50 years of Title IX: In STEM

Forty-nine years later, the Census Bureau found that number approached 27%. While Title IX is best known for its impact on athletic programs, it also broke open the gate for women to pursue careers outside of classrooms and into laboratories.

Because the law specifically prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, women were given equal opportunity to participate in science, technology, engineering and math programs and work in those fields professionally. However, Title IX can’t prohibit recurring stereotypes from looming in STEM spaces.

Three women from the Idaho National Laboratory spoke to the Post Register about their experiences working in STEM.

Andrea Jokisaari, Ph.D., has worked as a Computational Materials Scientist at INL since January 2018. Jokisaari attended Clemson University for her undergraduate degree and the University of Michigan for her doctorate. Even though she majored in ceramic materials engineering, Jokisaari didn’t always think engineering was a path she could take.

“I am a first-generation Ph.D. student in my family. Lots of things were things that other people did, not necessarily something I could do,” Jokisaari said.

Jokisaari dabbled in art, writing and science as an adolescent but truly only found science to be a hobby she wanted to monetize.

“I thought ‘Well, you know I could do science all day every day. I really enjoy that,’” Jokisaari said.

She said as a freshman at Clemson she was called to the front of the lecture hall in a general engineering course.

“They needed a volunteer for a demonstration so I stuck my hand up in the air, and they picked me, because I’m a girl” Jokisaari laughed.

Gender disparities followed Jokisaari out of her freshman year survey course into her professional field.

“It started out feeling like a red fish in a sea of blue fish. I was the only woman in a room full of 10 men. It can be a little bit scary, physically scary. I have to trust all of you to be professional.”

“Sometimes people make jokes where they’re like ‘They wanted you to talk because you’re a woman. They hired you for this position or you got this because you’re a woman.’ And that really is awful when people say that.”

“You feel it. I don’t look like other people. I don’t act like other people. I have to have a work persona sometimes. I’m always thinking about ‘What did I say? How did I act? Did I touch my hair too much? Did I laugh in a way that makes me seem weak? How do I act with authority that is accepted and not get labeled a bitch?” Jokisaari said of the difficulties working in a male dominated field.

“Some good things, though, include finding really great mentors who care. Building community and camaraderie with other women,” she added.

Jokisaari said that, specifically in her department at INL, she has found great female colleagues. She still works to break stereotypes, but also recognizes the impact Title IX has had in her life.

“There isn’t anything I could point to and say that is Title IX. I think that is actually a good thing. That means that it is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Our interactions are getting normalized,” Jokisaari said. “I am 100% positive I have been a significant recipient of Title IX in a silent way.”

Donna O’Kelly, Ph.D., has worked at INL since February 2015 as the analytical research laboratories director. Unlike Jokisaari, O’Kelly knew since childhood that she wanted to pursue a STEM career.

“Growing up I was unlike most of the other girls. They wanted to be teachers, and I wanted to be an astronaut. I grew up in the Deep South, so it wasn’t exactly kosher,” O’Kelly said.

Even though O’Kelly had an early dream to follow in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong, her career path diverged to an office job for seven years. She worked as a secretary where her boss encouraged her to pursue a higher education.

“Other than him, I didn’t have anyone that was really pushing me to further my education. I came from a family where you got married and that’s what you did. Even my father would say, ‘You better keep that job. It’s hard to get those jobs.’”

“If I had followed my dad’s advice, I would still be living in Charleston, South Carolina, working at a shipyard that’s been closed for 40 years now,” O’Kelly said.

She attended Idaho State University where she majored in chemistry.

“My chemistry class was about 50/50 men and women. Most of my electives were math classes and those had a lot of men in them. I always thought of myself as a bit of a tomboy, and I had a bit of a middle finger to everybody,” O’Kelly said about her undergraduate experience.

Even though her undergraduate chemistry course offered gender parity, O’Kelly found her doctorate path to be the exact opposite.

“The year I graduated from Texas A&M (with a doctorate in nuclear chemistry), there were no other women in nuclear that year in the entire world. That’s what I’ve been told,” O’Kelly said.

O’Kelly said even though Title IX granted her the opportunity to study nuclear chemistry, it didn’t erase the bad behavior she dealt with on a day to day basis.

“We would have experiments in grad school that would last 24 hours a day for six weeks. I was the only female in the group and my classmates said, ‘Oh let’s have Donna make the coffee since she’s a woman,’” O’Kelly said. “I didn’t make the coffee and to this day I still don’t make coffee. I won’t even make coffee for my husband. I drew that line.”

O’Kelly said she was further stereotyped when she had her children during graduate school.

“When I had my first kid, I can clearly remember this professor congratulated my husband, and then he came up to me at the other end of the hall and said ‘Don’t have any more babies. You can’t be serious about science if you have any more babies.’ OK Kevin, thank you. It was the same professor that was screwing a graduate student, which he later married. But still, a great role model here,” O’Kelly said.

Even though O’Kelly fought to be respected as a woman in the workplace, she always felt like she deserved a seat at the table.

“I hope this doesn’t come across as arrogance, but I’ve never felt like I don’t have the right to belong. I have a right to go anywhere I want to go.”

“Everybody wants to look at these as a male-female thing, and I guess I think we’re all in this together. As women, we’re not ever going to get this fixed. Men are the majority. We have to bring men along,” O’Kelly said.

Shannon Bragg-Sitton, Ph.D., a director for the Integrated Energy and Storage Systems Division, has worked at INL for 12 years. She worked in the STEM field for the first time when she was in high school.

“My first job when I was 16 was a little bit different. I worked for an Air Force research lab in Albuquerque on a project for space nuclear power and propulsion systems,” Bragg-Sitton said.

On this project, Bragg-Sitton was the only high school student and one of two women in the room. She had to break many barriers, some being language barriers.

“I worked with 16 folks from Russia. So, I learned a lot of those basic engineering skills like welding and soldering from people who didn’t speak English. I was working through a translator or truly through demonstration,” Bragg-Sitton said.

Bragg-Sitton’s goal from the beginning was to attend college to pursue nuclear engineering. Neither of her parents had a college education while she was in high school. After her father retired from the Air Force, he began to attend night school. It took him years to obtain a degree, Bragg-Sitton said.

“I watched him for years and years try to recover from that decision. I just knew (attending college was) what I wanted to do from the very start,” Bragg-Sitton said.

Bragg-Sitton received a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University in nuclear engineering. She went on to get a master’s degree in medical physics from the University of Texas at Houston. She later returned to nuclear engineering when she got her master’s and doctorate in the subject at the University of Michigan.

With ample university experience, Bragg-Sitton had few struggles being a woman in a STEM major.

“There was one other woman in my degree program in my year (for her bachelor’s), and she was equally as driven as me. We were the top two in the class. Those of us that were really, really driven, that wasn’t really a problem. But when I was at Michigan, there were a few girls that maybe felt overlooked,” Bragg-Sitton said. “I am not saying those challenges don’t exist, but I tended to push them to the side.”

Bragg-Sitton found herself in a different situation her first week in the professional world. She was sent to a meeting at a naval reactors facility days after graduating with her doctorate.

“Everything in their facility requires an escort. During the meeting they said ‘All right, let’s take a break. The bathrooms are down the hall.’ The room starts clearing out and I say ‘I need an escort, and there’s not another woman in this room.’ Was I respected? Yes. Did I have a voice at the table? Yes. But those little details get overlooked,” Bragg-Sitton said.

As a woman in a STEM field, and as a senior staff member at INL, Bragg-Sitton said she takes responsibility for helping those in situations like she experienced.

All three women shared similar experiences in their careers. When asked what they would say to girls pursuing a career in STEM, Bragg-Sitton, O’ Kelly and Jokisaari all said, “Do it.”

“Don’t worry what other people think,” Jokisaari said.

“Don’t stop. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t,” O’Kelly said.

“Don’t let voices around you hold you back. Don’t let anybody box you in,” Bragg-Sitton said.

All three agreed that more women need to enter these fields and pursue their passions, regardless of what the stereotypes may be.