Gender inequality in science, technology, engineering and math has been a long documented issue, but a new study coming out of the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality offers encouraging evidence of avenues to bridge this divide.

Dafna Gelbgiser, grad, and Kyle Albert, grad, found that green fields in higher education tend to bridge the gender divide in both STEM and non-STEM fields. Gelbgiser defined green fields as those that contribute to green jobs, which provide goods or have production processes that benefit the environment. Examples of such fields include environmental science and sustainability studies.

According to Gelbgiser, green fields are unique because they do not have clear roots in other disciplines. So, students do not have prior gender dispositions about the field.

“Men and women looking at fields like mechanical engineering would know that there would be very few women in those classes. If they’re thinking about psychology, they know they’re going to meet quite a lot of women,” Gelbgiser said. “But if they’re thinking about new fields like environmental engineering for example, these fields don’t necessarily have enough history for them to establish gender norms. We argue that new fields open up a new space.”

Read the source article at The Cornell Daily Sun