Why Aren’t More Girls Choosing to Pursue Careers in Math and Science? Brianna Gibson

 

Why Aren’t More Girls Choosing to Pursue Careers in Math and Science?

Lessons in Chemistry: Bonnie Garmus

   Since the beginning of time, women and girls have been discouraged from all things relating to work and brainpower. Women have steered away from mathematics along with sciences for as long as I can remember. Our society is heavily built on the ways of the past, and those ways were labeling women to stay at home, work, cook, and clean. This was all women knew for hundreds of years. Women continue to be underrepresented or invisible in the world of engineering, math, and science. 

   The hundreds of years without women in the scientific workforce created the thought that "Women aren't smart enough for scientific work, or any work at all". To put down a particular group of people for such a long time will eventually create the mindset that you can't do something, or shouldn't do something. Women have been shunned from the science industry for so long, that they began to believe that they couldn't do anything related to it, or didn't want to at all. The generational repetition of the belittlement of women has caused women today to feel a lack of interest in sciences. Though, I've also noticed that many people want their daughters to grow up around stem, to create a child that breaks boundaries.

   Many parents of children do believe that their daughters can take on the stem world, though they expect it from them too much. Some parents want their daughters to do science work because they think it will make them break stigmas and show a "can do attitude". They want their daughters to prove that they are smart and can do thinks males can do. Until the child is pushed to the point where they want nothing to do with it at all. Being shoved into a field of work that does not interest you will most likely cause you to steer away from it as a whole.

   In conclusion, it's not that women and young girls can't do stem related work, it's that society has made people think this. Instead of causing women to believe that they are dumb or not worthy of harder work, it is better to teach, and encourage. Girls growing up without seeing people like them all around the world is what will lower their excitement or will to do things science related. Women aren't dumb, they've just been told they are, and grown into those behaviors. Representation does matter.