[ti:Japan Wants to Remove Social Pressure on Women in Science]
[al:As It Is]
[ar:VOA]
[dt:2023-07-17]
[by:www.voase.cn]
[00:00.00]Yuna Kato is a third-year student at one of Japan's top engineering universities.
[00:07.80]She is looking forward to a career in research but fears it might be short-lived if she has children.
[00:17.63]Kato says relatives have tried to move her away from studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, commonly called STEM.
[00:29.73]They are doing so on the belief that women in the STEM field are too busy to meet a partner or have a family.
[00:39.32]"My grandmother and mother often tell me that there are non-STEM jobs out there if I want to raise children," she said.
[00:49.38]Kato has made it this far, but many females hoping to become engineers choose a different path due to social pressure.
[01:00.23]This creates many problems for Japan.
[01:05.10]In the information technology field alone, the country will be lacking 790,000 workers by 2030.
[01:15.47]That is largely due to a severe underrepresentation of women.
[01:21.75]The outcome, experts warn, is a decrease in innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.
[01:30.83]That will be for a country that grew into the world's third-largest economy on those strengths during the last century.
[01:40.67]"It's very wasteful and a loss for the nation," said Yinuo Li. 
[01:47.61]She is a Chinese educator with a doctorate in molecular biology, and whose likeness has been used for a children's toy as a female model in STEM.
[02:01.25]Japan comes in last among wealthy nations with only 16 percent of female university students majoring in engineering, manufacturing, and construction. 
[02:15.35]And it has just one female scientist for every seven. 
[02:20.86]That is even with Japanese girls testing second highest in the world in math, and third in science, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found.
[02:35.46]For the school year starting in 2024, about 12 universities, including the Tokyo Institute of Technology, will follow the government's call to introduce a set amount of placement for female STEM students.
[02:55.02]It is a big change for a country where an investigation in 2018 found a Tokyo medical school had purposefully lowered women's entrance tests to favor men. 
[03:10.48]School officials felt women were more likely to quit working after having children and would waste their education.
[03:19.84]Recently, the government created a video to show educators and other adults how "unconscious bias" pushes girls away from STEM studies.
[03:33.27]In one moment, an actor playing a school teacher tells a student she is good at math, even though she is a girl.
[03:42.59]This makes her feel unusual to be a female and good at math. 
[03:48.16]In another, a mother pushes her daughter away from studying engineering since the field is mostly controlled by men.
[03:57.39]Working with private industries, the government's Gender Equality Bureau will hold more than 100 STEM workshops and events mainly targeting female students.
[04:11.09]Students in one event will learn from the car company Mazda's sports car engineers. 
[04:19.75]Other companies including Mitsubishi and Toyota are offering scholarships to female STEM students.
[04:29.38]Mitsubishi human resources official Minoru Taniura noted that women make up half of the population. 
[04:39.78]Taniura added, "If the make-up of engineers is not the same as the population, we'd fall behind in being able to offer what customers are looking for."
[04:53.76]I'm Gregory Stachel.