Looking at a list of Australian scientists who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, you’d never guess that this was the country of “a fair go for all”.
In fact, you might be forgiven for thinking that you’d stepped back into Ye Olde Days where women were charged with mixing cake batter in the kitchen, while the men were given “real” chemicals to play with in the lab – it was only the occasional woman who could slip out under the cover of darkness to attempt to venture in the wake of Rosalind Franklin, who, by some accounts, received too little acknowledgement of her contributions to Watson and Crick’s Nobel Prize-worthy discovery.
To date, only one out of Australia’s fourteen contributions to the sciences’ Laureate honour rolls is female.
Of course, if the issue is the number of women doing science, it’s probably a good idea to look further down the academic food chain for the numbers. The good news is that they get better, but not by much.
Despite substantial progress in the last few decades, today there are roughly twice as many men working in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields as women. Which is striking, given that men and women make up roughly equal parts of the population. It’s also striking given that there are no major academic differences between men and women’s abilities to study matters vegetable, animal, and mineral. And given that anti-discrimination laws ensure some measure of equality when it comes to the workforce.
Does that just mean that not as many women want to be scientists as men?
Probably. But that’s precisely the problem and we clearly have some way to go in addressing it. Especially since STEM contributes almost 300 billion dollars annually to Australia’s GPD, while only effectively drawing on half of Australia’s potential STEM workforce.
Many children invest great thought and energy planning what they want to be when they grow up and many grow into the realisation that their future as a Jedi, Mermaid or Captain America is, unfortunately, unreasonable. Some even abandon more reasonable dreams, such as being Prime Minister or an astronaut, or, particularly in the case of girls, being a scientist.
After all, there’s no reason why dreams of white lab coats should discarded in the same way that dreams of superhero capes must, especially in a country that prides itself on innovation, which, presumably requires scientists and engineers to do the innovating.
Of course, given that the sciences were once almost exclusively male domain, there should be little surprise that the hangover lingers yet.
From a young age, we’re told to not judge a book by its over, but to look inside it for the moral of its story. The same advice given to the peak-career scientists of today would have had them studying from science textbooks in the ’70s that overwhelmingly depicted males as the ones “sciencing”, while the females, if any, were usually watching from the proverbial side-lines. Sometimes they were just sunbathing or swimming. Presumably the moral to be taken away here was that science is a “Boys Only” club.
Textbook publishers have woken from their slumber and now better acknowledge both sexes as being capable of doing the science, and even Lego has followed suit, with their introduction of female scientist figurines. The limited edition line sold out in a matter of days, possibly because it offered girls the alternative of playing with a doll of a female scientist rather than with a Barbie doll.
The dynamics performed in textbooks from ages past and the overwhelming trend of STEM toys being marketed towards boys are performed in real life, too, since the majority of scientists – let alone senior ones – are male.
Boys’ lab-coat-clad dreams are reaffirmed each time they see their future selves reflected in their usually-male teachers and lecturers, in announcements that Dr. Male Scientist has discovered the cure for Terrible Disease, in recruitment material featuring Mr. Engineer.
Meanwhile, in the absence of visible female role-models, the prospect of chasing a profession that is stereotypically male-associated becomes less and less appealing for girls.
Enter Female Scientist Role Model and Mentor; girls and women are now able to recalibrate their aspirations.
This is not to say that visible role models will completely reverse women’s lack of participation in STEM, but they do go a fair way – especially when your role model is also your mentor.
There have been many programs in other countries which have succeeded in supporting girls in pursuing STEM study with the help of female STEM mentors at all levels of education and career, including those in France, Israel, Norway and Finland. Mentoring programs often aim to engage and inspire high-achieving students and provide a way for them to experience research and development settings earlier and more intensively than otherwise.
Given the messaging that girls are usually exposed to around careers in science – whether through the marketing of toys, or the relative lack of prominent female scientists – is that often it’s not for them, access to a female STEM mentor can be transformative.
Now those girls can talk to and learn from a real, live, female scientist – something they might have previously been forgiven for thinking didn’t at all exist. Negative stereotypes and presumptions of future exclusion are dampened and self-efficacy increased.
Unlike some other initiatives encouraging women in STEM, the implementation of mentoring programs is flexible. They can be implemented in a variety of educational, academic and professional situations. They can suit varying groups sizes and work towards a variety of different outcomes. Perhaps most importantly, they are uncontroversial and relatively inexpensive and so require little capital – political or otherwise.
It’s time we gave women a leg-up in the academic food chain and helped fuel girls’ dreams of being the next Rosalind Franklin.