The absence of ‘cool’ women in STEM media

Which character from The Big Bang Theory do you want to be? Who wants to be cybersecurity engineer Elliot from Mr Robot? Do you want to be like Dr Brennan from Bones? 

Probably not, I'm guessing. I loved watching The Big Bang Theory over many years. At the time I laughed along. Now I wonder why it was possible to sustain a sitcom for over a decade on the back of making fun of scientists. Best of all, the aerospace engineer Howard was so ridiculous even the socially awkward scientists made fun of him. 

I was struck by this recently when watching the British legal drama The Split. The main characters are high-flying lawyers working on the pre-nups and divorces of the rich and famous in London. A few episodes in, I was genuinely questioning my life choices and why I hadn't signed up for a law degree. 

What a fabulous life! What interesting work! Everybody's so cool! For a while there, I was genuinely seduced by this idea of being a family lawyer.  

That's the power of popular media. Once I came back to reality, I realised that I was probably not going to do a law degree at this point in my career. I reflected on the fact that, despite the hard sell of the TV show, like most jobs, much of a lawyer's day probably involves things that are hard, annoying and require some level of drudgery. 

But the producers of this program focused on the power of family lawyers to transform people's lives. The characters became people that viewers (including me) could aspire to be.    

In contrast, the few scientists and engineers in the popular media are not people you want to be. Dr Brennan from Bones comes to mind. While beautiful, her lack of social skills is a key source of humour throughout the series. In contrast, the books on which this TV series is, only thematically, based on (written by a real-life anthropologist) features a lead character who is, by all accounts, 'normal'. 

Her transformation into a socially awkward scientist, who struggles to relate to others, was made in the production studios for the sitcom. Elliot from Mr Robot takes it one step further – the character suffers from mental illness and is a social recluse, the suggestion being this was probably brought on by his lone-wolf lifestyle as an engineer. 

Why are there these (almost universal) characterisations? Of course there is some truth to the trope, yet I think most people have also encountered doctors with poor bedside manners. Poor social and communication skills are, unfortunately for other professionals, not limited to scientists or engineers. 

Would a clever engineer or scientist who is also good-looking, well-dressed and socially desirable be frightening, or a source of envy? Do these tropes somehow reflect the anxieties of people outside of science that can start in early schooling? 

We live in an engineered world and interact with the work of many engineers just to get to work in the morning. Yet the public is often unaware of what we do, and perhaps through what is represented in the popular media, certainly don't want to join our ranks. And I don't blame them. Apparently, it may very well bring on a personal problem.  

This is to the detriment of our future, ever more technological world. In the real world, the possibilities and power of science and engineering are very cool indeed. Engineering is 'badass.' Engineers are courageous people who dive into the toughest problems, without fully knowing how they'll solve them. Engineers have allowed us to cross oceans with planes, rivers with bridges and global distances with our phones. 

Nine of the 10 of the world's wealthiest individuals (all men) have an engineering or science background. Many of them have developed the world's top tech companies and products. Yet people with this training are also over-represented in the highest ranks of business (eg Bernard Arnault, head of luxury goods multinational LVMH, who graduated from France's most prestigious engineering school). 

Engineering and science studies are demanding, as are law and medical degrees, and young people must first be highly motivated and see themselves strongly in this end role before they'll be willing to commit to such an undertaking. 

This motivation can come from many sources, but there is a clear role for popular media to help tell more realistic, and interesting, stories of scientists and engineers. The lone, crazed, scientist is an outdated stereotype – most of the big breakthroughs in science now come from the collective efforts of large, international teams.  

At the University of Melbourne, Dr Claudia Sandberg (film scholar and creator) and I are exploring representations of scientists and engineers in the media. We are presently developing a workshop based on a collage of film clips asking these questions, to get young people thinking about science, technology and engineering not as a 'science class' thing, but potentially, as a life thing. 

We hope, in a small way, to start changing the narrative. Tomorrow's world depends on it.