Personally, I'm a enthusiastic supporter of STEM, especially for girls (like me!). It's a real shame, then, that so few girls (relative to boys) are involved in it: Why So Few? The report asks, "Why so few?" Why does it seem that science and math are for men, and artsy-craftsy subjects more for women? It presents a few possibilities, like bias and stereotyping, even speculating on the deficiency in spatial ability of girls in general (which I don't entirely agree with... more on that later). Or maybe, is this even happening anymore? Are women equally represented in today's scientific workplace? Or, perhaps more importantly, are they (should I say "we"?) equally represented in the educational environment, which will represent the workplace in 10-20 years? Naturally, that's for you to answer.
I have faith that the educational environment is changing, but there are definitely way more boys than girls in the STEM fields. There may be a small biological aspect to it (the whole guys are more concrete and girls are more abstract argument) but I think it is mostly the cause of socialization of men and women. STEM fields are seen as the most important and the most difficult, which many sexist thinkers believe means that they are too hard for females and more suited to males. In early education, most women are lead away from math and science. This isn't always a conscious effort carried out by teachers in order to disadvantage young women, but more of a subconscious tendency to be more lenient with and "go easy" on girls. Teachers often sympathize with girls struggling in math and science so they lead them to subjects that they may feel more comfortable in like the humanities. Boys, however, are often encouraged to keep working at it and get much less sympathy for not keeping up with the class. This pressure usually pushed males to excel in the harder STEM fields. Women can (and should) do the same, but they're just not pushed as hard.
It's not that women are not good at doing math, it's just that women do not get excited about technical subjects the same way that men do. I think has to do with a drive for exploration.
It has been proven that men are statistically more likely to be better at concentrating at one task, while women are statistically more likely to be better at multi-tasking. This does not of course mean that Winnie from the wonder years(look it up) isn't way better at math then me. It does however explain why there are so few female race car drivers, or physicist's, and why women first entered the workplace as receptionist who specialized in multi-tasking.
Women don't join STEM because they would rather not be surrounded by a horde of stereotypical egotistic mouth-breathers (men, of course) who don't know a boob from a plunger. Although this stereotype is inaccurate in that many of these people aren't actually sexless mouth-breathers, it is true that being in a room full of STEM-ites is infuriating since you have to deal with a whole group where everyone is trying to prove they're smarter than everyone else.
Although there are some women with an interest in math and science many women have job interests and preferences that many men don't have. Many women prefer occupations like wedding planing, fashion designing, and occupations which are make up and beauty related to things such as physics and engineering. Our society tends to make women grow up to be more superficial then men.
