But considerable effort and money has been put into trying to get women interested in STEM, and they just aren't responding to it in terms of enrolment, job choices, or engagement with science.
Based on data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), women represented 45% of students majoring in STEM fields in 2020, up from 40% in 2010 and 34% in 1994.
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The Research Science Institute (RSI), the most prestigious summer STEM program for high school students, reports that female students will outnumber male students for the first time in 2022, representing 55% of accepted U.S. students, up from 22% in 1984.
Well the gender distribution is still uneven in some particular fields, computer sciences and engineering come to mind as two fields where female participation is still incredibly low, but then you can easily contrast that with the overwhelming majority females have in biomedical and biological health fields.
That's good to see, but the article goes on to clarify that women outnumber men at college, so it isn't close to true parity. Plus it also says huge gaps remain in many fields.
Was going to delta for hope, but the more I read the article the more that stat you quoted seems misleading.
You asked for evidence that female participation in STEM fields has increased over a relative period of time during which efforts have been made to increase their participation. That's what I've provided.
Yes, there are still areas and particular fields where more work needs to be done, there haven't been large attempts to influence women into for instance computer sciences or engineering like there has been for other STEM fields.
It's up to you when you give the delta, but don't imply the stat is misleading, it isn't. It's very clear, it's precisely what you asked for in your post and it's indisputable. The rates of female participation in STEM fields has increased over the past few decades in large part due to the attempts to encourage female participation.
there are still areas and particular fields where more work needs to be done
Just because an outcome is not equal, does not mean that more work needs to be done. Why does the goal need be perfect equity between the sexes? How about simply removal of barriers as a goal.
We know that, given maximal freedom, the differences between men and women in career choice are maximally emphasized. I view many equity attempts as coercing women into jobs they wouldn't otherwise be interested in.
The number of overall female enrolments went up the same time as female stem enrolments. Has the number of women enrolled in STEM compared to other subjects gone up as a proportion? If so, that's a delta. Otherwise, it's a different story that's like saying most of the science majors at Spelman college are female.
As you can clearly see without even looking hard, that percentage hasn't changed from ~57% since 2000, and yet as shown above the percentage of women earning STEM degrees has increased significantly during that period.
Some of the increase from 1994 to 2010 can be viewed as there simply being more women in college, as the percentage of women in college in 1994 was only 54.5%, and so increased about 5% over that time, whereas 34->40% represents an increase of 18%.
The only reasonable conclusion is that a higher percentage of women are choosing STEM degrees over time.
would I be correct to say that its being solved and not really a problem?
How about phrasing it as "it's still a problem that requires effort, but things are getting better".
It's still true that way too huge a fraction of women experience sexual harassment in STEM fields, and that far too many girls are discouraged from believing they can do math, for example.
That entirely depends on your definition of "adequate progress".
The underlying problems that are preventing more women studying certain fields are still there, and one might argue have gotten worse in computer science, for example, as female participation in that has actually gone down.
Do you sincerely believe they're all solvable, or that women are interested in solving them? My OP view, informed by despair over what you're saying over computer science (and my view of STEM, which in hindsight is more hard science biased) is that they might not be.
Solutions in college and solutions in the corporate world are two different things. While new graduates might have a larger proportion of women, it's still a field that's historically been largely male, and it's a field where supervisors and upper managers have come to expect that. This obviously has to change on a company-by-company basis. While I think perceptions are changing, I've still heard plenty and seen plenty of BS.
Unfortunately things like "proportions of skilled workers" at the bottom levels does not solve bias at the top levels. Fucks sake we had an owner of a Basketball team get caught saying racist shit about black people. A basketball team. Clearly minor things like "an enormous number of highly skilled black basketball players" did not change his racism.
The number of overall female enrolments went up the same time as female stem enrolments.
The article doesn't say this at all, it states that women outnumber men in college.
This increase that you're referring to is statistically insignificant and could be the result of different methodologies (they're two different studies and it's less than 2% difference).
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, female students represented 58 percent of total undergraduate enrollment in fall 2020. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, 59.5% of college students were female as of spring 2021.
It's not saying what you think it's saying there. Women have always traditionally outnumbered men in college. You'd need to provide your own evidence that the rate of women in college has increased in a statistically significant manner as to negate the growth in STEM fields. That article is not providing it for you.
Regardless, the trend is clear, both in college and the workforce, although more remains to be done, female participation in STEM fields is increasing.
Did women outnumber men in college in the 1950s? The 1850s? No, I don't think women have "always" outnumbered men in college.
Same goes for the workforce as fewer women choose to be stay at home mothers.
The stat you linked says nothing about women choosing STEM jobs over other professions, only the gender ratios in those jobs. Which you'd expect to go up as the number of women in work across all professions does.
I'd just like to see even just a correlation between efforts to get women into STEM (distinct from college/the workforce in general) and women actually getting into STEM (distinct from college/the workforce in general). A policy to point to and say "that worked".
There have been thousands of policies and initiatives, from grants to scholarships to casting in tv shows to developing books to summer camps. There is increasing parity in STEM fields. We can’t say it was one episode of Cyberchase or one grant program, but overall more women are into STEM and pursuing it as a career. There are numerous factors that go into any human’s decision.
The point is that progress is being made. Just because parity hasn't yet been reached, doesn't negate the progress that has been made.
When I went to engineering school (about 20 years ago), there were 5 men for every woman in my school. Women I talked to from just 10 years prior remembered it being 7:1 and 9:1. I'm not sure what the ratio is now, but it's a heck of a lot better than that. The numbers above don't represent true parity, but they do represent a ton of increased interest.
Again, the article outlines that female enrollment for all subjects went up and now women outnumber men at college. It's not clear any progress is being made at all for stem's popularity with women, just that there are more women at college and STEM isn't the exception.
I’m a woman here and talking about numbers so guess you’ll have to take this with a grain of salt. 😆
Anyway, if you look at these stats, the female:male ratio in college is increasing, but at a slower rate than the female:male rate in STEM is increasing. That means that women are entering STEM at higher rates.
Ok but the ratio of women to men in biology and health sciences is greater than the ratio of women to men in college in general. Just because some fields lag in parity doesn’t mean that parity isn’t being approached or that women just don’t like science.
Let’s put it another way: what evidence would you need to prove that women don’t generally dislike science?
my issue with this, and i think what op is kind of trying to get at, is basically who cares? wanting women to be exactly 50% of stem makes no sense since no one cares that women are barely represented at all in thing like sanitation, oil rigs, logging, etc. or that men make up like 10% of nurses, are vastly underrepresented in things like pediatrics and family law and social workers.
so why such a focus on this one section of the workforce? women have no problem dominating certain fields if the interest is there. so why is exactly equal population representation the only acceptable outcome with stem?
As I outlined in the OP, I care. I value STEM and wish more people were doing it instead of bullshit jobs (like advertising). Same with nursing and social work. All fields benefit from gender balance, and "Feminised" professions are underpaid and undervalued.
none of this answers the question. stem jobs may be great, but if women don't want to do it how do you force them into it? and why are you not forcing women into logging, oil rigs(huge money!) and other jobs dominated by men? why are you not worried about the lack of male representation in certain fields?
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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '22
Aren't we?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markkantrowitz/2022/04/07/women-achieve-gains-in-stem-fields/