When Sarah Munds stands in front of the mirror in the morning, she’s not thinking about the classes she will attend later that day, the exams she has to study for or the codes she needs to write during her next shift at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. Instead, she’s wondering if the skirt she wants to wear is too short or if her dress is too cute.
After years of learning in a classroom environment and working in the industry, Munds, a senior computer science major at the University of Idaho, has learned to assess the ways in which she presents herself so things like the clothes she wears won’t run the risk of being too sexually inviting.
Munds said choosing between changing her behavior to fit a specific environment and fighting against social norms is one of the many struggles she’s faced while working as a woman in a predominantly male field.
“I’ve learned a lot in my internships about things I need to change about my behavior in this environment. A lot of it is changing how you dress,” Munds said. “It’s a tough line because I feel like in order to be successful I have to tell myself, “˜Don’t be cute, be a little less than cute, don’t wear heels, don’t wear dresses.’ It’s frustrating because I don’t want to do that.”
Munds, a Post Falls, Idaho, native, received her associate’s degree in journalism at a community college before deciding to pursue computer science at UI.
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She said she chose to enter into the field for the chance to find better job prospects after college. Currently, she can count the number of female students she knows within her department on one hand.
The number of women in science, technology, engineering and math education (STEM) fields is strikingly low and while some fields, such as the life and social sciences, have seen an increase in female students, others, like computer science and engineering are still working to close the gender gap.
Dilshani Sarathchandra, UI assistant professor of sociology, said the age-old argument that more men enter hard science fields because biological differences between the two sexes gives them a greater aptitude for learning sciences has been debunked many times.
It’s also a claim she said she considers to be absurd.
Sarathchandra said the gender imbalance in such fields is largely influenced by the ways in which individuals are socialized to think about science and math as children.
“There are stereotypes that we hear in society that affect how girls and women think about science or going into a scientific career and how they perceive that affecting their life balance and future aspirations,” Sarathchandra said.
In addition to how children are socialized to think about science and societal pressures placed upon individuals to perform traditional gender roles, Sarathchandra said the lack of women in STEM fields also creates an uncomfortable environment for female students studying these subjects.
“It translates to what sociologists call the chilly environment,” Sarathchandra said. “When you go into an environment that is heavily masculine, then it creates a level of isolation and intimidation and that can also affect and create a loss of self-confidence in women.”
The chilly environment is one that Munds has become familiar with throughout her college career. Munds said being one of the only women in a male-dominated field can be a socially isolating experience.
“I’ve been sexually harassed in jobs I’ve had and that was something I was expecting, but there’s this type of discrimination where people are afraid of you,” Munds said. “I was not prepared for that. When I walk into classes, it’ll be quiet for a minute and I’m like, “˜Could you guys just not be weird like this, please?'”
Rather than facing blatant discrimination, Munds said there are subtle differences in the environments of her computer science classes compared to other courses she’s taken.
“It kind of sucks a little bit,” Munds said. “Just being a woman there is this element that is always following me around, there is this cloud that influences kind of everything you do.”
In addition to feeling socially isolated, Munds said her knowledge is challenged more than that of her male peers and she often feels like she has to maintain a bravado of confidence in order to be taken seriously.
Munds has also been sexually harassed more than once, which has prompted her to question whether or not she has to change how she presents herself.
“I’m having this inner turmoil right now,” Munds said. “I’m like, do I change what I do to fit the mold a little better so I can get through this, or do I have a firefight all the time about people being creepy and stuff like that?”
Despite the challenges she’s faced, Munds said she loves her co-workers and thinks highly of her male counterparts.
It’s not about the players, or the individuals who surround her on a regular basis, Munds said.
Instead, the problem has more to do with the game, or the environment created by a collective male consciousness and societal pressures to conform to gender norms.
However, there are those within the industry who are trying to make a change. For the past three years, UI Professor of Computer Science Terry Soule has taught a summer coding course to middle school girls through the Digital Innovation Generating New Information Technology program, or Dig’n IT.
In addition to the week-long coding camp for young girls, the program started by the Vice President of the university’s Coeur d’Alene campus, Charles Buck, includes a Java camp for teens and an internship for high school students interested in STEM fields.
Soule said the coding camp first began after the state of Idaho and Micron conducted surveys regarding changes in the youth’s interest in STEM fields.
“(They) found that interest in STEM fields in Idaho sort of started really high and it was toward middle school, especially for girls, that it dropped off pretty dramatically,” Soule said. “It wasn’t clear from the study why, but we could at least say, “˜This is the time we want to catch them before they lose interest.'”
While the environment in fields like computer science isn’t the most female-inclusive, not every subject is the same.
Unlike Munds, first-year graduate mathematics student, Kileen Sutherland, was pushed to pursue a technical field from a young age.
Sutherland said that her undergraduate mathematics classes were composed of mostly math education students, many of whom were women. It wasn’t until she entered graduate school that Sutherland first saw a shift in the gender composition of her classes.
“In undergrad, I never really had a whole lot of classes where there weren’t other women in my class,” Sutherland said. “This year, I’ve noticed a lot more the gender imbalance than I’ve had before. There’s only two women in the math grad program, then it’s just a bunch of guys, but I’ve ever really had a problem, I get along well with all of them.”
When it comes to gender imbalance in STEM fields, Sutherland believes the problem is not about the subjects themselves, but rather about society.
“I think the solution is cultural rather than STEM,” Sutherland said. “I think we’ve made a lot of progress in the last few decades as far as giving this idea that women are equal to men. I think that as we bring up this new generation, they’re being taught that even more.”
Encouragement to pursue scientific fields like the kind Sutherland experienced as a child is among one of the many ways Sarathchandra said society can begin to close the gender gap in certain areas of study.
In addition to providing students with equal access to classroom resources and creating more holistically inclusive classroom environments, Sarathchandra said providing positive female role models for young girls is crucial.
As a result of the lack of women in science, she said society largely views scientists as predominantly white males, a concept illustrated through a study that asked children to draw a scientist.
“A bunch of kids were asked to draw a scientist and what they drew was predominantly male old people with lab coats,” Sarathchandra said. “Nobody drew a female scientist. When we are asked to think about a scientist, we think about white gentlemen like Einstein.”
Sarathchandra said the best way to change the system is to change society’s perception of the fields.
“How can we break through the stereotypical imagery?” Sarathchandra said. “One way is to introduce them to other female role models who have become successful in science, but who don’t look like Einstein.”
Providing encouragement and becoming a positive role model for young women is exactly the thing that Munds aims to do.
“Part of my plan is I want to get my degree, work (in the) industry for a while and go back and teach computer science to high school or middle schoolers,” Munds said. “You know, someone has got to destroy the gender schema eventually and somebody has to play a positive role, so I want to do that.”