At a school like Stevens, people are often surprised to hear that I am majoring in biology, although this reaction is understandable as Stevens is a school primarily for engineering and computer science.
I came to Stevens for biology because of the emphasis on research since I have been interested in hands-on experience in biology since I was a child. Everything from forcing a syringe down a goat’s throat to make him take his medicine to looking at shedded snake skin under my first microscope as a child has captivated and inspired me to pursue biology and research into adulthood.
However, as I have connected more with my male peers at Stevens, I feel alienated when they tell me that similar experiences and childhood memories of playing video games or working on their cars inspired them to go into their respective fields. I found that many of the experiences that inspired my friends to go into their fields were experiences I had either subconsciously been persuaded away from by society or was explicitly forbidden to take part in.
Growing up, nobody ever explicitly told me that women can’t code or be engineers. But sometimes, the experiences that mold these decisions happen earlier in life than one might expect. Nobody ever told me that women can’t design computer programs, but I was told that video games were meant for boys to have their own time and that girls shouldn’t intrude on their sacred bonding time. I was never told that I couldn’t design or build things, but I was told that I’d hurt myself with heavy power tools and dangerous machinery.
For myself and many other women, the decision to not go into more male-dominated fields didn’t start when we were picking our future careers as adults. Rather, this process began when other influences in our lives decided our future abilities and interests for us by denying us the opportunity to freely explore our whims and curiosity because of our gender.
While some may argue that women simply should not be pushed into fields they wouldn’t voluntarily take part in, others may push for more open encouragement of women joining STEM career paths. However, perhaps simply letting people explore their interests without attaching stigma to doing activities dominated by the opposite gender may be a viable alternative.
Attaching feminine or masculine attributes to neutral activities can end up being harmful in the long run by denying people, of both genders, opportunities to explore new interests and gain helpful and even necessary skills that are useful in life. The only real way to end gender disparity in any field may be to just admit that jobs simply don’t have genders and people should be free to survey a broad spectrum of fascinations and form passions based purely on their own interests.
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