Opening Remarks by Kim Dempsey, 10th Grade Science Teacher
Welcome! Thank you for joining the East Side Community for our 5th Annual Science night!
This year, as you may have noticed if you attended any of our previous celebrations, we are renaming this event - “Women in Science Night” becomes “Diversity in Science Night”. This was done because as a science team and as a school, we would like to expand our awareness beyond the gender gap that remains in many STEM fields, to a broader understanding of the intersection of how the combination of an individual’s gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, or other unique identifiers influence their access to thrive in a career in STEM.
Let’s start with the concerning statistics. According to US Census, in 2011, 11 percent of the workforce was Black, while only 6 percent of STEM workers were Black. Similarly, 15 percent of the workforce was Hispanic in 2011, but Hispanics were 7 percent of the STEM workforce in 2011. Women’s representation in STEM occupations has increased since the 1970s - but not all STEM fields are equal when it comes to women’s representation. In 2015, the US Department of Commerce reports that women made up about 60 percent of biological/health science degrees awarded in the United States, but only 8% of computer science degrees and 20% of engineering degrees. There is currently no reliable data that quantifies the proportion the STEM workforce that identify as queer, transgender, or anywhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. This lack of data is itself a problem to be addressed. The American Physical Society March 2016 report noted that over one-third of LGBT survey respondents “considered leaving their workplace or school in the past year” after experiencing or observing harassment or discrimination.
This goal of Diversity in Science matters for us all - even those of us who will not pursue a career in STEM - because we ALL rely on science to provide data that helps us understand the world around us, technology to help us achieve our goals more efficiently, engineering to solve our most difficult problems, and mathematics to predict what might happen in the future. It is in all of our best interests’ that we have STEM industries that are strong and productive. The best way to do this is to have voices from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives in the group. This can increase the quality of the STEM work dramatically, as well as being more fair and equitable. Two economists working at Harvard analyzed the impact of 2.5 million published scientific journal articles and found that those that were authored by a group of scientists with a variety of ethnically different last names had, on average, more influence on the field.
More equitable representation in STEM will take some time and many different strategies to address completely, but one powerful way to start is to remember the importance of role models. In history, there are countless individuals who were not straight white males who greatly contributed to progress in STEM - their faces and work needs to be celebrated more forcefully. This event is a starting point - students, no matter how you identify or how you think the world perceives you, remember that you can find a role model and a mentor with some community support.
1 - “Disparities in STEM Employment by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin.” 2013. United States Census Bureau. LINK 2 - “Women in STEM: 2017 Update.” 2017. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics & Statistics Administration. Office of the Chief Economist. LINK 3 - “Is Science too Straight? LGBTQ+ issues in STEM diversity” 2017. Boston University. LINK