People’s lives have dramatically changed with the epoch of globalization and steadfast technological development. In a contemporary society technology and science play a very important role.
Throughout the world, Women take an active role and prove their abilities in a whole lot of spheres. When it comes to production industry, natural-resources management, educational sphere, community management, Women occupy different successful positions. Most of these mentioned spheres are female dominated ones. A huge percentage of women and girls work in science related fields as well.
Women and girls in science are a very limited topic. A very few of them are recognized and identified. In a male dominated world the gender gap still exists. Based on data analysis, less than 40% of world’s researchers are women. Many factors are responsible for women not pursuing careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). To start with the basic factors, family support is the major element for women not opting for such streams of study.
Progress is limited when compared to men in fields of STEM. Women seem to publish less and are also paid lesser than their male counterparts. There is no proper evidence to prove this disparity worldwide.
Academic and public sector are the two fields women predominantly choose for themselves. Men opt for the private sectors; the private sectors are promising in areas of advancement and opportunities and tend to be better in terms of salaries too. A lot of stereotype problems affect the growth of girls when they try to combine career with family. A hard known fact is “Motherhood”. It is one of the major obstacles that hold back women from pursuing science as their field of study.
Unlike men young girls and women face barriers like
- Late night work patterns
- Lack of family support
- Relocating to a different city for work
- Stay late at work
- Guilt of leaving children unattended
- Stereotyping society
For any women, the
well-being of her family comes first. Next is the education of her children. Major
things like, decision-making, social and economic development is all
stereotyped towards men only. Even when there is very good access to higher
education, the number of women studying science and science related subjects’ remains
below par.
In the last few years, there has been drastic improvement in the number of
women opting for science and taking science as their career. In countries like
Malaysia and China improvement seems very noticeable.
Children, especially a girl child should be
encouraged to study science and opt for work in the same field in the future.
This encouragement should start at primary level. They should be explained the
goodness of studying science and show them the right path.
