Working in the "chilly climate" of STEM programs

By definition, the "chilly climate" is an unspoken but widely acknowledged disparity between the genders that influences the learning and working roles the female students and professionals are in. This experience is not specific to women in STEM, but has been described my many groups of marginalized people as their presence becomes more abundant, ranging from ethnic and racial groups to political parties. The feeling of being ‘out of place’ based on the demographics and the subliminal context provided by colleagues is yet another factor deterring women from STEM participation.

One study presented by Brown University regarding the opinions of their female STEM undergraduate students, specifically those in the most male dominated fields like computer science and physics, gives a narrative of the experiences felt by these young women. This study states that many students felt “no outward hostility” based on gender, though the “atmosphere” in their STEM classes was summed up as “uncomfortable and sometimes unwelcoming.”24 These classes were specified to be male dominated, with some lectures only having a handful of female students. One computer science student was quoted stating “in some classes, I’m definitely hesitant to ask questions because I don’t want to put myself on the line as much. And I think men are much more inclined to do that in this environment.”24 The trends of responses between these students was similar across the board, most expressed similar sentiments of implicit inferiority. “I feel like I have to be a representative of my gender … like if I ask a dumb question, it’s not just me as a person asking that. It’s me as a woman,” said another computer science student.24

The imposter syndrome, as discussed here, is a feeling that is commonly attributed to female students who believe that they need to be more qualified to be seen as equally as competitive compared to their male counterparts. As the study from Brown defined it, the imposter syndrome is “psychological phenomenon in which people feel a persisting sense of inadequacy despite clear competency.” The students in the Brown study were found to feel more “comfortable” in classes that had more even gender distributions, including specifically biology, chemistry and neuroscience.

In STEM-based classes, research shows that “women are accustomed to the expectations of being ‘well-mannered’ and have little practice being verbally assertive.”7 Seymour and Hewitt observed that men interpret the women who ask questions in class as being incompetent, and Hall & Sandler found that when female students do verbally participate in class, they are “interrupted far more frequently by both the educator and their male classmates.”7 This culmination of expectations negatively impacts the female students, and while no outward actions are necessarily being taken, it's nonetheless a critical experience of the young women in question.

While the attributes of a "chilly climate" are diverse and often implicit, there are certainly factors in place that are able to be changed. First and foremost, educating both students and professors about this phenomenon to allow them to analyze their own experience. Ensuring similar explicit treatment of female students, provision of adequate educational support, the encouragement that it's okay to be wrong in order to learn, etc., are all methods that university programs may employ in order to immediately encourage their own female students and to avoid the leaky pipeline.

To read more about a Dichotomy of Realities - An Analysis of Gender and STEM at the University of Wyoming, click here.

References can be found here.