Over the past few weeks of being in a leadership class, I have learned that getting to a leadership position, especially in STEM, and even more, for women, can come with lots of obstacles. There are obstacles like bias hiring and discrimination, among other things, can prevent women, and more specifically in STEM, from joining the career in the first place, much less getting a leadership position. Many women join specific STEM careers but are not equally represented in engineering, physics, or computer science. This lack of representation in these STEM careers leads to a lack of role models for younger girls that want to do STEM. Without a role model in these leadership positions, they don’t get the chance to see that they are more than capable of also leading. Not having role models in STEM for young girls, I feel, can create a loop where young women now don’t do STEM because they themselves didn’t have a female role model to look up to when they were younger. Even though many women are in STEM nowadays, they still go through obstacles to get a leadership position and be seen as equal to their male colleagues. Despite this, women in STEM are still able to get higher up positions, but it is not always on there own.
I learned that many women who are now in leadership positions initially did not think that they were qualified for leadership positions, but were encouraged to do so by their male coworkers. This encouragement, to me, is something that should be happening throughout the STEM careers. It is crucial for male coworkers to support their female coworkers through the obstacles in STEM that are more prevalent for women. Of course, these positions should go to the person that is the most qualified to do the job and can lead people. Qualities for leadership can vary, as can the definition, from person to person. My personal definition of leadership is a person that can organize a group of people and make it possible that they all reach their final goal. The qualities that I think are necessary for a leader are communication, empathy, patience, and honesty. There are a lot more qualities found in leaders, but to me, these are the some that I hope to see in a leader and myself.
Overall, many different obstacles make it difficult for women to have a leadership position in STEM: the lack of role models, workplace discrimination, and bias hiring. I believe that the lack of research into the shortage of women in leadership positions can also affect the percentage of women going into STEM. Women aren’t able to see that many people like them want to join STEM but are not encouraged or confident. In my opinion, further research would inform women that leadership opportunities are available to them and help future women realize the same.
Even though there are already many women in STEM, there are still young girls who think that ceratin careers are for boys and that they aren’t allowed to do the same. Though there is still work to do to increase the women in STEM, there has been an increase in women in STEM that hopefully continues to grow.
