Gender Perceptions On Gender In The Workplace

Women have always been viewed as the weaker sex, and society will continue to view them that way unless they do something about it. In the essay “When Bright Girls Decide that Math is a Waste of time”, the author Susan Jacoby discusses the problems women steering clear of math and science subjects because of the traditional view of a woman. She focused on what causes high school girls to focus on arts courses instead of STEM courses and what are the effects of it on themselves. The underlying discrimination amongst boys and girls, stereotypical thinking of parents and teachers that girls are not good at math eventually decreases the self-confidence among girls to solve science and math problems.

In When Bright Girls Decide that Math is a ‘A Waste of Time’, Jacoby describes why girls tend to dislike math and science although they make superb grades seeing them as subjects designed for men. Girls often tend to not want to participate in math and science for the fear “that they will be unattractive to boys if they are typed as brains” (Jacoby 184). As young women continue to hold these beliefs that STEM isn’t meant for them nor is it attractive, it leads to women beginning to think they are incapable of reaching the same education levels of men, further barricading them from following their interests and dreams. Decisions to avoid advanced science and math courses eventually cause women to be unqualified for quality jobs, exclusion and anxiety about not understanding math and science as well as the opposite

In a speech in February 2013 President Barak Obama said, “One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being encouraged the way they need to.” It been three years since President Obama has made that statement and the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and math as known as STEM majors is still a big problem today. The STEM workforce is crucial to Americas global competitiveness and groundbreaking capability. The people who work in the STEM field make up nearly half of the United

51 percent of the United States is female but only 34.4 percent of doctors are women. While 90.4 percent of nurses are female (“Women in Medicine”; “Male Nurses Becoming”), the women who do become doctors earn an astounding 25 percent less than their male counterparts (Groves). These staggering figures are only a single piece in the larger overall lack of women in STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which has remained prevalent since the beginning of these fields. Although women are underrepresented in these STEM fields, this is not due to ineptitude, but instead it is a result of the force of societal stereotypes coupled with their wider range of abilities. The recent increase in women’s association with STEM seems

All though women in STEM face many challenges as a whole, a question being posed in this study is whether or not women in math and physics intensive studies face unique obstacles. Underrepresentation in STEM seems a stubborn fact of the matter, however, it is not even across the board. The number of women present in the life sciences (sciences such as biology, environmental studies, health care, etc.), both at the academic and professional level, is much higher than the number of women present in fields that focus heavily on math, physics, and engineering. More and more women are choosing to pursue post-secondary education and enter the specialized workforce; in 2010 the AAUW found “Women currently earn over half of all doctoral degrees

Gender and work exist sociologically as a way to maintain both authority and inequality. Women’s roles throughout history shed a light on the expectations and stereotypes that exist today; however, navigating a gendered economy and overcoming sex segregation continues to be a challenging task for most women. Wages continue to be uneven, and wives continue to bear most of the child rearing and domestic responsibilities despite increasingly working the same amount as their husbands do. Becoming educated on these inequalities and viewing them with a sociological perspective will allow people to see gender and work in an accurate light and continue to develop

In his article, “Does Gender Matter?”, Ben A. Barres writes about the apparent absence of women in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. He starts out the article by informing the reader about a few of the hypotheses that aim to explain this difference in presence, hypotheses that Barres aims to disprove. Barres explains, and at a few points depicts with charts and graphs, the significance of the gap between the amount of white men in the STEM majors and fields of studies and the amount of women and minorities in these same areas. He tell the readers the misconceptions such as the idea that women are inferior in these fields are untrue, and the fact is that woman and minorities are discouraged from entering into these areas

Women in STEM are greatly underrepresented. STEM usually refers to an educational curriculum. Usually the curriculum focuses on science, engineering, technology, and math. The percentage of women in the STEM workforce has risen from seven percent in the seventies to twenty six percent in 2011. (U.S Department of Commerce)

Interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is thinning for women as they progress into higher levels. Women in grades 7-12 were surveyed to see if their interest in STEM fields were diminishing. According to Van Leuvan, this survey showed that there was a decline in interest as these girls progress through high school. Throughout middle school and junior high a love for mathematics can be developed. However, a loss of interest is present as soon as girls hit more demanding classes like calculus. Grades will highly diminished and a fear for comprehension of mathematics in the future will develope. According to the article “Women and Minorities in Engineering” a major outlook on success from students is their ability to understand calculus.

STEM-ming from Sexism After studying the reason behind the low rates of girls in STEM fields in 2017, Sapna Cheryan found that “young girls and female students receive the message that they don’t belong”. That’s harsh. Harsher still is the full reality of being female and interested in STEM- science, technology, engineering, and math. Women have long been seen as less competent in math and science fields, and change comes slowly, if at all. These stereotypes manifest in various roadblocks for women interested in STEM fields, ranging from crudely sexist comments to small groups of women at tech conferences and STEM-related events.

When I was in the kindergarten, my parents were busy with work and they seldom policed my gender. Peer and friends play a more influential role in the field. There was a time when my sister painted her nails, she also painted my nails, too. When I went to the kindergarten, other children were unwilling to play with me. The teacher also told me to wash away the nail polish. I came to understand that boys cannot paint nails because it weakens men’s masculinity. When we moved to a new apartment, my parent painted the wall in my room blue and the curtain was grey. When I was in primary school, I was weak and some bad boys often bullied me. When I was bullied, I cried and reported my sadness to my father. However, my father said boys should not cry but

When acknowledging the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, we notice that this gap in gender participation begins to expand once students leave grade school (K – 12) and move into higher education. One of the reasons for this comes from women being underrepresented in these areas. So obviously, when working to close this gap, schools must work to represent women in these fields as much as they do men. In grade school, students are more likely to have a positive attitude towards women in science when they are exposed to women who work in STEM fields, as opposed to classes that were not given that exposure (Smith & Owens 1986). So, if the interest in STEM tends to be equal between girls and boys in grade school, it is fair to say the girls move away from these areas because they feel as if they don’t belong due to underrepresentation.

A psychologist by the name of Dr. Jessica L. Cundiff has contributed to numerous conference talks over gender stereotypes of women. In 2010, Dr. Jessica published a book on her research- based sex roles and the psychology of women. Based on Cundiff’s job history, one can conclude that she has engaged with woman. For example, the author named Theresa Vescio is a psychologist that focuses on researching on power, sexism, racism, heterosexism, and ageism. Therefore, the people that are allowed to speak is mostly females. The majority of Cundiff’s articles are concentrated on women’s issues, such as sexual harassment. For example, Cundiff’s Gender Stereotypes Influence How People Explain Gender Disparities in the Workplace illustrates how gender

Women and men face significantly different treatment in their day to day lives, whether it be about their clothes, their work, or even their actions. Because of this, it is a common misconception that women, without a doubt, face more gender restrictions than men, simply because women have not yet gained total equality in the workplace. While this idea is supported by both history and statistics, women have made great strides towards equality, steadily decreasing the wage gap between men and women since they began working during the early Industrial Revolution. However, men still face constraints from gender stereotypes in the forms of self-expression and parenthood. Although women are often not able to achieve their full potential in the workplace, as they frequently have to sacrifice their time to take care of their children, they are the ones that shape the minds of their kids. Because of this female led upbringing, with both parenting and educating typically being considered female roles, girls are brought up with a more nurturing and understanding attitude while boys are simply allowed to act rashly and be disruptive - characteristics often attributed to their wild nature. In modern society, both men and women face constraining gender role stereotypes. While these constraints stem from different stages of their lives, with men facing greater restrictions during their predominantly female raised childhood and with women facing greater restrictions in the workplace, these restrictions still significantly shape their characters, lead men and women to take on different roles both inside and outside the home, and cause them to face equal gender stereotype based constraints in their respective places.

In recent years, studies have shown that gender role norms impacts people's behavioral traits regarding how they act, think and feel leading to stereotyping or gender discrimination in all areas of life especial at the workplaces. From an extremely young age, children are taught to follow a defined code of conduct. Furthermore, these codes are mostly in the form of “gender role norms.” Historically, religion had the greatest influence on such issues. Today and in the last couple of years, peers and the media have come up as two of the most powerful influences, especially here in the United States (Eagly, 2013).