Missouri State held multiple events throughout the month of March in honor of Women's History Month, including an event featuring women in STEM.
Professor Theresa Odun-Ayo, has taught electrical engineering students at MSU for the past seven years and taught at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.
Odun-Ayo said she became interested in electrical engineering because of “the flare of it.”
“This is what I’ve been gifted to do,” Odun-Ayo said. “I love maths. It was like I never had to study for math, it was so easy.”
She said she could never understand why other people found math difficult.
Her original interest was in medicine, but eventually she discovered it was not what she was passionate about.
“I went into electrical engineering because that’s where my grades were stronger,” Odun-Ayo said.
She said she found herself naturally looking to go into the field of engineering. Her brothers and cousins were already in mechanical engineering, so she chose electrical to be different.
On March 19, Multicultural Programs held a panel called STEMinists: Womxn in STEM. It was a discussion over women involved in science, technology, engineering and math, and other male-dominated fields.
Speaking with Odun-Ayo was electrical engineering professor Tayo Obafemi-Ajayi and junior biomedical student Basant Hens.
Obafemi-Ajayi and Odun-Ayo are from Nigeria, while Hens is from Egypt.
Odun-Ayo said one of the first hardships she ran into as a woman in her field is the stereotypes.
“You have to constantly prove that you —at least as a faculty when you walk into a class —that you know what you’re talking about,” Odun-Ayo said.
She tells her students she does not hold all of the knowledge in the world and she wants to learn from them as well. However, she wants them to know she is standing in front of them for a reason.
“You never can do away with the fact that there will always be stereotypes,” Odun-Ayo said. “For us, as women, the first thing we need to do is look at how we can break down those walls.”
Odun-Ayo said women should not let the stereotypes stop them from going into the field of engineering.
“As an engineer, I am of no less value as a woman than a man,” Odun-Ayo said.
In an article from the American Psychological Association, Isis Settles described the STEM environment for women as challenging.
“Compared to men, women are stereotyped as less intelligent and less competent in mathematics and science,” Settles wrote in the article.
Settles said the cause of this environment is the “underrepresentation” of women in the field.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, in 2014 women earned 19 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees and 18 of computer science bachelor’s degrees.
Percentages are closer in the area of biological and agricultural sciences, where women earned 58 percent of bachelor’s degrees that year.
“Negative gender-based experiences, such as sexual harassment, are more likely to occur in male-dominated settings like the sciences,” Settles wrote.
Settles also mentioned women can “experience social isolation” because men view them as outsiders.
Women are slowly entering the sciences and following their passions, despite stereotypes.
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