These challenges come at a time of increased competition for technical graduates who are U.S. Assessments of recent development and acquisition process failures have identified a loss of technical competence within the Air Force (that is, in house or organic competence, as opposed to contractor support) as an underlying problem. While in the past the Air Force's technologically intensive mission has been highly attractive to individuals educated in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, force reductions, ongoing military operations, and budget pressures are creating new challenges for attracting and managing personnel with the needed technical skills. The growing complexity of both traditional and emerging missions is placing new demands on education, training, career development, system acquisition, platform sustainment, and development of operational systems. The Air Force requires technical skills and expertise across the entire range of activities and processes associated with the development, fielding, and employment of air, space, and cyber operational capabilities. Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences.Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.If this problem could be addressed anywhere, it ought to be able to be addressed within the federal civil service.Help Ordering Information New Releases Browse by Division Browse by Topic '(You can argue) the government ought to be able to be a model employer,' Kellough said. Regardless, he thinks the gaps in STEM employment for federal workplaces matter. Maybe in the future researchers will be able to do deeper dives into agencies that do have a higher share of women in STEM, Kellough said, or interview women who are supervisors. The data the authors had did not include data on race or ethnicity, something Kellough would like to look at, and the model did not have a good explanation for what causes women in STEM to quit. There are plenty of opportunities for further research on this topic. them in those jobs.' What to research next and is just bringing them in to those positions. 'The problem of women in STEM is twofold,' Kellough said. But when looking at what caused women to quit their jobs, having women as supervisors did not matter. Women may be more open to hiring other women, Kellough theorized, and women looking for STEM jobs may seek out roles where there are women supervisors. 'One conclusion is that if we have more women who are promoted and who are put into supervisory positions, that will, in turn, influence the numbers of women hired subsequently into subordinate positions,' Kellough said. The researchers ran statistical models to determine whether it was women serving in supervisory roles that attracted other women employees or whether having more women employees led to more women supervisors, and found that having women supervisors was the key factor.ĬON laws: Augusta state lawmaker appointed to committee questioning Certificate of Need lawsīad roads: Which Augusta roads saw the most fatal crashes and what was the biggest factor in wrecks? 'Where there are more female supervisors in departments and agencies, then we have more women hired into subordinate positions,' Kellough said. This first factor proved particularly important. The authors looked at several factors that led to higher employment: the proportion of supervisors who are women, how much of a particular department or agencies staff is STEM related, the support for diversity as reported by employee surveys, and the number of jobs that are in engineering.

What attracts, and keeps, women in STEM jobs It also looks at factors that contributed to higher numbers of women being employed in STEM fields and why at most agencies a disproportionate number of women in these STEM rolls quit.

Kellough's and Brown's research focused not just on counting the number of women. Air Force, while the Department of Health and Human Services had an average of 42.9%, the highest of the workplaces studied. The paper breaks down women's employment by agency - the lowest average across the years studied was 16.7% women in civilian STEM jobs at the U.S.

Air force stem careers