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Maybe an article written in Chinese was not the best way to introduce this topic on a English-speaking board. Anyway, the presence of women in science, engineering and other close fields is actually a quite large issue. Maybe I have this opinion because I'm a girl who study a scientific major, but I see this as a quite serious issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields
Summarizing in two lines the "Explanations for low representation of women" paragraph, we see:
- girls may be less interested into science
- According to stereotypes, science and engineering are for boys, girls are not expected to study and work in scientific fields. They can face discrimination at work, they can be labeled as less competent than male colleagues for mere discrimination and so on.
I can't say much about the first point, because it doesn't represent me at all. Anyway, I can't exclude that, on average, girls tend to be less interested in science and technology than boys.
The really worrisome part for me is the second part, and so that girls can avoid science majors just because of social pressure, and that women who work in science/eng. fields can face more problems than their male colleagues just because of their gender.
Also some institutions noticed this issue, for example a couple of years ago the EU proposed this program --> Science: It's a girl thing! that probably didn't solve much, but at least demonstrated some effort on this direction.
Also, I wanted to give you some statistic about how the situation in this regard is in Italy. My source is Almalaurea, a site organized by the Bologna University that collects data from all graduated from all over the country. https://www2.almalaurea.it/cgi-php/u...config=profilo
Browsing their data, I've found out that:
- considering all majors, 59.7% of graduates are females
- Among scientific majors, biology is the only one with many more girls than boys (ranging from the 75.3% of pure biology, which is the one with the highest number of students, to the 53.8% of agricultural biotechnology.)
- physics is definitely a male major in here, with only the 31.9% of girls. Even worse computes science, with only the 15.1% of girl.
- among engineering majors, the girls percentage ranges from the 8.9% of electrical engineering to the 57.0% of biomedical engineering (which is also the only one with more girls than boys)
- math is a girl major, with the 58.0% of female students. But in this case the explanation is just that the main career for math graduated is teaching, and teaching is a female job.
- chemistry is balanced, with the 52.7% on general chemistry and the 38.5% of girls in the industrial curricula (I say that they are balanced because the total number of students in industrial curricula is lower than in the one of general curricula).
- Natural science has the 55.7% of girls (again, this is a major intended for future teachers)
- forestal and environmental sciences, 35.6% of girls, geology the 37.9%
Now THIS is a good post for discussion! I can tell you from experience in my family, that girls who are gifted in math and express an interest in engineering are discouraged from that by parents, in some cases. Even if girls show interest for fields not traditionally for their gender, parents can steer them away from that. There seems to be an anti-engineer bias in the US in general, which I find to be very strange. There have even been anti-engineer threads on this forum, throwing around ridiculous stereotypes of what engineers are like.
The news report says that 71% of the female students between the age of 15-19 choose the science branch, I'm guessing it's referring to the arts/science division common amongst Asian countries in high school.
Regarding age, you have kids born later in the year, so they'd be 15 when they start high school, and then there are kids born earlier in the same year, so they'd be like 18 when they finish high school, add another year for those who take the exam twice, they'd start college one year later when they're 19. So I'm more inclined to believe that it's about high school students.
As for the figures, the article provides 0 information regarding the source, apart from the fact that the survey was conducted by Mastercard, and they didn't even include a link, which makes it very hard to verify.
Maybe. That is one hypothesis.
But the division takes place in the beginning of the second year in high school. Typically a 15 year old student has not made any choice and a 16 year old student already has. That choice can change but not commonly.
Now THIS is a good post for discussion! I can tell you from experience in my family, that girls who are gifted in math and express an interest in engineering are discouraged from that by parents, in some cases. Even if girls show interest for fields not traditionally for their gender, parents can steer them away from that. There seems to be an anti-engineer bias in the US in general, which I find to be very strange. There have even been anti-engineer threads on this forum, throwing around ridiculous stereotypes of what engineers are like.
When I was in graduate school, all the female PhD students in my department were from Asia, and probably 80% Chinese.
(But most male PhD students too.)
I do hope American schools do something to break the gender roles.
When I was in graduate school, all the female PhD students in my department were from Asia, and probably 80% Chinese.
(But most male PhD students too.)
I do hope American schools do something to break the gender roles.
My university had a special program to encourage and support women engineers. I thought that was fairly common for state universities in the 80's/90's? But somehow, they need to reach parents, too.
My university had a special program to encourage and support women engineers. I thought that was fairly common for state universities in the 80's/90's? But somehow, they need to reach parents, too.
Engineering is "not cool"? I feel American kids don't want to be "nerds".
Engineering is "not cool"? I feel American kids don't want to be "nerds".
It's a given that American society, and probably the whole West, are becoming anti-intellectual. In the US's case, it always was. Here, sports stars are widely praised, while engineers are jeered. But, I have a feeling it's also the exact same in any country in Asia. That's just my speculation. I'm not from there, so I'm not gonna pretend I know what it is like there
Engineering is "not cool"? I feel American kids don't want to be "nerds".
American kids want to be nerds in the sense they want to play video games, have the latest phones, gadgets, but many don't want to be nerds in the sense that they work really hard in school, get great grades, and work in fields of science or engineering.
A big difference is that American parents want their kids to enjoy their childhood over progressing in education, not that they don't care about education, but average is just fine. Asian cultures and many other western cultures are not like that. Kids enjoying their childhood is not nearly as important.
EDIT: I want to add that the average American kid isn't going to be competing with average kids from Asia or other western countries. They will be competing with their best. Average Asian students aren't coming to the US to get degrees, these are their best and brightest coming to the US.
American kids want to be nerds in the sense they want to play video games, have the latest phones, gadgets, but many don't want to be nerds in the sense that they work really hard in school, get great grades, and work in fields of science or engineering.
A big difference is that American parents want their kids to enjoy their childhood over progressing in education, not that they don't care about education, but average is just fine. Asian cultures and many other western cultures are not like that. Kids enjoying their childhood is not nearly as important.
EDIT: I want to add that the average American kid isn't going to be competing with average kids from Asia or other western countries. They will be competing with their best. Average Asian students aren't coming to the US to get degrees, these are their best and brightest coming to the US.
Those who come to the US are not the best ones anymore. In fact you are talking about undergraduates, many of the Chinese kids come here because they can't get in any decent college in China, where they can't get around the gaokao.
Those who come to the US are not the best ones anymore. In fact you are talking about undergraduates, many of the Chinese kids come here because they can't get in any decent college in China, where they can't get around the gaokao.
Any figures or further info to back this statement up? I don't necessarily disbelieve it, but I know that your China-boosting tendencies often lead to untrue and/or bizarre statements (stuff about Chinese people having larger heads and being destined to for greatness due to their "racial profile," for example). Going abroad for university seems to still be an extremely popular thing to do by nearly every metric I can see, and I have a hard time imagining any top-tier student turning down a spot at Harvard medical school or MIT for computer sciences in favor of Tsinghua or Zhejiang.
Of course, due to the Gaokao, it's far easier for a student of means but poor grades to go to a low-prestige, midpack American state school or liberal arts college than to a high-level Chinese university, but these students could have also just gone to a midpack Chinese school.
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I can tell you from experience in my family, that girls who are gifted in math and express an interest in engineering are discouraged from that by parents, in some cases. Even if girls show interest for fields not traditionally for their gender, parents can steer them away from that. There seems to be an anti-engineer bias in the US in general, which I find to be very strange. There have even been anti-engineer threads on this forum, throwing around ridiculous stereotypes of what engineers are like.
