Hi there, princess-munchkin. Female engineering student here.Â
Bill Nye is not saying that you HAVE to be a scientist, and you are right that no one is holding a gun to my head because I am interested in science, but let me tell you some of the struggles of being a woman in the STEM fields.Â
1) Because I am a woman, I am not expected these fields. I first fully realized this when I was in high school, on my robotics team. See, although my robotics team was about 50% female, most of the women were part of the âbusiness administrationâ side of things: finance, marketting, PR, membership, etc. Was this a problem? Absolutely not. But I was there to be an engineer, and specifically, to be the robot programmer. This was met with a lot of hesitation at first from some of the other students (all of whom happened to be male. This is not necessarily a bad thing.) You see, all of the robot programmers before me were guys. Computer programming is just a thing that guys do, or so they thought. Even after I had proved myself to the mentors on the team, many of the students still underestimated my abilities. There were rumors going around that I wouldnât have been able to program the robot at all if the lead software mentor wasnât there to help me. This was just flat-out false, but it wasnât until I won an award for the team that the other students actually saw my merit.Â
2) There is not a lot of encouragement for women to go into these fields. I first noticed this when I was in elementary school. I was always interested in math, science, you name it, but many of my teachers and family members pushed that to the side for a long time. When I asked for legos for christmas, I would get ballet slippers. In fact, for a long time, I was training to be a professional dancer. I loved to dance. I loved math more, but no one seemed to notice that about me. It wasnât until I had a long conversation with one particular teacher in high school that I decided to look into engineering. I had never even considered it as an option before, because no one decided to encourage me to pursue my interest in science. If it hadnât been for that teacher, I would probably not be at the school I am at right now.Â
3) For a long time, Engineering/Science/Math WAS a âboys onlyâ club. Let me tell you when some of the top technical schools and societies started letting women in:
RPI, The oldest tech school in the country, founded in 1824. Started admitting women in 1942 to âreplace men called to war.â Campus housing for women wasnât constructed until 1966.Â
Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honors Society - Founded in 1885. Started admitting women in 1968.
Caltech - Currently rated #3 in undergraduate engineering. Founded in 1891. Started admitting women in 1970.Â
Georgia Tech - Currently rated #5 in undergraduate engineering. Founded in 1885. Started admitting women in 1952.Â
Do you see the implications of this? Engineering has been a part of our society since around the late 1800s (in the case of RPI, since the 1820s), but women werenât even allowed in for the most part until the 1950s, regardless of their merit.Â
4) Because of the fact that it was a âboys onlyâ club for such a long time, there are not a lot of women engineers and scientists to look up to. When youâre reading your physics, chemistry, and math text books, the majority of those theories were came up with by men. It is true that much of our history was written by White Men, but this does not mean that the fact that there are few women scientists to look up does not matter.Â
So, as you can hopefully see, princess-munckin, or anyone else that shares the opinions of princess-munchkin, Bill Nye was not arguing that women that are not interested in STEM should go into those fields anyway. But he IS arguing against all of the systematic barriers set up against women who ARE interested in engineering and science. There are several women out there who are just as good as the boys at math and science, but will never pursue their interests because it just doesnât seem like an option. That was me for a long time. I am super grateful for the fact that I fought against that, and that I ended up where I am.Â
if you donât like science, fine. Donât be a scientist. But if one day you have a daughter and she shows interest in being a scientist, PLEASE encourage her. Because Bill Nye is right, there needs to be more women scientists in the world.Â
gracieabrams
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