STEM: Making the roots stronger

To gather expertise in any field of study, there are huge number of problems one faces and pursuing a career in stem is no easy task either. One has to keep learning, researching and experimenting. And if you are a woman in one of the STEM fields, the challenges automatically double up. In addition to the persisting hurdles in the subject, they also have to deal with the roadblocks thrown by the society on their path. But does this stop them? Absolutely not! Madame Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize once said, “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy”. All adventures, especially into new territories, are scary but the women aren’t afraid to travel. May it be Rosalind Franklin, Katherine Johnson, Maria Mayer or Elizabeth Blackwell, the woman or adventurers as I might say, have proved that there is no field that the society can keep the women away from because of a mere excuse that, 'it’s always been done this way'. The women in this field overcome a plethora of remarks made by the double standard society every single day.

Call them scientists and mathematicians and not a female scientist and a female mathematician just like you would address the men in the same field. We are yet to hear a man being asked for an advise on how to combine marriage and a career. Ask them about their work and their field and not just about how they were able to manage work in home together like you would ask the men in the same field. Celebrate them on her discoveries and intellectual achievements and not just her marriage and children just like you celebrate the men in the same field. Appreciate their work with equal remuneration as you would do with the men in the same field. Any society that fails to harness the energy and creativity of its women is at a huge disadvantage in the modern world. “One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent...not being encouraged the way they need to”. – Former President Of the USA, Barack Obama. If we want STEM to help and serve the diverse population of the world, we will have to inculcate the diversity in the field as well. There is no gender to an occupation and this has to be implanted in the peoples’ minds and therefore change their mentality because these are the roots of the society. If we want STEM to grow to greater heights, we have to make the roots stronger.

~ Manya Srivastava