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We need female role models to be less brilliant

Sarah Chapman

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Sarah Chapman

Sarah Chapman, Application Engineering Leader at 3M, talks to Computing about the 'genius myth' in STEM, and explains why role models in STEM could sometimes do with being a little less brilliant

STEM tends to suffer from what Sarah Chapman, Application Engineering Leader at 3M, calls the genius myth. This is the mistaken belief that to succeed in the field you need to be unusually gifted.

"When I was growing up, I shared all of the preconceptions about what a scientist looked like and what an engineer looked like, and they didn't look like me. I thought that sort of thing was just for really clever people, not for me."

Stereotypes like the "science genius" and the "computing nerd" are powerful, and they shape the choices we make without us realising. Chapman says that it wasn't that she knew she definitely didn't want that sort of career, it just never occurred to her to think about it. However, the genius myth made another appearance and this time the result was more positive.

"I actually had my heart set on being a ballet dancer but my feet decided that wasn't going to happen. My dad said something about science being a difficult subject. And at the time, I felt like had something to prove."

Chapman changed her arts and humanities-focused A-levels mid-term and swapped to the sciences. Whilst switching A-levels a few months in, isn't for the faint-hearted, she didn't regret it and was inspired by her chemistry teacher to take a chemistry degree.

Chapman completed her BSc but when considering continuing a master's, the stereotypes kicked in again and Chapman says she wasn't sure if she wanted to spend her life "being at a bench with potions and a lab coat."

"I was told I wouldn't make it in chemistry if I didn't have a master's or a PhD, which on reflection is clearly not true. But I've realised since that in almost every job I've ever gone for I didn't really know that job existed until I was moving into it."

This is the first point that Chapman is trying to communicate via her advocacy for women and girls in STEM, that the skills are highly flexible.

"I feel really strongly that with STEM skills, you can follow a passion, whether that's music or fashion or whatever, and you'll find a STEM job there. STEM skills can be applied to all sorts of diverse passions, and I guess that's what I did."

Having been interested in computational techniques and used cheminformatics at university, Chapman tried working in finance on accounting software but decided that she didn't fancy coding as a career and wanted an employer which could offer more variety. She alighted on 3M, the global manufacturer of more than 55,000 products. 18 years later, having experienced career growth via the 3M's personal safety division, customer innovation and compliance branches, Chapman now works as an Application Engineering Leader in the Tapes and Adhesives division.

"You'd be amazed at how often tape is used in cars, buses, trains and planes," she says. (She's not wrong.) "If you're going to use tape to join two materials together or adhesive, then you need to make sure that bond is going to do the job. So I have a lab and they essentially pull substrates apart to test how strong bonds are. We do things like fatigue testing, environmental testing.

"The cutting edge of that is automated assembly which my team are looking at the moment. How can we do that with robots and control the process? Computing affects everything."

Rich geniuses

For the last five years, 3M has published its State of Science Index, an annual survey into global attitudes towards science. Data for 2022 is now available and some of it is troubling.

"Seven out of 10 people in that survey reported that they perceived that there was a lack of access to STEM education in the UK," Chapman says. "In a country where education is available to everybody, I find that quite shocking."

The survey doesn't dig into individual experiences of why people perceive a lack of access to STEM education, but Chapman has some ideas based on her work in schools as a STEM Ambassador and as part of the 3M education programme.

"There is a real variance in STEM education depending on the school," she observes. "There are some schools doing really good things like STEM clubs, and they've got great science lessons. But, just as with computer science, it varies. There are schools that are not able to offer separate sciences and they don't get the interest and then don't get the numbers to run certain subjects.

"After GCSE level, there's also a perception that STEM carries a high economic bar. Nearly half of people in the UK survey said that being unable to afford a quality STEM education was a barrier.

There's a perception that STEM careers are only for rich geniuses."

The findings of 3Ms research back up the oft heard line from tech companies and other tech and wider STEM employers that the under representation of women in their ranks is a pipeline issue. Some employers wield the homogenous talent pipeline as a "get out of jail free" card and simply say that schools need to encourage more girls into science. Whilst agreeing that we certainly do need to encourage more girls into science, Chapman's stance is more proactive.

"I think as employers we have a really good opportunity to tackle this. Instead of complaining that we can't get diverse slates, what we can do is make sure that we're part of the solution. I think it's partly the outreach to schools to try and address some of the stereotypes but it's also about support and inclusion in the workplace. The survey also found that over 60% of people believe that women were leaving science because of a lack of support."

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We need female role models to be less brilliant

Sarah Chapman, Application Engineering Leader at 3M, talks to Computing about the 'genius myth' in STEM, and explains why role models in STEM could sometimes do with being a little less brilliant

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Computing has argued time and time again that inclusion in tech workplaces is vital if diverse talent is to be nurtured and retained. If companies simply choose to pay lip service to inclusion and flexibility, employees will seek more supportive employers, and in the current fiercely competitive marketplace for STEM and digital skills, won't take long to find one.

"If you get somebody through all those educational barriers, they've got a computer science degree and then they see a workplace that is completely different from them and that doesn't include them, then they are going to be put off, they're going to go into something else. As people progress through their careers, they might have families or caring responsibilities and if you aren't flexible there are losses there too."

Chapman points out that whilst a lot of employees talk the talk about flexibility, true flexibility involves managing workload - not just allowing employees try to cram the same work into fewer hours. Her long career at 3M is testament to the fact that it is a company which offers true flexibility and support.

Stars and Streetlights

Another point of consensus within the STEM realm is that more diverse role models are required to sell the opportunities to the next generation. This can have some unintended consequences for groups who are underrepresented in STEM occupations. One of these is that women, in particular, end up taking on a lot of work and pressure acting as ambassadors and representing their employer in various forums and in educational settings - those employers being keen to broadcast their ESG credentials to as wide an audience as possible. Some employers are getting better at recognising the importance of these contributions, and Chapman is all too happy to contribute to this particular cause. Nonetheless, she acknowledges that being held up as a role model brings pressure.

"I do think there's a pressure to be perfect, and I think that this pressure reinforces the cycle of holding up brilliant role models. We need brilliant role models of course. We need people who have climbed to the top of the mountain. But we also need to show people at the bottom of the mountain the people who are figuring out how to how to get up to the next crevice.

"I think we need to be very careful that we're not just holding up those trailblazers. We need to tell stories about the progression and the potential at every single level."

In Chapman's TEDx talk, she calls them the stars and the streetlights

"You need the stars because they give you something to look up to. These are the people who are breaking barriers and smashing glass ceilings and that's really important. But we also need streetlights. These are the managers, the mentors and the people who are sharing the challenges as well as the successes via the media and particularly social media.

"When I post on social media, I try not to just share the brilliant bits because whilst there are things I'm really proud of I also have daily struggles and I think it's really important to try and show that, right now, it's not that easy for women in STEM, and lots of other industries. There are still barriers and challenges."

In common with many women working to try to increase the representation of women in STEM industries, Chapman wants to inspire more men to advocate for their female colleagues.

"At 3M we have a ‘men as advocates' group and they're equally inspirational. We're rolling out allyship training to the whole organisation, and that's for that's for all of the underrepresented groups. It's teaching us all how to be better allies, to all of those groups. And I think that's really important because then it becomes our problem rather than an issue for women to solve."