STEM is one of the most popular occupational jobs…for Men.
Today, in the world, gender equality advocacy is slowing down, because conditions aren’t as “worse” as they were before. But the comparison is never with the past, but the present. In today’s world we don’t find a lot of women in professions involving STEM. Over 46% of graduates of STEM are women, but only 19% go on to pursue careers in the field. There is a limited number of women reaching great heights and receiving Nobel Prizes, Ramanujan Prizes, the Global STEM Award and others. Finding women working in the field is as rare as finding gems in ores. In fact, the girls of today are not motivated to take up jobs in this sector. This is clearly shown when in an only-girls coding workshop, more Boys registered than Girls! Encouraged to go into fields of art or become doctors because that’s the “best” profession for a girl is an ideology which, regrettably, persists in the mindsets of our society.
However the wheels of change are striving to be in motion. Women like Ms. Anna Sinha Roy, the first woman tunnel engineer of India, Dr. Neena Gupta, the Indian Statistical Institute professor who became the fourth Indian mathematician to receive the prestigious Ramanujan prize, the four IIT Roorkee professors (Dr. Davinder Kaur, Dr. Debrupa Lahiri, Dr. Pranita Sarangi and Dr. Kusum Deem) who were featured by the Confederation of Indian Industry, and many others are an inspiration to today’s generation of girls, serving as motivation and ensuring that the field doesn’t become a purely male-dominating one.
We at Bridge the Gap aim to do exactly what the name suggests, bridging the gap of ratio of males and females in STEM oriented occupations and encouraging young girls to take-up this field as an area of interest as well as prospective future.