mini rant: bad feminism, STEM, and the stigma against female-dominated careers

So, background for this rant: there's this phenomenon where the more women join a profession, the less "social value" it's seen to have (and the less money those working in it are paid!). Like teaching, or nursing, psychiatry, social work, the arts-- these careers used to be entirely male-dominated, and seen as respectable, difficult, and important professions. Now that these careers skew female, they're seen as easy, or replaceable. Meanwhile, male-dominated careers, like engineering, business, or computer science, are glorified, seen as essential and innovative.

I've always loved the arts, and I've always wanted to work with kids. Privately, sometimes I feel like a bad feminist for it. I wonder if my relative disinterest in STEM-- which has been consistent since childhood-- is really inherent, or if it's symptomatic of being raised in a patriarchal world. Growing up, I always felt this need to prove myself as just as smart, just as capable, and just as valuable to society as my male peers, and the messaging was consistent: the smartest, most capable, most valuable members of society went into (male-dominated) STEM careers. And so I sometimes felt like it would be a disservice to myself and my intelligence to pursue a humanities-based career, that I had some sort of obligation to pursue STEM. I felt like I was "letting my gender down", silly as it sounds, with my disinterest, and that I was falling into stereotypes women had tried so hard to leave behind by wanting to pick an "easy" career.

But it was all a lie. First of all, those "easy" careers aren't easy. Teaching, nursing, psychiatry, the arts, on and on and on-- it's all difficult work, it's all essential to society. And people in STEM aren't any smarter, more capable, or more valuable than those in non-STEM careers. I can't help but feel like we would still see it that way if humanities fields were still male-dominated. And I think it's telling that "feminine" careers are the ones we're trying hardest to automate with AI, or relegate to robots, or apps. If teaching was still male-dominated, would we defund the Department of Education? If the arts were male-dominated, would they still be seen as respectable, rather than not a "real job"? And, if STEM was full of women, would it be seen as frivolous, or "easy", or busywork? (I mean, we're already seeing this with some individual STEM fields, like psychology, biology, and nursing.)

All of this is to say, I think that we should stop holding STEM up as the most important work somebody can do. Because then, it's kind of like saying, "the jobs men dominate are the most important jobs... because men dominate them." I'm not trying to disparage STEM-based careers or the women in them. It's important and valuable work. I guess I'm just trying to say that it's not the only type of important and valuable work, and it's not a mark against a girl's (or anyone's) intelligence, ambition, or drive to be interested in a female-dominated career path. Because those career paths are just as valuable as the more "masculine" ones.

Thanks for reading :)