“Women in STEM” is a phrase I hear thrown around a lot. Pundits, politicians, journalists, activists — they all seem to be able to report endlessly on the supposed shortage of female scientists, each with a complex, comprehensive suite of solutions. Yet curiously, few slow down to address the fundamental question implicit in the discussion: “Do we really need more women in STEM?”

I suspect the answers may seem obvious to those proposing their solutions, so much so that questioning can seem like a sign of ignorance or an affront to their core values. I furthermore suspect that engaging in some aspects of this argument — specifically with respect to the aggregate differences between the sexes — is a politically fraught minefield to go exploring into. Nonetheless, it’s a disservice to not fully explore the facts, to not seek the objective truth before beginning activism on a foregone conclusion.

So do we really need more women in STEM? The obvious first question is: “How many women are there now?” Unexpectedly, quite a lot. In the social and behavioral sciences, women outnumber men substantially, earning 54 percent of sociology degrees and as many as 70 percent of psychology degrees. In the physical and life sciences, proportions are more or less equitable, with 49 percent of chemistry bachelor’s degrees and 58 percent of biology degrees awarded to women. Even in the notoriously abstract and highly technical field of mathematics, characteristics purportedly identifying a male-dominated subject, women earn 44 percent of bachelor’s degrees. One might thus conclude, without being entirely wrong, that the purported underrepresentation of women in science is overblown.

But as it so happens, there’s substantial ground yet uncovered. Women earn only about 20 percent of degrees in physics, engineering and computer science. Furthermore, while the proportion of bachelor’s degrees earned in a subject by each sex might be roughly equivalent, the corresponding demographics in industry and academia are often far from equitable. With job security and economic power increasingly tied to these technical fields, it’s clear that these imbalances still warrant interrogation.

Ultimately, though, isn’t the field people participate in up to them? It’s not our place to tell people what to do or not to do, to tell women who want to do psychology that they should do computer science instead. If women don’t want to do science, isn’t that up to them? I would argue that such choices themselves bear investigating. And if extrinsic factors are motivating these decisions, if otherwise capable and interested women are actively avoiding careers in tech, then we still have something to worry about.

Opponents of the “women in STEM” movement often argue that females are biologically less capable in fields that involve spatial and logical thinking — i.e., many believe that women are bad at math. The data don’t seem to support this hypothesis, however, with males and females performing roughly as well, on average, in mathematics — the former slightly ahead in standardized testing and the latter with a slight edge in curriculum mastery. It also stands to reason that perhaps women are biologically less inclined to enjoy technical fields. Research on infant behaviors seems to indicate that females, prior to any socialization, are less likely to prefer mechanical over human stimulus. Some degree of aggregate difference may be plausible, but it remains anomalous that as the ratio equalizes in the qualitatively similar and arguably more abstract field of mathematics, female representation in computer science has actually declined since the 1970s.

Moreover, whatever the biological differences between males and females may be, the fact remains that there is a substantial number of women who would enjoy careers in engineering and technology if not for social pressures. Even after working several years in Silicon Valley, women leave their tech positions far more often than men. One of the most frequent factors in the decision is the desire to start a family — a personal choice, but one laden with social connotations. First, it’s often not the desire to start a family itself but rather poor workplace accommodations for new mothers — namely limited to no maternity leave — that spur them to leave. Second, the fact that women, but not men, leave careers in tech to start families is demonstrative of the unequal responsibilities in child-rearing that are societally imprinted in our psyches.

In addition to misalignment with personal goals, a commonly cited reason for leaving is a discriminatory workplace environment, implicitly or otherwise. When you’re a member of an overwhelming minority in any particular environment, you are simultaneously a token, a target and a representative. Innocent jokes, when repeated by everyone else in the office, become at worst threatening and at best stale and annoying. You’re subject to intense scrutiny and skepticism; people assume your incompetence, and it’s your responsibility to prove them wrong. A mistake isn’t just a mistake on your part; it carries a larger implication for both yourself and your kind. To paraphrase the webcomic “xkcd,” when you’re the only woman in the office, “you suck at math” becomes “girls suck at math.”

These factors driving women out of engineering jobs likely also manifest as reasons not to enter the field in the first place. Knowledge of poor accommodations and subtly hostile “boys’ club” workspaces mean women won’t choose these fields as long as women aren’t in these fields. And that’s a problem. There is a host of other reasons to seek more equitable representation — econometric analyses reveal that gender diversity correlates directly with novel ideas and innovation, for example. But most fundamentally, someone interested in a field should be able to study it without feeling like an outsider. Volumes have been written on the policy and institutional changes by which this might be achieved, and I don’t presume to have any new suggestions. But in light of the major strides toward equality made in closely related technical fields, I view the future with optimism; after all, if the impenetrably abstract field of mathematics can start to shake its stigmas, I’m sure the rest can follow.

Albert Hsiung writes the Monday column on STEM student culture. Contact him at [email protected].