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Solvency

1NC – Solvency

Laundry list of alt causes – teasing, lack of encouragement, stereotypes, family concerns, competition, marginalization

Welsh 13 - Jennifer Welsh, Senior Editor on Tech Insider's science section. She first joined Business Insider in 2012 as the site's first science editor. In 2015, she moved to Tech Insider to help launch the new site's science vertical. She graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2010 with a graduate certificate in Science Communications and got a Bachelors of Science in Biology from the University of Notre Dame in 2006. In between, she was a research associate at at startup biotech company in San Francisco, 13 ("These Are The 7 Things Keeping Women Out Of Science Careers," Business Insider, 10-16-2013, Available Online at http://www.businessinsider.com/7-things-keeping-women-out-of-science-2013-10, Accessed on 7-10-2017 //JJ)

1. Teasing in school Even at the high school level, teachers and classmates sometimes stereotype girls who are interested in advanced physics and math. Pollack spoke to Yale physics undergrads and heard these stories: One young woman had been disconcerted to find herself one of only three girls in her AP physics course in high school, and even more so when the other two dropped out. Another student was the only girl in her AP physics class from the start. Her classmates teased her mercilessly: "You're a girl. Girls can't do physics." She expected the teacher to put an end to the teasing, but he didn't. These kinds of reactions to their presence in these courses pushes young women out. Studies have shown that countries with greater gender equity had smaller gender gaps in math. When given the right support women do just as well as men — it isn't an inherent ability difference between the sexes. "When girls see opportunities for themselves in science, technology, engineering and math, they're more likely to take higher math in high school and more likely to pursue those careers," researcher Janet Hyde, from the University of Wisconsin, said in a press release. 2. A Lack of Encouragement Lovelace herself was encouraged to pursue math by her mother, to avoid the "dangerous poetic tendencies" of her father, the poet Lord Byron, according to The New York Times' Bits blog. This could be why she shed the female stereotype and pursued her STEM interests. As Pollack, herself a physics major who didn't go into academia, writes: "I didn't go on in physics because not a single professor — not even the adviser who supervised my senior thesis — encouraged me to go to graduate school." She graduated at the top of her class, but none of her professors even asked if she was going to graduate school. Studies have shown that when told that men score better in math tests than women, women tend to score worse. When told that isn't true, the two genders scored equally well. This might come from an "internal bias" in the minds of young female scientists, who may naturally under-rate their intelligence. Whether that's a cultural concoction or a difference in how female brain responds to encouragement, we don't know yet. "Women need more positive reinforcement, and men need more negative reinforcement. Men wildly overestimate their learning abilities, their earning abilities. Women say, 'Oh, I'm not good, I won't earn much, whatever you want to give me is O.K.,'" Yale physicist Meg Urry told Pollack. 3. Stereotypes Females playing STEM-literate characters are gaining more popularity in the movies — for example, Natalie Portman plays a physicist in the new "Thor" movie and Sandra Bullock stars in "Gravity" as a female Astronaut. But, in other ways, women are being held back by stereotypes. In the hugely popular television show "The Big Bang Theory," female scientists are forced into "weirdo" roles, while the non-scientist is the only "normal" female character. These stereotypes also extend into how we portray male scientists. Research has indicated that when females are exposed to nerdy white-guy stereotypes, it discourages them from STEM fields. Studies have shown that when young women hear about a non-stereotypical computer scientist, their interest in the field increases. 4. Childcare Even if young women make it through a bachelor's and enter academia, they often leave the STEM fields early in their career. A frequently suggested reason for this is the lack of maternity leave and childcare after having kids. This is also seen in the long-hour days of technology startups. Tenure-track academics face steep obstacles in reaching their goals, and taking a "time-out" to have children is still a problem at many institutions. Astrophysicist and MacArthur "genius" grant award winner Sara Seager, of MIT, says she will use her $625,000 award to pay for childcare to help her concentrate on her work. If this wasn't an issue facing academics, she wouldn't need to put her winnings toward it. There are indications that having children isn't the main reason women leave STEM fields mid-career — after all, startups and academia allow flexible days and plenty of work from home opportunities — it does seem to become an issue for some research-minded women. A study by Berkeley researchers found that 41% of women postdocs who had babies retreated from their original goal of being a research professor, versus 20% of single women. 5. Competition Women are generally less competitive and aggressive than men, and this could impact their desires to follow through with a career in the sciences at the academic level — when constant competition to publish becomes the major determinant of a successful career. The push to constantly compete can wear on someone whose personality isn't naturally inclined to be aggressive. "While the women in our study were undoubtedly high achievers, many felt that the competitiveness of science (e.g., to secure a grant and post), and especially at the early career stages, results in less weight being given to integrity and meritocracy, making academia an unattractive long-term career option for those who are less naturally competitive," according to a study by the Wellcome Trust [PDF]. 6. Marginalization Even if women do find themselves a faculty position, they are frequently paid less than their male counterparts, given less lab and office space, get fewer awards for their work, and given access to fewer resources, an MIT committee found. Women software developers earn 80% of what men do. These figures hold true in larger studies, including one from the American Institute of Physics looking at 15,000 physicists in 130 countries. "In almost all cultures, the female scientists received less financing, lab space, office support and grants for equipment and travel, even after the researchers controlled for differences other than sex," Pollack wrote.

Deeply ingrained masculine culture means the aff can’t solve

Bach 16 - Deborah Bach, Writer at Microsoft News Center, Communications director, ("Study examines why some STEM fields have fewer women than others", MSN, 10/13/16, Available Online from https://phys.org/news/2016-10-stem-fields-women.html, Accessed on 7-10-2017, DS)

Women's relative lack of participation in science, technology, engineering and math is well documented, but why women are more represented in some STEM areas than others is less clear. A new University of Washington study is among the first to address that question by comparing gender disparities across STEM fields. Published Oct. 12 in the journal Psychological Bulletin, the paper identifies three main factors driving the disparity—and the most powerful one, the researchers conclude, is a "masculine culture" that makes many women feel like they don't belong. "There is widespread knowledge that women are underrepresented in STEM, but people tend to lump STEM fields together," said lead author Sapna Cheryan, a UW associate professor of psychology. "This is one of the first attempts to really dig down into why women are more underrepresented in some STEM fields than others." Women now earn about 37 percent of undergraduate STEM degrees in the United States, but their representation varies widely across those fields. Women receive more than 40 percent of undergraduate degrees in math, for example, but just 18 percent of degrees in computer science. The UW study focused on six of the largest science and engineering fields with the most undergraduate degrees: biology, chemistry and math, which have the highest proportions of female participation, and computer science, engineering and physics, which have bigger gender gaps. The researchers analyzed more than 1,200 papers about women's underrepresentation in STEM, and from those identified 10 factors that impact gender differences in students' interest and participation in STEM. Then they winnowed the list down to the three factors most likely to explain gendered patterns in the six STEM fields—a lack of pre-college experience, gender gaps in belief about one's abilities, and a masculine culture that discourages women from participating. The paper identifies three main aspects of that masculine culture: stereotypes of the fields that are incompatible with how many women perceive themselves, negative stereotypes about women's abilities and a dearth of role models. Those factors decrease women's interest in a field by signaling that they do not belong there, the researchers write. A lack of pre-college experience is also a factor, the paper finds. The gender gap in STEM interest is smaller among high school seniors at schools with stronger math and science offerings, the researchers note. But courses in computer science, engineering and physics are less likely to be offered and required in U.S. high schools than courses in biology, chemistry and mathematics—leaving students with little information about what those fields are like and who might be suited for them. "Students are basing their educational decisions in large part on their perceptions of a field," Cheryan said. "And not having early experience with what a field is really like makes it more likely that they will rely on their stereotypes about that field and who is good at it." A lack of experience does not itself cause women's underrepresentation in STEM, the researchers write. Women are attracted to many fields that students are typically not exposed to before college, such as nursing and social work, the researchers note. But when a lack of early experience is accompanied by a masculine culture, the gender proportion skews male. Early learning opportunities in STEM, Cheryan said, will only attract girls if they convey that girls belong in those fields as much as boys do. "If we're not providing students with a welcoming culture, these efforts are not likely to succeed," she said. Belief in one's abilities was a common theme in previous studies and may help explain current gender gaps, but Cheryan said inconsistent findings made it a less compelling factor. For example, she said, girls tend to report less confidence in their math abilities than boys, but the field of math is still relatively gender-balanced. Similarly, Cheryan said, gender discrimination in hiring and other opportunities was not able to explain current patterns of variability. The researchers expected to find less discrimination in the fields with higher female representation, she said, but discovered that it differed little across the six areas. The researchers embarked on the study focusing primarily on women's choices, Cheryan said, but quickly realized that explaining women's underrepresentation required also looking at men's choices. The proportion of women receiving computer science degrees, for example, has declined steadily since the mid-1980s, due more to an influx of men to the field than a drop in women's participation. Cultural historians attribute the shift to the advent of the personal computer and an accompanying stereotype of the nerdy male computer genius.

Interest alt cause – ending discrimination won’t draw in significantly more women

Conducting research for the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), Ashcraft, Eger, and Friend (2012) discovered middle and high school females can be disconnected from computing curriculum due to a lack of interest and the environment in which the computing curriculum is presented. Ashcraft et al. (2012) identified the following factors as diminishing females’ interests in STEM curriculum: (a) curriculum that is irrelevant, (b) pedagogies that discourage collaboration, (c) lack of opportunities to take risks and make mistakes, and (d) heavy reliance on lecturing instead of active, hands-on, project-based learning. In addition to these factors, informal features of classroom culture that can discourage girls’ participation are student- 22 student and teacher-student interactions. A result of Ashcraft et al. (2012) research indicated computing instructors still employ many pedagogical practices that are not based on sound learning theories. Consequently, computing taught in the abstract lends itself to a description of being a lonely, isolated, machine-focused set of tasks and provides no recognition of how technology aids in addressing relevant social problems (Clayton, von Hellens, & Nielsen, 2009).

Mindset alt cause - makes retention impossible

Seigworth 17 (Clifton, Ph.D. in Education from Trevecca Nazarene University. “Narrowing the Retention Gap of High School Females in an Integrated STEM Program”, 2017. ProQuest Dissertations, Available Online at https://search.proquest.com/docview/1916587858/previewPDF/5F80562C44F64DF7PQ/1?accountid=12598, Accessed on 7-18-17)//JM

Hallman (2015) wrote deepening the applicant pool has begun to occur through the STEM Higher Education Council that is a project of the STEM connector 26 organization. Bertram (2014) insisted all students should be inspired, at a minimum, to investigate STEM-related courses. Why? By 2018, STEM jobs are projected to increase at a rate nearly double that of other fields—17% versus 9.8% (Bertram, 2014). Imagine the opportunities afforded to young women coming out of high school or college, if they only approach learning STEM-related courses with a different mindset? Bertram (2014) argued society as a whole needs to reconsider the long-held perspective that school is about learning enough to get to the next grade level. Instead, Bertram (2014) suggested parents, guardians, teachers, and counselors encourage the mindset change of teaching students from elementary age all the way through to college to view schools as places of assurance that stimulate a passion for knowledge, endorse inquisitiveness, and most of all, persuade students that skills and knowledge matter. Bertram’s (2014) suggested changes especially hold true for young women in high school, if they are to be recruited, persuaded to investigate STEM-related courses, and retained in a STEM program throughout their high school careers.

Extend: Laundry Lists

Laundry list of alt causes - structural bias, poverty, lack of flexability

Seigworth 17 (Clifton, Ph.D. in Education from Trevecca Nazarene University. “Narrowing the Retention Gap of High School Females in an Integrated STEM Program”, 2017. ProQuest Dissertations, Available Online at https://search.proquest.com/docview/1916587858/previewPDF/5F80562C44F64DF7PQ/1?accountid=12598, Accessed on 7-18-17)//JM

Beede et al. (2011) highlighted many possible factors contributing to the discrepancy of women and men in STEM jobs. This investigator sought to identify potential barriers impeding the recruiting and retention of high school female students and compare those findings to prior research results. Previous studies (i.e., Beede et al., 2011; Milgram, 2011) conducted in other parts of the United States have identified such barriers as a lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields. Another purpose of this dissertation was to determine the effect, if any, of location, race/ethnicity, and social class to determine recruiting and retention of high school female students in the STEM programs. Based on international and national rankings, research statistics showed U.S. students in low income or at the poverty level are negatively affected when it comes to STEM education and achievement (Nikischer, 3 2013). In conjunction with the effect of demographics was the effect of changing technologies and course curriculum in the recruiting and retention of high school female students. In a study that compared regular and specialized STEM schools, curriculum and the way the curriculum was taught had an impact on recruiting, retention, and achievement (Tofel-Grehl, 2013).

Extend: Interest Alt Cause

Interest alt cause

Klein 12 (Zachary, J.D., notes editor for the Rutgers Law Review. “STEMing Out Disparities: The Challenges of Applying Title IX to the Study of Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics”, spring 2012. Available on Lexis Nexus, article published in the Rutgers Law Review. 7/14/17)//JM

The argument for a vigorous application of Title IX in STEM presumes that discrimination is the root cause of the gender disparity in these fields. Although discrimination may be part of the problem, n159 the suggestion that discrimina-tion is entirely - or even mostly - responsible for the dearth of women in STEM fields diminishes all other possible fac-tors that might influence a student's decision to choose other fields of study. This Note rejects any notion that there are innate biological differences between men and women that cause differing aptitude in math and sciences. n160 Rather, widely divergent ratios between males and females in STEM may be the result of differing interest in STEM-related fields. n161 [*920] Advocates of a strict proportionality standard have eschewed all factors besides pervasive negative gender stereotypes. n162 Such arguments, however, give no credence whatsoever to a lack of interest in STEM by women and are often as circular as arguments that solely blame women's lack of interest without acknowledging the role of discrimination. n163 These arguments might be valid in the STEM context if there were no plausible explanation to ac-count for lack of interest in STEM other than gender bias at the school level. On the contrary, there are a myriad of factors at play, not simply "historic forms of discrimination." n164 Indeed, "one of the reasons that it is crucial to ... ex-plore more complete explanations for these disparities is because the choice of legal tools depends on an accurate iden-tification of the problems at issue." n165 Title IX compliance reviews are not intended to presume guilt on the part of educational institutions. Rather, they are meant to objectively ascertain the state of Title IX compliance in such institutions. Stricter compliance reviews should not be used as a proxy for the goal of establishing palatable gender ratios. Instead, lawmakers should be open to other possible causes of the gender imbalance and not be too quick to blame gender bias as the root cause prevent-ing "efforts to recruit and retain women." n166 There are many reasons for lawmakers to question the discrimination-as-cause hypothesis. For example, if gradu-ate settings in STEM programs are uniquely suited to creating a hostile environment for women, n167 this does not ex-plain why life sciences [*921] enjoy a larger percentage of female students, as there is little evidence to suggest that life science programs are structured in a noticeably different way from STEM science programs. n168 Additionally, hos-tile environment claims are not unique to the STEM context. Fields such as medicine, for example, were still plagued by gender bias and implicit discriminatory practices even after the passage of Title IX in 1972. n169 Yet, since then, medical schools have experienced an explosive growth in their proportion of female students. n170 Implicit gender bias did not deter women from entering these fields, and in fact, the rapid influx of female talent helped ameliorate pervasive sexist attitudes. n171 Female interest in medicine remains consistent to this day despite evidence that some forms of gender bias still remain. n172 Discrimination cannot be the only explanation behind the lack of women in STEM. When considering the proper approach to the issue of women in STEM studies, it is important to look at other fac-tors that may shape young girls' interests in pursuing these fields. For example, young girls may avoid pursuing STEM studies because of fears of social alienation. n173 Interest in STEM subjects, such as mathematics, is often perceived as a social liability within youth culture - for both [*922] girls and boys - and this makes it especially difficult for girls to engage in such fields, even at a young age. n174 Addressing adolescent attitudes about STEM studies should be an important goal for educational institutions across the country, n175 and changing attitudes may actually help to increase overall interest in these fields regardless of gender. n176 However, young students' social perceptions should not be the basis for any form of institutional liability.

The individual nature of STEM work in schools drives away many women

*NCWIT: National Center for Women and Information Technology

Ashcraft et al. (2012) research reported to the NCWIT a recurring theme that served as barriers to females entering the computing classroom—boring and mundane, repetitive tasks with instructors who did not teach real-world applications the female students could apply or relate to in their day-to-day lives. Unfortunately, these barriers were not the only ones that middle school, high school, and undergraduate female students identified as keeping them away from the computer laboratory. Again, examples of deterrents were teachers not using project-based learning or real-world applications to entice or enhance female students to be a part of the computer laboratory learning, as well as instructors promoting independent work and discouraging or chastising the female students for collaborating on their work (Ashcraft et al., 2012).

Not all STEM gender disparities are from bias

Extend: Mindset Alt Cause

Workplace Alt Cause

Multiple alt causes – Workplace culture, lack of communication

Zazulia 16 (Nicholas, Staff Writer from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism internally quoting Beth Michaels, president of Primer Michaels, business consulting firm in a study focusing on factors for lowered women in STEM, “Women Leave STEM Jobs for the Reasons Men Want To”, US News, 4/8/2016, Online: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-08/study-women-leave-stem-jobs-for-the-reasons-men-only-want-to, 7/10, DTS)

Many of the factors driving women employees from STEM fields have nothing to do with family, according to a study conducted by the Society of Women Engineers. The study, which anonymously surveyed 3,200 engineers across four major companies (3M, Booz Allen Hamilton, Honeywell Aerospace and United Technologies Corp.), focused on values and perceptions of corporate culture in an attempt to find out why so many women leave jobs in the science, technology, engineering and math fields within a decade of entering the STEM workforce when their male counterparts do not. With that knowledge, SWE aimed to identify actionable steps companies in those fields can take to combat attrition among female employees. Do men and women experience corporate culture differently? "Not really," says Beth A. Michaels, president of Primer Michaels, the consulting firm that helped facilitate and conduct the study. "Frankly, both groups are not happy. They have the same values, on the whole," she says. "They have the same negative feedback. They have some different priorities, but here's the big-ticket item: The women react differently to the same environment." The study showed that both men and women feel that bureaucracy and hierarchy are impeding employees from achieving what they are there to accomplish. But Michaels said that men are likely to endure the dissatisfaction and continue working. However, when women notice what they consider to be unnecessary obstacles to their work, they tend to end up leaving for another career. That reasoning makes sense to Jane Howell, the American Society of Civil Engineers' director of communications. "These are people who have a good sense of what is important for them," Howell says. "And they frankly don't have to settle for working in an environment where they have to continually prove that this work can be fulfilling to them." One of the tactics Michaels recommends to companies looking to improve their culture is to start remembering that women are different from men – what she calls gender intelligence. "It's not easy to talk about; this really takes a lot of courage," Michaels says. "If you want women to stay, take gender intelligence seriously. The women are going to respond [to the same environment] differently. And they are being responded to differently." Given the past tendencies of companies in STEM fields, Howell says it makes sense that corporate culture is failing to reach women employees right now. "In the last 30 or 40 years, some of the people that were encouraged to pursue engineering were bright, certainly, but there was not a lot of emphasis on softer skills like communication," she says. That "emphasis on data and facts as opposed to the human side may be contributing to the culture." She did note that "there is a change underway in various parts of the community [toward] valuing business savvy and communication skills." Michaels has two 30-something children, one male and one female. As the survey results came in, she told her kids about them, including the fact that diversity and inclusion didn't show up anywhere in the top values or priorities, which shocked her. "Both of my kids said to me, 'Mom, why in the world would you be surprised by that? Gender has nothing to do with diversity,'" Michaels said. "We have a deep denial that gender diversity is a factor." James Brown, the executive director of the STEM Education Coalition, didn't find the absence of diversity in listed values to be such a surprise. He said that's not because it's unimportant to people, but because that isn't how people contextualize those priorities anymore. "Some of those companies [that participated in the study] are also consulting firms," Brown says. "If you're going to go work with a city with a certain demographic, it makes sense to go with a team that has a certain demographic that meets that. Same as if you're a defense contractor: You go and make sure you have people from the Navy, from the different areas. And when you do it successfully, you don't say, 'That was our diversity strategy in action,'" he says. "You say, 'That was our business policy in action, working well to serve our customer.'" Semantics aside, the data, like this 2014 study by the National Center for Women and Information Technology or this 2014 report by Catalyst, consistently show that more than half the women who enter STEM fields leave them within a decade, which is close to twice the frequency of their male peers in those fields.

Can’t Solve Bias

Aff can’t solve---multiple areas of gender bias that STEM does nothing to overcome---at worst, they misplace the blame

Huang 13 – Biwei Huang, working with the National Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA, no date but the latest cited was 2013 (“Gender Bias Faced By Girls and What We Can Do: One Student’s Perspective and Appended Information from the Center,” National Center for Mental Health in Schools, 2013, Available Online at http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/genderbias.pdf, Accessed 07-10-2017, HK)

Gender Norms in Schools¶ Researchers have found that many facets of school culture reinforce gender stereotypes and¶ biases and accentuate gender differences and inequities. Examples of such problems include¶ differential experiences related to classroom participation, socialization of behavior, textbook¶ content, and more.¶ With respect to participation, in some classrooms girls have been found to have fewer¶ opportunities than boys to engage in discussions, perhaps because teachers and students expect¶ girls to be passive and quiet while boys are expected to be active and talkative. For instance,¶ in both small-group discussions and whole-class activities, researchers have found that girls’¶ opinions are viewed as inferior by their male peers. Boys often interrupted when girls were¶ talking, and girls would arbitrarily be assigned tasks like taking notes during the discussion,¶ rather than being active in carrying out the assigned experiment or offering opinions. In one¶ study, the researchers note that the teacher was not aware of such problems until shown the¶ data.¶ Socialization processes also may be practiced with gender biases. For instance, male-female¶ differences are reinforced every time a teacher uses gender to group or line up students or¶ handles misbehavior differentially. Data indicate a tendency for teachers to apply “femininity¶ norms” (“be quiet, neat, and calm”) and punish girls harder than boys when they manifest¶ opposite behaviors.¶ In textbooks used until quite recently, researchers found that females were underrepresented.¶ This was reflected in the number of text lines, proportion of named characters, and so forth.¶ Moreover, females and males were portrayed stereotypically (e.g., females shown as nurses,¶ males as doctors and lawyers).

Plan can’t solve for implicit biases – success for women impossible otherwise

Corbett and Hill, Senior Researchers at the AAUW, 2015 (Christianne and Catherine, “Solving the Equation: the Variables for Women’s Success in Engineering and Computing”, DoA: 7/11/17, http://www.aauw.org/aauw_check/pdf_download/show_pdf.php?file=solving-the-equation, NV)

Reducing bias against women in engineering and computing fields is a society-wide endeavor. The best long-term strategy for accomplishing this goal is to change cultural stereotypes that lead to gender biases—for example, that men are better than women at math, science, and the other skills that engineers and computing professionals need. Ironically, one way to change the operative stereotypes is for a critical mass of women to succeed in engineering and computing occupations (Eagly & Diekman, 2012), which brings us back to square one.

Stereotypes reinforce disparities – parents and society pressure

ScienceDaily 17 — Science Daily, Releases research articles from a variety of different professors around the world (“Stereotypes still affect females' career aspirations in STEM topics,” Science Daily, June 22^nd, Available Online at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170622103950.htm, Accessed 07-10-2017 AZ)

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects, are traditionally male dominated and it is well established that females remain underrepresented in such programmes to this day. This gender discrepancy has been a hot topic among researchers and advocates who seek to understand this phenomenon to ultimately close or at least reduce the gap. For the few females who successfully end up in STEM programmes, one would assume they overcame the barriers and are less prone to stereotype views. But is this so? Professor Bernhard Ertl from the Universität der Bundeswehr München, in Germany et.al. took a closer look at this topic in their recent study "The Impact of Gender Stereotypes on the Self-Concept of Female Students in STEM Subjects with an Under-Representation of Females" published in Frontiers for Psychology. The study involved 296 women from different German universities who are all enrolled in a STEM programme with less than 30% females. It aimed at investigating the impact of stereotypes and the role of family, school and society on the self-concept of females already studying these scientific subjects. Stereotypes impact a person's self-assessment and lower their sense of competence, ability and self-confidence, i.e. the self-concept. "We were astonished that stereotypes about STEM still corrupt the self-concept of female students who already crossed several barriers and found their way into a STEM subject with a quite low proportion of females." states Professor Ertl. Even though the students participating in the study presumably had good grades in STEM, stereotypes still corrupted their self-concept. The STEM career path is considered untypical by many of the students' social environments and in some instances, was met with surprise or even scepticism. One of the reasons for this might lie in stereotypes that attribute girls' achievements to diligence instead of talent. Professor Ertl expands "Stereotypes are grounded in society and therefore it is important for us to know the effect of our stereotypes on individuals' self-concepts, achievements and career decisions." The study points to the fact that family can have a negative impact on female students' self-concept and initiatives that directly seek to support the students may actually backfire and reinforce the stereotypical views instead. Indirect support has proven to be more effective. This involves for instance giving children the opportunity to have positive experiences in science related subjects or by giving them the chance to meet role models that are enthusiastic about their STEM professions. Such measures may boost the self-concept of female students in STEM programmes, more so than direct encouragement. To conclude, study co-author Professor Manuela Paechter highlights the key learnings from the study for education "We should realise that supporting students may have ambiguous effects. Consider this paradox: If we perceive a student as not sufficiently gifted by the standards of our implicit stereotypes, we may communicate this opinion subconsciously whilst at the same time giving them support. Even if well intentioned, such behaviour will foil the hoped-for effects. Instead, teaching subjects like physics while linking them to how they explain daily life phenomena could attract more girls (and also more boys). "

Alt causes – lack of motivation because of stereotypes built into society

Vedantam 16 — Shankar Vedantam, is NPR's social science correspondent and the host of the Hidden Brain podcast. The focus of his reporting is on human behavior and the social sciences, and how research in those fields can get listeners to think about the news in unusual and interesting ways. (“Research Explores Ways To Overcome STEM Fields' Gender Gap,” NPR, June 15^th, Available Online at http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482123559/research-explores-ways-to-overcome-stem-fields-gender-gap, Accessed 07-10-2017 AZ)

DAVID GREENE, HOST: When you look at fields such as engineering and technology - fields that have a lot of well-paying jobs - women are significantly outnumbered by men. And the problem is not just recruitment; it's retention. There's new research now into why it is often hard to retain women at tech companies and engineering schools. And here to talk about it is NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam. Hey, Shankar. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, David. GREENE: So what is the problem you're looking at here? VEDANTAM: Well, you know, people used to say that women were not as good at math. But as women have started to do as well as men at science and math, the narrative has shifted, David. And now people say, look, women really aren't as interested in these fields as men. And there's some evidence to back up this theory. Only 18 percent of engineering majors in college are female. Lots of female students show up in college saying they're interested in science, technology, engineering and math, but a couple of years later, they've switch their majors. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the psychologist Nilanjana Dasgupta told me that she had a different theory on why women might drop out of math and tech careers. NILANJANA DASGUPTA: The prototype of success in tech is very male, so I think those stereotypes get in the way of women feeling that this is the field for them. They feel good at multiple subjects, and you feel like you don't really belong in a place. Over time, you start to de-identify or move away from fields and hang out more in other fields where your friends are.

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