Why do we need STEMinism?

Women are incredibly underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), not only this, but the women in these industries are also less likely to submit research funding proposals and are more likely to be left behind by career breaks. Furthermore, young girls are less likely to view themselves as capable of doing well in STEM subjects or viewing themselves as able to pursue a STEM career in the future.

Some people, including Richard Dawkins, are concerned about the integration of the women’s rights movement or feminism into science and readily question whether it even matters if there is under-representation of women in science or if the issues for women in STEM are addressed.

So why do we need STEMinism?

STEM industries are often thought of as a distant, separate medium, when they are in fact a form of business. The issues for women found in business are echoed within STEM, such as underrepresentation of women in higher paid jobs in these industries, issues surrounding the idea of women’s abilities within these industries and the gender pay gap. Moreover, most FTSE business boards have a very low proportion of women on them, and this is seen in FTSE STEM boards too. In fact, they have found that when a board has broader representation (having one women on the board), the profits of that business or company will increase dramatically. This is due to the diversifying of the experiences and opinions on the board, allowing alternative inputs and perspectives to be taken into account in dicision making. If fact, this profit increases even more if two women are featured on a company’s board, and even more so as you increase the diversity. Thus, due to the similar nature of STEM and the business world, the same effect would take place if diversity and equality was increased on FTSE STEM boards.

Furthermore, science as a community can often view itself as holding the correct view for the future, and (whether or not that is correct) we need to make sure that this view for the future includes everybody. So by increasing the representation of women and other marginalised groups on FTSE STEM boards and within STEM industries generally, we will be able to produce better science as it will bring in more perspectives and experience than those of the current majority (white, middle class men) and generate economic growth.

The potential for economic growth is high already for STEM, but this increases more as diversity is addressed. Current figures show that most women are employed below their skillset and their full potential is not being utilised in the economy. In fact, it is thought that if the UK started using women in the workforce to their full potential, this could generate £2.3 billion (2% GDP).

Thus, not only does diversity add to the efforts in science in contributing new ways of thinking and perspectives to a problem to be solved, but it also harbours tremendous economic potential for the money generated in science as well as society as a whole.