By Alyssa Opdyke
Women face inequality in STEM fields. Courtesy of Wikimedia
On Oct. 10, the New York Times ran the op-ed, “What Really Keeps Women out of Tech” by Eileen Pollack, highlighting the stratification between men and women in STEM fields. As a former computer science major who had left the field due to feelings of minimal belonging, Pollack cited the media’s male-focused coverage of startup culture, feared perceptions by male counterparts and niched “nerd” culture as reasons for women’s hesitance to pursue and remain in STEM fields. After speaking with three female STEM students at Fordham, it was evident that, while there are many instances of acceptance among women in STEM fields, there are still issues, especially at the undergraduate level.
The most prominent issues discussed and experienced universally among interviewed students were distinctly related to mentors and guidance in STEM.
Maria Coluccio, FCRH ’15, a psychology and pre-med graduate who is now enrolled in Fordham’s psychology graduate program to become a military psychiatrist, noted a mentor’s deep hesitance of her intended career path: “I’ve had someone who was supposed to be a mentor tell me that I should reconsider my career goals of wanting to go into military psychiatry because I’m a small woman and the men I will be dealing with are violent. I’ve had people question me about how I plan on keeping a family or finding a guy who will make time for my career multiple times every year.”
Additionally, Katie Dolan, FCRH ’18, a physics major intending to specialize in an area of theoretical physics commented, “[While] I’ve actually been very lucky thus far with my studying experience, I have never been taught science by a woman. I’ve had a female math teacher once here at Fordham, but overall, there is a distinct lack of female mentors and advisors.”
However, there have also been a number of positive aspects and advantages to studying in a STEM field as a woman. Brigid Mulroe, FCRH ‘16, a physics major and math minor who will be pursuing her PhD. in physics has always been “aware of a support system for women in STEM fields.”
Having attended conferences and networking events on women in physics and STEM, Mulroe commented that while she recognizes that she is a minority in her program, she has benefitted from efforts to encourage women to go into these fields: “As someone who’s not naturally very ambitious, I’ve always felt a lot of support from my teachers and professors to push myself: for example, in my first few years of college I was thinking of going into civil engineering, but a few professors encouraged me to pursue a PhD. in a more challenging field. In my senior year of high school, my STEM teachers encouraged me to go into science or engineering and pointed out that being a woman in STEM had some advantages, because girls are in the minority at most engineering schools, a strong female applicant would stand out more.”
My own experiences have fallen to the trends of the article: general encouragement to study STEM, but a lack of positive mentors to help me stay. I came into Fordham as an extremely hesitant biology major on the pre-med track, hoping to soon switch to the newly established neuroscience major and eventually become a neurologist. However, I had been debating pursuing that path since the middle of senior year of high school, when I realized that my enjoyment of science classes was more because I was good at them, not because I enjoyed them. I distinctly remember the incident when I decided that this major and career path was not for me. During summer orientation prior to my freshman year, Fordham required all students considering pre-med to attend an introductory meeting about the program. What seemed like a simple informational meeting became a terrifying, fear inducing hour of warnings about the difficulties of science classes and the massive amount of dedication they required. I also distinctly remember that the presentation was led by a female chemistry professor. While I now realize this meeting was necessary to weed out hesitant students like myself, regardless, the way the science program and STEM field was presented was that of a place that should be feared and warned about. It did not feel like an environment of acceptance or joy for any student, not just female students.
I quickly made an appointment in Dean Parmach’s office to drop my science major, became undecided, took a communications class and am now a very happy communications major, which has always been in the back of my mind but never seemed like a viable career path. However, I have recently considered attending graduate school for public health to eventually work in unstable mental health and healthcare reform.
I have always felt welcome in my STEM classes, and was never afraid to be classified as a “nerd” or compete with male students if I had pursued science. If anything, I was afraid of my failure on my part, not as a woman, but as a person with a history of school-related anxiety.
Overall, while there are still incidents of bias and misogyny evident in studying and pursuing STEM, it is often relative to the individual student’s experiences and mentors. Additionally, while systems like affirmative action and female-exclusive STEM events have recently popped up in major numbers, only time will tell if women will finally be viewed as equal to men in STEM fields.
Alyssa Opdyke, FCRH ’16, is a communication and media studies major from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
