Natasha Ali | Contributor
Featured image: York and U of T experts deliver lecture to raise awareness and respect for women in STEM fields. | John Amis
In honour of Ada Lovelace, often regarded as the first computer programmer, York and U of T experts presented a lecture regarding gender equality in the sciences. Men and women need to be given equal recognition for their contributions in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields, echoed the presentation.
York biology professor and director of York’s Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability, or IRIS, Dawn Bazely, organized the event and offered her views on Ada Lovelace Day and how to address unconscious gender biases in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
“The purpose of the day is feminist-undertaking and establishing respect for women’s achievements in STEM,” she says. “We need to stop women from leaving STEM fields and to bring this message across Canada.”
Topics discussed in the lecture included the issues women face in the different fields of science and technology in comparison to their male counterparts.
“The fraction of women versus men in physical sciences at the bachelor’s level is dominated by women. But at the graduate level, [the ratio] gets worse, as the number of women decreases,” said U of T professor Bryan Gaensler, director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at U of T.
Second-year pure mathematics student Breanna Charbonneau says women are underrepresented in STEM because of social norms dictating the roles men and women can occupy in society.
“It is not a matter of intellect as men and women have equal capability of entering STEM fields. Women choose to enter into the workforce as a teacher, a nurse or a child care worker because that is what society expects of them,” she says.
“Generation after generation seem to follow the same paths and so, the men continue in STEM and the women keep to other fields.”
Gaensler said that STEM professions can establish guarantees for all scientists in the field, including establishing a standard pay scale to avoid salary gaps among employees, enforcing a code of conduct to outline employees’ rights and duties, which they are all required to accept, and connecting people that face these discriminatory issues together.
Third-year biology student and member of the United Nations Student Organization at York Laiba Khan attended the lecture and expressed her interest in women’s issues, specifically how female scientists are perceived.
Interestingly, she notes that the event was not promoted on York’s main web page. “I was amazed to see that such an important topic was overshadowed by other events on campus.”
When asked about the opportunities available for science students upon graduation, Gaensler said that mentoring and networking programs are a great way to support science graduates, as they provide them with possible resources and connect them with experts in the various fields of science.
According to a 2011 poll by Statistics Canada, 39 per cent of STEM fields graduates were female. As of 2015, only 22 per cent of the STEM workforce is female.
The discussion around women in STEM fields was heightened after Nobel laureate Tim Hunt made inflammatory remarks to scientists and journalists in 2015 about females working in his lab.
Since then, Hunt has been let go as senior scientific adviser, but the conversation continues.
With files from Emilie Miranda
