Sexual harassment is hurting women’s career ambitions and driving them away from the areas where they’re most needed—science, technology, engineering, and math—the STEM fields, as they’ve come to be called.
We spoke to teenage girls participating in these programs about the possibility that their careers could be empowered instead of imperiled.
Bailey, an Afro-Latina who wants to be a pilot, says she’s glad to know the nuances of when to call someone out. She also says she trusts her mother and a school principal to support her.
The weeklong event this summer brought 50 girls from throughout Chicago to the Illinois Institute of Technology to see STEM professionals in action and to get hands-on learning experiences on a university campus.
The African-American woman in charge of the Paschen scholars’ program—herself a native of Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood on the west side—knows only too well the everyday realities the STEM students will face.
A National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report describes pervasive and damaging gender harassment—behaviors that demean women and isolate them with sexist remarks and degrading jokes.
