LAKELAND, Fla. — Women are tremendously underrepresented in the STEM field.
“Graduation Day! Industrial engineer. USF,” mentioned Shenita Malloy, as she checked out her commencement image on her telephone, reflecting on that day. “I was so proud. I was so happy. Young engineer. Fresh eyes. I couldn’t wait. I didn’t know what the world had ahead for me, but I was excited to get started.”
Malloy did not know that quickly after commencement, she could be engaged on circuit boards and GPS techniques for NASA spacecraft.
“You know that you’re building something that’s going to go into space. So, you go to sleep with that every night,” mentioned Malloy.
Malloy is just not the solely engineer in her household; her older sister is just too and impressed her. Though Malloy by no means doubted her talents to thrive as an engineer, as a lady, she was a minority in the STEM field.
Shenita Malloy
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1970, women made up 38% of the workforce in the United States, however solely 8% of STEM staff.
Today, women make up 48% of the workforce however account for simply 27% of STEM staff, which is a rise from many years in the past nevertheless it’s nonetheless a really male-dominated field.
“Young girls get involved in math and science and then, at some point in middle school, they lose interest in STEM,” Trudy Daniels with the Tampa chapter of a corporation known as Women In Defense.
Women In Defense present STEM scholarships for ladies in the Tampa Bay space.
“We’ve given out scholarships to the John Glenn Academy and the Pinellas County School System, to Hillsborough County – their Girls In Stem Summer Camp program,” mentioned Daniels.
Since 2017, the group has awarded about 65 scholarships to native ladies.
“I’ve never thought of myself as the science type, but it turns out I am the science type. As far as racial and gender equity goes, we need every idea, every diverse perspective in order to solve problems,” mentioned Dr. Jayshree Seth in the award-winning docuseries known as “Not The Science Type.”
In the docuseries, she spoke about the obstacles she needed to overcome as an Indian girl in STEM and the significance of making STEM accessible to everybody.
“I’ll say that the experience of having your story be told is quite surreal, but it also reinforced for me how challenges can be re-framed and how they can also give deep motivation to grow despite the detractors,” mentioned Dr. Seth.
As for Malloy, she now not works in STEM; she now works in finance. Though it could appear to be these two careers couldn’t be any extra completely different from one another, she mentioned her engineering background made her extra marketable for her new profession.
“I said, ‘well, I don’t have a lot of experience in this specific field, but I think I can pick it up,’ and he [her former boss] was like, ‘oh you can do this in your sleep.. I know you can.. Because you’re an engineer,” mentioned Malloy.