When I tell people that I’m interested in physics, they often ask what it is like to be a woman in STEM. Their question is frustrating to me. Why should my gender matter at all in my study of physics? The common social misconception of mathematics and science being ‘masculine’ bears little resemblance to the creative thought itself.
I believe the news media have a moral obligation to actively identify and discuss such social misconceptions that perpetuate academic and career inequalities. Journalists already quote males more than females by a ratio of about 3:1 according to a study by the Women’s Media Center. When science is featured in mainstream news, it’s simplistic, and the cited academics are almost always men. It’s probably not coincidental that besides Lisa Randall, Marie Curie, and Lise Meitner, I can’t name any other female physicists off the top of my head.
However, it is arguable that the media are not at fault in reinforcing gender bias – how can journalists cite females as much as males in fields that are underrepresented by women and remain objective? Less than one-fifth of computer science graduates are women according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Journalists are obligated to remain neutral in their reporting and not promote any particular viewpoint, and trying to keep an equal ratio of male and female sources would not accurately reflect the latest findings in a male-dominated field such as computer science. While it is easy to advocate for more women in the hard sciences so that journalists can have more female sources in their reporting, I find that the media should take more aggressive approaches in combating gender bias because the roots of it are deep, subtle, and complex. Mainstream media need to cover more analyses, stories, and op-ed pieces of how gender and other biases affect the life trajectories of women and other minority groups. In middle school instead of drawing flowers, my friends doodled equations and formulas in their notebooks. It was disheartening to watch them in high school and college shy away from subjects and careers involving science and mathematics. I believe the portrayal of women in the media partially influenced their decisions.
Although women have experienced more freedoms within the past century, I’m concerned that gender biases persist and infringe on academic and career potential, and the media seem to instill stereotypes more than confront them. The media must prioritize identifying biases that have been hazily pushed into accepted American ideology, even if that means forming opinions promoting women in science, losing some of the journalistic rituals of objectivity, and threatening a news sources’ reputation. I would like to see campaigns for journalists to self-examine the amount of times they quote men and women in their news articles and for cable news sources to systematically count the number of times television hosts use potentially sexist or derogatory remarks against women and minorities. In addition, while it is important for journalists to find sources from political elites and high-ranking academics, they lose perspective and voice from people underrepresented in those positions. As a news consumer, I will try to find articles that have sources that are not commonly used for political indexing and admire journalists who openly advocate for events like the Woman’s March that attempt to reduce gender, racial, and economic inequality.
I find that the media often cover political news and fail to recognize how gender and racial biases interact with politics and party affiliation. I believe that if mainstream news focused more on issue coverage and discussing biases other than those of the left and right, news consumers would gain better understandings of why economic and career inequalities persist. Instead of asking whether a news source is more conservative or liberal, I will try to examine if it’s biased towards certain groups such as whites, men, young people, Christians, and affluent people. I’ll observe whether the majority of the articles I read are from journalists of similar backgrounds and if there are patterns in how news stories describe black people, people in poverty, and women. Exploring other social misconceptions that are not just political in the media will help me become self-aware of the limitations in my opinions and media news consumption. It will also help me understand the ways in which media bias can be measured by an array of different variables.
The media’s purpose is to provide citizens the necessary information to be free and self-governing, and in order for news consumers to be free decision makers, they need to recognize the implicit and explicit biases apparent in their lives. News sources like Fox News, Breitbart, and MSNBC should distance themselves from political orientation and allow their journalists more space for independent thought and analysis, even if that means losing part of their partisan audience. I do not believe it is healthy for news sources to openly favor one party and also claim they are ‘objective’ and ‘fair and balanced’ in their reporting. Journalists should cover more stories that counter gender and racial bias congruencies like articles featuring women mathematicians and scientists. Editors should assign different beats that report on female politicians in D.C. or female tech executives in Silicon Valley. New sources should examine their tone and word choice in stories concerning minorities, and see if their reporting favors certain points of view. While the media do not solely determine our perceptions of the world, they help shape public opinion, and as we advance through the 21st century, the media will play a larger role in our lives than ever before.
As a college student moving into my sophomore year, I’m not exactly sure what area I expect to be involved in the media. Regardless, I will be a lifelong news consumer, and I’m fairly confident I’ll be working in a field that is underrepresented by women. My dream for mainstream and alternative news sources is for them to self-analyze evidence of gender, racial, and other non-political bias in their content and to create new American narratives where minorities are appreciated. If journalists, editors, and workers in PR and strategic communication stand against gender and racial injustice, other influential factors like advertisement, interpersonal, everyday relationships, and even politics will begin to shift. Maybe one day, I’ll be a journalist or writer who is a voice for girls and women who like Legos and Transformers and are interested in science and mathematics. Then, I may be able to give a more adequate explanation to why people ask me what it’s like to be in STEM when I tell them I like physics and why gender should ultimately never matter. For now, I’ll do everything I can to counteract social misconceptions and not make false assumptions about the shifting world and numerous people in my life.
