Role of Women in STEM and how Technological Change Affects Women and Gender Ideas (Research Paper Sample)

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Topic 2: Role of Women in STEM and how Technological Change Affects Women and Gender Ideas
Women have been engaged in the Globe of Science, Technologies, Engineering, and Math (STEM) from the very beginning. According to various studies, women participated in computer programming, charting planets, innovation in mathematics and discovering the radiation concepts. By taking part in STEM professions, women play a great role in shaping current and future sustainable developments. Allowing a significant number of women to work in STEM jobs helps the government to exploit untapped opportunities, therefore boosting the country's economy. Nonetheless, the science and associated fields have turned to be ruled by men in the modern times. It has even reached a point wherein these areas are assumed a globe primarily suitable for men. Equally, technological change has a considerable impact on market earnings. Women employed in STEM jobs have more earnings compared to women in non-STEM jobs. Although there are more men with STEM education than women, the population of women taking STEM degrees and employment has increased over the years (Buse 85).
Figure 1: University-educated employees with a STEM degree by gender & STEM job, 2013 (Bogg 2011, p 12).
According to Price (2012) studies, aiding women in STEM programs as well as researchers is not only a crucial part of United States strategy to out-educate, out innovate, and out-develop other parts of the world, but also essential to women themselves. Consistent with United Nations Commission on Science and Technology (UNCSTD), women in STEM occupations earn 34% higher than those in non-STEM jobs and have a minimal wage gap compared with men. Also, STEM career give women a chance to participate in a number of exciting jurisdictions of technological innovations and discoveries. Growing opportunities for women in these disciplines is a significant step toward attaining greater economic achievement and equality for females throughout the board (Wuhib and Sharon 13).
The important role of female scientists’ for the transformation of the “worldwide intolerable” into the developing opportunities has been realized (Syed and Martin 32). Women have turned population wave into reproductive health, violence into peace and teamwork, environmental degradation and poverty into sustainable human development. All the creativity and knowledge of bot, women, and men in science, are required for this transformation (Bogg 15).
For economic growth, knowledge has been continuously developed into the experience and employed in entrepreneurial undertakings (Price 233). For balanced, integrated social development, education must be amalgamated with cultural values to reach the wisdom level, which alone may bridge the huge gaps between the start and ambitious goals. Reaching these goals allows women not only to spearhead development but also brings the condition of survival. Stronger involvement of female scientists in creating and circulating innovative knowledge, developing social harmonizing power and economic potential, is vital for sustainable human development. Women in STEM play a crucial role in broadening the universities’ missions and other research institutions by changing them into centers of research, innovation, and education.
Neglecting the creative power, talent and the social harmonizing ability of women is an inexcusable waste. It is considered as the fifth of the "global intolerable" and a serious social problem (Watford 72). Some these problems include a shortfall of women technologists at the top level of management and professional positions, biases against women researchers in recruitment for lucrative posts in research, practically excluding women in policy creation of development. Also, there has been a feminization of occupations with little resources, capacity and status to achieve excellence in education and research, and disregarding female scientists in allocating awards and other types of recognition. Other issues hindering women success in STEM comprises obsolete attitudes concerning the social role of women, insufficient family education, and lack of appropriate childcare provision (Buse 98).
Women scientists have the potential for an essential input to sustainable human development, especially via their humanistic knowledge of the importance of science and technology, unity in sharing their gains, cautious judgment of undesirable results in applying science to the environment and the society (Syed et al. 45). As leaders, women have the capacity to change brutal competitions into competitive cooperation to achieve mutual goals. Time has reached to acknowledge the talents of these women as critical for now and the future, and ought to consequently most welcome and prudently developed. Men and females holding decision-making posts attending World Conference on Science should propose measures to tap the talents.
Although STEM labor force is essential to US innovative capability and international competitiveness, women are immensely underrepresented in STEM employments in spite of making up almost half of America workforce and half of the university-educated workers (Watford 78). That allows unexploited opportunities to expand STEM job in the US, even when there is extended agreement that the country has to do more to enhance its competitiveness. Even though women fill almost half of every job in the United States economy, they occupy less than 25% of STEM positions. This has remained the case all through the past ten years, even as college-graduated women have multiplied their share of the total workforce. Women with STEM jobs received 33% more than equivalent women in no-STEM occupations, primarily greater than the STEM superior for men (Bogg 23). Consequently, the gender wage gap is lesser in STEM professions in the non-STEM professions. The figure below illustrates gender share regarding overall STEM jobs in 2013:
Figure 2: Gender Shares of Overall and STEM Jobs, 2013 (Price 2012, p 260)
How Technological Change Affected the Roles of Women and Ideas of Gender
Since WWII, the comparative need of housewifery has reduced compared with other middle-class occupations. This is due to the improved working conditions for women in numerous STEM professions. Wealth per household has increased tremendously, and sophisticated gadgets have been developed to perform some tasks that were initially meant for women. The homemakers' position in economic levels that could formally afford domestic help could even drop. Due to increased involvement of women in STEM programs, women have continued to search for better-paying positions (Buse 103).
Network technologies such as internet, electricity, and water have changed gender roles and equity via technology. In the case of water, women no longer have to go to rivers to collect enough for the household. Instead, most professional women have tap water in their homes, therefore, increasing possible efficiency in homes. Electricity connectivity has also been encouraging for improving compensated activity on women's part, maybe because it substitutes physical labor. Equally, Mobile phones reduce the physical labor of traveling to receive information, decreasing the costs of transfer, and augmenting business women's capacity to bring together their family and occupation lives (Syed et al. 63).
Most of the economic research today on the effects of technological change on the roles of women proportionate to men has concentrated on the increased contribution of women in the workforce and the associated rise in their market earnings. The rises have taken place as a result of both labor market supply-side and demand-side parameters. Through progressing economic growth, Technology may have redistributed impacts if growth routes have no effect on gender equality. Technology, especially the most development in ICT and computers, had affected growth on America Economy and other countries (Bogg 37).
Figure 3: Average earnings per hour by gender and job, 2013 (Price 2012, p 267).
As economy evolved with time, various forms of labor is needed, portraying the shifting mix of products and services produced and demanded. Also, technological change may influence the complementarity and substitutability relations between workforce and other input factors. In those nations that have gone through the considerable level of economic development to date, technological change within the employment sector has elevated the demand for women labor within the formal labor force segment compared with men. Given the United States from 1800-1980 in which technological advances have been leading, women's recruitment about the average has increased the greatest (Syed et al. 117).
In this nations, demand for some forms of labor has declined, particularly for unskilled farmstead labor (wherein other inputs, such as capital, have been replaced for work), in addition to for both skilled and unskilled workforce for utilization in manufacturing (Wuhib et al. 17). In the meantime, demand for other forms of labor has continuously grown quicker average. In the first eruption of postindustrial development, demand for clerical professions increased rapidly. In the later eruption, demand for service jobs rose. This has caused some to claim that the contemporary economy has changed to necessitating female professions for the reason that they need skill, but do not need either permanent commitment specialized geographical area or work (Buse 126).
As well, change in demand for services and goods and complementarity between skilled labors and capital, together with money for unskilled workforce substitutability, increased the need for trained personnel compared with untrained. Because women are more educated in developed countries,...