The STEM Gender Gap

Introduction

Danielle Richey, a Lockheed Martin software engineer, helps middle school student Kayla Burby design a splashdown recovery system for the Orion spacecraft that Lockheed is helping to build for NASA. The two teamed up at the Girls Exploring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (GESTEM) event hosted by the Society of Women Engineers in Denver in 2016. Researchers say such hands-on programs could help reduce the gender gap in STEM fields. (Cover: Getty Images/The Denver Post/Andy Cross)

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Overview

After 30 years working at the renowned Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, biologist Katherine Jones decided she had put up long enough with what she described in court documents as the institute's “old boys club” culture.

“The Salk Institute, dominated by males with overtly and hopelessly outdated chauvinistic mentalities, promotes, encourages and rewards only males at the expense of female scientists, who — small in number — are only reluctantly tolerated for public appearance reasons,” Jones said in a gender discrimination lawsuit she filed against the California research facility in July 2017.1

Two other tenured professors at Salk, cell biologist Vicki Lundblad and molecular biologist Beverly Emerson, filed similar lawsuits the same month. They accused Salk of paying them less than the institute's 28 tenured male professors, promoting them at slower rates and shortchanging them on lab funding because of their gender.

The institute denied the claims, and in August it settled the suits filed by Jones and Lundblad on undisclosed terms. The suit by Emerson, who left Salk in December when her contract was not renewed, is moving forward.2

Women working in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) jobs at institutes like Salk and at universities and tech companies across the country are more likely than women in other fields to say they have been victims of gender discrimination, studies show. Researchers say that helps explain a wide and persistent gender gap in STEM fields, including in many jobs that economists say are key to keeping the United States globally competitive.

Olivia Ivy, 10, of Malden, Mass., watches as female scientists dissect a dogfish shark at the New England Aquarium in Boston in September 2017. Advocates for closing the gender gap in STEM say K-12 schools should make special efforts to interest girls in math and science. (Getty Images/The Boston Globe/Jessica Rinaldi)

But to what extent discrimination accounts for gender disparities in STEM is a matter of debate among experts who study the issue. While many say bias, harassment and cultural stereotyping demand an immediate and strong response from STEM employers and educators, others attribute at least some of the gender gap to educational or career choices that women themselves make.

Women account for about 47 percent of the U.S. workforce and receive about the same number of undergraduate degrees as men but receive only 30 percent of STEM degrees and hold only about a quarter of the nation's jobs in those fields, according to the most recent federal figures.

“While women continue to make gains across the broader economy, they remain underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders,” the U.S. Department of Commerce said in a report last year.3

Economists say women's lagging participation in STEM careers denies society important scientific and technological advances that a more diverse workforce would provide. “The lack of women in science and innovation fields … suggests that the economy is missing out on important potential for productivity growth,” said Jay Shambaugh, a senior fellow in economics studies, and Becca Portman, then a senior research assistant, both at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.4

Female students do as well or better than their male classmates in high school and college classwork in math and science, while males tend to do better on the math section of standardized tests such as the SAT. However, only 6.7 percent of women graduate from college with a STEM-related degree, compared to 17 percent of men.5

Among men and women with a STEM degree, women are much more likely to pursue a career in an unrelated field — such as education or health care — even though college graduates with science, data, math or engineering skills have more job opportunities and typically earn more money.6

The STEM gender gap varies, according to Labor Department statistics. Women hold only 16 percent of the nation's engineering jobs, 21 percent of computer programming jobs, 25 percent of math-related jobs and 38 percent of jobs in chemistry. No gap exists in the broad biology and medical science fields, where women make up more than half of the workforce.7

Expanding the ranks of women in STEM jobs would help meet growing demand for employees with science and technology skills. Over the next six years, demand will be high in geoscience, atmospheric and space science, biochemistry, petroleum engineering, civil engineering, information security analysis, web development, statistics and mathematics.8

By 2024, the number of STEM jobs is projected to increase by about 8.9 percent over 2014 levels, compared to an increase of 6.4 percent for non-STEM jobs, according to government estimates. By 2030, the country is expected to face a net shortage of 962,000 tech workers. Already, jobs in data science and analytics remain open an average of 45 days, five days longer than the average for all jobs. Some companies, including Google and Oracle, are investing in initiatives designed to increase the number of women pursuing a STEM career.9

But STEM employers often have trouble just keeping the female workers they have. Women in engineering, technology and other STEM-related occupations leave those jobs much more frequently than men, a phenomenon researchers refer to as STEM's “leaky pipeline.” Women quit tech jobs, for example, at about twice the rate of men.10

Workplace harassment and discrimination are at least partly to blame, researchers say, although they disagree about whether other factors, including women's level of interest in STEM work, are as influential.

“Sexual harassment is a serious issue for women at all levels in academic science, engineering and medicine,” concluded a report published in June by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a group of private institutions in Washington that functions as a top national resource for scientific research. “Such environments can silence and limit the career opportunities in the short and long terms for both the targets of the sexual harassment and the bystanders — with at least some leaving their field.”11

Half of women in STEM jobs say they have experienced gender-based discrimination at work, compared to 41 percent of women in non-STEM jobs, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last year and released in January.12 At some workplaces, scholars say, that discrimination takes the form of decisions by STEM employers not to offer paid maternity leave or otherwise accommodate young female workers who want to combine work with raising a family.

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“We keep getting the message that women have succeeded, you know, hey, it is over, the battle doesn't exist anymore,” says Pamela Dingman, the first woman elected to serve as a county engineer in Nebraska. “The reality is, it is not over. We still do fight gender bias and gender discrimination every day.”

Many men in STEM fields — and even some women — believe women are less well-suited than men in math, science and other STEM fields, researchers say. That view came into sharp focus in August last year when James Damore, then an engineer at Google, released a highly controversial 10-page memo attributing the gender gap in tech jobs to basic personality differences between men and women, including a higher degree of “neuroticism” among women.13

Women say discrimination also helps explain why they earn an average of 16 percent less than men in STEM fields. (The gender wage gap in non-STEM jobs is even higher, at 19 percent.)14

But some gender-equality scholars say discrimination is only one reason women are underrepresented in STEM jobs. Another major factor, they say, is that women and girls tend to be more interested in other careers.

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“Women are choosing to do different things,” psychologist Wendy Williams, a professor of human development at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., said last year. “Everyone doesn't want to be an electrical engineer or to do computer science, and that's not a failure or flaw.”15

Some studies blame cultural conditioning for the STEM gender gap, saying young girls are exposed as early as elementary school to stereotypes that devalue their potential to master math and science and teach them that STEM jobs are more suitable for men.

“Unconscious gender bias is a significant barrier to girls’ progress in STEM,” the American Association of University Women, a group in Washington that works to empower women, says on its website. “Early education plays a critical role for girls’ development, setting the stage for their level of interest, confidence and achievements, particularly in STEM.”16

Research on women's participation in STEM-related education and work reveals that:

• Women's share of bachelor's degrees in computer science, one of the fastest-growing job categories in the country, has fallen to 17.5 percent from a peak in 1984 of 37 percent.17

• The proportion of women with a STEM degree who work in a related occupation fell from 26 percent to 23 percent between 2009 and 2015.18

• Women held only 21.7 percent of the technical jobs at 60 top companies in 2016, up less than 1 percentage point from 2011.19

Some advocates say that changing how science, technology and math courses are taught in high school can make a difference. Schools that actively recruited girls to STEM subjects, for example, had higher rates of female graduates who declared an intention to study those fields in college, according to a study published in 2014 by researchers at New York University and Columbia University.

“The gender gap in STEM B.A.s would be reduced by about 25 percent if all schools encouraged girls to study science and engineering at the same rates as the top third of schools,” the researchers said.20

Advocates for closing the STEM gender gap say that helping girls build confidence in math, science and computer skills increases the chance they will become role models. “If more girls are successful in STEM fields, then the next generation will be able to envision themselves as scientists or engineers, and more and more girls will be willing to go into more male-dominated fields,” said Emily Tomashek, a chemical engineering major at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.21

But the culture of discrimination and harassment that pervades many STEM workplaces also must change, researchers say.

Lawsuits like those targeting the Salk Institute may help accomplish that, according to legal experts. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Qualcomm have faced similar suits in recent years. “One of the results of these suits is [that] people who haven't been sued begin to re-examine their gender policies,” said Wendy Patrick, a lawyer and business ethics professor at San Diego State University.22

As researchers and advocates for women study the causes and effects of the gender imbalance in STEM-related careers, here are some of the questions they are asking:

Should schools teach STEM subjects differently to help close the gender gap?

Advocates for boosting women's participation in STEM careers say the key is to encourage girls’ interest in math, science and computers at an early age.

“There is research that shows girls are less confident in areas like math and science than their male counterparts,” says Roberta Rincon, senior manager for research at the Society of Women Engineers in Chicago. Classrooms, she says, have an important role in making STEM fields more appealing. “How do we increase girls’ interest in pursuing these fields and studying these areas? By increasing their confidence.”

One way to do that is to make girls more comfortable taking science tests, according to a September 2017 report by McKinsey & Co., a global management consulting firm in New York. McKinsey analyzed test-taking data on male and female high school students in the United States and Canada and concluded that girls are more likely to experience anxiety when taking science tests.

“Girls have the building blocks, in terms of academic outcomes and positive motivation mindsets, for STEM careers,” the study said. “If interventions were made to decrease their sense of anxiety and increase their enjoyment of science, the outcome might well be more female STEM professionals.”23

Some research, however, suggests that changing how STEM subjects are taught will not help close the gender gap in science and technology professions. A study published in February in Psychological Science, for example, concluded that high school girls who outperform boys on science tests but whose strongest subject is reading tend to choose a non-STEM career, based on their “personal academic strengths.”24

“The fact is that men and women say they want to do different types of jobs,” says Gijsbert Stoet, a psychologist at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom and co-author of the study. “If you're interested in increasing the happiness of a society, you have to accept that men and women do different things.” Changing the way the subjects are taught in order to encourage more girls won't change their interests, he says.

Studies have found that girls and boys absorb cultural stereotypes at an early age. By age 6, “girls were prepared to lump more boys into the ‘really, really smart’ category and to steer themselves away from games intended for the ‘really, really smart,’” according to research published last year by professors at the University of Illinois, New York University and Princeton University. Such stereotypes discourage women's pursuit of many prestigious careers, the researchers said.25

Susan Wojcicki (left), CEO of YouTube, and her sister Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of the genetics testing company 23andMe, attend a conference hosted by investment firm Allen & Co. in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July. Female executives are rare in the male-dominated tech world. (Getty Images/Drew Angerer)

Interest in STEM subjects is high among girls in middle school but decreases sharply in high school, according to a 2016 study by Accenture, a global management consulting company in New York, and Girls Who Code, a nonprofit that seeks to close the gender gap in technology.

The study said that “sparking the interest of girls in junior high school [and] sustaining their commitment in high school where early gains are often lost” could help more than triple the number of women working in computer science by 2025. The study's authors recommended teaching young girls to code and emphasizing the fun side of working with computers.26

Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif., increased the share of women graduating from its computing program from 12 percent in 2009 to 58 percent this year, school officials say. It accomplished that by dividing the school's introductory computer course into two sections (based on experience level), allowing undergraduates to conduct research after their first year of studies and taking female students to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, the largest annual gathering of women in computer science. Hopper helped build one of the world's first computers while serving in the Navy during World War II.

School officials say they also increased the introductory computer course's focus on “a broad range of computational methods to solve real-world problems (including programming) and homework [that] involved a lot of team-based projects.”

Even the way classrooms are decorated can affect girls’ interest in technology, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found in a 2015 study. The researchers showed high school students photos of two different classrooms. One was decorated with posters from the television show “Star Trek,” along with tech magazines and computer parts, while the other was decorated with plants and nature posters. Girls were 20 percentage points more likely than boys to express interest in taking computer science in the classroom that was not decorated with items stereotypically associated with technology.

“Changes to the physical classroom environment could be used to attract girls to computer science without deterring boys in the process,” the researchers concluded.27

But tailoring high school math and science courses to appeal to girls will not, by itself, achieve gender parity in STEM professions, many experts say. Tech firms also need to do more to recruit and retain female workers — and to end the culture of chauvinisim and harassment at many STEM workplaces, said Carol Tang, head of the California Girls in STEM Collaborative, which works with organizations across the country to advocate for girls in math and science.

“If you're a parent, do you really want to send your bright, precious daughter into that sort of environment? Most parents would say no,” Tang said.28

Are discrimination and sexual harassment the primary reasons for the gender gap in STEM?

Some of the women who conducted research in Antarctica with David Marchant, a highly respected geology professor at Boston University (BU), described his behavior as beyond abusive.

“His taunts, degrading comments about my body, brain and general inadequacies never ended,” Hillary Tulley, one of Marchant's former graduate students, said in a 2016 letter to Boston University supporting a discrimination complaint filed by Jane Willenbring, another former BU graduate student. In that complaint, Willenbring said Marchant threw rocks at her and called her a “slut,” prompting her to move to another university. Another woman said she dropped her career plans after Marchant threatened to make sure she never received grant funding.

“I distinctly remember standing there, aghast … watching my career and life plans dissolve as Dr. Marchant smiled triumphantly at me,” the woman said in her complaint to the university. The allegations were first reported by Science magazine.29

Marchant has denied the accusations. In November, Boston University officials fired him after an internal investigation concluded he had sexually harassed Willenbring. In October, the U.S. House Space, Science and Technology Committee opened an investigation into the claims against Marchant, who has received millions in federal grant money.30 Committee officials said the probe was still in progress as of Aug. 30.

Harassment and discrimination targeting women in STEM fields are among the top reasons women leave those fields or never pursue them in the first place, many researchers say. “The more often women are sexually harassed … the more they think about leaving (and some do ultimately leave),” the June report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said.31

Almost half of women in STEM jobs (48 percent) say gender discrimination in recruitment, hiring and promotions is a major reason there are not more women working in those fields, according to the Pew study released in January.32

But some experts say gender discrimination is overrated as a reason for the gender gap in STEM fields. They say women and men simply have different career interests. “People assume there is a gender imbalance because of discrimination,” says psychologist Stoet at Leeds Beckett University. “That might have been the case 40 or 50 years ago, but it's probably not the case today.”

Stoet said his research supports the theory that girls in high school decide whether to pursue a career in STEM based on “a seemingly rational choice to pursue academic paths that are a personal strength.”33

No one disputes that many women working in STEM fields are often victimized by discrimination and harassment. The Kapor Center for Social Impact in Oakland, Calif., which works to increase diversity in the tech industry, said in a report last year that a sense of being treated unfairly is the No. 1 reason tech workers leave their jobs. “Women of all backgrounds experienced and observed significantly more unfair treatment overall than men,” the study said.34

Some research also shows that women in STEM fields experience discrimination in hiring and pay. When male and female faculty members in biology, chemistry and physics departments at six research universities were asked to evaluate a resume from an applicant named Jennifer and the same resume from an applicant named John, they gave the resume from Jennifer significantly lower ratings, according to a landmark 2012 study by researchers at Yale University. “Female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student,” the study's authors said.35

Women who become pregnant or have children at a crucial stage in their STEM career also may face discrimination, and in fact are sometimes told to drop out of their programs, some researchers say. “Pregnant undergraduates and graduate students are frequently told that their only option is to withdraw from their programs, with no guarantee of readmission,” Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, and Kate Massinger, a writer at the center, wrote in 2016. “One reason the [STEM] pipeline leaks,” they said, “is that women are harassed out of science.”36

Researchers at the University of California and the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, found that 41 percent of women who had children after receiving a doctorate abandoned their plans for a career in science, largely because of family-unfriendly policies at their workplaces, such as no paid maternity leave, no lactation rooms and general unwillingness to accommodate the needs of young mothers. The researchers called such policies “an unintended form of discrimination against women.”37

“I often had meetings scheduled outside of childcare hours, had travel expectations, and heavy workloads were not decreased,” said one woman who left her engineering job to work part-time as a consultant in the field.38

Williams at Cornell University and her husband, Stephen Ceci, also a researcher at Cornell, said that even just planning to have children in the future causes women to leave demanding, math-intensive research jobs twice as often as men. But they did not link that trend to discrimination. “Women are making active decisions to leave academia in a world that juxtaposes biologically determined fertility opportunity with the period of critical, early career growth,” Williams said.39

Overall, women working in math-intensive science fields are promoted at the same rate as men “and are more likely to be interviewed and hired in the first place,” they said. A study by Williams and Ceci that asked male and female science faculty members at colleges and universities to choose between fictional male and female job applicants with identical qualifications found that faculty members chose the female applicants twice as often.

“Many female graduate students worry that hiring bias is inevitable,” the two Cornell researchers said. “But the facts tell a different story.”40

Is increasing the number of women in STEM fields important?

Closing the gender gap in STEM professions would benefit individual companies as well as society as a whole, according to many researchers.

“The fact that women are not entering [STEM] fields of study or working in these sectors and occupations means that talent is being misused and that economies are less productive than they could be,” Ana Maria Munoz-Boudet, a senior World Bank social scientist, wrote in March. In addition, she said, greater gender parity in STEM fields would help correct the overall gap in pay between men and women in all professions, since STEM jobs tend to pay more.41

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In May, investment bank Morgan Stanley released a report saying that boosting gender diversity improves the financial performance of tech companies even more than at other kinds of companies. “For technology in particular the link between gender diversity and performance is real,” the report said.42

But focusing too much on gender parity in STEM jobs could end up leading companies to choose job applicants based on gender over individual merit — and missing out on the best candidates, some scholars say.

Excessive pressure to balance the numbers of men and women in STEM fields runs the risk of subordinating individual merit “to the mania over group equality,” according to George Leef, director of editorial content for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative think tank in Raleigh, N.C.

Government initiatives aimed at ensuring women's access to STEM fields, for example, could prompt engineering schools to reject highly qualified male applicants in favor of less-qualified female applicants, Leef said. “Equalizing the number of men and women in the STEM fields will not make society any fairer or better,” he added.43

Advocates for closing the gender gap in STEM professions counter that women are key to avoiding future shortages of college-educated science, technology, engineering and math workers. They also say sexual harassment and other factors that cause women to drop out of STEM fields often have economic consequences for society at large.

“Sexual harassment of [female] professors, students or postdoc employees … is profligate as public policy,” said Williams and Massinger at the Center for WorkLife Law. “Once those girls reach the final stages of their education — after dedicating over two decades of study — we lose them. The sunk cost of training a postdoc, conservatively, is $500,000 — much of it public funds.”44

The STEM gender gap also has financial consequences for individual women. A 2017 study by University of Missouri researchers said the lack of diversity among senior STEM faculty members at public universities is a major reason that female STEM faculty members at those schools are paid less than their male counterparts. It also said female students who might be interested in a STEM career lack role models among faculty members, so they “may be nudged toward lower-paying, non-STEM fields.”

“If an aim of diversifying the faculty is to promote better long-term outcomes for underrepresented students, targeted efforts to increase diversity in STEM fields may need to be an explicit objective,” the researchers said.45

The push for greater gender parity in STEM professions has sparked protests from some men working in the tech industry, including Damore, the tech engineer who was fired by Google over his memo criticizing the company's diversity efforts. “The whole idea that diversity improves workplace output, it's not scientifically decided that that's true,” he said. In January, he sued Google over his firing, saying the company discriminates against white, conservative men.46

Damore's attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, criticized tech companies that have adopted hiring policies rewarding managers with bonuses for boosting the number of women they hire. “That's illegal,” she said.47

James Altizer, an engineer at Nvidia, a tech company in Santa Clara, Calif., agreed with Damore that programs to increase gender parity in STEM fields have gone too far and unfairly demonize male STEM workers. “It's a witch hunt,” he said last year. “When you're discussing gender issues [in the tech industry], it's almost religious, the response. It's almost zealotry.”48

Some researchers have said that special efforts aimed at boosting the share of women in the STEM workforce are misguided, because the gender gap in STEM professions is largely the result of choices that individual women freely make.

“So why should we encourage more females? Everybody has a free will to pursue,” says Ming-Te Wang, a developmental psychologist and an associate professor of psychology and education at the University of Pittsburgh. Many careers, he says, are dominated by one gender. Elementary school teachers, for example, are overwhelmingly female. “We never see that as a problem, so why be selective in gender disparities in different fields?” he says. “We have to make sure the environment is good for both genders.”

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Background

Education Barriers

History offers numerous examples of young women who worked to overcome cultural and other forces to pursue careers in science, math and medicine.

In 1794, for example, 18-year-old Sophie Germain, determined to study advanced mathematics, assumed the identity of a male student to enroll in the École Polytechnique, a male-only research institution near Paris. A professor, after recognizing Germain's talent and discovering her secret, agreed to tutor her.49

Germain spent the rest of her life studying prime numbers (a category of which is named for her) and other aspects of mathematics and contributed to the mathematical theories that enabled construction of the Eiffel Tower. Still, she was consistently denied opportunities available to men, including admission to the French Academy of Sciences.50

In the United States, women were largely excluded from enrolling in higher education until the late 1800s, and then they mostly studied to become teachers, who were in short supply. It was almost unheard of for women to pursue a degree in the sciences. At most, one woman a year received an engineering degree during the last quarter of the 19th century, according to Troy Eller English, the archivist at the Society of Women Engineers in Chicago.51

“Some Ivy League and prestigious technical universities known for their science and engineering programs would allow women to study in the 1800s, but occasionally refused to award them degrees, even if they completed the coursework,” Eller English said.52

In 1873, Ellen Swallow Richards of Massachusetts became the first woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a chemistry degree.

“Subjects such as chemistry, botany and astronomy were considered ladylike; physics was not,” Eller English said. “Engineering, the practical application of mathematics and science, was pretty much out of the question.”53

In 1876, Elizabeth Bragg of California became the first woman to receive an engineering degree from a U.S. university. Although she obtained a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, Bragg never pursued a career, deciding instead to be a stay-at-home mother. But Julia Morgan, who graduated from the same university 18 years later with a degree in engineering, became an architect who designed more than 700 buildings in California.54

Nobel Oversights

In 1903, French scientist Marie Curie (1867-1934), became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She and her husband shared half the prize for their joint research on radiation, and the other half went to Antoine Henri Becquerel for discovering radioactivity. Eight years later Marie Curie won her own Nobel in chemistry for her work on radium and other radioactive compounds. She is one of only four scientists to have won the prize twice, and one of only 17 women to have won it in one of the Nobel's STEM fields (physics, chemistry and the category of physiology or medicine).55

However, science remained an overwhelmingly male dominion through the first half of the 20th century, and female scientists typically received scant credit for their achievements. Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, for example, did not share in the Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded in 1944 to Otto Hahn for work on nuclear fission, even though that work was based largely on a breakthrough that Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, had made six years earlier. Meitner, who was Jewish, was forced to flee Nazi Germany, and neither Hahn nor Nobel Prize officials acknowledged her contributions.56

Historians later concluded that the Nobel Prize official who evaluated Meitner's candidacy (she received 47 nominations for the prize) “made a mistake and underestimated her influence in the discovery [of fission],” according to Gustav Källstrand, a senior curator at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, which hosts traveling exhibitions that showcase the stories of Nobel laureates.57

During World II, a shortage of male workers led the U.S. government to launch efforts to train women in science and engineering, but those efforts lasted only until the war ended in 1945. Returning soldiers attended college on the G.I. Bill and replaced women who had been working in wartime STEM jobs. Women who did retain their STEM jobs generally ended up working for less money and fewer benefits than their male colleagues. Few employers made accommodations for women who wanted to keep their jobs while raising a family.58

Grace Hopper, a rear admiral during World II, was known as the “Queen of Code” for helping to build one of the world's earliest computers while serving in the Navy.59

During the early 1950s English chemist Rosalind Franklin, who studied the molecular structure of crystals, laid the groundwork for the discovery of the DNA double helix. James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for the breakthrough, but at the time, none of the prize winners gave credit to Franklin, who had died four years earlier. Nobel Prizes are never awarded posthumously.60

An American microbiologist, Esther Lederberg, was similarly overlooked after discovering the lambda bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria, in 1951. Lederberg and her husband, Joshua, also developed a method for easily moving bacterial colonies from one petri dish to another — a process known as replica plating. That research helped Joshua win a Nobel Prize with two other researchers in 1958.61

Esther Lederberg's work contributed to later discoveries on genetic inheritance in bacteria and other advances in genetic research, but Stanley Falkow, who worked with Lederberg at Stanford University, said the scientific community at the time denied her the credit she deserved.

“She had to fight just to be appointed as a research associate professor, whereas she surely should have been afforded full professorial rank,” Falkow said. “Women were treated badly in academia in those days.”62

Computer Age

By the mid-20th century there was growing interest in advocating for women in science and other STEM fields. In addition, women dominated the emerging field of computer programming — at least while the work was considered clerical and was relatively low-paid. Six female mathematicians were among those who wrote programs for ENIAC, one of the first electronic, general-purpose computers, completed in 1946.63

In 1943, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, which later became NASA) recruited African-American mathematician Dorothy Vaughan to work as a “human computer” performing calculations for engineers. She later was assigned to an all-black team of female mathematicians who were segregated from white workers and required to use separate bathrooms.

In 1949, Vaughan became the agency's first African-American supervisor, leading the West Area Computing Unit. Members of the team, including Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Eunice Smith and Kathryn Peddrew, contributed to pioneering space exploration missions at NASA.64

Mathematician Katherine Johnson works at her desk at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., in 1962. Johnson and other African-American women with the space agency's West Area Computing Unit provided crucial tech support for early NASA missions. The women faced both gender and racial discrimination even as they excelled in their work. (Getty Images/NASA/Donaldson Collection)

In 1950, the Society for Women Engineers, formed chapters in New York City, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia to provide networking and support for female engineers. The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik prompted the U.S. government to encourage both men and women to study science and technology.65

But in general, STEM opportunities for women were still limited. In 1958, Betty Lou Raskin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and an ardent advocate for women pursuing STEM careers, blamed cultural conditioning and the advertising industry when she addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“They have made the mink coat, not the lab coat, our symbol of success,” she said of the advertising industry. “They've praised beauty, not brains. They've emphasized leisure time, not hard work and originality. As a result, today's schoolgirl thinks it far more exciting to serve tea on an airplane than to foam a new lightweight plastic in the laboratory.”66

Beginning in the 1950s, men became increasingly involved in computer programming as salaries in that field increased. The trend, which accelerated through the 1970s, was fueled partly by career aptitude and personality tests that were biased to favor males over females for the jobs, according to Nathan L. Ensmenger, an associate professor of computing at Indiana University and author of The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. 67

In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, orbiting Earth 48 times in her capsule, Vostok 6. Her feat came 20 years before Sally Ride, an astronaut on the space shuttle Challenger, became the first American woman to fly into space.68

In 1967, astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell, then a research assistant at the University of Cambridge in England, helped discover that pulsars — extremely regular radio pulses — emanated from neutron stars. Seven years later, the discovery led to a Nobel Prize for physics for Burnell's adviser, Antony Hewish, and another researcher. Burnell later said her omission from the prize was appropriate, since she had been a student when the discovery was made.69

Another astronomer, Vera Rubin, an American and the first woman allowed to conduct research inside the Palomar Observatory in Southern California, discovered in the late 1970s that something invisible — later known as dark matter — was keeping rotating spiral galaxies from spinning apart. Scientists now know that dark matter makes up about 84 percent of the universe and affects the movements of stars and galaxies.

When she first arrived at the observatory in the 1960s, Rubin discovered that the building had no restrooms for women. “She cut up paper into a skirt image, and she stuck it on the little person image on the door of the bathroom,” recalled former colleague Neta Bahcall. “She said, ‘There you go; now you have a ladies’ room.’ That's the type of person Vera is.”70

Rubin's story is often cited as evidence of gender bias on the part of the Nobel committees in charge of awarding prizes in STEM fields. Only two of the 204 Nobel laureates in physics have been women, said Lisa Randall, a physics professor at Harvard. “It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the Nobel numbers are skewed,” she said.71

Faster Growth

By 1970, women made up 36 percent of the U.S. workforce but only about 7 percent of STEM workers. Among STEM job categories, women held about 15 percent of science, math and computer jobs, but only about 3 percent of engineering jobs.72

Overall, however, female participation in STEM careers grew rapidly during the 1970s, as the feminist movement gained momentum. By 1980, women made up 42 percent of the total workforce and 14 percent of STEM workers — double the percentage of a decade earlier.73

By 1990, the proportion of women working in STEM fields had increased to 23 percent, but the increase began to slow after that. And the proportion of women holding computer jobs began to decline, after peaking at 34 percent in 1990. Between 2000 and 2011, women's share of the STEM workforce increased only about 1 percentage point — to 26 percent — even as the proportion of college-educated female workers rose from 46 to 49 percent.74

In March 1999, MIT became one of the first institutions to confront the issue of campus gender bias when it published a report acknowledging the problem existed in its science departments.75

In 2014, math's highest honor, the Fields Medal, was awarded to a woman — Iranian-born Stanford University mathematician and professor Maryam Mirzakhani — for the first time.76

In 2015, British biochemist Tim Hunt, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, sparked an immediate backlash by telling a conference of science journalists, “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry.”77

That same year, Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a pioneer in the discovery of planets outside the solar system, resigned after a school investigation found he had violated sexual harassment policies.78

In 2016, the tech firm Qualcomm in San Diego agreed to pay $19.5 million to settle a class-action gender discrimination suit filed by women working in STEM positions who said the company had denied them equal pay and job opportunities.79

In February 2017, President Trump signed two bills aimed at bolstering STEM opportunities for women. The Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act requires the National Science Foundation to fund programs that support women who are moving scientific findings from the lab to commercial applications. The other bill, known as the Inspiring the Next Space Pioneers, Innovators, Researchers, and Explorers (INSPIRE) Women Act, directs NASA to support mentoring and outreach programs that encourage girls and women to study STEM subjects and pursue careers in aerospace.80

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Current Situation

Tech Diversity

The most recent comprehensive data on workforce demographics at tech companies largely confirms the industry's reputation as male-dominated.

Women made up less than 25 percent of the tech workforce at Google and Apple in 2016, according to information that 22 large tech companies released in November 2017 in response to requests from the Center for Investigative Reporting, a California nonprofit that conducts investigative journalism. Nvidia had the lowest share of female tech workers, at 16 percent. 23AndMe, a genetics testing company, and the online bulletin board Pinterest had the largest proportions of female tech employees, at more than 40 percent. The information is contained in reports that the companies filed with the federal government.81

Kimora Oliver (left) and Olivia Ross, members of Black Girls Code, an organization in San Francisco that works to increase participation by women of color in technology fields, take the stage in February 2016 at the Makers Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. The annual conference, sponsored by the Makers feminist media brand, highlights the stories of women who have overcome gender discrimination and other obstacles to become leaders in their fields. (Getty Images/Jonathan Leibson)

At 18 of the 22 companies, women accounted for no more than 30 percent of executives. The seven companies with the smallest shares of female executives included Apple (19 percent), Intel (13.21 percent), Google (12.9 percent) and Nvidia (11.51 percent). 23AndMe and LinkedIn, a job-hunting website, had the largest shares of female executives, at 47 percent and 36.8 percent, respectively.82

Oracle is the only firm among Fortune 500's 20 biggest San Francisco Bay Area tech companies that is headed by a woman. Safra Catz shares the title of CEO with Mark Hurd. Other powerful women in tech include Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, and Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.83

Tech companies are working to boost the number of female employees. GE has vowed to have at least 20,000 female STEM workers by 2020. Oracle has committed to spending $3 million on educating girls in STEM subjects through the federal government's Let Girls Learn initiative, which aims to expand educational opportunities for girls. In 2014, Google said it would invest $50 million in a program to teach young girls how to code. Some companies, including IBM and Microsoft, also have recently implemented programs to support females in positions of leadership.84

Rincon at the Society of Women Engineers says STEM companies should approach gender parity the same way scientists conduct studies: Set goals, make a change, monitor progress, make more changes, continue to monitor.

Federal Action

In February, the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology held its first-ever hearing on sexual harassment and misconduct in science. “We talk a lot about getting more women in the sciences,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., but “we need to be able to keep them there when they get there.”85

That same month, the House passed the Code Like a Girl Act, which would establish National Science Foundation grants to fund computer science programs for girls under 11. A companion bill is pending in the Senate.

“Computer science professionals are needed in almost every industry and field, and it's critical that we ensure young women have the skills they need to pursue these exciting careers,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who co-authored the bill with Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.86

The Building Blocks of STEM Act, also passed by the House in February, includes a provision to award grant money to programs that encourage young girls to study computer science. The bill is pending in the Senate.87

Presidential daughter Ivanka Trump, one of President Trump's closest advisers and director of an administration program to boost grants for K-12 STEM education, has called for acting more aggressively around the world to boost women's participation in STEM careers.

“Female and minority participation in STEM fields is moving in the wrong direction,” she said at the World Assembly for Women summit in Tokyo last November. “We must create equal participation in these traditionally male-dominated sectors of our economy.”88

Academia Responds

Some colleges and universities have started marketing STEM subjects to women. Dartmouth College, for example, modified its introductory engineering course to require only basic math and to focus on real-world problem-solving.89

Each summer, the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University in New York runs the Columbia Girls in STEM initiative, a precollege program that offers STEM programs to high school girls in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Miami and New York City.90

Colleges and universities still have far to go to reduce the incidence of sexual harassment of female STEM students and faculty members, according to this year's report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report — “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,” released June 12 — says too many colleges and institutions “focus on symbolic compliance” with sexual harassment laws rather than on preventing such harassment.

“At the same time that so much energy and money is being invested in efforts to attract and retain women in science, engineering and medical fields, it appears women are often bullied or harassed out of career pathways in these fields,” the report states. “There is no evidence to suggest that current policies, procedures and approaches have resulted in a significant reduction in sexual harassment.”

The report recommends that colleges and universities take steps such as making sure faculty members see the reporting of sexual harassment as “an honorable and courageous action,” and that college presidents and department chairs “make the reduction and prevention of sexual harassment an explicit goal of their tenure.”91

New Demands

Some scientists have urged the report's authors to follow their own advice, noting that renowned cancer biologist Inder Verma remains a National Academy of Sciences member despite allegations that he sexually harassed female colleagues at the Salk Institute and other women over a period of decades.92

Verma was one of the institute's top researchers before he resigned in June as Salk investigated the sexual harassment claims. He stepped down as editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a prestigious academic journal in May, five months after the journal placed him on leave in response to the gender discrimination suits that Jones, Lundblad and Emerson filed against Salk in July last year. Two of the suits accuse Verma of disparaging female colleagues and withholding research money from them.93

In May, BethAnn McLaughlin, an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University, started a petition demanding that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) expel members who have been convicted of sexual harassment or assault. More than 5,200 people had signed as of August 31.

“Sexual harassment is illegal and the goals of the NAS are not compatible with members who have violated these laws,” the petition says. The NAS responded with a statement stating: “While we never condone sexual harassment, there are no provisions in the NAS bylaws to rescind membership for any reason; election is for life.”94

On May 22, the presidents of all three academies issued a statement saying they have “begun a dialogue about the standards of professional conduct for membership.”

“We want to be sure that we are doing everything possible to prevent sexual harassment, to instill a culture of inclusion and respect and to reinforce that harassment is not tolerated,” the statement said. In November, the academies plan to hold a convocation on “developing and implementing policies, procedures and practices to prevent sexual harassment in academia.”95

McLaughlin also runs the MeTooSTEM blog (#MeTooSTEM on Twitter), which invites women STEM professionals and students who have been sexually harassed to share their stories. “The goal of this site is to make it harder for people in power, scientific societies, colleagues and the trainees to see us as more than numbers during this critical period for women in STEM,” the site says.96

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Outlook

Persistent Gap

Addressing gender bias in STEM fields is not just a matter of fairness, it is crucial for meeting future demand for those skills, says Mary Perkinson, chairwoman-elect of the Finance Committee at the Society of Women Engineers. Not enough students are graduating with STEM degrees to meet the demands of the fastest-growing career fields, she says.

“We're going to have a skills gap coming up,” Perkinson says. “We're not graduating enough engineers.”

Based on current trends, gender parity in STEM fields is decades away, according to researchers from the University of Melbourne, Australia, who collected more than 10 million scientific papers published between 2002 and 2006 and divided them up based on the authors’ gender. They said it will take 60 years to close the gender gap in math and 131 years in astrophysics.

“Despite recent progress, the gender gap appears likely to persist for generations, particularly in … surgery, computer science, physics and math,” the researchers said. “We conclude that the … gender gap will not close without further reforms in education, mentoring and academic publishing.”97

Other researchers offer a more optimistic outlook, at least where STEM-related “green” fields are concerned. Environmental science and sustainability studies, which focus on the conservation of natural resources and the health of ecosystems, are attracting as many women as men, according to Cornell's Center for the Study of Inequality, which researches the causes and consequences of social and economic inequality.

“Just by institutions changing how academic fields are framed, they can create better gender balance,” said Kyle Albert, a researcher at the center. “If universities carefully frame their curricular offerings to emphasize different themes, they can reduce the level of gender inequality in course enrollments.”98

Experts agree on the need to reduce gender bias in STEM fields. Jo Handelsman, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the issue, has helped develop videos depicting fictional scenarios that help researchers recognize bias. She says labs that receive diversity training are more likely to hire women.

She also says changing hiring practices through interventions and training is typically more successful than trying to change individuals’ internal biases. Because employees often respond negatively to workshops or meetings that add to their workload or take place outside the ordinary working day, Handelsman recommends providing diversity training as a supplemental focus at required employee or faculty meetings on other topics.

She says many scientists do not see themselves as biased even though their hiring practices show otherwise. “One thing I still hear constantly is, ‘We only hire the best,’” she says, “which is still an indication that people do not believe they're biased.”

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Pro/Con

Is discrimination the reason for the gender gap in STEM careers?

Pro Roberta Rincon Ph.D. Senior Manager of Research, Society of Women Engineers. Written for CQ Researcher, September 2018 Many see STEM organizations as meritocracies, where workers are recognized for the work they do and the most capable rise to the top, regardless of gender. But this view ignores research showing that bias can influence hiring, salary and advancement decisions, resulting in discrimination against women. Systemic gender biases are prevalent in STEM, effectively maintaining a low representation of women in leadership positions across all STEM fields and industries. While women earn roughly half of all bachelor's degrees in STEM, they hold less than 30 percent of STEM jobs. Regardless of the STEM discipline, women face biases that result in lower pay and less recognition than their male counterparts. The salaries of full-time working women in STEM are about 9 percent lower than those of their male co-workers, after controlling for education and years of employment. In academia, women in STEM are consistently underrepresented among scholarly and research awards, and though many women with STEM doctoral degrees enter faculty ranks, they are poorly represented in the highest levels of professorship and administration. A recent study by the Society of Women Engineers found that female engineers were more likely to report getting paid less, receiving less honest performance feedback and having less access to networking and advancement opportunities. Such studies have shown that women in STEM must constantly prove their competency, are often mistaken for administrative staff and are frequently delegated office housekeeping duties. Prior research found that women face discrimination in every field of science and engineering, where they must function in environments favoring those who have traditionally dominated these areas, i.e., men. In multiple studies on gender bias in hiring, male candidates are routinely evaluated higher on competency and worthiness of hire, and are offered higher salaries than equally qualified female applicants. It is easy to overlook bias in organizations where people assume everything is merit-based. The myth of meritocracy primarily serves the privileged because it makes it difficult to openly discuss the biases that create less welcoming and inclusive environments for all. To address bias, companies must work to understand what the situation looks like within their own organizations. By pinpointing areas of bias in workplace processes, STEM organizations can reduce discrimination in hiring, promotions and performance reviews, and eliminate the obstacles preventing more women from staying and advancing in the STEM workforce.

Con Denise D. Cummins Ph.D. Cognitive scientist and author. Written for CQ Researcher, September 2018 Men do not outnumber women in all STEM fields. According to a 2018 National Science Foundation report, women earn 51 percent of doctorate degrees in STEM, but men and women are not equally distributed across STEM subfields. In 2015, women earned more than half of doctorates awarded in most social, behavioral, biological and medical sciences. But they earned fewer than one-third of doctorates awarded in mathematics and statistics, computer sciences and engineering. Not surprisingly, these differences are reflected in the STEM labor force. Women are employed in high proportions in social sciences (60 percent) and life sciences (48 percent), but in low proportions in the physical sciences (28 percent), computer and mathematical sciences (26 percent) and engineering (15 percent). The question is why these differences exist. Although sexism surely accounts for some of these differences, another contributing factor tends to be downplayed: The gender gap exists because different STEM subfields are intrinsically more interesting to women than to men. Gender differences emerge early in development, long before socialization factors come into play. Newborn female infants prefer to look at faces, while newborn male infants prefer to look at mechanical objects such as mobiles. As early as the first year of life, boys prefer to play with male-typed toys, and girls with female-typed toys. It is not difficult to see how such early emerging preferences can end up shaping career choices: Women tend to gravitate toward fields that focus on living things (cells, organisms, ecosystems), men to fields that focus on objects. This does not mean that females are brainwashed or have inferior intellectual abilities. Attempts to eliminate gender gaps in traditionally male-dominated fields are grounded in the belief that such fields are intrinsically more important and more valuable to society. It is difficult to see how a traditionally female profession such as nursing is intrinsically less valuable to society than a traditionally male profession such as stock trading. So perhaps the better question is: Why are the fields that appeal to men better respected and better compensated than the fields that appeal to women? Rather than rushing to traditionally male professions to shore up our status and income, perhaps women need to reject the belief that the work men find intrinsically interesting is more important and valuable than work women find intrinsically interesting. We should demand greater respect and monetary compensation for the work we like and want to do.

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Short Features

Women Pursue STEM Where Gender Bias is High

It's a mystery that researchers have yet to solve: In countries with a high degree of gender inequality, women are more likely to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering or math than in countries where the sexes are treated equitably.

That's the conclusion of a newly published study of 67 countries by British and U.S. researchers who examined the relative progress of women and men according to 14 key parameters, including earnings, life expectancy, political participation and college enrollment.

Algeria, for example, ranked third-lowest in gender equality but first in the share of STEM degrees held by women (41 percent). Finland, by contrast, excelled in gender equality, but women there received only 20 percent of STEM degrees.1

Gijsbert Stoet, an experimental and cognitive psychologist at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom and the study's lead author, says the paradoxical finding remains “unexplained.” But he and co-author David Geary, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, Columbia, have a hypothesis: In the least gender-equal countries, STEM careers offer women a rare path to financial security, while in other countries women feel more free to choose a career based on what they want to do.

“Economic and general life risks are lower in gender equal countries, which in turn results in greater opportunity for individual interests and academic strengths to influence investment in one academic path or another,” the study said.2

Worldwide, women accounted for about 29 percent of science researchers in 2015, according to United Nations figures. The region that includes South and West Asia had the lowest average share of female researchers, at 18.5 percent, and Central Asia had the highest, at 48.1 percent. The region that includes both North America and Western Europe came in at 32.3 percent.3

Women in the developing world are underrepresented in STEM largely because they lack educational opportunities, says South African microbiologist Jennifer Thomson, president of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), an organization in Trieste, Italy, that helps early-career female scientists buy equipment and set up laboratories. OWSD surveys highlight such factors as lack of access to property, money and technology.

Gender bias also remains a huge barrier for women interested in a STEM career, Thomson says. In many African countries, she says, women interested in STEM must first overcome the stigma of working for money. “Then, they're going into something that is viewed as a men's world — science and math are not for girls,” she says. “It's embedded in the teaching and in the home.”

The degree to which women and girls pursue STEM — or have the opportunity to do so — varies widely across the globe. For example:

• Women accounted for about 16 percent of tech workers in the European Union (EU) in 2015, according to the European Commission, which implements EU policies. Bulgaria (27.7 percent) and Romania (27.5 percent) led the way. Countries close to the EU average included Britain, Croatia, France and Germany. Bulgarian Iva Kaneva, who writes code for a gaming company headquartered in Canada, said that in Bulgaria and other former Eastern Bloc countries, “women as well as men were pushed into engineering and science occupations,” and that the tradition has continued.4

• In China, nearly equal numbers of men and women work in STEM fields, and women launch more than half of new internet companies. The World Economic Forum attributes that partly to the country's former one-child policy, which allowed some women “to pursue personal dreams beyond their family responsibilities.” The policy ended in 2015.5 In 2015, the Chinese technology giant Alibaba said nine of 27 of its executive leaders were women.6

• Girls felt more confident than boys when working on math problems in only three countries — Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, according to a 2014 survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an economic research organization in Paris. In more than 60 countries, girls were more likely than boys to say they felt “helpless while performing a math problem.”7

— Stephen Ornes

[1] Gijsbert Stoet and David C. Geary, “The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education,” Psychological Science, Sage Journals, Feb. 14, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8hhs5eq.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Women in Science,” UNESCO Institute for Statistics, June 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybuxvs34.

[4] “Girls and women under-represented in ICT,” Eurostat, April 4, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybhrt2z3; Andrada Fiscutean, “Women in tech: Why Bulgaria and Romania are leading in software engineering,” ZDNet, June 13, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yaktj7dy.

[5] “Five ways China's women are closing the gender gap,” World Economic Forum, Nov. 9, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8orohvk; Leta Hong Fincher, “China Dropped Its One-Child Policy. So Why Aren't Chinese Women Having More Babies?” The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7ufcyf7.

[6] Kia Kokalitcheva, “Female executives are Alibaba's ‘secret sauce,’ founder Jack Ma says,” Fortune, May 20, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y9b4worx.

[7] Alana E. Foley et al., “The Math Anxiety-Performance Link: A Global Phenomenon,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, Sage Journals, Feb. 8, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybr5neah.

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Three Women in STEM Helped Pave Way for Others

One loved genetics, another the stars. A third was drawn to electrical engineering and, eventually, computers. Each woman became a pioneer in her field and an advocate for other women working in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM).

Jennifer Thomson wanted to be a zoologist while attending the University of Cape Town in her native South Africa, but she changed her mind once she began graduate work at Cambridge University in England. “Everything was so boring and old-fashioned in the zoology department,” she recalls. So she cycled up the road to the genetics department.

This was 1974, the advent of genetic engineering, the field that would define Thomson's career. The field was also dominated — as most STEM areas were at the time — by men. After leaving Cambridge, Thomson finished a Ph.D. at South Africa's Rhodes University and took a postdoctoral position at Harvard before finding a job teaching genetics at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. In 1988, she became the first woman to head the microbiology department at the University of Cape Town.

“I was interviewed by 12 white males, most of whom didn't want me because I was a woman,” Thomson, now 71, recalls. But her academic credentials and her genetics research carried the day.

At the university, Thomson began a cutting-edge research program and worked with a prominent virologist to create a microbiology department. Her work also led to the development of drought-resistant maize.

In 1995, Thomson helped found SA WISE (South African Women in Science and Engineering), which advocates for women in science through a network of professionals and by awarding scholarships to promising, financially needy students. Later, she was elected vice president of the South Africa Academy of Science, where she worked to create more opportunities for women in STEM fields.

In 2016, Thomson was elected president of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World, which provides money and resources to help women in developing countries establish laboratories and research programs.

Early in her marriage, Thomson and her husband made the difficult decision not to raise a family to increase her chances at a scientific career. “I don't want any other woman to have to make that decision,” she says, “so I'm doing all I can to help them.”

Debra Elmegreen grew up in Indiana in the 1950s, staring at the night sky. “I knew early on in grade school I wanted to be an astronomer,” she recalled in 2016.

Studying astrophysics at Princeton, Elmegreen was surrounded by men. “I was vastly outnumbered, but it didn't seem unusual or odd to me,” she says. She does recall being targeted occasionally by “stupid comments from stupid guys.”8 Elmegreen persevered, becoming the first woman to graduate from Princeton with an astrophysics degree.

Debra Elmegreen, an astronomy professor at Vassar College, points to the small blue dots on a Hubble Space Telescope image that show a new type of star-forming galaxy. Elmegreen, who discovered the galaxies with her husband, an astronomer at IBM, has helped organizations address sexual harassment of women working in STEM careers. (Courtesy Vassar College)

Her research on star formation has helped shape the field. At the Palomar Observatory in California, she was the first woman to study the stars from the observatory “cage” — the isolated perch where scientists control the observatory's large telescopes.

Elmegreen, 65, was president of the American Astronomical Society, headquartered in Washington, from 2010 to 2012, and currently serves on the executive committee of the International Astronomical Union in Paris, which promotes astronomy. She has helped both organizations address sexual harassment in STEM workplaces.

Elmegreen says women have more opportunities now but still face discrimination. “Professional societies need to take a stand, and departments need to take a stand,” she says.

Betty Shanahan was one of only three women in a class of about 125 while studying electrical engineering as an undergraduate at Michigan State University in East Lansing in the mid-1970s. “It was all men professors,” she said in a 2014 interview with the Society of Women Engineers in Chicago, which advocates for women pursuing a career in engineering. One professor, while handing back papers, called out “Ben Shanahan,” assuming after glancing at the first two letters of Shanahan's first name that she was male. The nickname stuck.9

After graduating from Michigan State, Shanahan was offered a job at computer company Data General and mentioned that her husband also was seeking work. The company hired him too — at a higher starting salary. Shanahan learned later that her lower salary had been part of a compromise designed to overcome one director's refusal to hire a woman. “And I was naive enough to take it,” she said.10

After a glowing first review, Shanahan said, she received a sizable “inequity increase” in her pay. Her former boss told her the company “[had] pushed for the software guys to talk to my husband just so they could get me,” she says. “I know they went to some lengths to make sure I would take the job.”

At Data General, Shanahan was the only female member of “Microkids,” the engineering team that produced one of the first minicomputers, the Data General Eagle. She worked for more than two decades in the computer industry. In 2002, she became CEO and executive director of the Society of Women Engineers. Since retiring in 2013, Shanahan, 62, has continued to give talks to groups that support women in STEM fields. “Diversity drives innovation,” she said. “You get better ideas when you have a diverse team.”11

— Stephen Ornes

[8] Stephen Ornes, “A woman's place is in science,” Science New for Students, Sept. 15, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/jxbxtgg.

[9] “Oral-History: Betty Shanahan,” Engineering and Technology History Wiki, Society of Women Engineers, Feb. 20, 2014, and Oct. 24, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y8vsgfub.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

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Bibliography

Books

Eliot, Lise , Pink Brain Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps — And What We Can Do About It , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. A professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science says society exaggerates the biological differences between girls and boys, leading to damaging cultural stereotypes.

Johnson, Paula A., Sheila E. Widnall and Frazier F. Benya , eds., Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine , National Academies Press, 2018. Editors at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine document how sexual harassment jeopardizes the careers of young scientists.

Saini, Angela , Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong — and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story , Beacon Press, 2017. A science journalist traces the history of the belief that men are biologically better suited than women to study science.

Shetterly, Margot Lee , Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race , William Morrow and Company, 2016. A writer and researcher recounts the experiences of three African-American female “human computers” who worked for NASA in the 1960s.

Tolley, Kim , The Science Education of American Girls , Routledge, 2002. An education professor at Notre Dame de Namur University in California explains that the study of science was not always dominated by males.

Articles

Barnett, Rosalind, and Caryl Rivers , “We've studied gender and STEM for 25 years. The science doesn't support the Google memo,” ReCode, Aug. 17, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y96rjvt6. A senior scientist at Brandeis University (Barnett) and a journalism professor at Boston University (Rivers) say research does not support claims by a former Google engineer that women are less well-suited than men to work in technology jobs.

Bell, Robin, and Lora Koenig , “Harassment in science is real,” Science Magazine, Dec. 8, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yc8fhcay. A professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (Bell) and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado (Koenig) cite their personal experiences in calling for scientific institutions to end the bullying and harassment of female researchers.

Coil, Alison , “Why Men Don't Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science,” Wired, Aug. 27, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yar4o9t8. A physics professor at the University of California, San Diego, explains why male scientists have trouble recognizing bias in their own hiring practices.

Mervis, Jeffrey , “They're fun. But can STEM camps for girls really make a difference?” Science, Sept. 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y94flqu2. A science policy reporter says it is impossible to know whether programs designed to interest young girls in a STEM career are effective because no one tracks their results.

Reports and Studies

Clancy, Kathryn , et al., “Double jeopardy in astronomy and planetary science: Women of color face greater risks of gendered and racial harassment,” Journal of Geophysical Research, AGU100, July 10, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yasrf8f4. Among men and women working in astronomy and planetary science, women of color were the most likely to report experiencing harassment or assault, according to researchers at the University of Illinois, the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and the American Astronomical Society.

Funk, Cary, and Kim Parker , “Women and Men in STEM Often at Odds Over Workplace Equity,” Pew Research Center, Jan. 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7c8l7fy. Research by a think tank in Washington shows women in STEM occupations are more likely than women in other professions to report experiencing gender discrimination at work.

“Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women's Success in Engineering and Computing,” American Association of University Women, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/yclte232. An organization that advocates greater gender equity in STEM professions says discrimination and stereotyping contribute to low participation by women in engineering and computer science.

Williams, Joan C. , et al., “Climate Control: Gender and Racial Bias in Engineering?” Society of Women Engineers and the Center for WorkLife Law, University of California, Hastings, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yb9kmfyt. A survey of 3,000 male and female engineers revealed significant gender gaps in certain types of workplace bias.

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The Next Step

Attrition

Buckholz, Kate , “If you can't retain women, don't recruit them,” Wired, May 25, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/msosrwu. Tech companies should stop working so hard to recruit women and should focus instead on retaining the women they already have, says a woman who used to work at a Silicon Valley company.

Fu, Angela N., and Dianne Lee , “Internal Report Shows Poor Retention for Harvard Women in STEM,” The Harvard Crimson, Dec. 1, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8yehlmo. The retention rate for female faculty members in STEM subjects at Harvard University is 20 percent lower than the rate for their male counterparts, according to a 2017 internal report.

Tellerman, Shanna , “Recruiting and Retaining Female Tech Talent Is a Challenge — Here's How We Did It,” Entrepreneur, Feb. 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9wah55t. The female CEO of a digital furniture design company recommends strategies for recruiting and retaining female engineers.

Discrimination and Harassment

Christensen, Dusty , “Report raps culture at UMass polymer science department,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Aug. 10, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc6l6ayj. A recently released report on one of the most prestigious STEM departments at the University of Massachusetts cites disrespectful and “antagonistic” treatment of women faculty members.

Hiltzik, Michael , “A gender discrimination case at the legendary Salk Institute exposes an ugly problem in science,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8cb8vsl. Lawsuits filed by women professors at a famed research institute say the institute operated as a “boys' club” that undermined and disparaged women faculty members.

Shaban, Hazma , “Google diversity report: Black women make up only 1.2 percent of its U.S. workforce,” The Washington Post, June 15, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybl3t83x. Google's most recent diversity report shows it has made little progress since last year in hiring more women.

Research

Keating, Brian , “There's Nothing Noble About Science's Nobel Prize Gender Gap,” Wired, May 27, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yckvlxa5. Only two women have received a Nobel Prize in physics, contributing to the lack of role models for young women interested in the field.

Weale, Sally, and Caelainn Barr , “Female scientists urge research grants reform to tackle gender bias,” The Guardian, Aug. 10, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc2dmseg. Projects led by women received only about 10 percent of research grants in engineering and physical sciences in Britain over the past decade, according to an analysis of British government data.

Yong, Ed , “When Will the Gender Gap in Science Disappear?” The Atlantic, April 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya79br74. It will take 16 years for women to catch up to men in publishing scientific papers, and in physics alone it could take 258 years, according to researchers in Australia

School Programs

Bagley, Allison , “As school year approaches, programs focus on girls and STEM,” Houston Chronicle, Aug. 15, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybo3en2u. A Houston-area after-school program aims to encourage young girls to learn more about STEM subjects through fun, hands-on projects, workshops and conferences.

Ferdman, Soraya , “Green Girls; How a science program teaches girls to stop doubting themselves,” Mashable, Aug. 15, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7yrsxhr. An environmental science summer program in New York City aims to build confidence in girls who might otherwise be reluctant to participate in science and math classes.

Sadin, Steve , “Area schools look to shrink the gender gap in STEM classes,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 20, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y94md4nw. A school district in suburban Chicago wants to close the gender gap in STEM classes by creating coding and engineering clubs for girls.

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Contacts

American Association of University Women
1310 L St., N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20005
202-785-7700
www.aauw.org
National grassroots organization that pushes for gender equity in STEM fields.

Association for Women in Science
1200 New York Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20005
202-326-8940
www.awis.org
A network of 70 volunteer-led groups around the world that works to advance women in STEM fields.

Center for WorkLife Law
Hastings College of the Law, University of California, 200 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102
415-565-4640
https://worklifelaw.org
Research and advocacy organization that produces reports on gender bias in STEM fields.

Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
American Astronomical Society (AAS), 1667 K Street, N.W., Suite 800 Washington, DC 20006
202-328-2010
https://cswa.aas.org
An 11-member panel that advises the AAS on ways to increase women's participation in astronomy.

Girls Who Code
28 W. 23rd St., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10010
646-629-9735
https://girlswhocode.com
A group founded in 2012 that is working to achieve gender parity in computer science by 2027.

Million Women Mentors
1200 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., Suite 820, Washington DC 20036
202-296-9222
www.millionwomenmentors.com
Offers development programs that support women entrepreneurs in STEM fields.

Society of Women Engineers
130 East Randolph St., Suite 3500, Chicago, IL 60601
312-596-5223
societyofwomenengineers.swe.org
Educational and service organization working to advance the role of women in engineering and technology.

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Footnotes

[1] “Katherine A. Jones vs. Salk Institute for Biological Studies,” sciencemag.org, July 11, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y9saexdy.

[2] Meredith Wadman, “Salk Institute hit with discrimination lawsuit by third female scientist,” Science, July 20, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yd565shy; Bradley J. Fikes and Gary Robbins, “Email reveals former Salk president's efforts to discourage gender discrimination suit,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yctnd72l.

[3] Ryan Noonan, “Women in STEM: 2017 Update,” U.S. Department of Commerce, Nov. 13, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yd52nlns.

[4] Jay Shambaugh and Becca Portman, “How many Grace Hoppers have been lost from the innovation pipeline?” Brookings, Jan. 8, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8tbcymk.

[5] Nathalia Gjersoe, “Bridging the gender gap: why do so few girls study Stem subjects?” The Guardian, March 8, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7z6bcbm; “Where Do Women Study STEM?” BestColleges.com, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y769jvzp.

[6] Noonan, op. cit.; Kerry Close, “STEM Majors Will Earn Highest Starting Salaries This Year,” Money, Jan. 21, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yb3c84s9.

[7] “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybcqflfb.

[8] Vicky May, “Landing a Dream Career in STEM,” Community for Accredited Online Schools, undated, https://tinyurl.com/ybv4khbd.

[9] “STEM Jobs: 2017 Update,” Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, March 30, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yakx2vzq; Jesus Lopez, “What you should know about the tech labor shortage in the US,” Medium, Nov. 2, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycxo9ztf; Louis Columbus, “IBM Predicts Demand For Data Scientists Will Soar 28% By 2020,” Forbes, May 13, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycxuohcc.

[10] Catherine Ashcraft, Brad McLain and Elizabeth Eger, “Women In Tech: The Facts,” National Center for Women and Information Technology, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y8sqdrs5.

[11] Paula A. Johnson, Sheila E. Widnall and Frazier F. Benya, eds., “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,” The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yd56zzuh.

[12] Cary Funk and Kim Parker, “Women and Men in STEM Often at Odds Over Workplace Equity,” Pew Research Center, Jan. 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7c8l7fy.

[13] “Google's Ideological Echo Chamber,” James Damore, July 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yde86v9e.

[14] Noonan, op. cit.

[15] Glenn T. Stanton, “The Science Says The Google Guy Was Right About Sex Differences,” The Federalist, Aug. 11, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yauyg2cc.

[16] “AAUW Issues: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education,” AAUW, undated, https://tinyurl.com/ybkx7wqj.

[17] Emily Chang, “Women Once Ruled the Computer World. When Did Silicon Valley Become Brotopia?” Bloomberg Businessweek, Feb. 1, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc5d37js.

[18] Noonan, op. cit.

[19] “Advancing Women Technologists Into Positions of Leadership,” Anita Borg Institute, April 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybk8a8uw.

[20] Joscha Legewie and Thomas A. DiPrete, “The High School Environment and the Gender Gap in Science and Engineering,” Sociology of Education, Sept. 22, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y8fqoef5.

[21] Emilie Cochran, “Women feel extra pressure to prove themselves in male-dominated majors,” The Badger Herald, University of Wisconsin, March 7, 2018 https://tinyurl.com/yclow8km.

[22] “Google joins list of tech companies sued for gender discrimination,” The Irish Times, Sept. 15, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y7st7ry8; Mike Freeman, “Qualcomm enters $19.5 million gender bias settlement,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 26, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yb82cv38.

[23] Jake Bryant et al., “Drivers of Student Performance: Insights from North America,” McKinsey&Company, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybg9vver.

[24] Gijsbert Stoet and David C. Geary, “The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education,” Psychological Science, Feb. 14, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8hhs5eq.

[25] Lin Bian, Sarah-Jane Leslie and Andrei Cimpian, “Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children's interests,” Science, Jan. 27, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/j7zyt67.

[26] Shana Vu, “Cracking The Gender Code; Get 3X More Women In Computing,” Accenture and Girls Who Code, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y9fvoyel.

[27] Allison Master, Sapna Cheryan and Andrew N. Meltzoff, “Computing whether she belongs: Stereotypes undermine girls’ interest and sense of belonging in computer science,” Journal of Educational Psychology, May 26, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/yawqttlo.

[28] Carolyn Jones, “Girls draw even with boys in high school STEM classes, but still lag in college and careers,” EdSource, March 12, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybwpbhml.

[29] Meredith Wadman, “A Cold Case: Disturbing allegations of sexual harassment in Antarctica leveled at noted scientist,” Science, Oct. 6, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y925xmsd.

[30] Meredith Wadman, “Boston University rejects geologist David Marchant's appeal of termination,” Science, Feb. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yctsmq4u; Meredith Wadman, “House science committee investigating sexual harassment allegations against Boston University geologist,” Science, Oct. 26, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycdaxzwq.

[31] Johnson, Widnall and Benya, ibid.

[32] Funk and Parker, op. cit.

[33] Stoet and Geary, op. cit.

[34] Allison Scott, Freada Kapor Klein and Urirdiakoghene Onovakpuri, “Tech Leavers Study,” Kapor Center for Social Impact, https://tinyurl.com/y7pvx6t9.

[35] Corinne A. Moss-Racusin et al., “Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oct. 9, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/ycqd69kl.

[36] Joan C. Williams and Kate Massinger, “How Woman Are Harassed Out of Science,” The Atlantic, July 25, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/luvyuth.

[37] Marc Goulden, Karie Frasch and Mary Ann Mason, “Staying Competitive: Patching America's Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences,” Center for American Progress and University of California, Berkeley, November 2009, https://tinyurl.com/hr65wux.

[38] Nadya Fouad et al., “Women's Reasons for Leaving the Engineering Field,” Frontiers in Psychology, August 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y72o64am.

[39] Susan Kelley, “Study: women leave math-intensive science fields when they decide to have kids,” Cornell Chronicle, Feb. 14, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/ycckbcx8.

[40] Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci, “The myth about women in science,” CNN. April 13, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y7r5ytas.

[41] Ana Maria Munoz-Boudet, “STEM fields still have a gender imbalance. Here's what we can do about it,” World Economic Forum, March 16, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8bbz62j.

[42] “Women Employees Boost the Bottom Line for Tech Firms,” Morgan Stanley, May 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8rzfw9u.

[43] George Leef, “Stem-Ming College Gender Quotas,” The Daily Caller, Aug. 6, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/9cpm9j9.

[44] Williams and Massinger, op. cit.

[45] Diyi Li and Cory Koedel, “Representation and Salary Gaps by Race-Ethnicity and Gender at Selective Public Universities,” Educational Researcher, Aug. 16, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yaqsdvkb.

[46] Nellie Bowles, “Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It's Gone Too Far,” The New York Times, Sept. 23, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybjffmwt; Jessica Guynn, “Google gets tough on harassment after James Damore firing roils staff,” USA Today, June 27, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yd58z98e.

[47] Bowles, ibid.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Smith Sanderson and Greer Lleaud, “Sophie Germain,” Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary, Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, Editors, Greenwood Press, 1998.

[50] Vesna Crnjanski Petrovich, “Women and the Paris Academy of Sciences,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Spring 1999, https://tinyurl.com/y8y5e393.

[51] “Women's History Month: Take Our Quiz,” All Together, March 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yb6blh9w.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid.

[55] “Nobel Prize awarded women,” The Nobel Prize, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y7fu5fmd.

[56] “Lise Meitner (1878-1968),” atomicarchive.com, undated, https://tinyurl.com/yhp4eef.

[57] Stephanie Hanel, “Lise Meitner — Fame without a Nobel Prize,” Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, May 11, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ybjbc9jq.

[58] Laura Micheletti Puaca, Searching for Scientific Womanpower: Technocratic Feminism and the Politics of National Security, 1940–1980 (2014).

[59] “12 historical women in STEM you've probably never heard of,” The College of St. Scholastica, Nov. 16, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ybyds32h.

[60] “The Rosalind Franklin Papers: Biographical Information,” National Institutes of Health, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y9qdxjbl.

[61] Jeremy Pearce, “Esther Lederberg, 83, “Scientist Who Identified Stealthy Virus, Dies,” The New York Times, Dec. 8, 2006, https://tinyurl.com/ya33glg6.

[62] Jane J. Lee, “6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism,” National Geographic, May 19, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/yaujjl3h.

[63] Rhaina Cohen, “What Programming's Past Reveals About Today's Gender-Pay Gap,” The Atlantic, Sept. 7, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y943r52l; “ENIAC Programmers Project,” ENIAC Programmers Project, https://tinyurl.com/3bg83g.

[64] “Dorothy Vaughan Biography,” NASA, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y7ve4ayc.

[65] “The Founding of SWE National,” Kansas State University, undated, https://tinyurl.com/ycpwxaee; “Women's History Month: Take Our Quiz,” op. cit.

[66] Rebecca Onion, “‘Unclaimed Treasures of Science,’” Slate, July 13, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/kajol57.

[67] Nathan L. Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (2012).

[68] Tim Sharp, “Valentina Tereshkova: First Woman in Space,” Space, Jan. 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybqdqs9z; “First American Woman in Space,” NASA, June 18, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/y8vh27ux.

[69] “Jocelyn Bell Burnell,” Encyclopedia Britannica, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y9699w46.

[70] Sarah Scoles, “How Vera Rubin confirmed dark matter,” Astronomy Magazine, Oct. 4, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/hp4cvyy.

[71] Lisa Randall, “Why Vera Rubin Deserved a Nobel,” The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yats8mkm.

[72] “Women in STEM occupations: 1970 to 2011,” U.S. Census Bureau, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y8nqmj36; “Census Bureau Reports Women's Employment in Science, Tech, Engineering and Math Jobs Slowing as Their Share of Computer Employment Falls,” U.S. Census Bureau, Sept. 9, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/yc7v2nr5.

[73] “Women in STEM occupations: 1970 to 2011,” op. cit.

[74] Ibid.; “Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation,” U.S. Department of Commerce, August 2011, https://tinyurl.com/pdy277n.

[75] Nancy Hopkins, “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT,” AIP Conference Proceedings, August 2002, https://tinyurl.com/yafctrrj.

[76] Bill Chappell, “Maryam Mirzakhani, Prize-Winning Mathematician, Dies At 40,” NPR, July 15, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ydfc39j4.

[77] Dan Bilefsky, “Women Respond to Nobel Laureate's ‘Trouble With Girls,’” The New York Times, June 11, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ycfh8pl9.

[78] Calla Cofield, “Planet Hunter Geoff Marcy Resigns Following Sexual Harassment Investigation,” Space.com, Oct. 15, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y8zvzzyh.

[79] Freeman, op. cit.

[80] “President Trump Signs Two Bills Promoting Women in STEM fields,” American Institute of Physics, March 2, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y945s9so.

[81] Will Evans and Sinduja Rangarajan, “Hidden Figures: How Silicon Valley Keeps Diversity Data Secret,” Reveal, Oct. 19, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycym79za.

[82] Rani Molla, “Square and Pinterest's latest available employment data reveals a lack of diversity in top ranks,” ReCode, Oct. 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y96hp5ve.

[83] Katy Murphy, “Silicon Valley poll: Women face daunting roadblocks in male-dominated tech,” The Mercury News, July 1, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybxaoxjj; Laurence Bradford,“15 of the Most Powerful Women in Tech,” The Balance, Feb. 4, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8lqlbtn.

[84] Tara Seals, “Tech Companies Embrace Gender Diversity in STEM Positions,” Infosecurity Magazine, Aug. 7, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yd7edx7l; Tara Garcia Mathewson, “Oracle pledges additional $3M to draw more girls to STEM,” Education Dive, June 20, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y82x2ldt; Eliana Dockterman, “Google Invests $50 Million to Close the Tech Gender Gap,” Time, June 19, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/myen2so; “Final Mentoring Report,” Million Women Mentors, https://tinyurl.com/yb84xubb.

[85] Kimberly M.S. Cartier, “House Science Subcommittee Hearing Targets Sexual Harassment,” EOS, Feb. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yb4pjml5.

[86] “House Passes Stefanik Initiative to Encourage STEM for Young Girls,” Press Release, Office of Rep. Elise Stefanik, Feb. 14, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybu8n3tf.

[87] “House Unanimously Approves Building Blocks of STEM Act,” Press Release, U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Feb. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yay2ozg4.

[88] “Ivanka Trump Says Women Need a Step Up in STEM,” Reuters/Fortune, Nov. 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y9x5jnxj.

[89] Jillian Berman, “Why Some Colleges Are Better than Others at Getting Women into STEM Careers.” MarketWatch, Jan. 4, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y95rtu7w.

[90] “Girls in STEM initiative,” Columbia University, undated, https://tinyurl.com/yahd2lcx.

[91] Johnson, Widnall and Benya, op. cit.

[92] Meredith Wadman, “Accused cancer scientist resigns as editor of prestigious journal,” Science, May 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybz45txx; “Message From The Chairman Of The Board And President,” Salk, June 11, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yd5ssu8r.

[93] Wadman, “Accused cancer scientist resigns as editor of prestigious journal,” ibid.; Meredith Wadman, “Leading Salk scientist resigns after allegations of harassment,” Science, June 11, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycfxypjb.

[94] “Remove Sexual Harassers from National Academy of Sciences,” change.org, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y8xz5hkv; Shawna Williams, “Petition Asks National Academy of Sciences to Boot Sexual Harassers,” The Scientist, May 4, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7yerr2t.

[95] Meredith Wadman, “Will U.S. academies expel sexual harassers?” Science, May 29, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8vyfrzv; “Together We Can Do Better: A Convening of Leaders in Academia to Prevent Sexual Harassment,” The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y6wx5aac.

[96] Anna Azvolinsky, “Q&A: Scientist and Advocate BethAnn McLaughlin,” The Scientist, Aug. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y77vxlho; “Your Story Matters,” MeTooSTEM, undated, https://tinyurl.com/yd4p3kdt.

[97] Luke Holman, Devi Stuart-Fox and Cindy E. Hauser, “The Gender Gap in Science: How Long until Women Are Equally Represented?” PLOS Biology, April 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7pnyqa7; Kyle Plantz, “Closing the gender gap in some science fields may take over 100 years,” Science News, April 20, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y845ucmz.

[98] Marie Donlon, “Future of Women in STEM Fields Improving,” IEEE, undated, https://tinyurl.com/yd88q299.

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About the Author

Stephen Ornes is a freelance science and medical writer in Nashville, Tenn., whose articles have appeared in Scientific American, Discover, New Scientist, Science News for Students, Cancer Today, Physics World and other publications. His next book, Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations (Sterling Publishing), is scheduled for release in April 2019.

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