Women In STEM

A Mediaplanet Guide to Empowering Female STEM Careers

JUNE 2022 | EDUCATIONANDCAREERNEWS.COM

Women in STEM

Loni Love “ The Real” co-host opens up about her electrical engineering career

How educators can foster an interest in STEM as early as Pre-K

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Outschool is empowering kids’ creativity in and out of the classroom

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Unlocking the Potential of Girls in STEM Leah Brown Executive Vice President & Chief Customer Officer, Project Lead The Way

COVID changed the education landscape in a lot of ways, but there was a truth present prior to COVID that remains prominent today: there is a gender gap in PreK-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) learning.

Research shows that there are many reasons why girls and women are underrepresented in STEM education and careers, including gender @MEDIAPLANETUSA

stereotypes, bias, and norms that can affect girls’ interest in STEM from an early age. At Project Lead The Way (PLTW), we know that having confidence in the classroom from an early age can make all the difference in a student’s choice to pursue higher education when they are older. We also understand the importance of building self-confidence and self-esteem, which begins as early as elementary school when students are demon@EDUCATIONANDCAREERNEWS

strating an innate drive to observe, explore, and discover the world around them.

To close the gender gap in STEM learning and STEM careers, an integral part of the solution lies within introducing female students to STEM at a young age — as early as Pre-K — when they exhibit a natural curiosity to make sense of the world around them. For example, in Lubin’s 2017 study, 76% of the study’s PLTW High School female students agreed or

strongly agreed that they have the ability to become an engineer because of PLTW courses.

Additional data obtained by PLTW in 2022 of a rural school district in south Texas suggests that, after exposing more elementary students to PLTW Launch and increasing opportunities for middle school students to participate in PLTW, the gender demographics change from 26% to 46% female of their PLTW Gateway (grades 6-8) students.

Exposure to hands-on, relevant learning experiences in education has never been more important for America’s students, especially for girls and other underrepresented groups. How do we make learning in the third grade relevant to a career?

We must help them understand that what they’re learning today matters — and not just to ace a test, but for the lifelong pursuit of an enduring career. n

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Publisher Ellie Heif itz Business Developer Joelle Hernandez Managing Director Jordan Hernandez Lead Designer Kayla Mendez Designer Daniel Vega Lead Editor Jon Adams Copy Editor Taylor Rice Director of Content and Production Jordan Hernandez Cover Photo Heidi Gutman-Guillaume All photos are credited to Getty Images unless otherwise specified. This section was created by Mediaplanet and did not involve USA Today.

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history and science. Working in groups helps boys and girls learn to communicate and problem-solve together, tapping into each other’s creative ideas and learning from their collective mistakes that help build a solid foundation for confident collaboration in the workplace. Hackathons and meetups provide a wonderful way to expand team-building skills once they get the hang of coding.

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ender disparity in STEM is unfortunately not a new development, despite women being on the frontlines of innovating the industry. The movie “Hidden Figures” is about Katherine Johnson, the Black female mathematician who hand-calculated the re-entry trajectory of John Glenn’s historic spaceflight and pioneered coding and software engineering at NASA for decades. A recent New York Times Magazine article entitled “The Secret History of Women in Coding,” chronicles the journeys of even earlier coding heroines, and the reason behind today’s gender imbalance in tech, especially in coding and software design.

Early women pioneers Lady Ada Lovelace was the first known female coder. While her brother Lord Byron was fight-

ing wars and writing poetry, Lady Lovelace wrote an algorithm for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine in 1843; the model is on display at the Computer History Museum.

Using symbolic logic learned in her philosophy courses at Wellesley, Mary Allen Wilkes was an early coder at MIT. When state law mandated that Elsie Shutt give up her computing job after giving birth, Elsie founded a “work-fromhome” computer company for women with childcare responsibilities, training her female coders after hours on rented computers.

In these days, the men did the early hardware engineering and women were the coders. Women like Hedy Lamarr, Jean Bartik, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper are among the illustrious coding pioneers.

From World War II until the

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Women Pioneered Coding in the Past – Let’s Empower Girls to Code in the Future 70’s women made up a significant percentage of computer programmers. This changed with the advent of personal computers in U.S. homes in the 70’s, when parents were more likely to buy a PC for their sons — who were twice as likely to receive one. Thus, by the late 1980’s, men were dominating both the hard and soft sides of computer technology, entering college with a leg-up in coding.

Popular culture re-enforced this phenomenon by featuring young white men at keyboards.

The storied 150-year history of women in computing went dark, depriving women, especially women of color, of a treasure-trove of heroes to admire and follow into the modern Silicon Age. Women can lead once again It is time to re-right this ship. Broadcom Foundation is teaming up with the Rasp-

berry Pi Foundation to help women gain equal footing in computer technology and software design through early engagement in coding.

The Foundation is taking the following steps to help girls become confident coders before they enter high school and college:

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Collaborate with Raspberry Pi Foundation to establish Code Clubs, especially in under-resourced communities where kids of all color and first-generation can get a handle on coding at an early age in a safe, non-judgmental environment. Raspberry Pi resources are free to all.

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Team up boys and girls when they are introduced to coding to avoid the trap that sex defines aptitude, a myth long-disabused by

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Work with Science Buddies and other STEM learning resource nonprofits to open the portals to an array of careers that yield coding skills.

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Build Wikipedia content to include coders “who look like me” with unsung STEM women heroes through WikiEdy.org.

Next to “Hidden Figures”, my favorite movie is “The Martian” where a female computer engineer teams with a young Black physicist to calculate her spaceship’s return to save the stranded astronaut from certain death on the Red Planet. These fictional heroes represent our robust future workforce if everyone joins Broadcom Foundation in introducing all young people — especially women — to the fun and excitement of coding at an early age. n Paula Golden, President, Broadcom Foundation

To learn more about STEM Education, visit broadcomfounation.org

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What Women Leaders Bring to the Table

Do you have policies in place to eliminate gender bias from hiring and advancement decisions? If not, you may be missing out on the skills, results, and unique perspective that women leaders bring to the table.

According to HBR, women score higher than men in most leadership skills.

Specifically, Pew Research shared that women are seen as more ethical, empathetic, and able to work out compromises.

Women tend to set more realistic targets and achieve better employee engagement. During crises like the pandemic, women leaders demonstrated their ability to manage conflict and increase cohesion.

Studies have proven time and again that diverse organizations outperform their less-diverse counterparts. For example, Board Ready reported that companies with over 30% of board seats held by women outperformed their less gender-diverse counterparts in 11 out of the top 15 S&P 500 sectors. Similarly, a McKinsey report found that taking action to promote gender equality could add $13 trillion to global GDP in 2030 compared to a gender-regressive scenario.

Yet, women still lag behind their male counterparts when it comes to leadership positions. According to the Fortune 500, women secured 26.5% of board seats in 2020 and women of color held 5.7%. It was much worse for privately held companies.

So, what percentage of leaders in your organization are women? Women leaders bring many skills to the table and a unique perspective that can benefit your organization. It is important to not let gender bias impede hiring and advancement decisions.

Meredith Gibson, Interim CEO, Association for Women in Science

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Everyone Benefits When We Give STEM the Gift of Girls Increasing girls’ access to STEM education can narrow the gender gap and strengthen the field.

Achieving gender equity is a complex challenge requiring collaboration from social, political, economic, and educational spheres. What can educators do to push towards a more equitable future for women?

One possible solution lies in giving girls a robust STEM education.

A strong foundation in STEM provides girls with a unique skill set that builds their ability to be creative problem solvers. Girls gain access to a broader range of careers, learn to think critically, and are positioned to not only be smart consumers of technological advances but also to be the creators of those advancements. Education can play a significant role in helping to bridge gender equity gaps, but these benefits can only be achieved if we change the current STEM experience for girls at the K-12 school level.

Educators must intentionally work toward

disrupting STEM gender norms in classrooms and schools. Routinely providing positive reinforcement, giving agency and voice, and introducing diverse female role models in STEM fields can help build girls’ confidence in STEM classrooms and give them opportunities to see themselves in these disciplines.

A voice for everyone Racial diversity is particularly important given that the numbers of women of color in STEM fields are disproportionately lower than the number of white women. In 2017, women accounted for only 29% of science and engineering professionals, despite making up over 50% of the college-educated workforce. The racial breakdown of women working in STEM careers reveals stark disparities: White and Asian women represent the majority within the female STEM workforce (62% and 20.7%, respectively).

Yet, Black women make up 8.6%, Latinas 7.9%, and American Indian/ Alaska Native women

account for only 0.3%.

When comparing these percentages to the racial breakdown of the general female population, it is evident that the gaps are wider for women who are Black, Latina, and American Indian/Alaska Native.

Raising awareness of these statistics coupled with the disruption of gender norms in STEM classrooms can serve as a steppingstone toward changing this narrative and increasing representation in these fields.

In order to truly advance and tackle the complex global issues we currently face, there must be a diverse set of voices and ideas present to push innovation forward. The benefits of increasing STEM education access to girls are therefore mutually beneficial for girls and for the STEM field. Girls are capable of not only contributing diverse perspectives to the field but also of bringing unique skills. Research shows that although there are no differences in math and science cognitive abilities between girls and boys, there is a significant difference in

the capacity for empathy between genders — it’s higher for females.

Building empathy is the first step of the design thinking process — one frequently used by engineers and scientists to solve complex problems.

What girls contribute to the STEM field goes beyond diversification.

They are capable of driving forward progress in STEM fields through their unique gifts.

A bright future We are being threatened with some of the most critical problems in history. From climate change to the unprecedented rise of a global pandemic, now is the time when the work of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and others is imperative.

Having a diverse set of voices, skills, and perspectives in those fields can assist in finding effective solutions to these problems.

The work of giving girls access to STEM education must endure, and although it’s challenging, the profits are immense. If we dare to dream big, we can build on the efforts of others in the movement toward a world where every girl is born with limitless opportunities to thrive, both as individuals and within their communities. n Briana Castaño, National Managing Director of STEM, Teach For America

Girls in STEM Are Critical to Future Innovations

If we are discussing the question of why STEM is important for girls, then we must wonder if and why girls would not naturally be involved.

Innovation comes from looking at things through varying perspectives and multiple lenses.

It is this range of opinion that allows for numerous and various ideas, which is important. In the United States, there are as many girls as boys; in fact, it is almost an even split, with girls at a slight majority. Why would we eliminate more than 50% of a population from engaging in the most critical work, study, and innovation? Careers in STEM encompass today’s engineers, medical scientists, sociologists, and informational security analysts, all of whom help shape our global economy and healthcare system.

The United States Census Bureau reported in 2021 that women account for just 27%

of employees in STEM-related careers, despite making up nearly half of the current workforce. Some of the most in-demand and lucrative careers of today and the future — computer science and engineering — remain male-dominated. At the college level, students majoring in STEM-related fields are predominately young men.

Creating a new normal We need to recognize that the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) promote a specific type of thinking that should be nourished by all our young people. STEM fosters problem-solving and creativity through a hands-on, real-world approach.

The opportunity for our students to fully engage in activities using this methodology provides deeper learning experiences and the ability to explore and pursue interest in careers that they might not otherwise consider.

By empowering our girls,

from the elementary level all the way through high school, we can help decrease the gender gap that we still see today.

Offer a robust STEM curriculum, programs, and guidance to all students, especially those who initially lacked the confidence to pursue such a field due to pre-conceived notions. By not embracing girls in STEM, we could lose out on future innovations and discoveries that may potentially change the world for the better, whether it is a medical marvel or a technological advancement. Simply look to the women in STEM today for such examples.

So, let’s push our girls in the classroom to create a computer program, conduct a science experiment, fly a drone, or play chess so we can get to a place where one day, the question of the importance of girls in STEM will seem dated. n

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Tear Down Silos to Get More Girls in STEM

Many girls are interested in STEM, but that interest wanes by high school; as a result, fewer women are pursuing STEM in college and in their careers.

PreK-12 educators can play a crucial role in creating a more inclusive, equitable STEM workforce. One way to provide all students with opportunities to build their knowledge, skills, and confidence is to de-silo STEM education.

Most real-world problems require interdisciplinary approaches. Integrating science, technology, engineering, and math allows students to see how these subjects apply in real-world applications.

Having students participate in hands-on activities is a great way to de-silo STEM and spark interest early. These experiences show girls and boys that anyone can do STEM. Digital platforms, such as STEMscopes, can also help teachers support inquiry-based learning and cross-curricular connections in any learning environment.

Another way to break down barriers is to highlight career connections and diverse role models. This makes STEM more relevant and helps students see themselves in these fields.

Since most subjects are taught separately, de-siloing STEM will require new pedagogical approaches. Organizations, such as the National Institute for STEM Education, can help with highly targeted professional learning for teachers.

All students are capable STEM learners. De-siloing STEM means seeing these subjects for what they are — part of an integrated whole. By creating connections, educators can cultivate a sense of belonging and close STEM gaps for girls and underrepresented groups. Today’s STEM learner is tomorrow’s STEM leader.

To learn more, visit stemscopes.com/desilo-stem-ed

Shari L. Camhi, Superintendent, Baldwin Union Free School District

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Inclusion Leads to Innovation In 2021, STEM enabled the rapid development of COVD-19 vaccines, made remote learning and telemedicine widely available, allowed new battery technologies for powering electric vehicles to be developed, and much more.

Expansion of the digital economy will be driven by an increased prevalence of telework, by new products associated with the Internet of Things (IoT), and by the analysis and interpretation of large datasets. These demands will spur rapid employment growth for statisticians, information security analysts, and data scientists. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that, over the next decade, computer and mathematical occupations will grow by around 33%, compared to 7.7% growth in the total number of occupations in the United States. However, only 26% of those employed in computer and mathematical sciences are women. Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous women are even more severely underrepresented.

Now is the time to create a STEM culture in which all people can thrive. Innovations are more likely and more robust when developed and tested by teams with diverse representation. Gender diversity is one factor shown to increase the collective intelligence of scientific working groups. Gender-diverse teams exhibit high levels of social perceptiveness and achieve greater equality in participation.

To promote innovation, our classrooms and working teams must be welcoming and safe places for all perspectives, all genders, and all cultural experiences. We must acknowledge unconscious bias and resist stereotypes at every level, eliminate harassment and discrimination in all forms, and prioritize a work/life balance for ourselves and our colleagues. Beyond these essentials, we must create collaborative learning and working environments, actively build balanced and diverse teams, and, crucially, promote women and traditionally underrepresented people to prominent positions. Representation matters. Role models matter. Community matters.

Darla Kremer, Ph.D., Executive Director, Association for Women in Mathematics

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How Loni Love Got Her Start in STEM Comedian and host of “The Real,” Loni Love began her career as an electrical engineer, and she hopes to see more women pursuing STEM careers in the future.

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ost people would recognize Loni Love from her stand-up comedy career or her work as co-host on “The Real.” However, Love’s career began in electrical engineering.

“After graduating high school, I immediately got a job at General Motors working on the automobile line,” Love says. “I was in my early 20s and was put in a work group with men in their 40s and 50s. It was a culture shock.”

Love was the only woman working on her team. “In the beginning of my career, being a female in engineering was lonely,” she says, “but I learned a lot from my coworkers, and soon they realized that I was an asset to the group. I would complete my projects well before most of them, and I looked at problems differently, so they started coming to get my advice on issues they couldn’t figure out. Soon I was not the young girl in the group but a reliable member.”

Now that she has the platform to speak to a wide audience, Love is encouraging women to seek out jobs in STEM and not be intimidated by the relative lack of women in certain areas. “Diversity is needed in STEM because there are many issues that affect women differently than men when considering solutions,” she says. “Having women to give their expertise can prove to be valuable.”

STEM workplaces can also do more to encourage women to enter

the STEM workforce. Love says the key is making sure women are heard and respected. “Engineering is about providing solutions to make a process better,” she said.

“Women should not have to fight to be acknowledged. Let them do the job they were hired for.”

For women already interested in STEM careers, Love has some simple advice: “Never stop learning about new technologies. Keep moving, and when you need a break, take it.” n Ross Elliott

An Astronaut Shares Her Advice for Aspiring Space Explorers Plenty of kids say they want to become an astronaut when they grow up, but their dream isn’t realized.

For 37-year-old Jasmin Moghbeli, it did. Moghbeli has been a NASA astronaut since August 2017. Before that, she was a U.S. Marine Corps test pilot. According to NASA, she has more than 150 combat missions and 2,000 hours of time in the air in more than 25 different aircraft to her name.

“As a kid, I was just naturally drawn to science and math,” Moghbeli says. “In college, I especially loved physics. I kept asking, ‘How do things work?’ and ‘Why do they work this way?’”

“Throughout junior high and high school, I participated in afterschool STEM-driven programs,” she adds. “I think all of those things drew me into it.”

Defying the odds Of course, making it big in STEM is no easy feat for multiple reasons. For women, that can be especially true. The National Girls Collaborative Project notes that although women comprise half of the workforce educated in the United States, they make up just 28% of the science and engineering segment.

Moghbeli emphasized that

equal representation in STEM is important. “When the younger generation looks and sees all men in a room and you’re sitting there and you’re a little girl, how does that make you feel? Does that make you feel like, ‘Hey, I can be there too’? Maybe not. At this point, because we’re still underrepresented, it takes an active, conscious effort to incorporate more diversity — whether it be in gender or in different ethnicities, or whatever it is — into those fields.

“And I do feel hopeful that we’ll get to the point when we no longer need to make that active effort because we have become a main part of the industry,” she adds.

Reflecting on the past and future Working in STEM comes with other challenges, including an ability to overcome failure.

Moghbeli wishes she knew how normal it is to fall short of expectations when she first started out.

“I think it’s really important looking back to say, ‘Hey, don’t let those failures stop you from continuing to pursue your passion in this field,’” she says. “Those failures are a sign that you are pushing yourself, challenging yourself, and trying to do things that are really worthwhile and really difficult.”

Being steadfast paid off. The field of space exploration is ever-evolving, and Moghbeli describes current projects as “extremely exciting.”

“Even from the time I got selected to now, about three years later, there are so many new programs and spacecraft being worked on,” she explains.

She notes that NASA is aiming to land humans on the moon in 2024 and use their learnings from that mission to go to Mars next.

“How cool is that, right?” she says.

Growing up Moghbeli credits her parents with giving her the confidence to pursue her dream. “I was very lucky growing up,” Moghbeli says. “I never questioned whether or not I could do something because I was a girl. Having that at a young age made me believe I could do anything,” adding that her teachers were similarly encouraging.

She applauds all the adults helping inspire future generations in STEM. “Thank you to all the parents and educators out there that are working to help kids of all backgrounds and genders realize that they, too, can be in these fields and do these things.”

Another piece of advice she would’ve given her younger self is to take up space and raise her voice. “I think for me personally, one of the hardest things at times was feeling like I belonged. I think I often had the tendency to question if I was good enough to be in a room or to speak up,” Moghbeli explains. “When I was younger, that held me back a lot more. I think that was probably the most difficult thing for me was realizing, ‘Hey, I have just as much to contribute in this room as anyone else does. And I have just as much right to be here.’” n

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Staff

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