How men are discriminated in STEM
This article is a segment of a larger article
Why it is men, not women, who are discriminated
Women are underrepresented in the workforce in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and men vastly outnumber women majoring in most STEM fields in college. According to a popular myth, this discrepancy is due to women being discriminated. However, this could not be further from the truth.
For example, on February 2017 Trump signed laws designed with the purpose of promoting women in STEM. Multiple universities have Women In Science Programs (WISP) that "promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity for women", sometimes along with "minorities, persons with disabilities and veterans". Some of these programs involve paid internships for women only.
The Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship (MLEF) Program is an internship program for women and under-represented minority students is a 10-Week Summer Internship sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy. It is directed towards students who are pursuing academic majors in science, technology, engineering, and math. Only women and "minority" students need apply.
In 2016, seven global engineering and tech companies (IBM, Intel, General Motors, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cummins, Caterpillar, and Johnson Controls) piloted re-entry, paid internship programs for people who had taken career breaks of two years or longer. In IBM, selected participants are all women.
In Australia, there's the Edith Dornwell Internship for Women in STEM, which is a program provides that one woman each year with three months full time or six months part time fully paid employment with an organisation whose focus is on STEM.
These are but a few examples of the many programs that result in women generally being favored over men. A 2015 study demonstrated an overall 2-to-1 advantage for women in being ranked first for the job in any STEM field.
The real reason behind the gender imbalance
So if it’s men who are discriminated in favor of women, why is there a gender imbamance? Well, first of all, it is a misconception that women are underrepresented in science or STEM fields fields in general. The reality is that women have entered some STEM fields to the point where they are no longer underrepresented (e.g., biology) while largely forsaking other STEM fields (e.g., computer science).
Today, more women than ever major in so-called STEM fields. In fact, more than 58% of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in biology are being awarded to women.Within certain University biology departments, women also make up nearly half of the faculty. And within the department of behavioral and social sciences, 70% of faculty members are women :
However, women comprise only 18% of students receiving bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering, and those figures have actually dropped over the past couple of years :
In spite of having an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in any STEM field, women remain underrepresented as faculty members for those fields as well. Policies to attract more girls and women into subjects such as computer science, physics and engineering have largely failed.
These trends in gender representation are consistent internationally. For example, if we look at Britain, we see that women are eg. less than 20% of all engineering and computer science undergraduates, but more than 60% of all biology undergraduates and even more than 75% of all veterinarian undergraduates :
If we look at Europe as a whole, we see that 40% of the 17 million scientists and engineers in the EU are women. However, men are particularly overrepresented in manufacturing (83% of scientists and engineers in manufacturing were male), while the services sector was much more balanced (55% male and 45% female).
Further, we see that women are in the majority in all of the EU Member States among students studying for Master’s degrees. Yet, we also see that there are considerably more female than male students studying social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration or law, with women accounting for 57.6 % of all students within this field of education :
Even if we look beyond Europe and North-America, we see a very similar gender distribution across different fields :
I and one of my last exes, both living in Belgium, are a perfect reflection this pattern as well : I have a background in corporate R&D and have worked almost exclusively with male colleagues, while my ex teaches at the bio-chemistry faculty at a local university and has mostly female colleagues.
Obviously, there still remain differences in the gender gap on a per county basis. Peculiar about these differences, however, is that women are actually less likely to enter a STEM field in countries with greater gender equality :
One possible explanation for the aforementioned gender distribution is the high "geek factor" in fields like computer science, physics and engineering. Another would be gender stereotyping transmitted through our interaction with others. However, there also biological differences to consider, like the difference between men's and women's brains.
Men may simply be more driven by a biological urge to build things, whereas women may simply be more driven by a biological urge to help people. It would be foolish to underestimate the impact of sex hormones on our individual preferences when even among monkeys males prefer to play with trucks and females with dolls!