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Arely Alvarez

Professor Batty

English 101

29 May 2019

Calling Out for Women In STEM

At Los Angeles Valley College, females make up more of the population than males, and

yet, there is significantly less females in the STEM population. Through the course of time, the

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program has been a male-dominated field

resulting in there being a lack of female student representation in STEM. There is currently a

mentorship program in Los Angeles Valley’s STEM program, PASO (Promoting Awareness of

STEM Opportunities), which seeks to meet the needs of aspiring stem students.

However, its main purpose is to serve the overall STEM community, and not just focus

on the smaller needed population of women in STEM, creating a lack of representation of

females in the overall field. There are also many female STEM figures that have not been told

throughout STEM’s history. Females are more social and work best in groups, leading to them to

work better under the guidance of a female. Having a mentorship program to guide and

encourage female STEM students will greatly benefit them and the community. Although there

is a STEM program, there is not one focusing solely on female STEM students. Los Angeles

Valley College has to put in more effort to this needed small population. Despite PASO, having a

mentorship program catered to women here at Los Angeles Valley College would improve the

success of females students in the difficult STEM field which would help reduce the lack of
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representation, bring light to lost female figures, and the environment mindset of Los Angeles

Valley College.

I do acknowledge that there are programs at Los Angeles Valley College that help its

STEM students. The STEM program at Valley is called PASO, and its focus is on the overall

STEM community; not solely just women. PASO has STEM-related events like Pi Day, along

with a mentorship program, and there are twenty three mentors in all of the STEM departments

offered at Valley (STEM), and have their own counselor. They also hold tutoring hours for the

students in the program, and do their best to help the existing STEM students. It is not PASO’s

fault that women are not applying to the program as anybody is welcome. PASO’s door are

always open, and males hold a bigger share of the STEM department because they are the only

ones that apply.

However, there is still a lack of representation of females in the overall STEM field.

Unfortunately, when people think of doctors or astrophysicist, they often associate the job with a

man. The lack of representation is shown numerically. In an interview with the STEM counselor

Kassidy Miller, conducted by Arely Alvarez, Miller says “Many women in STEM feel as if they

are isolated and alone.” They feel like they have no one pushing them or guiding them - that

feeling of being on their own is intimidating. When we look at the data, females in the stem

department “make up less than 30%” (Miller) of the population. Which is significant when the

numbers also show that in the population at LAVC there are “57.28% of women and 47.72% of

men” (LAVC) To show further evidence that women are the minority of the STEM group, the

student profile shows the major Computer Science “females are 30.81% and males are 69.18%”

(LAVC) of the population. Computer Science is increasing in popularity,but the female to male
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ratio stays the same. The majority group on campus is still the minority group in STEM at

LAVC.

There are women in history that have been hidden from textbooks that have done

amazing things. In an article by Lindsay Rohland in the Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia

about Katherine Johnson, she states that Johnson “...work[ed] as a "human computer" for NASA

in the 1950s and 1960s, Katherine Johnson performed calculations for missions that sent an

astronaut into orbit around Earth and successfully landed humans on the moon”. Johnson had an

extremely important job in NASA, since her calculations where vital in keeping those astronauts

alive. Yet, she was forgotten in both history books and textbooks. Her story was not told until

nearly seventy-six years later in 2016, when the movie ​Hidden Figures surfaced, which sparked

up conversations of her amazing work and angered many on how long it took for us to hear her

story. As people move past this stigma of having men at the forefront of STEM fields, the

hurdles that women have to face while going through these unchartered waters are being noted.

There are many more stories of women in STEM that are lost in a male-dominated field.

Like many college students, I can speak from experience in that I also did not know where

to start in my STEM career. My major, Psychology, is in a gray area where it can be considered

either Humanities or STEM. Without a guided path, I would have been lost and not have known

what classes to take. Yet, I do not have an understanding in what direction I should go other than

what courses to take. And while there are counselors to help find classes and to tell us that there

are internships, counselors often hand over a list but give no further specific guidance. This also

leads students to question what internships would better suit their needs or questions like “Is

there someone I could talk to that has the job I am considering?” Counselors do a great job, but
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they can only help part of the way. Having a STEM mentorship for women would greatly benefit

not just me, but others going through what I am going through. A STEM mentorship program

could grow further and help more students; not just female STEM students. Female STEM

students need more guidance through these thick woods, and having a mentorship program

would clear the path and benefit the whole STEM community.

Females are more social and work best in groups. In an article titled “Female Peers in

Small Work Groups Enhance Women's Motivation, Verbal Participation, and Career Aspirations

in Engineering,” by Nilanjana Dasgupta, Melissa McManus Scircle, and Matthew Hunsingerc,

the authors state that “Women participate more actively in engineering groups when members

are mostly female vs. mostly male or in equal gender proportions,” females feel less intimidated

with other females. Like in the workplace, the lack of females in each classroom affect their

participation, and females can feel isolated and/or intimidated by other male classmates. It is

human nature that, when there aren’t others that look like them, they feel as if they do not

belong, and this will cause students to drop out of classes since they do not feel like they belong.

This gives women the feeling like they can not do it, when in fact, they can. By having a

mentorship program guiding female STEM students, they will see others that look like them. It

will create a movement that would raise the female STEM demographic.

In summary, having a mentorship program guiding female STEM students would benefit Los

Angeles Valley College. It would also give Valley a more appealing look by making it more

welcoming to female STEM students. Since more women in STEM are needed, a mentorship

program would help lessen the gender gap in the STEM field. Times are changing, and the world

is changing and adapting. The biggest changes start with education; with its students. It is time
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for Los Angeles Valley College to be part of the growing movement and push for mentorships

for women in STEM.

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Works Cited

Dasgupta, Nilanjana, et al. “Female Peers in Small Work Groups Enhance Women's Motivation,

Verbal Participation, and Career Aspirations in Engineering.” ​Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America​, National Academy of

Sciences, 21 Apr. 2015, ​www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4413283/​.

“LAVC Student Profile.” ​Los Angeles Valley College,​ lavc.edu/research/FB.aspx.

Miller, Kassidy. Personal interview. 20 Feb. 2019.

Rohland, Lindsay. “Katherine Johnson.” ​Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia,​ 2017.

EBSCOhost​,​library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=tru

e&db=ers&AN=125600082&site=eds-live.

STEM Home: Los Angeles Valley College​, www.lavc.edu/stem/index.aspx.