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Leyvahyrumws
Leyvahyrumws
Hyrum Leyva-Cardenas
Ms.Noyce
English 9
17 January 2018
How the Gender Gap in STEM Fields for Women is not an Issue.
Ever since people were born there have been certain expectations for men and for
women that differ. As children boys are expected to be interested in things such as
construction, cars, or any job considered a public service. Meanwhile female children are
expected to be interested in things such as princesses, colors considered girly, and performing
stay at home jobs. These ideas of given expectations have integrated themselves into the fields
of science, technology, engineering, and math known as STEM. The three articles “Why do so
many women who study engineering leave the field?” by Susan S. Silbey, “Why the STEM
gender gap is overblown” by Denise Cummins, and “Reporter Examines Gender Gap in Math
and Science” all discuss the topic of whether or not there is an issue of gender inequality or a
bias of careers considered masculine or feminine. Gender inequality for women in STEM is not
an issue caused by just men since most women leave the field due to separate interests from
men and since there are more women that graduate in STEM fields than men.
Most women in STEM fields do eventually leave those fields, since they have developed
interests in other subjects and fields that appeal more to them. An author from the Boston
globe wrote an article about how there are so many opportunities in the western world that
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women have the freedom to choose several other fields. The author is Elaine McArdle and she
responded in an interview with reasoning as to why women enter fields outside of STEM: “most
of the time women prefer to work with other people… men most of the time prefer to work…
manipulating tools and that kind of thing” (“Reporter Examines Gender Gap in Math and
Science”). In this interview McArdle explains that the reason women enter other fields and
leave STEM is solely due to the fact that they prefer interacting with others. In science,
technology, engineering, and mathematic careers people generally only work with non-living
things such as computers, microscopes, and hand tools. This is enough to keep men interested
in the field, but as stated women would rather have a career centered on working with other
Currently, there are more women that have graduated in STEM fields compared to the
number of men that have graduated in STEM. The National Science Foundation disclosed a
graph displaying the percentages of bachelor degrees earned by women from 1991-2010. In
1991 almost 50% of women had a bachelor’s degree in Biosciences which rose to almost 60% in
2010, about 45%of women had a degree in social sciences in 1991 which rose to almost 55% in
2010, and in psychology women are a little more than 80% people in that field in 1991 which
rose to almost 85% in 2010 (Cummins). All three of these fields showed an increase of bachelor
degrees earned by women which shows that men do not necessarily outnumber women in
STEM fields. As shown in the statistics, some fields actually have more women that graduated
than men. In psychology women actually greatly outnumber the amount of men in that same
field, which proves that there are in some cases a lot more women in STEM. And all three of
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these fields involve working with a living thing or person which explains why there are more
Now, some people argue that there is a gender inequality in STEM because women are
being paid less than their male counterparts. Denise Cummins discussed how men were paid
more than women in the same job, “the average female nurse earned $51,600, 16 percent less
than the $60,700 earned by the average man in the same job.” (Cummins). This is no surprise
since for about a century now men have usually been paid more than women. It is definitely
something that needs to be addressed in the business world and many women are indeed
fighting for equal pay. It is the right of all people including women to peacefully assemble and
protest for things that they see are unfair, which is in this case the fact that people are paying
However it is not just the fault of men for women earning less than males. In fact
women pay other women less money just like their male peers. There are two economic games,
the first being the dictator game which grants one person the power to keep money to
themselves or share the money with their peers. In the ultimatum game one person is allowed
to make an offer of money to another player who has the option to accept or reject the offer,
and if the offer is rejected than no one gets to keep any money. And in these games they show
that “On average, women keep less for themselves than men do. In the ultimatum game… Both
men and women make lower offers to women than to men.” (Cummins). These games show
that it is not just the fault of men that women are paid less, but that in fact both genders pay
less to women as seen in the ultimatum game. This shows that whatever bias men have for
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women, women have for each other as well since they make lower offers to their female peers.
So if there is an inequality for women in STEM, then they are part of the problem as well.
There are three articles regarding women in Stem with the first being “Why do so many
women who study engineering leave the field?” by Susan S. Silbey, “Why the STEM gender gap
is overblown” by Denise Cummins, and finally “Reporter Examines Gender Gap in Math and
Science”. All three of these articles help to prove that in STEM there is no inequality for women
since more women have graduated in these fields than men and they simply have different
career interests than their male peers. The inequality does not exist since women have
separate interests that usually involve the organic sciences that have them interact with living
things as opposed to men who prefer to work with inorganic objects. Also, more women have
graduated in STEM fields than men, especially in organic sciences where they interact with
living things. And finally while there is a pay gap between the two genders, men are not the
sole cause of it since it’s shown that not just men but women also pay less to their female
peers.