Arianna Haven Capstone - Gender Representation in STEM

For my capstone project, I investigated what it was like to be a woman in an underrepresented field of work. Since I want to go into engineering, and STEM is one of the fields that has a small percentage of women compared to men, I felt that this was a very relevant topic for me to learn about. Ella Petersen, another female senior here at Science Leadership Academy, wants to go into business. Business is another field where women are underrepresented in the workplace, so we felt that it was appropriate to team up and learn about women in underrepresented industries together. I focussed on women in STEM, Ella focussed on women in business, and together we were able to learn a lot more about both fields and reach a much bigger audience. 

We had both heard horror stories about women in a workplace where they are outnumbered by men, so we were very prepared to face the harsh reality of what our future could look like. However, after interviewing many women in STEM and business jobs, we realized that these industries are slowly becoming much more welcoming to women. We decided that wanted to help the improvement of these fields in whatever way we could because they were our future. Because of this, we held a panel with five women in underrepresented fields for the underclassmen at our school. Four classes came and got to talk to these women and ask them questions about what it is like to be a woman in an underrepresented field. I loved getting the opportunity to explore a topic that affects me so much.