Young girls can still be overlooked in STEM.
This academic article was originally published by Olivia Loguidice on October 27, 2024, and is reprinted here in its entirety.
When people are asked about the time in their life when they realized what career they wanted to go into, many are able to pinpoint the exact moment when they had their epiphany. While science and medicine was something I was always drawn to, I only began to consider it as a career path during my sophomore year of high school when I was exposed to courses such as anatomy and physiology and pharmacology. These classes gave me the confidence and sustained interest needed to be able to pursue medicine as my future career. However, I had this epiphany just in the knick of time as college applications were due the following year. I often find myself wondering if I would have realized my love of science sooner, and been able to take advantage of more opportunities, if I had more exposure to it as a younger child.
New Jersey, in general, has made great strides for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, but has its efforts been enough to encourage more young women to pursue STEM? In 2021, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed an act that focused on minimizing the STEM gender gap. This act aimed to increase the number of STEM outreach programs for young women and increase the number of STEM educators and faculty in New Jersey schools. The act also intended to increase the number of resources available to young women to help encourage them to pursue higher STEM education.
Despite being enacted early on in my high school career, this bill seemed to have no impact on my school and others around it, especially considering that there was a persistent teacher shortage and an overall lack of STEM programs available to students. Though this act, and others like it, seem as though they put New Jersey on the right track for increasing female participation in STEM, the reality is that progress just isn’t being made.
Women still only represent 27% of STEM workers nationally, further indicating that this legislation is not having its intended effect. This already meager percentage is only expected to decrease in upcoming years as the interest in STEM of Generation Z girls, those born between 1997 and 2011, plummets.
According to an article published in CNN, 85% of young men said that they were interested in at least one sector of STEM, while only 63% of young women said the same. When questioned about why they weren’t interested in the field, a majority of young women stated that they believed they wouldn’t be good at STEM, representing a lack of associated confidence within younger generations. Despite being a national issue, this overall lack of confidence applies to young New Jersey women who might want to pursue a career in STEM as well.
In June of 2023, a panel discussion was held between several prominent female New Jersey STEM leaders. One of the panelists, Dr. Vojislava Pophristic, Dean of Rowan University’s College of Science and Mathematics, explained that she believes that if more opportunities are provided for young girls K-12, there would be an increase in women pursuing STEM as a career later on in life. Specifically, Dean Pophristic recommends exposing young individuals to how meaningful and impactful STEM can be through mentorship programs.. If more of these programs were widely available, it is likely that young women would become inspired and see that women can excel in STEM.
Dean Pophristic additionally mentioned how certain sectors of STEM have different sex breakdowns. Sectors such as math and computer science generally see more male participation while biology often sees more female participation, a trend I observed in my own high school. For instance, out of roughly 20 students in my AP Biology class, only 3 were male. However, in one of the AP Computer Science classes offered, only about 2 or 3 students were female.
As Dean Pophristic further pointed out in the discussion, STEM, regardless of the sector, has been historically dominated by white men, a trend that obviously needs to be changed. However, as white men have been the leaders of STEM for so long, it begs the question of where does this bias, that has been keeping others from being equally represented in STEM, originate?
A potential origin for STEM gender bias may lie within some of the youngest members of the population, children in kindergarten to third grade. A study that looked into the beliefs held by these children had some alarming findings. Primarily, children of both sexes believed men to be more competent than women in STEM, with 62% of boys stating that STEM was their favorite subject and only 37% of girls stating the same. Kim Eslesser, a gender bias expert who discusses the study in a recent Forbes article, proposes a solution that has the potential to work at the local, New Jersey level. She suggests that providing more role models, women with careers in STEM, to young girls could boost confidence and change biased perceptions. Additionally, she indicates that encouraging young girls to pretend to be scientists during play time could also help promote STEM confidence in younger populations, a solution that New Jersey schools could easily implement in their classrooms to stop gender bias at its potential root.
Furthermore, though all women are underrepresented in STEM, women of color are even more underrepresented than white women. An article written by Marisa Peñaloza, a senior producer at NPR, about the National STEM Festival in Washington D.C., helps to highlight how young non-white women can feel even more dissuaded from pursuing STEM than young white women. One of the individuals that Peñaloza interviewed, the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at MIT stated that “women of color face the most challenges and harassment, both explicit and implicit”.
One of the youth presenters at the festival, Treyonna Sullivan, described her own personal experiences with her place in STEM. She stated that she felt discouraged after seeing the background of her competitors, but then described how having Black mentors and seeing other Black youth there inspired her, helping to improve her confidence in her abilities. Sullivan’s story provides further support for the benefits of increasing the number of mentors available for young women in STEM and shows that to have the most impact on young women, mentors of diverse backgrounds are needed.
The bottom line is that while New Jersey has taken measures to encourage gender equality in STEM for women of all backgrounds, advancements just aren’t being made. As STEM is a field that has always been primarily male dominated, it is devastating to see that more women still have yet to to take their rightful place at the forefront of scientific innovation and success. Since a lot of the current programs and bills introduced in New Jersey, that target girls in middle and high school, have been largely ineffective, it is time New Jersey turns its attention to even younger girls. If New Jersey is able to increase mentorship opportunities and find ways to successfully eliminate bias within younger populations, inspire younger girls, and sustain their inspiration throughout their high school years, STEM participation, interest, and confidence will skyrocket, creating an environment where all girls can flourish and realize their interest in STEM early on in life.
Olivia Loguidice is a biological sciences major at Rowan University who plans to pursue a career in medicine. She has a passion for female representation in STEM.
