Friday, November 14, 2014
What We've Been Reading 11/14
“Codeathon Winner Makes Safety Alert System for Jawbone
Health Tracker”
This article in the Boston Business Journal
recaps the events of the Clinton Foundation’s Women’s Health Codeathon series.
These events not only serve to emphasize women’s health issues, it also
provides a platform for female programmers in a male-dominated field. The
winning program is called Safe.me, which uses the fitness tracker Jawbone to
send out alerts to emergency contacts. While the purpose to program this app
was the prevalence of sexual violence across college campuses, its aim is to
increase bystander intervention. While the programmers have only created a
prototype, the app is definitely taking a modern approach to persisting
societal issues.
“Pregnant, and No Civil Rights”
This opinion piece in the New York Times argues how the
abortion debate has resulted in the loss of fundamental rights for many
pregnant women. The author cites anti-abortion laws that are being used as a
basis to arrest women and prevent them from making choices about how they will
give birth. For instance, women have been arrested in Iowa, Utah, and Louisiana
for “attempted fetal homicide.” In one instance, a pregnant woman had fallen
down the stairs, and after seeking medical help, she was arrested by the
police. Other women have undergone forced caesarians, some of which have
resulted in the deaths of both the mother and child. This is an alarming
phenomenon especially due to the rise of laws suppressing abortion rights. For
this reason, the argues that we need to start focusing on the loss of women’s
civil and human rights as an issue rather than abortion.
‘Blame-The-Victim’ Culture May Discourage Female Vets From
Seeking Help For Trauma
This article in in the Huffington Post seeks to draw
increased public attention to sexual assault in the military and hardships
female vets undergo due to the prevalence of ‘blame-the-victim’ culture in the
military. A survey estimated around 26,000 cases of sexual assaults with only around
4,000 being reported. Women are hesitant to seek help for trauma since they
feel they do not “deserve to have help.” These are women who have valiantly
served their country but are stigmatized, discouraging them from seeking help.
The author argues that the military needs to create a more welcoming
environment at hospitals. Currently, most Veteran Affairs hospitals are male-dominated
and this may add to the discomfort the women feel.
Why so few women in
science, technology, engineering and mathematics?
The number of
women in science and engineering is increasing, yet men continue to outnumber
women, especially at the upper levels of these professions. In elementary,
middle, and high school, girls and boys take math and science courses in
roughly equal numbers, and about as many girls as boys leave high school
prepared to pursue science and engineering majors in college. However, fewer
women than men pursue these majors. Among first-year college students, women
are much less likely than men to say that they intend to major in science,
technology, engineering, or math (STEM). By graduation, men outnumber women in
nearly every science and engineering field, and in some, such as physics, engineering,
and computer science, the difference is dramatic, with women earning only 20
percent of bachelor’s degrees. Women’s representation in science and
engineering declines further at the graduate level and yet again in the
transition to the workplace.
Social and
environmental factors contribute to the underrepresentation of women in science
and engineering. The rapid increase in the number of girls achieving very high
scores on mathematics tests once thought to measure innate ability suggests
that cultural factors are at work. Thirty years ago there were 13 boys for
every girl who scored above 700 on the SAT math exam at age 13; today that
ratio has dropped to about 3:1. This increase in the number of girls identified
as “mathematically gifted” suggests that education can and does make a
difference at the highest levels of mathematical achievement. While biological
gender differences may play a role, they clearly do not provide sufficient
evidence and explanations for the gap between men and women in STEM. As
mentioned before, there are numerous external factors, such as social and
environmental, that impact the number of women in science and engineering.
Firstly, the environment around girls shapes their achievements and interest in
math and science. For example, when girls are told that by teachers and parents
that their intelligence can expand with experience and learning, girls do
better on math tests and are more likely to say they want to continue to study
math in the future. Secondly, at colleges and universities, little changes can
make a big difference in attracting and maintaining women in STEM. For
instance, providing a broader overview of the field in introductory courses,
can add up to big gains in female student recruitment and retention. The same
goes for improving departmental culture to promote the integration of female
faculty. Last but not least, bias, often unconscious, limits women’s progress
in scientific and engineering fields. This bias not only affects individuals’
attitudes toward others but may also impact girls’ and women’s likelihood of
cultivating their own interest in math and science.
To conclude,
women can be as successful as men in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
We should not hinder them from showing their skills and capabilities but rather
encourage them to explore their talents in whatever area of study they wish.
The research
report can be found here: http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/Why-So-Few-Women-in-Science-Technology-Engineering-and-Mathematics.pdf
