About diversity & inclusion in STEM
There's something I need to get off my chest.
DEI (diversion, equity & inclusion) is something that's very important to me. I've done my best to make sure I'm present in the rooms where DEI is being discussed at my faculty and associations, to make sure my voice is heard and to try and contribute to things changing for the better, not just for me but for my entire cohort and everyone who comes after us. I've joined lectures and symposia on DEI in STEM. I've been in meetings with faculty staff. I'm (interim) president to a DEI working group for my association. So like, I'm really trying to do my part here.
And there's something I keep noticing.
To the dean of my faculty, DEI is two numbers of a presentation: 70+ nationalities, 20% women, look how great we are!
Now, you see, the fact that that is what DEI is to the people in power at my uni and the fact that that is what ends up on the PR, is the reason why it's important to me to do something about it.
So I join a symposium, you know. Meet some like-minded individuals, experts in the fields, all that. And what do they talk about? Women, and cultural differences.
Okay. So I go to the faculty DEI meeting. And what do they talk about? Women. A little bit about neurodiversity. Mostly women, though.
See, the interesting thing is that women. are. not. a minority.
And the sad thing is that 1) in STEM, they still are, and 2) the inclusion and equity of women in STEM still fucking sucks. I started university as a woman in STEM and while I don't exactly relate to that anymore, I did experience what almost all women around me experienced. Not being listened to by men. Being given secretary tasks rather than engineering tasks in group projects. Getting the feedback to "speak up more" in one project and "too bossy" in the next. These are real issues, and that's not even considering the social safety aspects many women face.
So DEI teams are trying to solve the problem of how to make sure women actually make it to STEM programmes (diversity), and how to make them feel welcome (inclusion) and get the same chances as men (equity). Which is important! It really is! Whenever I get the chance I do advocate for girls and women in STEM.
But meanwhile, trans students get addressed by the wrong gender in emails (ironically I've seen this happen in an email about a PR video where "more diversity" needed to be shown, inviting "successful female students" to join since only guys where currently participating, with at least 2 of the addressed people not, in fact, being girls), the nearest genderneutral bathroom is in a different building half a kilometer away, neurodivergent students don't get accommodations that are not "extra time on exams", lecture recordings don't have subtitles if recordings are available at all, the Bachelor graduation project expects 40 hrs a week attendance with no excuses (resulting in people coming in despite being really sick, amongst other issues). I could probably go on for a little while longer.
And it's not just my faculty or my university. I'm looking for internships in the engineering sector. I'm applying to several international or multinational organisations, and each application I've sent in so far has stated something like "we care about diversity", sometimes with a link to a diversity webpage. Do you wanna know what those fucking diversity webpages talk about. Do you wanna guess, maybe? About women in STEM, perhaps? About anything else, then? Sometimes they mention accommodations or opportunities specifically for people with disabilities, which is neat, actually. But it's mostly "we strive to achieve X% of female employees within X amount of years!" and "we organised an outreach day specifically for girls!" which is cool, like, it really really is.
But I really don't think you get to say you care about diversity if one of the questions on the application for candidate interns is "what is your gender" with two options (male/female) and no option to skip the question, specify something else, or select "would rather not say".
(As a sidenote, funnily enough, the smaller companies tend to not ask this question.)
In my 3+ years at university (and my 18-something years in education in general), I've met exactly 1 person who seems to get the issue and actually happens to be better at wording it than I am. They wrote an opinion piece for the journalism platform of the university explaining the entire issue with diversity at our university so well. And it was the first time that I felt like my complicated feelings about DEI were valid. I've struggled with this and every time I try to explain it, I get emotional and I just can't word what I want to say, and they just did it, said exactly what I've been thinking.
Cos you see, I can ask my graduation project supervisor if he can use they/them pronouns in the recommendation letter he's writing for my internship applications. That's not actually that hard. But I still gotta go to the application and click that stupid gender button. And sometimes I feel like I can't talk about how much I struggle with that. Because I'm afraid people will just tell me "welcome to the real world". Because it's easy to be a white middleclass kid in a European university and try to get DEI policies to change. But what's the point, if that's not how it works in the actual adult world? Shouldn't I just get used to the fact that in my professional life, I'm gonna get misgendered and accommodations won't be there? Is there really a point in trying to change the university DEI policy?
I've actually met the person who wrote that opinion piece in person and they said they're in the DEI team because they want to be visible to younger students. And I really hope they know what their visibility means.
And sometimes I want to be like them. Be visible. Be in the meetings, speak up in the symposia, be heard, change things for the better.
But sometimes I'm just tired of it all, tired of how long changes take, tired of people who think DEI lowers the quality of an organisation (actually one of the symposia's presentations was about the business advantages of diversity and people feeling included). Sometimes I think that maybe I should just try to be normal, adapt to the system that's there rather than trying to change something I've got barely any influence over.
And since I can't figure out how to put all of the above in a 400-word witty column, I'll just write a rambly post on my blog about my conflicted feelings about working on DEI. And continue to go to the meetings and the symposia because what else is there to do.
(Just to clarify: I do NOT think that we should talk less about the struggles women in STEM face. It's about fucking time we solve those issues so we can focus on other struggles, too.)
