About Women and Minorities in STEM
A dramatic shift in US demographics is making women and minorities, collectively, the new majority of future workers by a wide margin. This new majority is expected to grow significantly over the next several decades.
Women will remain about 50%
of the population, but according to data reported recently by the National Science Foundation and others, the percentage comprising people
of color, particularly Hispanic, is expected to continue to grow quite rapidly.Currently, women, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans are significantly under represented in engineering, physics, and
information technology fields; African Americans and Latinos are significantly under-represented in the life sciences, as well.
The persistent under-representation of women and minorities has become a matter of great concern to the nation's business and academic
communities for two important reasons:
- the scientific and engineering workforce, which is predominantly white and male, will soon retire
- the replacement labor pool is significantly different from that which produced the current workforce
Solving the under-representation problem is now seen as a national imperative for reasons of global competitiveness and national security.
It calls for a concerted effort by all concerned.