Provoke a culture change in STEM with the example of STEMchange
Tags: STEM, Prototyping, Interaction Design

Why is there only one female Fields medal winner? Why are there only approximately 13% women in the field of engineering? Why do 40% of women that earned an engineering degree quit or never even start their career in this field?

Questions like those show that there is a problem within STEM that needs to be talked about. For me as a male interaction design student the question was, how could a website tackle this problem — so after diving deeper and trying to understand the topic, I designed a prototype website with a concept that could tackle the current status.

But first let me give you an overview on the complex matter and how the problem shows itself in the day-to-day life of many women around the world.

There are so many stories that illustrate that there is a systematic problem within society that prevents women from fulfilling their dreams in STEM fields.

When it comes to computer science, it is the fact that the introduction of personal computers and the circumstance that most parents only bought those for their male children led to an inequality early in the life of many young girls. But not only parents played their role, also teachers in school who do not take female students seriously in courses that are STEM related. (1)

When it comes to mathematics it is illustrated by the fact that there is only one female Fields medal winner up to now, which is Maryam Mirzakhani who sadly passed away too early due to breast cancer. The problem here is that women historically have not been treated equally in education, as it was not able to even study those topics for them.

In the field of engineering only 13% are women and as mentioned above many quit their jobs or never enter them after earning a degree. ( 2)

There is not only one answer to all those whys — there are many things that play a role. Male Teachers, Employers or co-workers that will only give administrative tasks to women in their group works are one example. Also, it has been shown that women tend to seek reassurance more often, so they will look to others in order to try to make them feel competent.

What really stood out to me, when reading through articles on this topic was one thing:

Many women want to be socially responsible and want to make the world a better place through their work, which was mentioned as one of the reasons they quit, because they soon became disillusioned. I mean seriously, this is a lot of potential that we as a society throw away. This shows that the mission of trying to encourage women to enter those fields could benefit our society.

So, with all those thoughts in mind, I tried to tailor a prototype for a website that could tackle those problems. The site I created is called STEMchange (https://floriant3.wixsite.com/stemchange ) and the main mission is to change the culture within STEM by encouraging women of all ages to believe in their talents.

What the site offers is a Hub for women to share inspiring stories, individual coachings, internships, jobs and even auction their products and services. It also includes a community section where various discussions can take place. The site would surely not single handedly solve all the problems, but I hope to provoke discussions and raise awareness for the matter. The reasoning behind the choice of categories on the website are as follows:

Inspiration Section:

Here women can share and read inspiring stories from women in STEM, they are also able to offer and consume individual coachings or webinars on this matter. This section is directly addressing the fact that women tend to seek reassurance and role models.

Opportunities Section:

Here women can find different opportunities, from internships and jobs to online education and training. All of those offers will include a rating system to give women the possibility to point out if there were colleagues and employers that may have treated them inequal.

Offers Section:

Here women can offer their goods and services in a rather unique way. The system is based on auction modus, where the seller has the possibility to set a starting price and buyers are bidding to get the service. This idea was inspired by my scientific research on this matter — as recent studies showed that women are bidding more than men in auctions, but only if they are facing other women. (Chen et al., 2015) So, this mainly female themed auction system could encourage them to this behaviour.

Community Section:

This section offers a discussion board for chatting about various topics that may not be fully covered by the other sections. It gives women the opportunity to talk about internships and jobs or other experiences in the field of STEM.

Throughout the whole research and design process for this prototype, I really tried my best to try to understand what challenges women are facing in this field. Most of those problems, I as a man have never experienced and many of those have been present throughout history, so it was challenging to analyse the problems and put together a seamless and impactful concept and design.

The bottom line is that we must change the culture within STEM.

By understanding those challenges that women still face and then trying to systematically eradicate them. Not just the academic world or the employers could profit from a higher percentage of women, our whole society could be improved by the imagination and determination of women in those fields. I sincerely hope to raise awareness on this topic with this story and as a result be part of a worldwide change process in STEM.

References:

(1) https://www.cio.com/article/3278274/why-aren-t-more-women-in-computer-science.html

(2) https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field

(3) Chen, Zhuoqiong and Ong, David and Sheremeta, Roman M., The Gender Difference in the Value of Winning (June 1, 2015). Economics Letters, 137, 226–229, 2015, DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.006, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2639908 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2639908