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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

people, rather than a tool.

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

women in these fields, as previously mentioned.

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

more to males than females.

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.