[Dcouncil] Article about women/minorities in STEM fields

Wed Dec 11 10:11:57 EST 2013

Dear Council

here is today's NYT editorial.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/opinion/too-few-girls-and-minorities-study-tech-subjects.html?hp&rref=opinion

Nothing really new but another fresh testimonial that there's still a 
lot that needs be done about D & I...

Fulvia

            Editorial Board

    Missing From Science Class

  Too Few Girls and Minorities Study Tech Subjects

A big reason America is falling behind other countries in science and 
math is that we have effectively written off a huge chunk of our 
population as uninterested in those fields or incapable of succeeding in 
them.

Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent of 
science, technology, engineering or math jobs, according 
<http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/employment_occupations/cb13-162.html> 
to the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11 percent of the workforce but 
just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15 percent of 
the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions. There is no 
question that women and minorities have made progress in science and 
math in the last several decades, but their gains have been slow and 
halting. And in the fast-growing field of computer science, women's 
representation has actually declined in the last 20 years, while 
minorities have made relatively small gains.

These jobs come with above-average pay and offer workers a wide choice 
of professions. Opening them to women and minorities would help reduce 
corrosive income inequality between whites and other groups, and would 
narrow the gender gap in wages. Improving the representation of women 
and minorities would also enrich American scientific research and 
development, because they will add a different perspective to workplaces 
currently dominated by white and Asian men.

Moreover, the people who do well in these professions will be much more 
likely to lead the industry in the future and make decisions that affect 
thousands of workers and customers. Many technology companies, including 
Twitter until recently, have no women on their board of directors, and 
few blacks and Hispanics in senior management roles, in part because too 
few girls and minorities are becoming programmers and engineers.

*What's Holding Them Back
*

he biggest career disadvantage faced by many lower-income blacks and 
Hispanics is their limited access to a good education. Compared with 
upper-income Americans, a greater percentage are raised by parents who 
have not gone to college or graduated from high school, and more grow up 
with single parents who do not have the time or resources to enrich 
their children's education. Moreover, a smaller percentage of minority 
children attend enriching prekindergarten programs, which studies have 
shown aids the development of cognitive and analytical skills that are 
needed to do well in science and math. A recent study 
<http://bit.ly/19xkna0> showed that nearly half of Hispanic 4-year-olds 
are not enrolled in any preschool classes. While more than 60 percent of 
black 4-year-olds are enrolled, most of them are in programs of low or 
mediocre quality.

Schools that serve minority and lower-income neighborhoods tend to 
employ teachers with fewer years of experience and less specialized 
training in math and science than schools in white and upper-income 
neighborhoods, according to a 2012 National Science Foundation report 
<http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/pdf/seind12.pdf>. By contrast, 
developed nations like Germany, South Korea and Belgium tend to devote 
more resources like teachers to schools that serve their most 
disadvantaged students than on schools that serve advantaged children, 
according to <http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46623978.pdf> the Organization 
for Economic Cooperation and Development.

*Lower Expectations*

Entrenched stereotypes about who does well in science and math also work 
against minorities in classrooms. Too many teachers give up easily on 
them simply because they are not expected to do as well as white 
students. Despite those challenges, many minorities still enroll in 
science and math programs in college but fewer of them earn a degree in 
those programs in five years --- 22.1 percent for Hispanics and 18.4 
percent for blacks --- than whites (33 percent) and Asians (42 percent), 
according to a study <http://bit.ly/1d5yTYY> by researchers at the 
University of California, Los Angeles. Many of those who leave are 
simply ill-prepared for the rigors of college-level math and science. 
Others feel socially unwelcome because they make up a tiny minority in 
largely white and Asian science and engineering departments. They also 
have far fewer role models to look up to.

Unlike minority children, girls as a whole do about as well as or better 
than boys as measured by 
<http://www.aauw.org/resource/why-so-few-women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics/> 
their high school grade point averages in science and math. And in the 
last several decades, women have made great gains in fields like 
biology, chemistry, psychology and sociology; they now earn a majority 
of undergraduate degrees and a growing proportion of advanced degrees in 
life sciences.

But women have made far fewer gains in physical sciences and more 
math-intensive fields. When making choices about their majors and 
careers, many young women rule out engineering and computer science 
partly because they are uninterested, feel ill-prepared for them or 
because society identifies these domains as male. Women who do earn 
degrees in these fields leave those professions at much higher rates 
than men. And the women who graduate with degrees in engineering and 
computer science areless likely 
<http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf>to be employed than men.

In many cases, women seem to have internalized society's belief that 
they are incapable of mastering these fields as well as men. Carol 
Dweck, a professor at Stanford, and other psychologists have found 
<https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/cdweckmathgift.pdf> 
that female students who are made to believe that math ability is innate 
have lower scores and are less likely to study math than girls who 
believe that math skills can be acquired through hard work. Another 
study <http://allenmcconnell.net/pdfs/mcst-JPSP-2009.pdf> showed that 
female college students got more questions right on math tests when they 
were told beforehand that "college students are good at math" than when 
they were told "women are bad at math," which suggests stereotypes 
undermine women's performance.

*Insufficient Resources*

These gaps could be reduced if every child had access to free public 
preschools. Earlier this year, President Obama proposed making 
high-quality preschools available to 4-year-old children of families 
with incomes of up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line, at a 
10-year cost of $75 billion. Studies have shown that every $1 invested 
in preschools saves society $7 in the future through lower spending on 
remedial education, higher productivity and less crime.

The country should also make sure that the schools that primarily serve 
minorities have the resources and support they need to hire qualified 
teachers so their students are not at a disadvantage relative to 
children in more affluent areas. States will need to take the lead to 
make this happen, but the federal government can also assist through 
grants and other support.

*Conventional Teaching Methods*

The Knowledge Is Power Program, which operates 141 public charter 
schools around the country, has effectively used smaller class sizes, 
longer school days and summer school to help lagging minority students 
improve test scores in math, reading and science. Teachers at KIPP 
schools maintain high expectations of all students, working intensively 
one-on-one with children until they comprehend every important concept. 
Though the program has been criticized for its dropout rates and 
admissions policies, one recent independent study 
<http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/Newsroom/Releases/2013/KIPP_2_13.asp> of 
KIPP's approach showed that middle school students who spent three years 
in its schools had math scores that on average put them 11 months ahead 
of where they would have been had they not joined the school; they were 
14 months ahead in science achievement.

Teachers also need to make science and math education much more 
practical and hands-on. Girls have shown much more engagement in 
subjects when they learn the connection 
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/IEEE99.html> 
between what they are studying and real-world problems. That may partly 
explain why so many talented girls prefer to go into life sciences, 
where that link has generally been more apparent.

*Not Enough Role Models*

Groups like the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering 
have been showing <http://www.nacme.org/middle-high-school-programs> 
minorities and girls that they can imagine themselves as scientists or 
engineers, providing role models to speak to middle school students and 
helping high schools set up engineering academies. A five-year program 
<http://www.cs.bowiestate.edu/cas/stem.html> funded by the National 
Science Foundation at Bowie State University, a historically black 
university in Maryland, provides training and mentorship to high school 
science and math teachers and a summer science academy to 10th graders.

For both women and minorities, academic and social support is critical. 
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County has programs for minorities 
<http://meyerhoff.umbc.edu/> and women 
<http://www.cwit.umbc.edu/scholars/> that provide students with 
scholarships, mentorship, internships and involvement in cutting-edge 
research. Students enrolled in its programs are much more likely to 
graduate than other comparable students.

More than half of the American population will be made up of minorities 
in 2043 
<https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-243.html>. 
And the number of women who are the primary or sole earner in their 
families is growing 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/economy/women-as-family-breadwinner-on-the-rise-study-says.html>. 
Those trends make it imperative that one of the most dynamic sectors of 
our economy no longer remain a male and largely white and Asian domain.

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