There can be a solution to improve the lack of women career in technology field. Since 2015, in response to the call of the United Nations, we celebrate every February 11 the Day of Women and Girls in Science. The United Nations proclaimed it with the aim of making the role of women career in technology is visible. Today, the number of women enrolled in technology majors is less than it was 30 years ago.
STEM is an acronym that includes the English terms Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In Spanish, STEM is also spoken about for the translation of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
STEM has been talked about as the careers of the future for more than a decade. The near future, which is just around the corner from the pandemic, will be a future technologized to the teeth. It is not difficult to see that if women are not trained in technological careers, again they will not be present in the management of the companies that run the world, and they will not have access to a mainly technological labor market. As Inmaculada P. de Guzmán underlines in her text: “If women are a minority in these disciplines, they will have serious difficulties to enter the labor market of the future on an equal footing. But it is not considered a problem. Society is not mentalized. It does not appear in the CISS. The gender gap (salaries, working time, pensions) that already exists in our labor market will widen »
The era of technological illiteracy is approaching, showing its teeth, and the data indicates that, once again, women will be the most devoured by the wolf.
Inmaculada P. de Guzmán Molina, professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Malaga, reviews in her article the data on the technological gap, highlights the women who do participate in leadership in this new world and, finally, proposes her solution to the Shortage of Women in STEM: Her 8 × 3 Theory.
Text by Inmaculada P. de Guzmán Molina. Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Malaga. Research in Applied Mathematics in Computing. Automatic reasoners.
February 11th! It is time to talk about women and Science and I have to say that I am going to do it with a panic. I am not exaggerating, I am panicky to see that this is becoming a habit and the worst thing for a problem so real and so serious is that it becomes an assumed problem that is talked about and talked about, but there is no progress in its solution. I will try to explain the reasons for my panic.
A look at the data for women career in technology:
- About a month ago, an engineer whose name was not disclosed by Google pointed to “biological differences” as an explanation for the low presence of women in the technology industry. The female percentage in technology has fallen since the early 1990s from 36% to 25% in the United States.
- In the EU they are 16% in non-executive jobs:
- The management positions of Silicon Valley companies are only 11% female.
- It is difficult to find female leaders on the boards of the technology companies, and that is also a hindrance for the situation to improve.
But there are them. These are the women who today lead and / or decide in large technology companies.
- Facebook’s # 2 chief operating officer is Sheryl Sandberg.
- Google’s CEO is Susan Wojcicki.
- The first woman to lead DARPA, the US Army’s high-tech projects agency, was Regina Dugan, who stepped down to lead Google’s most innovative division, ATAP, and last year went to Facebook’s think tank.
- The first woman in the financial management of Microsoft is Amy Hood, negotiator in the largest acquisition of the giant created by Bill Gates, that of Linkedin.
I could go on but I’m going to go further. Again I will say that I am not exaggerating when I say that without women, computing would not exist as we know it. Am I exaggerating? Let’s see, to women we must:
- The first digital computers
- The First Great Computer
- The First Word Processor
- Programming languages: Cobol, Fortran.
- The first microelectronic chips.
- Bluetooth, wifi and GPS
- Portable fax, touch-tone telephone, solar cells, fiber optic cables
- The first pediatric exoskeleton .
And yet
- Countries with greater gender equality have, according to a study published in Psychological Science, a lower proportion of women who study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM for its acronym in English).
- Only 30% of students enrolled in STEM-related careers in higher education are women, and only 3% of higher education students choose to pursue studies in the field of information and communication technologies ( TIC).
- In the US, women enrolled in technology majors were 30% in 1990. Now they are 13%.
If women are a minority in these disciplines, they will have serious difficulties entering the labor market of the future on an equal footing. But it is not considered a problem. Society is not mentalized. It does not appear in the CISS. The gender gap (wages, working time, pensions) already significant in our labor market will widen.
In 1870 in the western world only 9.6% of women could read and write. And 10% is just the current average of women who have access to a trained use of technologies
An alert: In 1870 in the western world only 9.6% of women could read and write. And 10% is just the current average of women who have access to a trained use of technologies. Of course, we are not talking about being users. The jobs that will disappear with the advancement of the introduction of technologies are many of those that women usually do: typically administrative jobs, repetitive manual and / or cognitive tasks that are already being automated. Consequence : Automation will affect female employment rates.
Is Automation that close
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) states that the increase in robots is 15% per year. The use of robots not only creates qualified jobs, it also lowers the cost of products.
According to the World Economic Forum, next year 5 million jobs will disappear in the world’s 15 most developed economies. But the consulting firm Metra Martech points out that robots have currently been responsible for the creation of at least 8 M jobs, which will not only cover the lost, but also represents a surplus.
Returning to the situation of women, why the low percentage of women in ICT? One of the most widely argued causes is that they do not have references, or rather, they are not provided with references. A good exercise would be to seek relevant contributions from women in Science and Patents. The result will certainly be a surprise.
I started this article by saying that I was in a panic when talking about it again. And it is that there is talk of the inequality to which we refer by the UN, the Higher European Research Centers, the Governments, the Council of Rectors, the European Commission, the OAS, but, what it continues to be transmitted remains unchanged: we are not moving forward.
These are some phrases from scientists when asked why we are not moving forward:
“…. Because maybe it doesn’t look bad that you arrive professionally, but as long as you leave the rest done ”.
“…. How far have we women advanced… ten meters? Well, by ten meters we have left the liver, the pancreas, the kidney… ”.
The 8 x 3 measure
Have measures been proposed? Of course: mechanisms for reconciling professional and family life, flexible hours, tax incentives that encourage all people to be financially independent throughout their lives. Stable employment with adequate hours to reconcile with life. Disseminate European policies. Publish and disseminate statistics and indicators annually.
But I think all of them have shown that they are not being effective. From my experience, I have been proposing for years a measure that I think would be effective and that I call 8 x 3. It is very simple, the day has 24 hours and it is not unreasonable to think that this number invites us to organize it as 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of work and 8 hours of personal life.
38% of American mathematicians remain single, compared to 18% of mathematicians
If not, we will continue to feed the option that has already been named: DINK (Double Income No Kids, double income, no children) . Young couple, without children, who receive double income and who are willing to invest only in themselves. Again, am I exaggerating? 38% of American mathematicians remain single, compared to 18% of mathematicians.
There is a fact that supports my proposal, in addition to my experience. If we look for the percentage of women in the different professions, it is easy to see that those in which 8 x 3 is allowed, the number of women increases.
Medicine: The number of registered women has exceeded for the first time in the history of several countries that of men. Lawyers, although a part of these women leave the profession in the first years of practice, due to the difficulty, sometimes, to reconcile family life with professional activity, nursing, primary and secondary school teachers, etc.
I finish, I am going to try to eliminate my panic, I am going to think tonight that next February 11 we will be a huge amount of people fighting for 8 x 3.
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