More women in STEM? The humanities should answer for that. An engineering professor indicts her humanities colleagues for denigrating STEM fields. From the editorial:

I’ve observed that women tend to choose disciplines other than STEM…. An important but often neglected factor is the attitudes of undergraduate professors. Not STEM professors, but professors in the humanities and social sciences.

Professors have profound influence over students’ career choices. I’m sometimes flabbergasted at the level of bias and antagonism toward STEM from professors outside scientific fields. I’ve heard it all: STEM is only for those who enjoy “rote” work. Engineering is not creative. There’s only one right answer. You’ll live your life in a cubicle. It’s dehumanizing. You’ll never talk to anyone. And, of course, it’s sexist. All this from professors whose only substantive experience with STEM is a forced march through a single statistics course in college, if that.

My colleagues in the humanities unthinkingly malign STEM in front of me. Their bias has become so deeply ingrained that they don’t think twice. My students tell me it’s worse when I’m not around. With joking asides during class or more-pointed conversations about careers, the STEM disciplines are caricatured as a gulag for creative types. Even a few untoward remarks like this to students can have profound effects. It’s too bad, because science, technology, engineering and math can be among the most creative and satisfying disciplines….

A student named Bob might get a C in Physics 101 but a D in English composition. His English professor probably won’t try to recruit him into the field. Bob’s choice to become an engineer makes sense because he’s less likely to be good at the social sciences or humanities.

Women who are average in physics classes, on the other hand, are often better at other subjects. When Sara has a C in physics 101, she’s more likely to have a B or even an A in English composition. Her English professor is more likely to recruit her. And, crucially, the “STEM is only for uncreative nerds” characterization can play well here. It can provide a mental boost for Sara to hear a powerful figure like her professor denigrate the subject she’s struggling with.

For a related post, see here.