Mindsets Matter; Sexism in Our System

Mindsets Matter; Sexism in Our System

By Ashley Ng, CV, Foundation/3rd

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“Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.”
― Joss Whedon

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A month ago, our university played host to NAM Institute for the Empowerment of Women’s (NIEW) Great Gender Debate 2013. Conducted in the British Parliamentary debate style, each team consisted of two people, one male and one female, where topics under the scope of gender issues were debated and discussed.

It is an event especially significant to science, engineering and technology universities of our kind, sometimes infamous for their inherently sexist policies and ideologies. Be it the university’s selection process or common female students stereotypes, sexism is still an underlying issue in our society especially in the areas pertaining to education and career paths.

In the US, women account for only one-fifth of engineers at national universities, and that number has been dwindling. It isn’t that these women are under-qualified or unevenly matched to the men: in fact women are outpacing men in overall participation in higher education, taking the SAT’s more often, and earning more degrees than men. It’s that there is a constant threat of stereotyping towards these female engineers, and the constant reminder while in university that engineering is apparently a “male-driven field”.

As actual Engineering/Technology students we see with our very own eyes how unbalanced the representation of men and women in these fields is. Sexist behaviours of the students in these institutions do nothing to help this situation.

From memes posted in Facebook groups meant for all students that generalise the populous of engineering student genders to policies that discriminate against women (for example the gender-segregated schedule for the gym schedule that forces girls who want to work out to have to struggle to find a time to actually work out) there is an obvious disparity between the way males and females are viewed in our university.

Stereotype 1: Girls in engineering are "boyish", "unattractive" and "unwanted".

Stereotype 2: Girls in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering simply don't exist apparently!

Stereotype 3: Females cannot do engineering, duh.

Negative effects of sexism

Perhaps the most noticeable gap in our university exists between the number of male and female students exist in the Mechanical Engineering and (to a lesser degree) Electrical Engineering programmes. In fact, the number of male students outnumber the female students in every engineering programme (except maybe Chemical Engineering). Why?

Ask almost any female engineering student and they will tell you why they wanted to be an engineer, or more likely why people around them discouraged them from wanting to be engineers. We live in a Patriarchal society, run by mostly men. This has led to many unfortunately sexist and misogynistic views of women and men. Because of the patriarchy, men are expected to be manly and to be tough 100% of the time, and women are to never cuss like sailors or enjoy football or want to be engineers or scientists. Little girls around the world are forced into gender-roles, given dolls to play with and told that to be rough and inquisitive and intuitive are masculine traits and should be left behind as they grow older.

These stereotypes and the behaviour towards females already in these fields serve to push girls away from engineering. Standford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research released an article stating that “extensive empirical research on stereotype threat has demonstrated that if a person is exposed to a negative stereotype about a group to which they belong (e.g. women, Asians, African-Americans), they will then perform worse on tasks related to the stereotype.” It goes on to discuss the “powerful effects of negative stereotypes on the psyche,” stressing how “stereotypes decrease self-assessments of ability, lowering the likelihood that women will enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.”

It doesn’t help that memes like the above play into these stereotypes. They’re not even that funny, and only serve to discourage the female students already in the programme. They ignore completely the minority and propagate the stereotype that these programmes are only for males. Speaking to a female Mechanical Engineering student, she notes the domination of discussion and attention given to them by lecturers.

While it could be argued that this is due to the small number of girls, it is in fact a systematic cycle of oppression. Girls are discouraged from entering the programme (perhaps by family, or circumstance), then those who are brave enough to take a stand (or are interested enough to overlook the discouragement) and enter the field are discriminated against for actually being in the programme, by the very people they are to call friends in the programme.

Hope for the future

Question: Why is it so important to talk about equality?
Answer: Because talk leads to action.

As (to paraphrase our university’s motto) future engineers of the future, we play a huge role in equalising how all members of the human race are treated. And if the debaters that ran rampant around our campus on the 23rd to the 26th of November have anything to say about our futures it’s that it should be one of equality.

If we can get people talking about the future, if we can get people talking about equality, then we can get the ball rolling. Organizations like our university must “control the messages they are sending, by making sure there are no negative gendered beliefs operating in the organization.” Whether it be by regulating the amount of “hate speech” against females by fellow male students, or by actively encouraging more female students to enter these fields to somewhat equalise the ratio between the genders, any change for the better would be encouraging.

All this begins, of course with us asking questions and demanding that the cycle be broken.
While definitely there will be girls (and boys) who don’t like the STEM fields for non-sexist/stereotypical reasons we must make sure that those who do are encouraged to enter and stay in those fields.

Gender stereotypes that define what a little girl can grow up to be must be broken. Little boys and girls must not be told that there are girl and boy subjects; rather that all subjects are for everyone.
It starts with us opening our minds and our arms to show them the welcoming side of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These fields are fields of logic and critical thinking. If we allow gender stereotypes to blind us, our science is sullied and the whole point of these fields will be moot.

It all starts with us, those who are already in these fields, encouraging our little sisters and our juniors and telling them that it’s okay to want to be an engineer.

If we can’t even accomplish that, then we have no hope of equal opportunities.



Editor's note: The content of this article is the opinion of the author alone and does not represent the views of HOT as an organisation.