• Question: do you feel like there is more men than women in the jobs of stem?

    Asked by freya to Natalie, Jeni on 10 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Jeni Spragg

      Jeni Spragg answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Hi Freya 🙂

      Good question! While it’s true that there are more men than women in many STEM careers, personally I find that most of the time you don’t notice.

      The only thing I’d like to see more of is female role-models – other women who’ve done really well in STEM careers, who would be great inspiration for others. Because some STEM careers have been traditionally ‘male’, we still don’t see as many women with high-profile jobs. When you dream up a career, it always helps if there’s someone to look up to who’s a bit like you, doesn’t it?

      However, this is all changing. The balance is getting better all the time as new generations start their careers. In my engineering degree course, about a third of the course was women. Now that I am doing my PhD, there are actually more women than men in my year group. So the future looks good!

    • Photo: Natalie Wride

      Natalie Wride answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Hi Freya!

      This is a great question 🙂 and one I get asked quite a lot so I’m glad you’ve asked!

      There are generally more men than women in STEM. But it depends which area of STEM you’re in; for example biology and medical based subjects tend to have more girls in.

      I think some people still think Engineering is a manly subject, and in the case of Civil Engineering you have to get muddy and spend all day on a construction site. This isn’t true and it shouldn’t put people off the subject (but equally if you want to spend all day on a muddy construction site you can!). There’s some great progress to encourage more people like yourself to consider STEM and we have things like National Women In Engineering Day (google NWED) and events like Inspire by EDT for Year 11s (http://www.etrust.org.uk/inspire-year-11-girls-courses) to give you and other girls a taster of different types of Engineering.

      There are definitely more girls going into Engineering jobs and things look like they’re on the up but I agree with Jeni; we need to show everyone that there are people like you who do Engineering and love it – things like this event! – and we need more female role models who’ve been in Engineering a lot longer than me that can show how great and rewarding Engineering is as a lifelong career at the top levels of the job too.

      In Civil Engineering, roughly 30% of my University course were female and now I’m doing my PhD I’m one of two girls in my office. One of the reasons I wanted to do Engineering was because it was different and I thought if boys in my year were going to study it and I liked the same subjects as them then why shouldn’t I study it too! Being one of the few girls in my department doesn’t bother me, I love what I do and enjoy my work – being a girl doesn’t really come into it (apart from lab coats being way too big for me!).

      Hope this answers your question 🙂

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