Struggles of being a woman in STEM

Brad Arrington
WRIT 3101
Spring, 2015

Introduction
I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile
family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy. Marie Curie. Women are trained
from a young age that they must fit into specific molds sculpted by society. Women in American
society have struggled for decades and centuries to gain deserved rights. Since the latter half of
the 20th century women have begun pursuing careers historically male dominated. As a society,
progress is happening but we are not there yet. Women in science and engineering fields, most
commonly associated with the male gender type, feel pressures from society and patronization
from within their fields, limiting their success. The gender constraints placed on women make it
difficult for them to balance their gender identity as a woman and the ability to succeed in the
field of science and engineering.
Along with struggling to balance femininity and success women in science also face the
pressure:

to perform clerical roles in collaborative groups,

to outperform their male counterpart to succeed,
to be a soft-spoken lady

Felt Difficulty
I felt a cognitive dissonance between the gender distinctions American society places on
certain professions. Historically we differentiate between man jobs and woman jobs. The
social construct of gender has lead to differences in what society accepts of and expects form the
different genders, and in America we associate certain professions with a specific gender, for
example men are firefighters and women are hair stylists. I wanted to inquire as to how a
demographic felt when they were in space commonly associated with a different gender. I

interviewed women studying science and engineering majors at the University of Minnesota
(UMN) to learn about the struggles they face in a male dominated field. In the next section I will
cover my research methods.

Methodology
Research question
To help me satiate the struggles I was feeling I knew I had to go out and ask those
affected to share their stories and experiences. I began my research to answer my research
question which is as follows: What struggles and obstacles, if any, do women in science and
engineering face based on their gender?
My overall goal for this research report is to better understand a demographic that I am
not a part of and to persuade others to think about how we judge each other.

Procedure
This section will outline the method I followed to gather information and help answer my
research question.
To answer my research question I created an eight-question survey that I sent out to
women enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors at the University
of Minnesota. The survey contained open-ended interview questions and Likert scale questions. I
made the survey using Google Forms and emailed participants with a link to the survey.
Participants filled out the interview questions along with brief background questions and the
results are sent back to me. The questions ask women about being discriminated against and
pressured in their field of study. See Appendix A for the interview questions.

A friend brought me in contact, via email, with a list of potential participants who fit the
criteria. She belongs to the Women in Science student group at UMN and helped me find women
willing to help me conduct my research.
To coincide with the primary source data, scholarly research articles will also be used to
help support the claim that women struggle balancing their gender and success.

Interviewees
All of the interviewees were women currently attending the University of Minnesota and
enrolled in STEM majors. Six women responded to my survey; their names and majors are listed
below.
Name

Gender

Tessa

Female

Miley

Female

Courtney

Female

Grace

Female

Same

Female

Victoria

Female

Major
Biomedical
Engineering

Year in school

Statistics

Junior

Biomedical
Engineering
Biomedical
Engineering
Biomedical
Engineering
Biomedical
Engineering

Senior

3rd year
Senior
Senior
Senior

Figure

Women and engineers and the struggles of being both

Women should be free to choose whichever career path they desire without facing
pressures and having to overcome struggles to succeed in the field they choose. However, society
still limits the scope of female achievement. Being an engineer is a job title and should not carry
4

any indication of a gender or gender role; female engineers should still be able to be viewed as
women who want to follow a career in engineering. Several of the women that I interviewed
mentioned the difficulties that come with being a female engineer, and they provided insight into
the daily struggles of balancing what society expects of women and what the STEM field expects
of engineers. The following sections contain the information gathered from the interviews.

Respect
Respect: a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their
abilities, qualities, or achievements (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). American society holds the
concept of respect in high esteem and often considers it to be mutually given between two parties
unless there is a reason for it to be lost. The women I interviewed presented a different
understanding of how they achieve respect due to their gender. When asked what struggles and
obstacles women in Stem face because of their gender (question 4) Sam responded with,
Garnering the respect of our peers, it takes much more time and effort. Finding the confidence
to speak up and voice our opinions in a room full of outspoken men. Respect should not take
time to earn and should not require confidence to speak up to receive it. The lack of respect for
women in STEM leads to another issue of women struggling to find a balance between what it
means to be a woman and future success.

The balancing act

Multiple interviewees stated that they struggle with finding a balance between their
gender identities and succeeding in their field. Society places a lot of pressure on women to
conform to certain ideals of beauty and what it means to be a woman, however the traits that
make a woman are looked down on in science and engineering. Sam told me that she struggles
with balancing the things that society expects of us as women (politeness, friendliness,

kindness, caring and nurturing) vs. the traits required to make it in a competitive industry
(confidence, assertiveness, ruthlessness etc.) that oftentimes conflict. This quote highlights the
feeling that a lot of the women expressed in their interviews; being a woman is not being an
engineer.
An article by Daiga Kamersade compares different approaches to reconciling the gender
inequality in science. Ones field of research into alleviating the gender inequality and pressure
placed on women in STEM is the, focus on individuals themselves, i.e. mainly on gender
differences in pupils' beliefs, values and goals. This approach implies that in order to promote
more girls (and women) in STEM, their values, goals and beliefs should be modified
(Kamersade, 2007). An easy solution to the problem of balancing a womans gender identity
and her career success would be to change her values and beliefs to fit into the mold that society
has made for success in engineering. I use the term solution with loosely because this does not
solve anything, and I would bet that the strong women that I interviewed would agree that it
would help limit the struggles they face but it will not make them change.

Victorias Story
This section tells the story of struggles faced by one of the interviewees. The last of my
interviews was with a senior biomedical engineering student, Victoria. When asked about the
struggles she had to face because of her gender identity as a woman she responded most
frequently about the concept of beauty. During job interviews Victoria has definitely felt
discriminated against because of her gender. If she walks in to the interview nicely dressed with
makeup on, what our society expects of women to be considered beautiful, she immediately feels
stereotyped if the interviewer is male. Whether or not the interviewer actually comments on her

wardrobe choice she gets the impression that they assume I spend my days shopping at the mall,
gossiping with my girlfriends, and know little in the field of science.
She often struggles with wanting to dress and look however she pleases and doing what
will give her the greatest opportunity for success, and often contemplates how to present herself
before a job interview. Victoria told me, Often, before an interview, I find myself wondering if I
should skip the makeup and hair routine, assuming the interviewer will take me more seriously if
it looks like I devote my life to my major. The science and engineering fields add struggles and
create limitations for women simply based on their choice of trying to conform to social
standards of beauty. Victoria also added that she felt, that beauty acts as a hindrance when
applying for jobs in the engineering field. Victoria and the other women in science and
engineering struggle to balance the different pressures placed on them from society and their
respective disciplines. The following section overviews current research into why women drop
out of the major due to these pressures.

Appearance
Wolffram, Derboven, and Winker, conducted a research study to understand why students
enrolled in science and engineering fields drop out. One of the main factors that caused women,
over men, to drop out of STEM majors was due to the difference between the types of women.
The women who fit more of the masculine gender-type were more likely to remain in the major
than more feminine women. The follow quote from the study helps to understand some of the
struggles the women I communicated with shared
However, right from the start, they experience that they look different to the other women and the
other women also let them know that they are different. The key sentence of these women is: "I
looked totally different to the other women; they all looked a bit like the guys". It follows that

they are socially excluded. That is very dramatic in technical degrees, because the students need
mutual academic support to get through their exams. And thus, social exclusion causes academic
exclusion at the same time (Wolffram, et al., 2009).

Patronization
The male-dominated fields of science, technology, engineering, and math gives power to
men that is unjust. Along with struggles of the physical nature women also must overcome the
assumption of their inadequacy simply for being a woman. Miley wrote that she actually does
not necessarily feel discriminated but definitely feels patronized in here statistics field. Miley
explained, People have assumed I don't know what I'm doing because of my gender, and
questioned my abilities more because of my gender, as though somehow her gender held an
association with skill level. The questioning of ability leads to the need to out perform male
counterparts to succeed.
The follow three sections all discuss different aspects of patronization the women of
science and engineering face.
Out Perform
Grace stated that she feels the pressure to succeed in the male-dominated field because of
the limited number of women in engineering and the stereotypes about them. She feels the
pressure to break the stereotypes for all women to prove their collective worth. Sam mentioned
that she will need to work harder than her male peers to get the same level of recognition because
she is a woman. The female STEM majors feel that they must first prove their worth before
being accepted.
Soft-Spoken

Miley helped me to understand the struggle that she feels as a woman in regards to
boisterous language. She stated, Sometimes I feel as though I have to be the quieter one in the
group, and watch myself not to speak out against men in my group often. Sam informed me that
she has also felt this pressure and feels the need to be polite and accommodating or be labeled a
bitch or unreasonable, in the sense that she cannot assert herself with be judged by her male
peers.
Clerical Role
From the interviews I conducted I also learned that when working in collaboration with
other students the woman in the group often gets pressured to preform the clerical or secretarial
roles in the group rather than receiving an opportunity to exercise the technical skills she has
learned alongside her male peers.

Statistical Responses
Figure 2 below shows the responses to question 9 (Society pushes women away from
science/engineering). The responses show a clear conclusion that the women studying STEM
majors feel pressured by society into thinking that they do not belong in their respective fields.
One-third of the women agree with the statement and one-third strongly agrees with the
statement that society pushes women away from science and engineering.

Society pushes women away from STEM

strongly agree; 33%

disagree; 33%

agree; 33%

Figure 2

The other side of the argument

Not all of the responses I received were women stating the pressures and struggles they
have faced; some of the women I interviewed stated they did not feel any pressures. The figure
above shows that two women disagreed with the claim that society pushes women away from
science and engineering. Tessa and Grace both responded that they do not feel discriminated
against in their field of biomedical engineering.
A study conducted in 2010 by Cech and Blair-Loy about women in STEM professions
discovered that the career and family circumstances of a woman affect their view of success in

10

these fields. Americans often rely on meritocratic ideologies to explain inequalities in labor
markets, however this study looked into structural factors limiting women in the science and
engineering fields. The study revealed that married woman, women with business education, and
those in top positions of their organizations are more likely to attribute the gender inequality to
deficiency in womens human capital or motivation, as compared to mothers, primary
breadwinners, sellers of professional services, and those working in unsupportive organizations
are more likely to claim structural factors limit women from succeeding in STEM (Cech and
Blair-Loy, 2010). The research from this study creates opportunity for social change if the
women for have managed to succeed in these fields view the limiting factors as structural instead
of doubting the merit of other women. Some women and men may only view the gender
inequality as a result of merit distribution, although the first-hand responses from women in the
field refute this claim.
Recently, after conducting the interview, Grace informed me of a situation she
encountered at her place of work where she told her major to a male coworker and he responded
by saying, Oh wow I didnt know girls could do that! I assumed you were an HR intern or
something! This experience altered her perspectives of gender discrimination in her field. To the
women who claim that they have not been the victims of discrimination, and that society does
not place pressure upon them, I am glad they are able to succeed without struggles based on their
gender. I would also like to counter that argument with the realization that discrimination against
women continues to be a problem and can occur at any point in a womans career, as the story
above emphasizes. Women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math struggle to
overcome patronization and find a balance between their gender identity and their ability to
succeed.

(word count: 2541)

11

References
Cech, E. A., & Blair-Loy, M. (2010). Perceiving glass ceilings? Meritocratic versus structural
explanations of gender inequality among women in science and technology. Social
Problems, 57, 371-397
Kamerasde, D. (2007). Shaping women or changing the system: Accounts of gender inequality in
science. Equal Opportunities International, 26, 162-170.
Wolffram, A., Derboven, W., & Winker, G. (2009). Women withdrawers in engineering
studies. Equal Opportunities International, 28, 36-49.

12

Appendix A
Interview Questions
This sections lists the interview questions used.
1. First name, major, year in school
2. Do you feel discriminated against in your field because of your gender?
3. What social pressures, if any, do you feel in the science/engineering field because of your
gender?
4. What struggles and obstacles, if any, do women in science/engineering face and based on
their gender?
5. Why do you think so few women are enrolled in engineering majors at the University of
Minnesota?
6. What struggles do you foresee in the science/engineering field based on your gender?
7. Have you ever thought of choosing a path that is more commonly associated with the
female gender? Why or why not?
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
8. Women receive as much pressure to avoid science/engineering from other women as they
do from men.
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
9. Society pushes women away from science/engineering.
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree

13