STEM educationSome STEM fields have fewer women than others. Why?
Women’s relative lack of participation in science, technology, engineering, and math is well documented, but why women are more represented in some STEM areas than others is less clear. Women now earn about 37 percent of undergraduate STEM degrees in the United States, but their representation varies widely across those fields. Women receive more than 40 percent of undergraduate degrees in math, for example, but just 18 percent of degrees in computer science.
Women’s relative lack of participation in science, technology, engineering, and math is well documented, but why women are more represented in some STEM areas than others is less clear.
A new University of Washington study is among the first to address that question by comparing gender disparities across STEM fields. Published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, the paper identifies three main factors driving the disparity — and the most powerful one, the researchers conclude, is a “masculine culture” that makes many women feel like they do not belong.
“There is widespread knowledge that women are underrepresented in STEM, but people tend to lump STEM fields together,” said lead author Sapna Cheryan, a UW associate professor of psychology. “This is one of the first attempts to really dig down into why women are more underrepresented in some STEM fields than others.”
UW says that women now earn about 37 percent of undergraduate STEM degrees in the United States, but their representation varies widely across those fields. Women receive more than 40 percent of undergraduate degrees in math, for example, but just 18 percent of degrees in computer science.
The UW study focused on six of the largest science and engineering fields with the most undergraduate degrees: biology, chemistry and math, which have the highest proportions of female participation, and computer science, engineering and physics, which have bigger gender gaps.
The researchers analyzed more than 1,200 papers about women’s underrepresentation in STEM, and from those identified 10 factors that impact gender differences in students’ interest and participation in STEM. Then they winnowed the list down to the three factors most likely to explain gendered patterns in the six STEM fields — a lack of pre-college experience, gender gaps in belief about one’s abilities, and a masculine culture that discourages women from participating.
The paper identifies three main aspects of that masculine culture: stereotypes of the fields that are incompatible with how many women perceive themselves, negative stereotypes about women’s abilities and a dearth of role models. Those factors decrease women’s interest in a field by signaling that they do not belong there, the researchers write.
