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.
优奈·加藤是日本一所顶尖工程大学的大三学生。她期待着从事研究工作，但是担心如果有了孩子，这项工作干不长。
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.
加藤表示，亲戚们都试图让她放弃学习STEM学科，也就是科学、技术、工程和数学。他们这样做是因为认为从事STEM领域的女性太忙了，没法找对象和组建家庭。
"My grandmother and mother often tell me that there are non-STEM jobs out there if I want to raise children," she said.
她说：“我的祖母和母亲经常告诉我，如果我想要抚养孩子，只能做一些非STEM工作。”
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.
加藤已经走到了这一步，但由于社会压力，许多希望成为工程师的女性选择了一条不同的道路。这给日本带来了许多问题。仅在信息技术领域，到2030年，该国将缺乏79万名工人。这在很大程度上是由于女性代表人数严重不足。
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.
专家警告说，其结果就是创新、生产力和竞争力下降。这些是日本这样一个国家在上世纪成长为全球第三大经济体的优势所在。
"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.
李一诺表示：“这对国家来说是非常浪费的，也是一种损失。”她是一位拥有分子生物学博士学位的中国教育家，她的肖像被用作STEM领域女性楷模的儿童玩具。
Unconscious bias
无意识偏见
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.
日本只有16%的女大学生主修工程、制造和建筑，这在富裕国家中排名最后。并且日本每7名科学家中只有一名女性。经合组织发现，即便是日本女孩的数学成绩在世界上排名第二，科学成绩排名第三。
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.
在2024年开始的学年，包括东京理工学院在内的约12所大学将响应政府的呼吁，为STEM女生提供一定数量的名额。
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.
对于一个在2018年的一项调查发现东京一所医学院故意降低女性入学考试成绩以偏袒男性的国家来说，这是一个巨大的变化。学校官员认为，女性更有可能在生完孩子后辞职，浪费了她们的教育。
Recently, the government created a video to show educators and other adults how "unconscious bias" pushes girls away from STEM studies.
最近，政府制作了一段视频，向教育工作者和其他成年人展示“无意识偏见”如何将女孩从STEM研究中赶走。
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.
在一个片段中，由演员扮演的学校老师告诉一名学生，她数学很好，尽管她是个女孩。这让她觉得作为女生擅长数学很不寻常。在另一个片段中，一位母亲迫使女儿放弃学习工程，因为这一领域主要由男性控制。
Working with private industries, the government's Gender Equality Bureau will hold more than 100 STEM workshops and events mainly targeting female students.
政府性别平等局将与私营行业合作，举办100多场主要针对女性学生的STEM研讨会和活动。
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.
其中一项活动中的学生将向马自达汽车公司的跑车工程师学习。包括三菱和丰田在内的其他公司开始为STEM女生提供奖学金。
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."
三菱公司人力资源部官员谷浦实指出，女性占总人口的一半。谷浦补充道，“如果工程师的组成与人口不一样，我们在提供客户所需产品方面就会落后。”
I'm Gregory Stachel.
我是格雷戈里·施塔赫尔。(51VOA.COM原创翻译，请勿转载，违者必究！)