Margaret Mead

Leaning over a microscope wearing a crisp white lab coat is a biochemist developing the cure for cancer. Wearing faded blue jeans and a red polo shirt is the company information technologist fixing the company security system. An engineer designs a reusable space shuttle powered by interstellar radiation. Human computers calculate the moon landing to assure the safe arrival of the first men on the moon. Imagine a person in these positions. What did they look like? What color was their skin? Was it a man or a woman? Statistically speaking, you thought of a white man, probably in his thirties or forties. Now you may argue that these were all hypothetical so why does it matter? Who could you have hurt with your own unspoken thoughts? Well,
Mead was an anthropologist who studied gender roles in tribal cultures, specifically those in Polynesia (Felder 4). In Mead’s work she discovered that in many tribal cultures, women were seen as equal to their male counterparts. This was drastically different from the common held belief of many first world countries that women were docile, fragile creatures whose most useful purpose was as homemakers, and not working contributors. This is one example of women, throughout nearly all of civilized human history, being required to prove themselves as more than simple homemakers. Many would say this is in the past, but the 21st century is rife with those who still feel that being a homemaker is a woman’s first job. Years before he was president, Donald Trump said “when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof” and this was two decades after Mead’s death (qtd. In Cohen). This demonstrates just how long held this idea of women being homemakers first is. With women habitually being told they are expected to meet these societal requirements their desire to work and learn, specifically in male dominated fields where they will face these criticisms even more frequently, continues to
This number steadily increased, and by the 1960’s “38% of women age 16 and older were in the labor force” (Hynes & Davis). While throughout all races, the percentage of working women increased over the years, the rate of single working women increased most for white women (Hynes & Davis). The rate of married working women, however, increased most among african-american women (Hynes & Davis). This is due to the fact that in white households throughout the 20th century there was much more emphasis placed on women being homemakers and men being breadwinners, whereas in african-american households women and men were seen as equal financial contributors to the household. Despite the steady increase in working women, STEM fields have maintained nearly identical percentages of female workers since the 2000s. The amount of women working in physical and life sciences, engineering, and as STEM managers has increased by an average of about 2.5% . It could be argued that this shows an increase in women in STEM fields, however, that is not the case. While those fields have increased, slightly, their amount of female workers, the percentage of women in STEM fields has not changed from its 24% since 2000. Although some may argue that no change is fine, in fact the amount of female workers in general has increased by about 7 million people meaning that despite this great