Accounting Is Being Added To STEM, And This Is Great News For Girls
Photo: ExtendED Notes
We all know about the importance of STEM - that’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics - and the push for STEM-focused education in our public schools. It’s been a significant topic of debate and emphasis in recent years, and a massive portion of school funding has been directed toward robust STEM programs all over America and beyond.
One of the benefits of this push has been an increase in the number of girls who enter STEM-based careers after high school and college.
There’s one big problem: finance wasn’t included in the initial, legal definition of the STEM curriculum. Skills like accounting, tax preparation, budgeting, debt management, and general money management have long been missing from our kids’ education.
That’s finally changed. In 2021, the House passed a bill that added accounting to the STEM curriculum and mandated its inclusion in K-12 education. This is a big win for every American child, but it’s an especially promising development for girls.
Here’s why.
Girls Are Slowly Closing Our Society’s Financial Gaps––And Now They Have Another Tool In Their Arsenal
The pay gap is a well-known problem in feminist circles, and much has been said and done about it over the past few decades. Even so, the gendered pay disparity persists.
Other gender-based financial gaps exist alongside this one, but many of them remain lesser-known and largely ignored.
Photo by Sarah Elizabeth on Unsplash
For a long time, women were excluded from the majority of professions. They couldn’t own their own businesses or assets, they had limited inheritance rights, the money they did acquire was owned by their husband upon marriage and, generally speaking, they were made totally financially dependent upon their male relatives and “guardians.” We had to fight to win the same rights as men, and this was especially true for women of color and women with disabilities.
This kind of imbalance doesn’t go away overnight. Social change is slow, and financial rights are gained step by step. Every piece of ground we’ve won in this arena has come at a cost (no pun intended).
Once rights are won, we still have to fight to learn how to use and manage them. Having the right to invest doesn’t mean someone knows how to invest, and specialized education can be costly. Women’s financial disadvantages have been persistent for precisely this reason.
Adding accounting and related skills to the K-12 curriculum is a huge step in providing access to the vast body of knowledge our foremothers were barred from. It has the potential to undo centuries of forced ignorance, and it allows girls to not only acquire but also develop an aptitude for finance.
Aptitude is a term that describes a natural ability or talent, and it’s often correlated directly with innate passion or interest. For most of Western history, it was considered inappropriate for girls to take an active interest in accounting. It was “men’s work,” and women’s only place in it was the one relating to household cost-keeping and small budget management. Within these limited realms, they always answered to a male and could not make any real financial decisions for themselves.
Providing our girls with a foundational understanding of accounting means that they can become comfortable with the world of finance from an early age. This helps to circumvent centuries of negative conditioning regarding women and money.
From here, any number of accomplishments and career paths become possible for female students, whether they wish to become business owners, accounting professionals, economists, or any number of other financial professionals.
Economic Power Leads To Lasting Change––And Education Is The First Step
Women, on the whole, have made huge leaps in the realm of finance and economics. We are currently starting more businesses, providing more philanthropic funding, and demonstrating more financial resilience than ever, and there are other, more subtle measures that show our progress on both a micro and macro level.
In other ways, we still lag behind. History is complicated, after all, and it’s rarely linear.
Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash
In many ways, we can see financial equality as a collaborative effort aimed at long-term change. Men and women alike have a stake in this mission. All of us benefit from progress, and all of us lose out when progress is lost or held up. Providing an equal educational footing for boys and girls is a huge step in the right direction.
When girls and boys graduate with the same foundation of knowledge and the same basic financial skillset, they graduate as true equals. In girls’ cases, it offers a measure of security we’ve long been denied.
Adding accounting and finance to our STEM curricula gives girls the knowledge necessary to protect themselves from fraud and financial abuse. They’re less likely to miss the signs of monetary control within personal or professional relationships. It allows them to help others who might otherwise fall prey to financial predators, and it gives them the opportunity to become forces for financial good in their communities. This kind of foundational education waters the seeds of true, permanent social change.
Accounting is the starting point of every other money-based skill set, so it’s only natural that it be the main impetus for a financial education program. From there, the sky’s the limit, and progress is all but certain.
Conclusion: This Long-Overdue Law Could Change Everything (For The Better!)
Money management is a skill set that goes firmly under the “necessary” label. The fact that it’s been missing from our K-12 curriculum for so long is shocking, but hey –– better late than never, right?
Accounting is more than arithmetic and budget-keeping, after all. It’s a term that encompasses a slew of different skills and touches on just about every other adult skill we have to develop to thrive. Adding it to our girls’ education is especially important. For women, financial literacy is a game of catch-up that has a long, painful history behind it. The earlier girls start learning to manage and approach money, the less vulnerable they’ll be to sexism in the financial arena.
As accounting joins the STEM family and we start to see its impact on our society’s basic education, we’re sure to witness a major change in our culture and collective mindset. Progress is inevitable when knowledge is behind it. This shift is a sign of things to come and a reason to celebrate.
We can’t wait to see how girls lead the way on this exciting new journey!
THIS ARTICLE WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR PARTNERS AT FOUMBERG, JUNEJA, ROCHER & CO.! THANK YOU FOR EMPOWERING WOMEN LEADERS THROUGH OUR PLATFORM.
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