Englishwomen in STEM Fields: Then and Now essay

This paper is meant to trace the progress of females in England and critically analyze the effects of the legal system, societal norms and professional practice in a relative field of Math, Science, Engineering, and Technology. This paper also discusses the most significant issues, challenges, and opportunities that women in those areas face today as they plan their careers. Also, there are some recommended strategies, which may improve women’s prospect in work environment and open a path for future opportunities in England.

Females-Scientists Encouragement

Males certainly outnumber females in the majority of STEM careers. For instance, only seventeen percent of chemical engineers and 22% of environmental scientists are ladies. However, it does not mean it is difficult for females to obtain jobs in those spheres. Actually, many organizations prefer to hire and keep qualified women for STEM jobs. The question people have to ask as the society is not “can females excel in STEM fields?” – Marie Curie answered this myth years ago – but “how can people encourage more ladies with extraordinary capabilities to pursue careers in these spheres?” Extensive researchers on the issue have identified the need to address crucial societal and cultural factors. Speculation that “inner dissimilarities” can be a considerable reason of under-representation by females in science and engineering may revitalize old myths and reinforce unconstructive biases (Linn, 199-200).

Why is it so significant? England as many other nations faces rising rivalry from abroad in technological modernism, the most powerful driver of the economy, whilst the academic work of the school-age students in science lays behind many nations. Against these surroundings, it is vital that people tap the perspectives and talent of the female and male halves of the English populace. Until females may sense as much at home in engineering, math, technology and science as men, England will be less than a total sum of its parts.

Progress of Englishwomen in STEM Fields: 16-20 Centuries

For many centuries women faced many barriers in the scientific work that was considered to be primarily for males. No woman was invited to either the French Academy of Sciences nor the Royal Society of London until the 20th century. The Scientific Revolution of 16-17 centuries did little to alter human beings’ thought about the nature of females. Male scientists utilized the novel science to spread the opinion ladies were subordinate to males and suitable to play a domestic role as mothers. Most human beings in the 17th century treated a living devoted to any sort of scholarship as being against the home duties females were expected to carry out. By the 17th century, scientific thinking and the experimental approach had become the sphere of more males, and only by the mid-18th century, growing numbers of females would be included as well.

The 18th century was typified by 3 different opinions towards females: that ladies were psychologically and socially inferior to males, that they were equivalent but various, and that females were potentially equivalent in psychological capability and contribution to the social order. Whilst people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought females’ roles were confined to maternity and service to the men partners, the Enlightenment was an era in which females did not experience extended roles in sciences. The increase of the salon culture in entire Europe brought philosophies and the conversation to an intimate setting where males and females met to discuss contemporary social, political and scientific issues. While Jean-Jacques Rousseau assaulted female-dominated salons as creating “effeminate males” that stifled severe discourse, salons were typified in the 18th century by the combining of the sexes. With the help of salons and their effort in STEM fields, ladies started to have an important influence during the Enlightenment. Females where not completely excluded from being formally acknowledged by the scientific globe.

Though females excelled in lots of scientific spheres during the 18th century, ladies were discouraged from education concerning plant reproduction. Females were usually described as obviously emotional and unable of objective way of thinking or as natural mothers reproducing a natural, ethical society. Even with these characterizations, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, known for the prolific letter writing, pioneered smallpox immunization in England. She was the first woman who observed the inoculations whilst visiting the Ottoman Empire, where she created detailed narratives of the practice in her letters.



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