Science and engineer sectors have made great contributions to building a diverse labor forces in current American. However, we may notice that women and minority groups have fewer participation in those sectors. Therefore, a question has been proposed "is science a new area of segregation.
The author presented the statistics as below:
African American accounted 12% of population and 11% of all students beyond high school, however, there is only 7% of African American earn a bachelor degree in STEM field, 4% of African American earn master degree of STEM, and 2% of AA earn PhD in this field. There is only 6% of African American work in the field of STEM.
In terms of women, although female account half of the workplace, there is only 26% of female work relate to STEM.
The multiplying and decent paid job in STEM, as well as the long-term under-representative of female and minority in this field, have aggravated the entrenched economic inequality by race and gender.
Some reasons for this reality have been proposed as "a complex equation of self-doubt, stereotype, discouragement and economics, and sometimes just wrong perceptions of what math and science are all about".
Some solutions should be made to promote the diversity in the field of STEM to tackle with the inequality caused by gender and ethnicity, the inequality that might be deepened as the science and engineer sectors keep on developing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/opinion/charles-blow-a-future-segregated-by-science.html?_r=0
I think the way this article is written is very interested. There has always been a disparity in STEM education access among women and people of color. Very little on a large systematic level has been done to really address this problem so it seems expected that this would continue to be true in the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jamari. For a long time women and minority students hae been underrepresented in STEM fields. Being a women and a minority who likes math, while going through high school I was often 1 of 2 females in the class. When I got to college, I was also one of a few female students in my upper level science classes. I know that they are starting to offer scholarships to individuals interested in STEM, however, something actively needs to be done to address this issue if there is going to be a positive change.
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