Fighting the Gender Gap at the Upper School
September 6, 2015
At the Upper School, STEM related fields often also experience a “gender gap” where specific classes that are related to science, mathematics, engineering and computer science are predominantly taken by male students. Senior Panny Shan, who takes an Advanced Topics class in Computer Science, believes that the gender gap exists not only in the industry but also at Harker.
“There are statistics that indicate that there are pay gaps and gender gaps not only in participation, but also once women do enter the field, they experience extreme discrimination,” she said. “I’m one of two girls in [the CS] class, and it’s very apparent not only at Harker but also as we go out to Silicon Valley, there is quite the gap in participation.”
Physics teacher Lisa Radice agrees that the gender gap is slowly closing in comparison to when she studied in college, but still believes that more can be done.
“When I was in college, in my year there were 17 physics majors, and I was the only female,” she said. “The higher up you go in physics, especially college or graduate school, it definitely becomes much more skewed. Teachers I had were used to that being the status quo, and now things are changing [so] that girls are not getting the message that science is something they can’t do.”
