Your sex should not dictate whether you choose a STEM major or not

STEM has been previously conceived as a man’s career, and the gender inequality has been pointed out over and over again. However, are individual’s interests biological or social?

According to a study reported by PBS, there are not only the socially engineered preferences of males and females, but also the internal biases that were present in the beginning when a person was born. Both nature and nurture have a role in the development and interests of an individual, and thus a preference is not entirely without its biological beginnings.

They claim that “these sex-linked preferences emerge in human development long before any significant socialization can have taken place,” and show that “newborn girls prefer to look at faces while newborn boys prefer to look at mechanical stimuli (such as mobiles). When it comes to toys, a consistent finding is that boys (and juvenile male monkeys) strongly prefer to play with mechanical toys over plush toys or dolls, while girls (and female juvenile monkeys) show equivalent interest in the two.”

The range of our interests we develop later are both socially and biologically created.

But your sex shouldn’t matter when picking a career. As long as we aren’t thinking someone is incapable of something, we should be letting individuals follow their interests, whether it’s in STEM or other fields. Though reports say women lack an equal presence in STEM, every person, male or female, should be able to choose the field they want to go into, and not be pressured into choosing something they don’t want.

Why are we elevating the STEM fields anyway?

As long as a woman is not choosing a field other than STEM because they feel incapable, we should praise their interests. Everyone is gifted differently and has a passion and interest so that benefits the world in their own unique way. Everyone is perfectly capable of applying themselves in whichever way they desire, so if a person chooses a STEM major or humanities major or whatever, are not all areas of knowledge essential to the growth of mankind?

Your sex should not dictate whether you choose a STEM major or career, or not.

Whatever you go into, you bring your personality and unique way of viewing things

Whether men tend to think more in terms of objects or women more in terms of livings things and agents, or whatever way a person thinks because of their environment or genes, STEM fields are not limited to only one type of processing. A person’s mind can see things others can’t, and maybe that’s just the thought we need to hold in order to embrace the differences in thinking in these fields, and create a greater space of innovation. Even a mind that tends towards living organisms can have a unique perspective on the physical world.

Narrowing brains into ‘maleness’ or ‘femaleness’ is also not fair for all the variegated brains out there, as reported in Science. No one displays only male or only female characteristics – we are all unique and crafted by our nature and environment.

The trends towards certain majors for men and women could also be cultural or societal norms or expectations. More recent findings have shown that it may not be a gap in all STEM, and just be in ET. This just goes to show that over time there has been more equality and it may just take more time to see all fields as such. However, as good as it is to get different types of minds in the same field to produce the most diverse growth and findings, an individual should choose what they are interested in, and not what society expects them to be interested in.

I didn’t choose a STEM major because I didn’t think I was capable. The thought never even entered my mind that I was unqualified because I was a woman. My interests were just elsewhere.