per year than their male counterparts.
“The question should never be, ‘How do we encourage girls to like STEM?’” Vakharia says. “It’s, ‘How could we create more supportive environments?’” There’s no quick answer to that question, she says, but part of it is making STEM spaces safer for young women and changing the stereotypes around these fields.
W
hen she was younger, Melissa Jane Alconcel enjoyed her English and history classes, but didn’t care much about math or science. So when she entered high school and found herself actually enjoying her science classes and wanting to pursue a career in STEM, it surprised everyone—including herself. Now in her fourth year of biomedical sciences at Ryerson, Alconcel thinks she would have liked science more in elementary school if her teachers had been more supportive. “I didn’t really have encouraging teachers to push me to be interested,” she remembers.
Alconcel felt her teachers had high expectations for boys in science and math but low expectations for girls, which she thinks led her female peers to believe that boys are better at those subjects. As a result, she and her peers would lose their sense of self confidence.
“Boys are expected to excel and do well in subjects like math and science because they’re considered ‘boy subjects,’” she says, but for girls, “teachers didn’t really care unless they were actually failing.”
These biases continue to exist in higher education. After graduation, Alconcel is considering pursuing her masters in biomedical engineering, but the reactions she’s gotten have been less than encouraging. She’s told the job market will be harsher to her.
“Someone [once] told me that ‘they’re not going to hire you because you’re a girl,’” she says.
In the fall of 2019, according to Ryerson’s enrolment statistics, women in Alconcel’s program outnumbered men by almost three to one (which Alconcel thinks is “pretty cool”). But in a program like mechanical engineering, men outnumber women by over seven to one. Alconcel believes popular culture is partially responsible for the lack of women in these fields. She thinks of the way female engineers and coders in TV shows and movies are “presented as someone awkward and lanky with no friends, kind of like the stereotypical nerd that everyone makes fun of,” she says. “No girl wants to be made fun of because they like computer science or they’re into engineering.”
These high levels of women in biomedical sciences aren’t unique to Ryerson. The National Science Foundation notes that women made up 53 per cent of biological and medical scientists in the United States in 2015.
Vanessa Vakharia is the founder of The Math Guru, a math and science tutoring centre, and is also creator of the Math Guru award for women in math at Ryerson. She believes that shows like Grey’s Anatomy have helped to show young women that they can be skilled doctors and still have a life outside of work.
“We don’t see shows like that for engineering, or for coding,” Vakharia says. Nor do we see many female mathematicians on the big screen. “Honestly until Hidden Figures came out there was basically no female mathematicians or cool scientists in movies.”
Think of the scientists you see onscreen. The Big Bang Theory features one smart but awkward woman, one unintelligent woman and one woman who pretends to be unintelligent to save her boyfriend’s feelings. Silicon Valley, a show about the California tech industry, has only two female main characters, in contrast to its 11 main male characters. In Mean Girls, kids who like math are, by definition, uncool: “You can’t join Mathletes. It’s social suicide,” Damien tells Cady.
While doing her masters of arts in mathematics education at the University of British Columbia, Vakharia wrote her thesis on how media affects girls’ ideas of math. She argued that the media and popular culture present math as something that makes you boring, friendless and stereotypically nerdy, which makes girls shy away from pursuing math. “What young girl is going to be like, ‘Yeah, I really want to be like that when I grow up’?” she asks.
Vakharia says that the media also sends girls the message that they have to choose between beauty and brains. “You don’t have to strip yourself of your personality to be good at math for a guy,” she says. “You don’t hear anyone say, ‘Oh my god, he’s good at math and he’s so hot.’”
The lack of media representation of women in STEM leads girls away from pursuing STEM fields, even if they have an interest in them. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” Vakharia says, explaining that the lack of these role models can stifle a girl’s curiosity or love of math and science.
Not only are women underrepresented in STEM fields, they are also widely underpaid. For workers in tech with a bachelor’s degree or higher, the Brookfield Institute estimated that in 2019, women made on average $19,600 less per year than their male counterparts.
“The question should never be, ‘How do we encourage girls to like STEM?’” Vakharia says. “It’s, ‘How could we create more supportive environments?’” There’s no quick answer to that question, she says, but part of it is making STEM spaces safer for young women and changing the stereotypes around these fields.
O
ver at York University, third-year student Nourin Abd El Hadi estimates that her software engineering program is 95 per cent male. (Ryerson is hardly better, with men making up 86 per cent of the undergraduate computer engineering program.) In an environment that is predominantly male, Abd El Hadi doesn’t always feel safe. “I’m uncomfortable when my labs end late,” she says. When she walks to the subway at night, she makes sure to have one of the male friends she trusts walk with her. The men in her program “are nice and everything, but you never know. I watch Forensic Files.”
Regardless of her male peers being polite, Abd El Hadi says she experiences microaggressions every day. “It’s never blatant sexism,” she says. “It’s [more] like, ‘What are you doing, are you failing? You’re probably failing, right?’” Abd El Hadi finds her classmates seem to think she is some sort of “diversity hire” instead of someone who studied just as hard and got in based on academic merit. “My hard work is dismissed, often, for being a woman,” she says.
“They say it’s a joke,” she says. She makes air quotes with one hand and fiddles with her necklace with the other. “But it’s not. It’s not really a joke.”
Abd El Hadi says she thinks lack of exposure to technology at a young age is a reason why there are so few women in her program. While boys are given technology-based games and encouraged to explore their interests in engineering, girls aren’t pushed to understand the way technology works, she says. “Girls are usually given dolls or Barbie games.”
As girls grow older, Abd El Hadi says, it’s difficult for them to find space for themselves in the male-dominated world of technology. Engineering and technology spaces online are often geared towards male audiences, which encourages men to pursue these fields without similar encouragement for women. “If I go to search up any tech review for a phone I want to buy, for example, male YouTubers come up always, but never a female one,” she says. “Where’s me? Where’s my representation?”
Gaming communities aren’t safe either. Abd El Hadi often finds herself the target of sexist vitriol when gaming, hearing comments like, “Oh, go back to the kitchen, dishwasher.”
Every year, Abd El Hadi participates in a women and non-binary folks only hackathon: a coding competition aimed at solving problems. The mission of her hackathon, ElleHacks, is to challenge participants to collaborate to solve real-life problems in an inclusive space. Surrounded by women and non-binary folks who have the same passions and interests as her, she feels she’s able to have a larger say than in the male-dominated spaces in her program. Events, classes and programs like that can help girls insert themselves into the world of technology, she suggests.
O
ver at York University, third-year student Nourin Abd El Hadi estimates that her software engineering program is 95 per cent male. (Ryerson is hardly better, with men making up 86 per cent of the undergraduate computer engineering program.) In an environment that is predominantly male, Abd El Hadi doesn’t always feel safe. “I’m uncomfortable when my labs end late,” she says. When she walks to the subway at night, she makes sure to have one of the male friends she trusts walk with her. The men in her program “are nice and everything, but you never know. I watch Forensic Files.”
Regardless of her male peers being polite, Abd El Hadi says she experiences microaggressions every day. “It’s never blatant sexism,” she says. “It’s [more] like, ‘What are you doing, are you failing? You’re probably failing, right?’” Abd El Hadi finds her classmates seem to think she is some sort of “diversity hire” instead of someone who studied just as hard and got in based on academic merit. “My hard work is dismissed, often, for being a woman,” she says.
“They say it’s a joke,” she says. She makes air quotes with one hand and fiddles with her necklace with the other. “But it’s not. It’s not really a joke.”
Abd El Hadi says she thinks lack of exposure to technology at a young age is a reason why there are so few women in her program. While boys are given technology-based games and encouraged to explore their interests in engineering, girls aren’t pushed to understand the way technology works, she says. “Girls are usually given dolls or Barbie games.”
As girls grow older, Abd El Hadi says, it’s difficult for them to find space for themselves in the male-dominated world of technology. Engineering and technology spaces online are often geared towards male audiences, which encourages men to pursue these fields without similar encouragement for women. “If I go to search up any tech review for a phone I want to buy, for example, male YouTubers come up always, but never a female one,” she says. “Where’s me? Where’s my representation?”
Gaming communities aren’t safe either. Abd El Hadi often finds herself the target of sexist vitriol when gaming, hearing comments like, “Oh, go back to the kitchen, dishwasher.”
Every year, Abd El Hadi participates in a women and non-binary folks only hackathon: a coding competition aimed at solving problems. The mission of her hackathon, ElleHacks, is to challenge participants to collaborate to solve real-life problems in an inclusive space. Surrounded by women and non-binary folks who have the same passions and interests as her, she feels she’s able to have a larger say than in the male-dominated spaces in her program. Events, classes and programs like that can help girls insert themselves into the world of technology, she suggests.
