RE: Why STEM Companies Need to Work Harder than Ever to Close the Gender Gap

Michalle Adkins — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 13:56:54 GMT

Thanks for a great blog!

RE: Why STEM Companies Need to Work Harder than Ever to Close the Gender Gap

Meha Jha — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 21:15:02 GMT

One of my favorite Ted Talks provides some unique insight on why there is a gap of women between middle to senior leadership, but I think this holds true to the lack of female leaders in STEM fields. In Susan Colantuono's Talk "The Career Advice You Probably Didn't Get - she cites that there are so few women leaders in corporations because the tendency is for women to be advised by mentors to be likeable, network, work well on teams etc. However, this tendency is what limits females from reaching senior levels. She cites a case where a male executive had two protégés: a man and a woman. And he said, "I helped the woman build confidence, I helped the man learn the business, and I didn't realize that I was treating them any differently." Susan talks about how this difference in the kind of mentorship men and women receive are what causes this gap. Women are often mentored on soft skills development, but not on strategic acumen. Having mentorship programs is great and I have benefited from them, but I think these programs need to be re-designed to give confidence not through encouragement, but with arming women with more strategic knowledge is what can impact the trajectory for more Women in STEM.