Happy International Women's Day!

Women in STEM

Despite efforts for addressing Gender Inequality in STEM, the gender gap is persistent. In 1970, women made up 8% of STEM workers. By 2019, the STEM proportion had increased to only 27%. And while the percentage of women in computer occupations is higher than in 1970, it decreased between 1990 and 2019. [1]

Gender inequality is also present in academia and scientific careers. Currently, less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women [2]. In engineering, only about 17% of publications are authored by women [3]

In honor of Women History Month, International Day of Women and Girls in Science [4] (Feb 11th), and International Women’s Day (Mar 8th), the Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences will dedicate March to highlight some of the female students and researchers that compose the Institute’s producing knowledge and advancing the risk sciences.

References
[1] U.S. Census

[2] UNESCO Institute for Statistics

[3] J Huang, AJ Gates, R Sinatra, Albert-László Barabási. Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 117 (2020), pp. 4609-4616

[4] United Nations

Resources at UCLA

• UCLA SEAS Women in Engineering (WE)

• UCLA Center for the Study of Women