We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism. Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England were up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism. The main perpetrators of this sexism were not university staff, however, but were men STEM degree students.
We can be less bigoted than the past while also having a long way to go still. You could even count as a sign of this improvement that these issues are taken seriously and discussed rather than ignored as “just the way things are”.
But we can’t take it for granted, because progress is not guaranteed and equality can decline. Say, such as the matter of abortion rights in the US and consequently how pregnancies are policed, leading to possible arrests even for natural miscarriages.
If you acknowledge that we aren’t finished fighting bigotry, I don’t really understand what’s your concern here.
I get that clickbait is a thing, but as a community focused on Technology it seems pertinent to consider what the experience of different people in this area is like.
Should we pretend it doesn’t happen so that the journalists don’t “win”? It is upsetting to know that this happens, but I don’t see how we “lose” by being informed. This isn’t someone trolling on social media, it’s the reality of the world we live in.
