Leaving Your Legacy: You Don't Need to Win a Nobel Prize to Inspire the Next Generation

摘要

It is a widely known and highly concerning fact that women remain underrepresented in the science and engineering workforce. This gender imbalance is not as severe as it once was, but wide disparities remain, especially in engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences. The underrepresentation of women in science classes and in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers continues to be a compelling and puzzling issue. Female scientists and engineers are concentrated in different occupations than men, with relatively high rates of women in the social sciences (60%) and in biological, agricultural, and environmental life sciences (48%). Meanwhile, rates of women are relatively low in engineering (15%) and computer and mathematical sciences (26%) [1]. Women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce but only 28% of the science and engineering workforce. If we look at a younger age group, only a shocking 7% of teenage girls in the United States say they intend to work in science, engineering, and technology when they are older, according to a survey conducted by the Committee of 200, an association of the most powerful women in business, and the Simmons College School of Management in Boston [2].