Introducing our women in STEM series

When con­tem­plat­ing the STEM indus­tries in terms of gen­der bal­ance, the num­bers leave a lot to be desired. Accord­ing to the most recent fig­ures, pub­lished by the Wise cam­paign, women cur­rent­ly make up only 24 per cent of the core-STEM work­force in the UK, although they con­sti­tute near­ly half of the whole labour mar­ket. But times are chang­ing — as is demon­strat­ed by the women fea­tured in this series.

We inter­viewed sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and engi­neers from a range of indus­tries, back­grounds, ages and expe­ri­ence lev­els, to explore what work life is real­ly like for women in STEM today. Although every sto­ry is unique, many of our inter­vie­wees had gone through sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences. For sev­er­al of them, an ear­ly inter­est in STEM came in the form of man­u­al play — be that with Lego, spare parts or old com­put­ers. Some found a love of tech­nol­o­gy through com­put­er games or lit­er­a­ture.  

Many of the women in this series were pur­su­ing oth­er inter­ests or careers entire­ly before enthu­si­asm for a STEM sub­ject gripped them, while oth­ers knew ear­ly on that this was the path for them. 

Anoth­er com­mon ele­ment of their sto­ries can be seen as a pow­er­ful rea­son for opti­mism. Although almost all have encoun­tered sex­ism through­out their careers, the major­i­ty have stat­ed that they feel respect­ed for their skills and abil­i­ty, with their gen­der viewed as large­ly irrel­e­vant. So what oth­er assump­tions and bar­ri­ers are hold­ing young women back from fruit­ful STEM careers? Before div­ing into our indi­vid­ual inter­views, we asked five women their opin­ions. 

Sara Daqiq, soft­ware engi­neer at Okta and men­tor at Girls Who Code

Mel Tsi­aprazis, EVP and group chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of Crown Agents Bank

Dr Cat Kel­ly, direc­tor of clin­i­cal infor­mat­ics and ser­vices at med-tech com­pa­ny Per­spec­tum

Jut­ta Horstmann, Chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at eyeo

Dr Siob­han Gar­diner, cli­mate change and envi­ron­ment lead at Deloitte Ven­tures

Q: What are some of the most common misconceptions about being a woman working in STEM?

SD: “The biggest mis­con­cep­tion is still that women are not nat­u­ral­ly inclined to like STEM sub­jects, or that it is uncon­ven­tion­al, in some way, to be both a woman and be in soft­ware. The great­est assets I have as a soft­ware engi­neer are my prob­lem-solv­ing skills and curios­i­ty. These are not skills that can be defined or influ­enced by my gen­der. There’s still a lot of work to be done to change people’s mind­sets.”

MT: “The UN has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly acknowl­edged that entrenched gen­der stereo­types and gen­der bias are dri­ving girls and women away from pur­su­ing careers in sci­ence-relat­ed fields. One of the biggest mis­con­cep­tions is women are nat­u­ral­ly more inter­est­ed in care­giv­ing occu­pa­tions (e.g. teach­ing and social work).

A per­son­al mis­con­cep­tion that was held by my then 6‑year-old daugh­ter is that girls haven’t achieved as much as men in our his­to­ry. To every girl out there: know that women have been trail­blaz­ing in the STEM space for cen­turies. Women work­ing in STEM is often seen as a new phe­nom­e­non — this couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth.”

CK: “That if you have kids, you are not seri­ous about your career. I think this is becom­ing far less com­mon, but ten years ago when I was hav­ing my chil­dren, I received a lot of com­ments, includ­ing from peo­ple in a man­age­r­i­al posi­tion, that hav­ing a sec­ond child indi­cat­ed a lack of com­mit­ment to my field. Apart from it being ille­gal to dis­crim­i­nate on a gen­der basis, I try to be as sup­port­ive as pos­si­ble of my team’s work life bal­ance and pro­mote their career pro­gres­sion with­in the com­pa­ny — basi­cal­ly, how I would like to be treat­ed! I find that peo­ple often come back from mater­ni­ty leave with laser focus, as they have few­er hours in the day to get stuff done.”

JH: “That you are only inter­est­ed in the “soft­er” parts, like user inter­face or peo­ple man­age­ment — and not into net­works, hard­ware, shell scripts and cod­ing all night. Also, that you need to copy tox­ic male behav­ior to be suc­cess­ful and that you are not capa­ble of ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing and rea­son­ing.”

SG: “Peo­ple often have pre­con­ceived ideas of what sci­en­tists look like. I’ve been told that I “don’t look like a sci­en­tist”, have been referred to as a “lady-sci­en­tist” and even as “Dr. Gardiner’s assis­tant” on sev­er­al occa­sions through­out my career. Even so, I have noticed a pos­i­tive shift in recent years in the indus­try with more women acknowl­edged for the sci­en­tif­ic con­tri­bu­tion they make, and mov­ing up into senior lead­er­ship posi­tions. Many peo­ple may also con­sid­er that a career in sci­ence is just about being in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. While this is huge­ly impor­tant, col­lab­o­rat­ing with busi­ness­es, indus­tries and wider soci­ety to com­mu­ni­cate results and inno­vate more broad­ly is inte­gral as well.”

Q: What are some concrete things which could be done to get more women into STEM?

SD: “The most impor­tant thing is pro­vid­ing a round­ed edu­ca­tion and aware­ness of STEM to young women, espe­cial­ly in dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties. The biggest issue is that many women are not taught about careers in STEM. Ear­ly path­ways, which allow women to learn about STEM sub­jects, and an under­stand­ing of what a career in such a ful­fill­ing field is like, is key. It is impor­tant to know that STEM is very diverse and the stu­dent does not have to code, be in the lab or solve math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tions all day. STEM can be observ­ing the Fibonac­ci sequence in a flower.”

MT: “Accord­ing to UNESCO, there are an esti­mat­ed 130 mil­lion girls aged 6 to 17 out of school. It is imper­a­tive that emerg­ing mar­kets tack­le edu­ca­tion­al access irre­spec­tive of gen­der, race or finan­cial posi­tion. This should be fol­lowed by hav­ing gov­ern­ments make STEM edu­ca­tion part of the core cur­ricu­lum. Hav­ing larg­er organ­i­sa­tions cre­ate spe­cial pro­grammes for girls in sci­ence, maths, engi­neer­ing or tech­nol­o­gy that fos­ter ear­ly expe­ri­ence in high schools and uni­ver­si­ties is crit­i­cal and will lead the way for future oppor­tu­ni­ties. Com­bined with a larg­er num­ber of intern­ships (even vir­tu­al intern­ships) to pro­vide ease of access or return-to-work pro­grammes in this area, we’ll start to see real progress.”

CK: “I think get­ting women into STEM careers is not the hard part any­more, it’s keep­ing them there! How­ev­er, I think that hav­ing women in senior posi­tions makes a huge dif­fer­ence, as it shows young women that STEM is a real oppor­tu­ni­ty for them. There is a huge breadth of careers in STEM that peo­ple might not ini­tial­ly think of — if you like engag­ing with cus­tomers, per­haps med­ical sales or mar­ket­ing is your thing, or if you are cre­ative and like work­ing as a team, there’s prod­uct man­age­ment and design. It isn’t just pipet­ting (though that can be fun too!) For me, it is hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ence to people’s lives. I sleep well at night.”

JH: “We will only be able to real­ly change things if soci­ety changes as a whole. As long as kids see stereo­typ­i­cal depic­tions of female vs. male capa­bil­i­ties every­where — in their books, movies and TV series, and ads — they will believe that this is real­i­ty and adapt their own dreams to it. On top of that, we see a chick­en-and-egg prob­lem: as long as we lack female role mod­els, it remains hard for young women to envis­age them­selves in a tech­ni­cal role. So we need to change how we edu­cate kids and we need to pro­vide role mod­els.”

SG: “For organ­i­sa­tions of all sizes, from start-ups to inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, address­ing the gen­der pay gap and career pro­gres­sion chal­lenges that women face in the work­place will be cru­cial to build­ing diver­si­ty of lead­er­ship and an inclu­sive work cul­ture. Men­tor­ing pro­grammes that con­nect women in STEM at all lev­els, from school out­reach to ear­ly and late-career sup­port, can cre­ate a net­work for peo­ple in the indus­try to share lessons and offer guid­ance. Through these schemes, women can grow their net­works at every stage of their career, and STEM indus­tries can retain top tal­ent.”

Read our inter­vie­wees’ own sto­ries about being a woman in STEM here.