America
used to be the leading country in innovation, technology, and design. The
steady decline has been linked to a disparities gap in the science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM) majors in college, graduate, and professional
programs. With America’s ever growing population the underrepresented
minorities are steadily becoming the majority. If this trend continues then
America will quickly lose more than just the leading position in innovation,
but our economy will greatly suffer and our disparities gap will continue
growing, creating a torn nation. In this
paper I will discuss ways in which applying theories from feminists praxis can
be applied to closing the gender and racial gap of STEM based majors. By
creating new programs that focus on promoting diversity in STEM majors and
focusing on retaining minority’s interests in these subjects, we will create a
workforce that is more diverse and dynamic.
Developing opportunities for minorities that include financial support,
research based mentorships, and by creating diversity in STEM fields will
encourage students to continue with seeking higher education, thus promoting a
more heterogeneous workforce. It is through this diversity and equality that
our nation will grow and flourish becoming, yet again, the number one nation in
innovation.
So far many of the issues raised in our capstone course on black feminism beliefs are relating to equality, underrepresentation, marginalization, discrimination, and patriarchal domination. I can relate these themes or ideas into the previous paragraph (my abstract) in a few ways. First of all these are all the relating themes that create inequality and the divide that we see in America's workforce. The workforce has continued to be this way because of the old beliefs of our patriarchal mainly white leaders in our companies. It has taken years for Blacks and Hispanic's to be able to break into our competing workforce and a lot of this has to do with unequal education standards. Our STEM majors continue to see a marginalization between races and gender because we continue to support a system that doesn't encourage a heterogenous environment. We dehumanize and berate our fellow scientists of color and make it increasingly difficult for them to survive in our hegemonic industries. Even when we see growth from our government in terms of financial support to our minorities, we still see the issues that they deal with from colleagues and outsiders.
The issues I have had at the beginning of this paper were finding how to connect these unrelated topics. My main issue was my own white privilege made it difficult to direct my paper on things other that statistics. Until some support from my professor I didn't even think about bringing the underlying issues of what its like to be black, female, and a STEM major. I only focused on ways of closing the gap in terms of monetary and social aspects, when it is probably more helpful to look at the treatment of minorities and their opinions.
