STEM to STEAM: Fix gender biases at the school level
- The inclusion of all genders in every field of academia is important for us to empower women. Putting the ‘A ’of arts into a STEM project can effectively enhance the creativity of learners, helping them think radically about possibilities.
In his poem, The Mushroom Hunters, Neil Gaiman posits women as progenitors of science. He refers to rules of gendered division of labour in the pre-agricultural world, whereby men were expected to hunt while women foraged. Consequently, men focused on growing stronger, being better fighters, developing their quick-thinking and risk-taking abilities, while women, “who did not need to run down prey,/ had brains that spotted landmarks and made paths between them/… Observe everything."
Even after agriculture began, in pagan religions women were the “wise ones": those who observed and experimented, developed medicine, spliced grasses to grow edible cereals and found the best materials to work with. They were the mothers who built the social institutions that would enable their societies. Yet, in the modern world, with the greatest career development opportunities and specialization of roles in history so far, less than 30% of people in science and technology are women.
Gender and STEM: Many attempts have been made to explain why men and women tend to go for different fields of learning. One of the more recent theories is that male and female brains are differently oriented. with women being more ‘right-brained’ (tending to be more emotionally expressive, dreamy, artistically and creatively oriented), and men being more ‘left-brained ’ (logical, better at sequencing and math skills, philosophical ideas and factually strong).
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This has been widely debunked. The human brain is generally asymmetrical, and while there are gender-based asymmetries, research shows that no single half is stronger in any gender. Exciting learning explorations make both halves of all brains light up, irrespective of gender.
To say that STEM (for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is for men only because of the demands of scientific rigour, is to align oneself with poorly aged Enlightenment Philosophy, which divided human beings into parts, rather than seeing them as indivisible wholes. This understanding has helped rename STEM as STEAM, with ‘A’ for arts.
Women in the STEAM space: There is a common perception that STEM subjects are more challenging than humanities, and that girls should opt for ‘easier ’subjects. This bias arises not only from an erroneous understanding of the way that male and female brains work, but also from cultural patterns of expected behaviour and lifestyle, which are mostly gendered.
Women are meant to manage kitchens and raise babies, so why put their efforts into the rigours of STEM? Of these four fields, the one with the least female participation is engineering, which is often seen as too ‘technical ’for women.
However, where circumstances haven’t hindered them, women have performed equally or even surpassed their male counterparts. Women such as Lady Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, and Zaha Hadid are examples of women who have excelled in the fields of engineering and architecture. In India, the women behind Mission Mangalyaan have made history.
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The importance of inspiration: Providing parents with accurate information about the importance and benefits of STEM education for their daughters can dispel misconceptions and biases. Our school, for example, seeks to build excitement for STEAM projects and encourage female students to take the lead on these.
Project Urja, an inter-school collaborative clean energy drive, was led by a female student of Grade 11. Also, a group of five female students developed a Capstone project called Pawsitivity, aimed at creating affordable and comfortable prosthetic paws and limbs for dogs.
In arts, too, the general belief is that women are suited for dance and music and ‘informal ’arts, The serious work in visual and performance arts is the domain of men, since these spring from the realm of ideas and not emotions.
Here, too, school level interventions are important. Right at their earliest introduction to the world, young learners need to understand that people of all genders may be equally suited or unsuited to be artists. It is important for an arts programme to focus on enabling students to see take a gender-neutral view.
One approach is for a school to encourage teachers to conduct research in the classroom and challenge stereotypes in the process. Women teachers should seek to have their work published in prestigious journals and secure grants for their fieldwork. Similarly, arts teachers should be feted as artists in their own right. They need to be seen as role models by students.
Scientists: We now know that by giving creativity its due place, the journey of exploration becomes smoother and often leads better findings. Putting the ‘A ’of arts into a STEM project can effectively enhance the creativity of learners, helping them think radically about possibilities. A prime example of this is the work of Leonardo da Vinci, which shows a clear amalgamation of science, art and engineering. In the present era, renowned laboratories such as CERN and Fermilab emphasize the inclusion of art.
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We conclude with another few lines from Gaiman’s The Mushroom Hunters:
And science, you remember, is the study of the nature and behaviour of the universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts.
The race continues. An early scientist drew beasts upon the walls of caves to show her children, now all fat on mushrooms and on berries, what would be safe to hunt.
