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Culture February 17, 2017
Do you kick butt at math or love writing computer code in your spare time? Then you might be interested in exploring careers in STEM, or science, technology, engineering or math. If you’re a woman, though, you’ll have your work cut out for you: although women make up half of the workforce, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM positions.
READ MORE: ‘STEM’-ing Out: Women in the Science Field
Just think about it. When you imagine technological moguls, who comes to mind? Most likely, people like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. Women’s names, however, are much harder to come by.
Fortunately for women everywhere, the fight to improve women’s standing in STEM is widespread and gaining traction. Which organizations and STEM resources are helping women close the gender gap? Here are five amazing organizations every left-brained women should love!
As most working women know, mentorship is often the key to success. However, mentorship might be especially important in STEM, with research finding that:
Benefiting from mentorship might be easier than finding a mentor – but that’s where Million Women Mentors comes in. This organization pairs aspiring young women with both male and female STEM professionals. Don’t mistake MWM for a small organization, either. MWM works with 60+ partners, 45+ corporate sponsors and 35+ state leadership teams to reach over 30 million women. They’ve completed almost 700,000 “mentorings” so far, and aren’t slowing down any time soon. In fact, they just launched their first branch in Maryland.
According to their website, MWM hopes to increase the number of high school girls interested in STEM, female college students with STEM-related majors and women advancing in STEM careers overall.
READ MORE: The Magic of Mentorship: Meet Your Match
We’d say MWM is off to an epic start.
By 2020, the demand for workers in STEM is expected to increase by 16.8 percent. Based on the numbers of men and women going in STEM right now, analysts predict that the U.S. will be short over over one million workers to fill STEM jobs.
The National Girls Collaborative Project is striving to prevent this talent gap by attacking the problem at its roots: lack of interest in science by young girls and boys. While the NGCP’s main goal is to improve the STEM resources and programs offered to girls, their 33 Collaboratives – which are spread out among 41 states and work with 22,800 organizations – currently serve 16.35 million girls and 8.5 million boys.
READ MORE: 5 Ways To Make Your Daughters ‘Hidden Figures’ Style Geniuses
What exactly is the NGCP doing to make a difference? According to their website, NGCP’s main targets in the past few years include 1) improving girl-focused STEM programs and help them reach underrepresented girls, and 2) increasing K-12 school counselors’ understanding of and access to materials about STEM gender barriers.
Research shows that the human brain is especially receptive to learning math, logic and other STEM-related skills between the ages of one and four. So, it seems like, “early bird gets the worm” is a very true phrase when it comes to getting girls interested and involved in STEM. Maybe more STEM programs in early education – like those being promoted by the NGCP – is exactly what the STEM field needs.
Just like with many of the jobs related to STEM, figuring out how STEM can include more women is a bit of a puzzle. The American Association of University Women tries to consider all of the pieces, though, in its STEM Pipeline for Girls and Women.
They begin by conducting plenty of research on the environmental and social barriers that are pushing women away from STEM. The AAUW also provides community programs to introduce women to STEM outside of the classroom; in one year, they offered 150 STEM programs in 35 states, reaching over 10,000 girls.
READ MORE: Here’s How Google Is Encouraging Young Women to Pursue STEM
THE AAUW also advocates for legislative changes to increase funding for STEM education and improve computer science courses in K-12 public education. You could argue that their legislative approach is working, considering President Trump recently signed two new laws to promote women in STEM.
The Inspire Act authorizes NASA to encourage more women and girls to be involved in STEM and aerospace careers. The second law, Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act, gives the National Science Foundation permission to support female-focused entrepreneurial programs.
It seems like the more approaches an organization take to decrease STEM’s gender gap, the better.
Have you ever wondered why you pursued the career you did? It may be because you learned about that job in the first place. In fact, a 2011 study found that exposing students to more information about engineering made them twice as likely to consider it as a career. Similarly, a 2014 study concluded that “students exposed directly to work environments in…STEM fields are more likely to decide to follow paths that will lead to such careers.”
READ MORE: Emma Watson Promotes Women in STEM With ‘The Circle’ (VIDEO)
The team at STEMinist is doing their best to make sure this “exposure effect” draws more women into STEM. STEMinist provides interviews with prominent women in STEM, ranging from college students to CEOs. These women offer advice to aspiring STEMinists, anecdotes from their professional and academic careers, reasons why they love their field and what inspired them to pursue their careers.
The website also features a blog that discusses important topics related to women’s issues in STEM. Articles range from “To Freeze or Not to Freeze?” which discusses the controversial practice of egg freezing by career-driven women, to coverage on the lack of employee diversity in tech-giants like Amazon.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “The more you know…” Well, in the case of STEMinist, the more young women know about STEM, the more likely they’ll be to kick butt in that field.
Girls Who Code is one of the better-known organizations that caters to future female techies. They’re also not afraid to share some disheartening facts, like:
Girls Who Code addresses this overwhelming gender gap in two ways. First, GWC provide club programs to girls from 6th to 12th grade. Not only do the girls learn about coding, but they also use computer skills to solve a problem that’s relevant to their community. GWC also offers 7-week summer programs for 10th and 11th graders, where girls learn about coding and tech jobs.
READ MORE: Artificial Intelligence Will Take More Jobs From Women Than Men
According to their website, Girls Who Code now boasts 10,000 girls in 42 states, but the organization is still growing. In early March, the Rapid City Public Library opened its own GWC chapter, as did Indiana’s Allen County Public Library and Washington’s Hawkins Middle School. A video game studio called Sparkypants even fundraised for Girls Who Code to celebrate International Women’s Day.
The number of women involved in coding might not be growing yet, but the awareness of the gender gap in computer science – and the support for women pursuing this field – definitely is.
As much progress as women have made in STEM, more changes obviously still need to take place. It isn’t enough for women to only hold one-fourth of all of the positions in STEM – and it certainly isn’t right for lack of STEM programs or female role models to keep girls from chasing their scientific dreams. With help from organizations like these, however, women are getting closer to cracking the code of STEM’s gender gap.