March 8 is globally recognized as International Women’s Day, a holiday that commemorates the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements made by women. This year’s official theme for the holiday is #BreakTheBias.
The women of Long Beach City College are breaking the bias in STEM, which includes fields typically known to be male-dominated like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
“I feel like regardless of how small my stature is this is something I want to do and so I don’t care about the bias. Yeah, it’s a man’s field still but that is changing,” Jules Fugett said, a student worker in metal fabrication.
According to the United States Census Bureau, only 27% of STEM workers were women in 2019, despite making up nearly half the workforce in the United States.
“Luckily here at LBCC I don’t really feel like there’s much of a bias, I think most of the student workers here are women, from what I’ve seen,” Fugett said.
Julianna Maleki is a second year student here at LBCC and is working on pursuing a career in computer science. As of 2019, only twenty one percent of computer science graduates were women according to a study done by Berkeley University called Changing the Curve: Women in Computing.
“I am new to computer science so I have not faced any bias yet personally, but I will say in my class of thirty plus kids there is only me and one other girl,” Maleki said.
“Thankfully having a female teacher makes me feel a lot more confident in the class because if it was just me and the other female student I would feel a lot more out of place. Professor Davis is a really good teacher and she makes me feel like I am capable of doing well,” added Maleki.
Sofia Amores, who originally came to LBCC to obtain her associate’s degree in sociology, saw a poster advertising trades at the college and decided to take up welding.
“I got my associates for sociology first and while I was doing that I saw a sign at the LAC campus saying trades were back, I thought wow that sounds really cool because I saw pictures of the arc being struck and it was bright and interesting and i thought what is that? So I signed up for an intro to welding class and I ended up really liking it ,” explained Amores.
“The only way I am breaking any bias is just by choosing to be myself. It’s cool to be able to express your femininity and still do man’s work,” Amores, a welding and metal fabrication student said.
Darlene Garcia is also a welder at the college and had decided to pursue welding because she did not like how male dominated welding is and wanted to prove women have just as much of a place in welding as men do.
“Just me being short is saying so much because not a lot of people expect women of my size to do this. I feel like I’m setting an example and creating more space for women in the field so that other women will feel more inspired to do this,” Garcia said.