I've been trying to work on a post about some further research on women in STEM fields, and I keep getting bogged down in definitions. I am currently headed down the rabbit hole of what a "STEM job" actually is.
I found out some interesting things. According to this report, my job doesn't count as a STEM job, despite the fact that I work with nothing but math and science (alright, and some psych). It's not the psych part that excludes me however, it's actually that I work in healthcare. Healthcare, apparently is excluded completely.
So if I were performing my same job, with the same qualifications, in a different field, I'd have a STEM job. Since I report in to a hospital however, I don't have one.
Your doctor does not have a STEM job. Neither does your pharmacist, dentist, nurse, or anyone who teaches anything on any level. Apparently if you run stats for the Red Sox, you're in a STEM job, but do the same thing for sick people, and it doesn't count.
Fascinating.
So physician would not be a STEM job?
ReplyDeleteNot as far as I can tell. Page 9 has the list of the 50 jobs that qualify. Medical scientist counts, but it seems no other healthcare jobs do.
DeleteChange it to STEMM: the first M for Math, the second M for medicine.
ReplyDeletePerhaps MDs were excluded as punishment for all the pre-Meds who ruined the Organic Chemistry curve. :)
Ha!
DeleteI'm actually a little baffled that their excluded. Medicine is one of the fields where diversity for the sake of diversity has actual proven statistical value...so you think it would be the subject of more scrutiny of this sort. Patients tend to have better outcomes when they feel their doctor is able to relate to them or is like them (much of why obstetrics was so easily dominated by women when they started going to medical school).