I’ve been labelled my whole life. Every kid gets labelled eventually, and my labels were “smartypants,” “genius,” “math whiz,” and “computer geek.” I lived, ate, dreamed, and breathed science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Understandably, I found my calling in mechatronics.
The one label I was never branded was “just a girl.” Once I eventually figured out that I was a cute girl and developed a sexual identity, it was something I kept mentally separate from the genderless world of STEM. I had never experienced anything indicative of being disadvantaged as a woman.
I had heard the stories of famous female pioneers like Rosalind Franklin, Sally Ride, and Marie Curie. I appreciated that long before I was born, women fought for equal rights, and that’s why I was able to enjoy them today. Alas, in academia, the war is over and equality now reigns. In Western society, women are now more likely to get an undergraduate degree than men. If you limit your purview to science, then the split is precisely down the middle.
Everything changed a couple of years ago, while I was in university. Feminism became trendy and sororities sprung up, pointed a finger at us, and said “poor unfortunate girls! We must help them!” Suddenly people started putting me on a pedestal and treating me like I was a special little flower. I attended SFU’s Op Fair where employers went out of their way to point out to me how they are making the effort to hire more women, as if I cared.
Contrary to common sense, the push for equality is stronger than it has ever been, so what gives?
Everyone being created ‘equal’ is an ideal, not a reality.
The really unfortunate thing is that these pushes for equality are actually having negative effects on women in STEM. By telling women that rather than having made a free choice to go into early childhood education, or the humanities, or (perish the thought) being a mother, they were manipulated into these decisions by the ghostly hand of the patriarchy, you’re infantilizing them. I feel pretty objectified when I get the sense that I might be hired over an equally qualified male candidate in order to ‘diversify.’
The problem here is the conflation of equal opportunity and equal outcome. Why should it be that exactly 10 per cent of every company’s employees are from the LGBTQ community? Why should exactly 50 per cent of all jobs in a field go to women? Everyone being created ‘equal’ is an ideal, not a reality.
As long as everyone is given access to the open marketplace of ideas, then the world is fair. I don’t see anyone advocating for an increased male presence in female-dominated fields like environmental sciences, health sciences, or education.
The idea that I, as a woman studying STEM, need special measures to ensure my success is a deeply misogynistic view. The whole system should be genderblind; this is really all that’s needed to remove the spectre of sexism. Initiatives to expand the representation of women in these fields are turning into the worst kind of misogyny, especially now that it’s being perpetuated against women by other women.
I am quite aware that I am in a faculty whose undergrads are 15 per cent female. I don’t personally care, though. I’m too busy trying to get my code to compile to have time to bat an eyelash at the gender disparity.
