I was watching some YouTube last last night, and in honor of International Women’s Day, Microsoft blasted me with this ad.
What. The. Fuck. Microsoft?
First of all, not until you get to Microsoft’s website do you get the fine print.
Only 6.7% of women graduate with STEM degrees vs 17% of men, meaning men are 2.5 times more likely to enter these high paying fields.
Watching the video, it looked to me like they were trying to imply that 93.3% of STEM degrees went to men.
I tried to double check their statistics and found this article from the US News and World report.
Overall, 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees earned by men and 29 percent earned by women are now in STEM fields.
That’s a little different from the Microsoft claim. Isn’t it?
Then you go into the breakdown of STEM fields by gender and you find out that while 18% of computer science majors are women, so are 60% of biology majors. So in the video, that girl that wants to cure cancer has good chance of being one of the women who make up the 57% of STEM degrees earned in biological or life sciences.
That bit is true. Why? Because they are girls? No.
Because modern science is collaborative. Research teams include hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. You can dedicate your life to a project and sometimes only make a tiny dent in solving the problem. The vast majority of engineers and scientists won’t ever become a Nobel Laureate or a famous inventor, regardless of gender.
Welcome to the world of engineering.
It is hard. That is why so many students who start in an engineering degree fail to finish it. It is academically rigorous. While all your friends are out partying on a Wednesday and cutting that 8:00 am class, you are writing lab reports or doing differential calculus. Being an engineering major sucks. I know, I did it for 11 years.
But ultimately, what I want to know is, who is telling these girls that they can’t major in STEM.
That is what pisses me off the most. I began my STEM career in 2001 and have seen nothing but program after program and initiative after initiative to bring girls into STEM. Where are the people saying “science isn’t for the girlies?” Everything I’ve seen is 100% the opposite. I’m tired of hearing how discriminatory STEM is. All Microsoft managed to do with this ad was beat me over the head with the same crap I’ve heard in eleven years in academia, somehow as a man who likes science, it’s my fault that there aren’t as many women in the field “as there should be.”
“Being an engineering major sucks. I know, I did it for 11 years.”
LOL — at Georgia Tech, we called that being “a gradual student.” It took me 15 quarters to graduate, but since I went continually with the exception of one summer (for ROTC camp), I graduated in 4.33 years.
I feel a little better about earning my 4-year degree in only 8 years now. My dad did it in 5, and he had a double-major.
“I began my STEM career in 2001 and have seen nothing but program after program and initiative after initiative to bring girls into STEM. Where are the people saying ‘science isn’t for the girlies?’ Everything I’ve seen is 100% the opposite. I’m tired of hearing how discriminatory STEM is. All Microsoft managed to do with this ad was beat me over the head with the same crap I’ve heard in eleven years in academia, somehow as a man who likes science, it’s my fault that there aren’t as many women in the field ‘as there should be.'”
Hear, hear! Not only did MS beat us over the head with the same crap, they are essentially telling girls that the statistics are fate. Nowhere in most any diatribe against the lack of women in STEM is the fact that not going into STEM is a choice of the women — a choice that is probably swayed by all the “STEM is misogynist” rhetoric.
Another implication in there is that women are discriminated against by employers, when the opposite is the case. You show me two new grads, guy and girl, with the same academic records and I guaran-damn-tee you the girl gets the job offer.
It’s a 100% sure thing bet if it’s a fortune 500 company.
Absolutely. And that was true 20 years ago too, when I graduated. Recently I went through hiring training for a Fortune 500 company, and while they told me they don’t have quotas, and we should hire the best candidate, if all else is equal- hire the woman (or minority, or disabled). If you are going to hire a white make, document the hell out of why he was the best candidate.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2015/06/stemwomen.jpg
The people telling girls they can’t be engineers are the same ones telling them to stay out of games journalism: feminists.
And just like the girls who would love to go into the video games industry, it’s feminists telling them they’ll face difficulty that keeps them out. Because the women who do go into engineering (and the video game industry) almost invariably find themselves given the red carpet treatment.