The Under-Representation of Women in STEM

This interactive infographic by Chantilly Jaggernauth (2017), while slightly outdated, shows the power of information and good design. The design choice to highlight the stats about women in various technology fields by using a color for their stats that contrasts with the black and grey of the rest of the infographic immediately calls out the disparities, especially lower in the graphic when specific information technology careers are highlighted. The interactive graph at the bottom also calls attention to the growing gap over time between attainment of degrees at different levels of education. The subtle references to The Matrix series, including the falling green code in the top banner and the repeated use of green as a highlight color across the infographic, invites a general population who might not have experience with coding or computer science to look at the graphic. Other features such as being able to limit the focus on the data to a single occupation by selecting that data to change the information about the wage gap and fading other data points into the background are powerful ways to help a user focus on the data they want to home in on without the distraction of all data sets.

This is more of a standard infographic than many that I saw on the site, but I like the simplicity of the design coupled with the amount of data being displayed and the direct tie to our courses. What would be interesting to see would be a scrubbable timeline that would adjust the numbers and percentages over time. With the messaging about the importance of women in STEM careers, it would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between efforts to expand access and employment opportunities over time.

Jaggernauth, C. (2017, January 14). The Under-Representation of Women in STEM Fields. Tableau Public. Retrieved February 5, 2022, from https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/chantilly.jaggernauth/viz/TheUnder-RepresentationofWomeninSTEMFields/MainDashboard