The following article is an opinion piece written by Anca Ciobanu. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Technology Networks.

在过去的几年中，针对Covid-19的努力使妇女在前线上。我们目睹的许多著名科学突破来自女性：卡塔琳·卡里科（KatalinKarikó）的研究formed the basis of the COVID-19 vaccine,Ramida Juengpaisal的数字跟踪器stopped the spread of misinformation and 14 year-old Anika Chebrolu’s科学项目identified a lead molecule that can selectively bind to and inhibit the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.

Women make great contributions to STEM every day, and most organizations acknowledge this. In fact,85％of organizations believe that a diverse and inclusive organization is crucial to encouraging different perspectives and ideas, and powering innovation. Yet, women remain underrepresented, particularly in top executive roles, and although organizations are setting ambitious diversity strategies, they often fall short.

那么，我们如何解决性别差距？首先，我们必须努力赋予现有女性雇员的能力，并促进纳入STEM工作场所的感觉。几乎一半（49％）整体生命科学的劳动力是女性。但是，在职业阶梯的每个步骤中，有很大比例的妇女离开了行业。与其他行业相比，这种脱节是由严格的工作时间，较小的工资上升和在职业休息中遇到的困难而加剧了连接。需要有更多的计划来使人们摆脱育产假，促进工作时间的渐进式重新入职以及培训以帮助重建对当今快速发展的环境的信心。

Many organizations相信他们正在促进多样性，但女性雇员不同意。Massbio技术委员会found that 40 percent of companies consider themselves fully inclusive, but only 9 percent of women working in life sciences consider their companies to be diverse.

组织必须重新考虑其多样性策略。当我们返回办公室，实验室或混合工作环境时，组织应审查其政策并考虑如何实现妇女重返工作岗位。为了防止妇女局限于中级角色并促进她们晋升为更多高级职位，组织应提供产妇和亲生假期。明确的促销结构也是确保妇女进步的关键。

Moreover, there’s a great deal of work to be done in terms of attracting new talent to STEM. From an early age, girls are subjected to bias in the education system: an埃森哲研究发现有57％的教师承认已经对STEM产生了潜意识的性别偏见。到学生到大学时，明确的证据证明了这种偏见的影响：only around21％的工程专业和19％的计算机和信息科学专业是女人。

随着这些妇女进入STEM劳动力的发展，性别差距变得越来越明显。女人只组成10 percent of boards, and 20 percent of leadership teams.This gap perpetuates a vicious cycle, with46％的女性说，如果他们拥有全男性董事会，全男性管理，或者是因为他们只受到男子的采访，他们将拒绝雇主。

To put an end to this cycle, we must work to change attitudes to women in STEM at every level. Educators should be actively working with pharma companies, tech companies and governments, to inspire young girls and showcase the STEM career possibilities available to them. Once on the career ladder, to heLP晋升为更高级的角色，在消除性别偏见以及认可其技能和贡献的环境中，需要更好地支持妇女。组织应通过提供有关绩效，庆祝成功并提供指导的明确反馈来促进更多妇女担任领导职务。

培训计划至关重要，为教练和网络提供了一个地方。通过跨行业的合作培训，组织可以将妇女介绍到STEM中的新途径，他们可能没有考虑到这些途径。例如，Pistoia Alliance最近推出了STEM计划中的妇女, which will unite women from different areas of STEM, putting women in the majority and amplifying women’s voices.

通过此类举措，以及与政府，监管机构，慈善机构和学术界的合作，我们可以开始解决STEM中存在的全系统性别失衡，为新一代的STEM女性领导者铺平了道路。