Women in mathematics,Science,and Engineering Essay - 1

Women in mathematics,Science,and Engineering - Essay Example However, women are highly underrepresented in science and technology studies at the secondary and tertiary levels of education, and in the overall technical workforce. This is despite evidence that suggests further involvement of women in technology related fields would greatly improve innovations and economic development in most countries (OECD, 11). Young girls are currently less involved in technical subjects as early as in their high school level; only a third of students in OECD countries taking biology, advanced chemistry, and physics related subjects are girls. In the United States, only 15% of girls are enrolled in advanced computer science studies, despite the growing computer literacy among all young people. Therefore, there is need to critically address the low enrollment of women in science and technology based fields to bridge the large gap between male and female expatriates in science and technical fields. Currently, women in US and other OECD countries are increasingl y enrolling in male dominated engineering and mathematics fields; there has been a remarkable impact on the number of women enrolling for engineering and math intensive courses.... There is a serious under representation of women in engineering enrollment in the western world. In the US, there are evident and remarkable differences in the numbers of females enrolled in various engineering disciplines. These trends are indicative of specific university features, or some courses appearing attractive to females, resulting in higher numbers of female students in some science and technical courses compared to others (Gill etal, 392). For example, in Australia, though engineering is regarded as one of the highly paid professions, requires high tertiary scores before admission to university, and has the highest level of employment from the graduate level, females in Australia make below 14% of the total first year enrollments in engineering; this is despite the given incentives, high professional status of engineers, and high pay offered in engineering (Grill et al, 392). Moreover, in Australia, women have been leaving the engineering profession at a much higher rate compared to men, which suggests that women underrepresentation in engineering will continue to worsen. This is complicated by the fact that high performing females who overcome the barriers to score highly in math and science subjects, and would be expected to take engineering as the best course, prefer other courses such as Law and medicine, with female students making more than 50% of first year enrollments in these studies across Australia (Grill et al, 392). The trend where high performing female students in Australia prefer law and medicine to engineering hints on the social implications of being an engineer. Law and medicine are associated with