VOA慢速英语听力：日本希望消除女性在科学领域的社会压力 Japan Wants to Remove Social Pressure on Women in Science.
Yuna Kato is a third-year student at one of Japan’s top engineering universities. She is looking forward to a career in research but fears it might be short-lived if she has children.
Kato says relatives have tried to move her away from studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, commonly called STEM. They are doing so on the belief that women in the STEM field are too busy to meet a partner or have a family.
"My grandmother and mother often tell me that there are non-STEM jobs out there if I want to raise children," she said.
Kato has made it this far, but many females hoping to become engineers choose a different path due to social pressure. This creates many problems for Japan. In the information technology field alone, the country will be lacking 790,000 workers by 2030. That is largely due to a severe underrepresentation of women.
The outcome, experts warn, is a decrease in innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. That will be for a country that grew into the world’s third-largest economy on those strengths during the last century.
"It's very wasteful and a loss for the nation," said Yinuo Li. 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.
Unconscious bias
Japan comes in last among wealthy nations with only 16 percent of female university students majoring in engineering, manufacturing, and construction. And it has just one female scientist for every seven. 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.
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.
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. School officials felt women were more likely to quit working after having children and would waste their education.
Recently, the government created a video to show educators and other adults how “unconscious bias” pushes girls away from STEM studies.
In one moment, an actor playing a school teacher tells a student she is good at math, even though she is a girl. This makes her feel unusual to be a female and good at math. In another, a mother pushes her daughter away from studying engineering since the field is mostly controlled by men.
Working with private industries, the government’s Gender Equality Bureau will hold more than 100 STEM workshops and events mainly targeting female students.
Students in one event will learn from the car company Mazda’s sports car engineers. Other companies including Mitsubishi and Toyota are offering scholarships to female STEM students.
Mitsubishi human resources official Minoru Taniura noted that women make up half of the population. 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."
I’m Gregory Stachel.
Yuna Kato是日本一所顶尖工程大学的三年级学生。她期待着从事研究工作，但担心如果有了孩子，她的职业生涯可能会很短暂。
Kato表示，亲戚们一直试图让她远离科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）的学习。他们这样做是因为他们认为从事STEM领域的女性太忙，没有时间找到伴侣或养家糊口。
她说：“我的祖母和母亲经常告诉我，如果我想要养孩子，就有很多非STEM的工作可供选择。”
Kato已经走到了这一步，但许多希望成为工程师的女性由于社会压力而选择了不同的道路。这给日本带来了很多问题。仅在信息技术领域，到2030年，该国将缺乏79万名工人。这主要是由于女性在这个领域的严重代表不足。
专家们警告说，结果将是创新、生产力和竞争力的下降。这将是一个国家，在过去一个世纪以这些优势发展成为世界第三大经济体。
“这是非常浪费和对国家的损失，” 阴诺·李说。她是一位中国教育家，拥有分子生物学博士学位，她的形象被用作儿童玩具中的女性STEM模特。
无意识偏见
在富裕国家中，日本的女性大学生中只有16%主修工程、制造和建筑专业，而且每七个科学家中只有一位是女性。经济合作与发展组织发现，即使日本女孩在世界范围内的数学测试中排名第二，科学测试中排名第三。
从2024年开始的学年，包括东京工业大学在内的约12所大学将响应政府的号召，为女性STEM学生提供一定数量的名额。
对于一个2018年的调查发现东京一所医学院有意降低女性入学考试以偏向男性的国家来说，这是一个巨大的变化。学校官员认为女性在生育后更有可能辍学，浪费了她们的教育。
最近，政府制作了一段视频，向教育者和其他成年人展示了“无意识偏见”如何将女孩推开，不让她们选择STEM学习。
在视频中的一刻，一位扮演学校老师的演员告诉一个女学生她擅长数学，尽管她是女生。这让她感到作为女性在数学方面出众很不寻常。在另一个场景中，一个母亲阻止她的女儿学习工程学，因为这个领域主要由男性控制。
与私营行业合作，政府的性别平等局将举办100多个主要面向女性学生的STEM研讨会和活动。
在一个活动中，学生们将向马自达汽车的跑车工程师学习。三菱和丰田等公司也为女性STEM学生提供奖学金。
三菱人力资源官员谷浦宏表示，女性占人口的一半。他补充说：“如果工程师的构成与人口不一致，我们将无法提供客户所需的产品。”
我是Gregory Stachel。
