One time, in my AP psychology class, my teacher had asked us “When you think of an engineer what’s the first thing that comes to mind?” one girl responded with “white man.” It’s understandable to give that answer almost immediately because of the double standards that we’ve seen between men and women growing up. It is too common to see a field in STEM that is completely dominated by men, especially white men.
Women are highly underrepresented in the STEM world. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020, women only make up 34.5% of STEM majors in schools and only 1.5% of those women are Black, 2.0% are Latina/Hispanic and 0.08% are Indigenous women. Not only are women in STEM highly underrepresented in universities, but they also face a wage gap in the workforce earning 81.6 cents to the dollar men earn.
Growing up, the picture for a woman’s job has always been teacher, nurse, or housewife. I was never the girl that my family thought would major in STEM; instead, they pictured me as a teacher or a nurse due to me being “too nice” for STEM. Even now that I’m at Cal Poly they think I’m too much of a pushover to commit to my major of Construction Management since it’s such a male-dominated field. For a man, the industry is different; they easily fall into categories such as doctor, stockbroker, construction worker, architect, and, as stated before, most commonly an engineer.Â
Women have historically been deprived of a proper education and equality in academic and professional fields. Now, women attending a top school or being a STEM major live with imposter syndrome, feeling as if there isn’t a place for them in their school or major. Throughout the years, the STEM field has evolved; we went from only 5% of physicians being women in the 1920s to 54%.2 in 2024. But unlike men, it took a while for women to obtain a degree from respected universities, even more so from an Ivy League.
When did the top 10 STEM schools begin admitting women into their institutions?Â
- 1870 – BerkeleyÂ
- 1876 – MIT
- 1891 – Stanford
- 1952- Georgia Tech
- 1970 – CalTech & John Hopkins
- 1920 – Harvard Graduate SchoolÂ
- 1968 – Yale
- 1969 – PrincetonÂ
- 1972 – DartmouthÂ
- 1983 – Columbia
Notable women in STEM
Edith ClarkeÂ
 Source: MITALUMNI
Edith Clarke was the first woman to earn her master’s in electrical engineering from MIT. In 1919 she was having trouble getting a job in EE because of the low demand for women in her field. When she did get a position at General Electric (which she was overqualified for), she began to work on her invention of the graphing calculator which was approved in 1925. She was not only the first female electrical engineer but also the first woman to hold such a position as an electrical engineer in the United States in 1923. After her career at GE, she retired in 1945 to teach electrical engineering at the University of Texas Austin. She passed away in 1959 in Baltimore, MA, but to this day she continues to be one of the most highly recognized women in engineering, not just for being the first, but for creating such a fascinating invention that is still used in the STEM world to this day. She is being recognized in MIT’s National Inventors Hall of Fame.Â
Dr. Ellen Ochoa
Source: Britanica – Elena Ochoa
Dr. Ochoa was the first Hispanic woman to go to space in 1993 and went on to serve NASA’s Johnson Space Center from 2013-2018. She received her master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (1981) and her doctorate in 1985. She was selected by NASA in 1990 to be in their astronaut program and soon after in April of 1993, she became the first Hispanic woman to go to space in an STS-56. In May of 1999, she was a part of the discovery crew of the STS-96 which implemented the first docking to the International Space Station.Â
Nowadays there are women in the STEM workforce everywhere. Though some of us do still have imposter syndrome, even if it’s silently, we all continue to persevere in the industry we’re in, pushing through the double standards and constantly proving people wrong on their negative opinions. In the end, the only thing we have to keep remembering is that our only competition is ourselves, and to be better than the person you used to be.
Sources:
Witter, Brad. “Katherine Johnson and 9 Other Black Female Pioneers in Science.” Biography, 19 Jan. 2021,Â
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Ellen Ochoa | Biography & Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Ellen-Ochoa.
“First Female Engineer Inducted into Inventors Hall of Fame.” Alum.mit.edu, alum.mit.edu/slice/first-female-engineer-inducted-inventors-hall-fame.
‌Singh, Ishani. “By the Numbers: Women in STEM: What Do the Statistics Reveal about Ongoing Gender Disparities? | Yale Scientific Magazine.” Www.yalescientific.org, 27 Nov. 2020, www.yalescientific.org/2020/11/by-the-numbers-women-in-stem-what-do-the-statistics-reveal-about-ongoing-gender-disparities/.