LAKELAND, Fla. — Women are greatly underrepresented in the STEM field.
“Graduation Day! Industrial engineer. USF,” said Shenita Malloy, as she looked at her graduation picture on her phone, reflecting on that day. “I was so proud. I was so happy. Young engineer. Fresh eyes. I couldn’t wait. I didn’t know what the world had ahead for me, but I was excited to get started.”
Malloy didn't know that soon after graduation, she would be working on circuit boards and GPS systems for NASA spacecraft.
“You know that you’re building something that’s going to go into space. So, you go to sleep with that every night,” said Malloy.
Malloy is not the only engineer in her family; her older sister is too and inspired her. Though Malloy never doubted her abilities to thrive as an engineer, as a woman, she was a minority in the STEM field.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1970, women made up 38% of the workforce in the United States, but only 8% of STEM workers.
Today, women make up 48% of the workforce but account for just 27% of STEM workers, which is an increase from decades ago but it's still a very male-dominated field.
“Young girls get involved in math and science and then, at some point in middle school, they lose interest in STEM,” Trudy Daniels with the Tampa chapter of an organization called Women In Defense.
Women In Defense provide STEM scholarships for girls in the Tampa Bay area.
“We’ve given out scholarships to the John Glenn Academy and the Pinellas County School System, to Hillsborough County – their Girls In Stem Summer Camp program,” said Daniels.
Since 2017, the organization has awarded about 65 scholarships to local girls.
“I’ve never thought of myself as the science type, but it turns out I am the science type. As far as racial and gender equity goes, we need every idea, every diverse perspective in order to solve problems,” said Dr. Jayshree Seth in the award-winning docuseries called “Not The Science Type.”
In the docuseries, she spoke about the obstacles she had to overcome as an Indian woman in STEM and the importance of making STEM accessible to everyone.
“I’ll say that the experience of having your story be told is quite surreal, but it also reinforced for me how challenges can be re-framed and how they can also give deep motivation to grow despite the detractors,” said Dr. Seth.
As for Malloy, she no longer works in STEM; she now works in finance. Though it may seem like those two careers could not be any more different from each other, she said her engineering background made her more marketable for her new career.
“I said, ‘well, I don’t have a lot of experience in this specific field, but I think I can pick it up,’ and he [her former boss] was like, ‘oh you can do this in your sleep.. I know you can.. Because you’re an engineer,” said Malloy.
