Take This STEM Job and Shove It

There is a lot of encouragement these days for women to seek out careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Most of this “encouragement” comes in the form of whining on Jezebel, of course, but this is still an important subject to think about…I mean, careers in the STEM field are important, obviously, but what makes them so damn special compared to careers in the arts and humanities? If women are that important to STEM, they’re obviously important to the other fields of study as well – and as a woman with an AA degree herself, I’m going to defend my field of study.

Career fields in the United States are, as far as diplomas and degrees go, divided into two categories: Arts and Sciences. The way I see it, the Science field teaches you skills that are needed to build a productive life, and the Art field teaches you skills that make said life worth living. There is usually overlap, especially in community colleges, and many people are good at both areas of study…but I’m not, so I don’t want the First Church of Gloria Steinem telling me what to do with my education choices.

Why should all able-bodied and able-minded women be recruited to STEM? We need our women here in the arts and humanities. Fields such as Psychology, Sociology, and History fall into this category, as well as Fine Arts (the few lucky ones in this field make more money than your average 9-to-5 engineer ever will, so there goes bridging the wage gap). If we’re going to make feminism an issue here, let’s take a look at the problems that already exist in the arts and humanities that will only be made worse by seducing women away from them:

• There aren’t many well-known women in these fields that don’t suck. I’ve already mentioned that women who go for bullshit degrees often don’t amount to more than being internet famous Feminazi bloggers or trophy wives to men with actual income-producing jobs. If women are going to be encouraged to blog or write, there needs to be more variety than the usual first-world women’s problems sites or mommy blogs that seem to be the female comfort zones these days. Does anybody remember when fratire was popular? Maddox, Tucker Max, AngryJerk…they actually write about stuff that’s interesting, offensive, and funny. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I am the only woman on the internet who comes anywhere close to touching the subjects that they do (that I know of, but I’ve looked), and even then I spend a good time bitching about my exes, angsting about how nobody loves me, and talking about my children. That’s not to say that I think women should appropriate fratire for their own use – even men need their own space to vent – but I think more chicks on the internet can stand to blog more like me.
• If more women go into STEM careers, more men will go in the other direction. Hey, fair is fair…as an egalitarian, I can’t really complain. But considering how bad the guys I’ve known do when it comes to domestic basics, I don’t have high hopes for what they have to offer in terms of careers that typically appeal to women. For example, lots of women become nurses of some sort, but many patients are typically more comfortable around female nurses than male nurses, so that can be somewhat disheartening…and then you have writer John Green, who I’m almost certain has his novels ghostwritten by his reclusive wife, because he specializes in a sophomoric writing style and cliché subject matter that is generally exclusive to female authors. So while women may have a lot to offer the world of STEM, men don’t seem to have much to contribute to the field that is being left open as the cows migrate to greener pastures.
• Minimum wage jobs aren’t getting any better. It’s hard enough to be a US citizen getting a job that most baby boomers equate with high school dropouts (though that’s entirely the fault of US citizens, but that’s another rant), but even immigrant-status jobs are hard for women to get because of all the physical labor involved…even if I can lift fifty pounds or whatever the requirement is these days, if I don’t look like I can do it at first glance, they won’t hire me. It’s more to do with liability and less to do with sexism, but everyone has to start somewhere, and in today’s US economy, the starting point is usually where it stops. Long story short: we should focus on making lower level jobs better and more accessible before we start nitpicking over how many female doctors are in a room.
• Quilting is badass. What exactly is so great about STEM jobs, anyway? Sure, at best they save lives and advance cultures, but as I said before, without things like art, philosophy, and trophy housewives with frill degrees, what’s the point of living? Take this quilt block, for example:
  
  I made this, not science. Granted, there is definitely mathematics involved (measurements, geometry, etc.), but those are more applications of everyday life rather than something for Rosie the Riveter clones to cream their coveralls over. It is assumed that most educated people can do basic mathematic functions such as add small numbers together, read a ruler, and push two right triangles together to make a square. I’m proud of the things I make and design, and since I am good at those things, I wish to base my career choices around it. Which brings me to my next point…
• Not everyone was meant to be a scientist. One of the last classes I took in community college was Chemistry 100. I remember doing one experiment where I had to heat a strip of magnesium over a Bunsen burner and then observe its properties. So I did, taking care not to look at it directly (due to ultraviolet rays and whatnot), and nothing happened…but then, with a blinding flash, it disintegrated into nothingness on the counter. I don’t think that was supposed to happen. As for math and technology and other such fields, I do okay with Algebra (which is essentially just basic math with unknown variables), but everything else is over my head. I know jack shit about programming (which is why I don’t like Linux) and what little I know about any script of any technological language I have to find on the internet – I think the extent of my scripting knowledge is limited to some basic HTML. In other words, I’m not good at STEM fields and I would not be an asset to any career that required high levels of STEM-field knowledge.

Women who excel in the sciences should be encouraged to acquire STEM jobs, if that is what drives their passion and they have the motivation for such. I don’t, lots of people don’t, and for all that encouragement to get “girls to like math,” women who push for other women to get into STEM jobs obviously can’t read the numbers that show that women generally don’t pursue those areas of study. It could be a psychological sexual dimorphic quality of some sort, or maybe even some kind of residual gender role grooming, but more than anything, I think it’s just that there are women like me out there who won’t bother being part of a circle-jerk if they’re not getting their due reach-around.