Gender inequality has always been an issue faced by women all over the world. It is the most unfair and hurtful reality of the life that a mother never wants her daughter to face. The inequality can be in various forms such as education, income, customer preferences, science, and whatnot.
Women are considered to be less capable as compared to men. People think that they are meant to look after a family, cook food and take care of her children while they stay back at home. However, women are more capable of doing and managing various tasks as compared to men irrespective of the field. Fortunately, the point of view of people has evolved in recent times and now we see women and men going shoulder to shoulder. Women are not considered to be meant to be at home now. However, gender inequality still prevails in many fields such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
For years there has been confusion that men publish more than women in the field of STEM. This confusion was due to the thought that women have the responsibility of the family and her children. However, after the research done by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a professor of Physics at Northeastern University, the result was that the women publish nothing less than the men in their field but that they leave the profession earlier as compared to men and therefore have less time to publish. However, on doing an average of the careers the result showed that men spend 11 years in publishing whereas women spend 9.3 years publishing.
Unfortunately, this gap was seen persisting when compared with other disciplines or countries over the last 60 years. This is not the only form of inequality in the field of STEM, but also the recruitment is the problem, where male employees tend to hire male employees only decreasing the chances of employment for the women. Salary is another sphere in which women face inequality, predominant in many countries such as the U.S. where there is a difference of 24% in the salary between the genders. In countries like Mexico women are 35% less likely to be promoted.
This is a high time where the inequality between the genders needs to be eradicated from the root. Steps are needed to be taken that are effective and efficient. There are many inexpensive as well as effective steps like addressing conscious and unconscious biases in the institutions, providing a friendly environment for the women employees in their work place, educating other staff members and asking them to educate others, etc. This is a long journey where even smaller steps can show drastic changes.
Mrinal Garg
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