In current events with my English class, we are currently giving short presentations on the sources we found relating to our topics. The presentation is then followed by peer feedback on what they think of the topic and how our classmate should follow up with it.
One of my peers, Riley, introduced her topic of gender inequality to the class. She explained that she initially researched about women entering Santa Clara University for her archival research and decided to branch out her research on gender inequality in college.
She discussed the context of her sources in that the ones from the 19th century were primarily written by men and that the more current articles are predominantly written by women.
However, the most compelling thing that I found about Riley’s topic was the statistics of women majoring in the arts and sciences is significantly less than that of males.
It’s actually not that surprising thinking about it again. This statistic proves true at my own university. It’s become a fact that not that many women major in engineering, specifically. One could argue that women may not be interested in these subjects which accounts for the lack of women participation. But why would women not be interested? Why is gender associated with this argument?
Pursuing engineering or any science career for women is not encouraged by society.
As a woman myself, I feel societal pressures to worry about getting a boyfriend and being pretty. I believe that this is the real reason why there aren’t many women engineering majors. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but I believe it’s important to highlight the societal pressures on women to act and look a certain way.
I’m excited to see where Riley will take this research because gender inequality is something that I’m extremely passionate about since I am so affected by it.
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