User:Katies01/Women in STEM fields

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Many gender imbalances continue to exist in STEM fields. Women are underrepresented in STEM fields throughout all parts of the world and also face disparities in gender pay. There are many reasons that may explain the underrepresentation of women and the gender pay gap which include stereotypes, low self-efficacy, lack of support and more. There are many strategies that can help to close the gender imbalances including to combat stereotypes, provide more support and role models, and to increase self-efficacy through affirmations. Organizations like Girls Who Code, Engineer Girl, Girls Can Code, and many other have been part of the effort to increase representation of women in STEM fields especially in computer science and engineering which have the lowest representation of women.

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Self-efficacy and the Gender Pay Gap

There are many factors that contribute to the gender pay gap, one of those being self-efficacy. A study conducted in 2020 found that women in engineering and computer science fields had lower self-efficacy overall compared to men, and it was determined that there was a direct relationship between gender and pay with self-efficacy being the significant contributor of this relationship. Therefore, the decreased confidence women had in their abilities to complete tasks in their field had a direct association to a decrease in starting salaries between men and women. Additionally, their results measured that among recent college graduates holding computer science and engineering degrees, there was a significant 9% overall decrease in the starting salary for women compared to men.

One study found that women steer away from STEM fields because they believe they are not qualified for them; the study suggested that this could be fixed by encouraging girls to participate in more mathematics classes. Out of STEM-intending students, 35% of women stated that their reason for leaving calculus was due to lack of understanding the material, while only 14% of men stated the same. The study reports that this difference in reason for leaving calculus is thought to develop from women's low level of confidence in their ability, and not actual skill. This study continues to establish that women and men have different levels of confidence in their ability and that confidence is related to how individual's performance in STEM fields. It was seen in another study that when men and women of equal math ability were asked to rate their own ability, women will rate their own ability at a much lower level. A study in 2020 found that across the engineering self-efficacy and percentile plot, women had lower confidence across the entire range of the graph compared to men, and this this lack of confidence leads to women to pursue jobs that pay less or not negotiating higher pay. Programs with the purpose to reduce anxiety in math or increase confidence have a positive impact on women continuing their pursuit of a career in the STEM field.

North America: United States

Computer science and engineering are among the STEM fields with the lowest representation of women, but also has the highest gender pay gap. When comparing the starting salary between men and women with same degree in engineering, a research study found that the average annual salary earned by women is less than $61,000 while men earned more than $65,000.