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There are those who say that boys are more adroit than girls at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). They are wrong! There are differences between the genders, but STEM aptitude is not one among them. It is, however, undeniable that men outnumber women in these fields at pre- sent, and that there still is a salary gap, nay a salary gash, that runs along the gender line. These inequities were not born of the differences in aptitude, but of the biases that laid the foundation of society. All of us—corporate executives, mentors, teachers, parents, siblings, and most importantly school-age girls and boys—must do our part to eliminate these biases.
In this article, I shine a glaring light on the existing gender bias and sexist attitude in STEM, explore the possible reasons why gender bias still exists in the 21st century, and offer some remedies that all of us can apply in our daily lives to eradicate gender bias from society.
I am going to cite some publicly available statistics in order to make my points that gender bias and sexist attitude are diffused throughout the various STEM fields. I am neither a statistician nor a fact checker. So, I am taking these published numbers at their face values. But even without resort to statistics, anyone can sense that gender bias exists not just in STEM but in society as a whole, as well. Gender bias in STEM is merely a reflection of that which exists in the greater society.
The clearest evidence of gender bias is the so-called “glass ceiling”—that invisible and unstated, but universally accepted, upper limit of achievement for female executives. Even in the more enlightened climate of 2015, only 4.6% of the CEO positions in the S&P 500 companies are held by women. [Women CEOs of the S&P 500, Catalyst, 2015]. That is, of the 500 world’s largest companies, only 23 are led by women. This gender bias against women is not confined to the top executive level, however; it starts at the entry level and per- vades throughout the entire corporate hierarchy. About 59% of the college-educated, entry-level work- force in the US is made up of women, but only 14.6% of the executives are women. [The women’s leadership gap, Center for American Progress, 2014]. So, it appears that somewhere between the entry level and the top level, disproportionate number of educated women are being denied their due promotions, in favour of their male colleagues. Women lag behind not only in promotions, but also in pay rises. In the US, only 8.1% of top earners are women. [Id]. This salary gap exists not just at the top, but at all ranks, and nationwide. US Women with graduate degrees earn a mere 69.1% of men with similar educational background. [New data on just how bad the gender pay gap is, Forbes, 2015].
When men are endowed with such impressive amounts of money and oppressive measures of power, it is no surprise that sexism is rampant in the corporate culture, especially in the technology sector, which appears to have more than its share of sexual harassment lawsuits. [Silicon Valley is cool and powerful. But where are the women?, The Observer, 2015]. In Silicon Valley technology companies, just 11% of executives are women. [Id]. Although it is not surprising, this disparity is disturbing, nonethe- less. Moreover, only 20% of the Silicon Valley technical staff are women. [Id]. This is the place where being a technologist is the prerequisite for the top job. And what is true of Silicon Valley is true of worldwide IT. So, it appears that the odds of becoming the chief executive heavily disfavour women, from the very beginning of their careers in IT. Perhaps the sexist corporate culture and the obvious gender bias are to blame for this palpable lack of female participation in IT.
Sexism is not endemic to the top brass of Silicon Valley, however. In the gaming industry, the majority of ordinary gamers are males, and many of them are blatently hostile toward the female gamers in online gaming communities, sometimes even inciting violence against them. [5 charts that show sexism is still alive and well in gaming, Tech.Mic, 2015]. No game publishing house is led by a female CEO, and only 22% of game developers are women. [Id]. Furthermore, it does not require the trained eyes of a sociologist to see that female game characters are overtly and gratuitously sexual.
Academia fares no better, either. Recently, Sir Richard Timothy Hunt, a renowned British scientist and a Nobel laureate, in a speech given at the World Conference of Science Journalists promoted the idea of gender-segregated workplace, because female scientists working in laboratories “fall in love with [the male scientist], and when [he criticises] them, they cry.” [A nobel scientist just made a breathtakingly sexist speech at international conference, Time, 2015]. That is quite a thing to say for a man of science.
There are subtler forms of sexism, as well. In January 2014, Ms. Mary Barra, a long-time executive who joined GM in the 1980s as a young electrical engineer, took over the reins of GM as the CEO. A few weeks after, news broke that millions of GM cars had been manufactured with faulty ignition switches that can accidentally disable the steering, the brakes, and the airbags; that several hundred deaths may have resulted from this fault; and that GM knew about this problem as early as 2004. [GM recall: 10 things you need to know, CNN Money, 2014]. The ensuing recall was a major disaster for GM, both in terms of publicity and profits. It took ten years and many deaths before GM was obliged to issue the massive recall. [Id]. I am no conspiracy theorist, but the sudden appearance in the news of a decade-old problem seems too well-timed to be a mere coincidence with Ms. Barra’s ascendance. As such, I am inclined to view this incident as an instance of gender bias in the corporate world and in the news media, a strain of bias that could be categorised as a subtle form of sexism.
Gender bias is real, especially in STEM fields. But why? First, there is this ill informed, but long- standing, social bias, which overtly or covertly steers many young women away from STEM studies, so fewer women end up choosing STEM careers. Secondly, the biased society is ill equipped to cope with the increasingly equalised gender roles, and it actively or passively shunts many high-achieving women off the executive track. Thirdly, the society is still hanging on to the Palaeolithic notion that raising a child is primarily the responsibility of the woman, instead of owning up to the truth that raising a child is, and has always been, the responsibility of the entire family, and indeed that of the whole village. Whatver the cause fewer women entering and remaining in STEM fields means fewer female candi- dates for the top posts, and these few candidates who do remain must further suffer the indignity of the glass ceiling.
The incompatibility between the modern business climate and the antiquated notion of business hours is another souce of problem. In corporate America, business hours can be either flexible or firm, depend- ing on the boss’s mood. Today, a typical boss expects an immediate reply to his 02:00 urgent email. He may well be justified in his expectations, because in this globalised economy, the business hour is from 00:00 to 24:00, seven days a week. But the trouble is this. This boss has no qualms about your fulfilling his predawn demand by performing a minor miracle from your bedroom. But he is decidedly reticent to allow you and your team to work remotely from home, during the hours between 09:00 and 17:00, the so-called business hours, the notion passed down to him by his 19th century male predeces- sors, who never envisioned a twenty-four-hour workday. And in the same breath with which he denied your request to work from home, your boss blithely converses via a videoconference with an outsourced team located in a faraway time zone. The outsourced team, by its very nature, is a remote workforce. He trusts the outsourced team to work unsupervised, but not your team. Singular, he is.
This anachronistic notion of business hours conspires with an equally outmoded practice of keeping the school hours from 08:00 to 15:00. In the mornings, parents are obliged to rouse their young children from bed at an ungodly hour, drop them off at school well before the bell, then fight the traffic jam to reach work on time. And pray tell what is “on time,” these days? No, not 09:00; it is 07:30. You see, many lower-ranked team members have to gather for a meeting at 07:30 daily for at least several minutes, so that they can present to their immediate supervisor a detailed analysis of the problems that may have cropped up during the night such as security breach, server outage, overseas supply chain breakage, unplanned absence of a team member due to illness, and so forth. This supervisor must, in turn, report the issues up to his superior, and thence up the chain of command. This way, the big boss can have his crisp, two-minute summary with his hot, morning Earl Grey, when he arrives at 09:00, sharp. For this, many children have to endure before-school day care, ahead of the 08:00 bell. And what are young children to do when they are let out of school in the middle of the day, when all the adults in the household are at work and will be so for the next several hours? Well, they end up in after- school day care, of course.
This is an untenable situation for many families. It forces people to make choices between their careers and their children. Which parent stays home to care for the children is a foregone conclusion, given the well-established salary gap. So, many women are obliged to drop out of the workforce, the moment a child is born.
Even if the woman returns to work after childbirth, she faces many potential hurdles. A few weeks absence from work is more than sufficient time for a metamorphosis of the workplace political structure: a male co-worker, who has never taken a maternity leave in his career, may have been promoted past her; her political opponents may have succeeded in closing down the project she was spearheading, before she went on leave; her boss may have retired during her absence and was replaced by a stranger, with whom she must now begin to build a rapport, whereas her male co-workers have had weeks of head start. Indeed, her troubles may have begun much earlier. During the first trimester, she may have suffered a servere bout of morning sickness, which may have affected her productivity. Later in her pregnancy, she would naturally be less active than her usual self. All of this could have influnced her co-workers, perhaps unconsciously, to view her reduced productivity in a negative light. All women who have the audacity to become mothers face these problems. Very few men ever encounter such issues: they are those who volunteer to fight in defence of their country. When a fighting man ends his tour of duty and returns to work, he is welcomed back as a hero that he is. But when a new mother returns to work after having performed one of the most daring feats of nature, her co-workers may give her a collective cold shoulder.
There are other difficulties, too. Some women are less aggressive than their colleagues. So are some men. When a man is unaggressive, his quiet demeanour is perceived by his co-workers as a strength of character. But when a woman is courteous, her affability is universally interpreted as a lack of resolve. Some women are just as aggressive as some of their male counterparts. When a man is aggressive, he is viewed as a decisive leader. When a woman is aggressive, she is deemed a difficult person to work with.
So, a modern-day female professional accepts the hand Nature dealt her, and she battles the biased society and the sexist co-workers, in order to make headway in her career. And to this mix, she willingly adds the responsibilities of motherhood. I can only imagine the sort of miracles a single mother per- forms, daily.
There is a simple first step that the companies could take to eradicate gender bias in workplace. They should adopt a flexible remote-work policy. In today’s permanently connected world that runs on a globalised economy, the centralised workplace is as out of place as the eight-hour workday. Besides, when it comes to productivity, presence and punctuality cannot substitute for process and prudence. A flexible work schedule will promote gender equality not only at work, but also at home. Both parents will then be able to share the familial responsibilities as Nature intends, without sacrificing one or the other’s career or income. If women are not obliged to abandon their careers early on, there will be more female candidates for senior-level positions, thus levelling the playing field. Once the corporate world manages to stamp out gender disparities in its ranks thusly, the glass ceiling and the salary gap will cease to exist. And this equitable culture may flow out into the greater society. This may be easier said than done, but we must start somewhere. The status quo is intolerable.
So, what about societal inequities? Well, we all—corporate executives, college professors, high school teachers, parents, and most importantly young girls and boys alike—must work diligently to achieve the common goal of gender equality. Federal laws and corporate policies do bring about improvements in the short term. But they go only so far. Like racism, sexism can only be eliminated if the society itself desires so. To achieve that end, parents and teachers must promote collaboration across the gender lines from a young age. A six-year-old boy’s refusal to play with his female classmates may seem like an amusing quirk to some. But such conduct, if left unchecked, could lead to a twenty-six-year-old man refusing to collaborate with his female colleagues. So, parents of young children should instill respect for the classmates of opposite gender. Attitude of mutual respect thus inculcated would be carried into workplace, years hence.
Among parents, teachers, and school-age children, there is an encouraging trend of changing attitudes toward gender role equalisation, at least when it comes to familial responsibilities and pursuit of STEM studies. But the business world is woefully lagging, still. The key reason for this disparity is the present corporate culture that demands strict adherence to the clock and blind devotion to the old-boys’ net- work. These corporate executives would do well to realise that to slight a woman is to disparage her family and to insult her community. Bigotry bears no good fruit for society.
This article is unusual in the STEM/π series in that it deals exclusively with gender equality, a topic that seems to have no relation to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, and certainly not to the Raspberry Pi. But upon reflection, it is plain to see that gender equality is the most important topics in STEM, because it is the one that could have the greatest impact on the future of STEM.
In closing, I must make it absolutely clear that despite the depressing state of affairs, not every man in STEM is a sexist. Indeed, I dare say that the majority are not. But if the few men who are in positions of power let themselves be persuaded by their gender biases, and if we countenance sexism in our everday lives, this illness will persist. The best that we ordinary members of the STEM community can do is to admit that gender bias is pervasive in our field, and endeavour to rectify the problem at home, at school, and at work.