Earlier this month, The White House Council on Women and Girls released the report Keeping America’s Women Moving Forward: The Key to an Economy Built to Last — a release that coincided with the April 6 White House Forum on Women and the Economy. Among other policy issues, the report points to the underrepresentation of women in STEM, noting that, “between 2010 and 2020, STEM-related employment is projected to increase by 16.5 percent to more than 8.5 million jobs. Yet, women still represent only 25 percent of the STEM workforce.”
The operative word here being “still” women are still underrepresented in STEM careers despite decades of research and political action directed toward women in science and engineering fields.
While it is true that more women than ever are attending college, excelling in math and science in high school, and ultimately pursuing STEM fields, they remain severely underrepresented in the fields of physics, computer science and engineering—the shortage of female students eclipsed only by the dearth of female professors.
The nation should be particularly concerned about the underrepresentation of women in computing. In 2009-10 women earned less than 20 percent of computing bachelor’s degrees. Black, Hispanic and Native American women combined held just 5 percent of bachelor’s and 8 percent of associate’s degrees in computer science.
These statistics also reveal the obvious untapped pool of talent that women represent; particularly when our nation is experiencing an overall shortage of computer scientists and engineers, including at the associate’s degree level.
Despite putting billions of public and private monies into motion over the years to support women in STEM while attempting to break barriers that impede them from accessing and succeeding in STEM careers, as a nation of highly educated women, we are still coming up short.
It seems no amount of money can buy the cultural change that must occur within those STEM fields where women are most underrepresented. While technology as a catalyst for innovation has evolved in ways we could have never anticipated, the professional fields that support this ever-expanding industry seem at a cultural standstill.
