I'm a female engineer, so I can say there is NO active discrimination against women in STEM fields.
There are several reasons why women are not as common in STEM as the life sciences or social sciences where they dominate. Interesting how no one screams sexism that men aren't half of nurses or lab workers.
1. While women's IQ is a narrow bell curve around average, men's is a flatter, broader curve. More idiots and more geniuses. End result - more men as a percentage are the uber-geniuses necessary to be math whizzes and physicists.
2. Men on average have better visual spacial skills for visualization that is necessary for Calculus 2&3 and engineering courses. Linear algebra, logistic matrices were much easier for me - so I shifted to industrial and manufacturing engineering.
3. Girls prefer on average dolls, cooking toys, playing house. Boys prefer to take things apart and learn how they work. I played with legos with my brother, but I also had barbies. I've given both my son and daughter Raspberry Pi. Those interests lead to learning that impact interest later on in tech fields.
4. When women are in the STEM fields, the workaholic culture often drives them away. I made as much as my husband, also an engineer, before I had children. When I couldn't work longer hours, my pay raises dropped from 5-8% to cost of living raises. When I had my second child and shifted to part time work, my career stalled. This is a reflection of a workplace that pushes overtime and grueling schedules on the high salaried workforce to offset for their high pay. We can talk about ending the expectation of 60 hour work weeks for engineers and programmers without calling it sexism, since I know that schedule burns out the men, too.
While I've spoken about averages, this doesn't preclude women having those interests or pursuing those fields. But screaming sexism to explain every gender based difference does preclude honest discussions about what works for different people and what can be done to help EVERYONE in the field.
by Volitans 12 years ago
How do you cultivate an interest in science and math among children?Science and math are the key to the future. That's where the jobs are, and that's how we advance as a country and as a species. However, the media is filled with messages that math and science are uncool, that they're too hard, and...
by Sharlee 6 months ago
The ongoing debate about the H-1B visa program has sparked some attention, but much of the current media coverage is missing the broader point raised by both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. While they acknowledge the importance of addressing the immediate need for foreign talent through visa...
by Andrea K Fleming 12 years ago
Why are so few students entering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers?How do you feel this affects our nations future as a world leader?
by Colleen O'Brien 10 years ago
Why are boys better than girls in Math and Science?I need three male opinions for a survey for class. Do you believe that girls do worse in math and science because teachers and parents unknowingly treat boys and girls different, in ways that make their expectations about gender and academic...
by Micheal 10 years ago
Why Are Women Still Paid Less Than Men. What Has Happened To Equal Rights For Women?We have had the equal pay act since the 1970's and yet women still earn a third less than their male counterparts. Why is this discrimination still happening?And more importantly why is nobody talking about it?
by Rhys Baker 12 years ago
Which is the most important science and why?
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |