Women in STEM Wikipedia
In Ghana, UNESCO organized STEM Clinics to familiarize girls with STEM, build their skills in these fields and facilitate contact between girls and female STEM professionals who can act as positive role models. A training package and an accompanying advocacy toolkit were developed to facilitate quality gender-responsive STEM education, and close gender gaps in STEM studies and careers. Too many girls and women are held back by biases, social norms and expectations influencing the quality of the education they receive and the subjects they study.
Early Intervention: The Power of Pre-High School Programs
Through this comprehensive research exercise, UNESCO has built a strong knowledge base on the gender gap in STEM education, and provided evidence-based policy recommendations to education ministries and relevant stakeholders. UNESCO is giving special attention to this issue through research, policy and capacity-building work and as part of its efforts to promote the empowerment of girls and women through education More girls are in school today than ever before, but they do not always have the same opportunities as boys to complete and benefit from an education of their choice. Titled ‘Understanding the Gender Imbalance in STEM’, we used survey data from 858 STEM students and recent graduates who identify as women or non-binary, studying at universities across the UK. These sectors are also some of the most financially lucrative, meaning that the high-paying jobs within these fields are predominantly taken up by men, whilst lower paying jobs such as those in healthcare and education are dominated by women. More work is needed to encourage women to study STEM subjects, to transition into the workforce, and to become future leaders in STEM.
A 2018 study originally claimed that countries with more gender equality had fewer women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. They are particularly under-represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education – women make up only 35% of STEM graduates, figure unchanged in ten years – and consequently, in STEM careers. Many scholars and policymakers have noted that the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have remained predominantly male with historically low participation among women since the origins of these fields in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. Recent efforts to encourage girls to study sciences at A-level have finally come to fruition with female students now outnumbering males for the first time ever. Specifically, computer science and engineering and technology fields show the largest gender imbalances, from current students, to graduates and within the workforce. The project aims to give visibility to women, both professionals and university students, working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
STEM Majors List: A Young Woman’s Roadmap to Science and Technology Careers
This overshadowing is clearly not a product of intelligence or work ethic, because girls tend to out-perform boys at high school. Female Physics, Maths and Computer Science students are less likely to obtain firsts compared to their male counterparts—a problem visible here at Oxford. As illustrated, there is a common perception that men are technical, mathematical beings who think in cold, hard logic, so steer towards physics, maths, and engineering. One of the points of Blickenstaff’s framework refers to the common belief that there are fundamental biological differences between the sexes that drive them to different sciences. In 2006, Jacob Blickenstaff laid out a framework of nine key points that pin up aviator game he argued fuel the lack of women in more “technical” STEM fields. This stereotype is certainly not perpetuated to my predominantly male, physics-studying counterparts.
Women in STEM Statistics 2025: Trends, Gaps, and Action Steps for Young Women
Therefore, women all over the United States are underrepresented in tenure faculty and leadership positions. Gender differences are evident by kindergarten, and many children have developed an attitude towards math and their career. Similarly, another experiment showed that making groups achievements salient helped buffer women against stereotype threat. The findings of another study suggest that role models do not necessarily have to be individuals with authority or high status, but can also be drawn from peer groups.
Subject breakdown – Female Graduates
Research indicates girls involved in structured STEM activities before high school are 50% more likely to declare STEM majors in college. STEMblazers combats these gaps with mobile STEM labs and virtual workshops that have reached over 15,000 girls in underserved communities, boosting local STEM club membership by 40%. STEMblazers addresses these disparities by hosting leadership and negotiation workshops for girls, helping them advocate for fair compensation and leadership roles as early as high school. A 2023 Society of Women Engineers survey found that 35% of women with STEM degrees leave their fields within five years, compared to 26% of men.
- The majority of the women agreed that mentorship is a crucial resource, and many want to be involved in mentorship, but there are not enough resources or opportunities in their work environment.
- Meet young Arab women researchers who have distinguished themselves in engineering, biomedical science, and genomics.
- The fact that men outperform women in some measures of spatial ability, a skill set many engineering professionals deem vital, generates this misconception.
- STEM Women recently published a whitepaper report which explores students’ and graduates’ attitudes towards gender issues that are prevalent within STEM.
- It was seen in another study that when men and women of equal math ability were asked to rate their own ability, women will rate their own ability at a much lower level.
- The “Computer Women” at NASA during the 1950s and 1960s, a group of women known as “computers” at NASA performed essential calculations for aeronautical and space research.
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 10.4% increase in STEM occupations between 2021 and 2031—compared to 4% growth for all occupations—adding over 1.1 million new jobs in STEM fields. By 2025, several key data points will shape our understanding of women’s roles in STEM. Alongside the other pressures society places on women – from childcare to cleaning, cooking and household chores – maintaining a high-powered STEM position holds a far higher burden for women than men. For example, the Royal Society of Chemistry reports that 35% of Chemistry undergraduates are women, compared to a staggeringly low 9% of professors.
The academic and research environment for women may benefit by applying some of the suggestions she has made to help women excel, while maintaining a work-life balance. The worst scores were from the situation where women were told that men had performed better than women. The last group was told nothing about how men had performed and there was no mention of gender before taking their test.
Programs like Girls Who Can Code, Black Girls Code, and Million Women Mentors have been successful in inspiring girls to pursue STEM education. There are various strategies that can be implemented to close the gender gap in STEM. Closing the gender gap will not only bolster sustainable tech-enabled growth and innovation but is also deemed an economic necessity.vi
They also include climate-related seaweed research, quantum dot nanotechnology, diabetic heart complications, forensic detection using UV Raman technology, and respiratory microbiology and infection epidemic. The 12 projects cover key scientific areas such as aerospace robotics, food security, epigenetics, personalized medicine, microbiome science, and metabolic health. When young girls see someone like them succeed, they begin to believe they can too.” El Said is now a postdoctoral researcher at New York University Abu Dhabi, studying how long non-coding RNAs regulate the three-dimensional structure of DNA. She later earned a master’s degree in biotechnology from the American University in Cairo, where she conducted metagenomic research on the Red Sea brine pools.
Digital skills development
A Statistics Canada study from 2019 found that first-year women make up 44% of STEM students, compared with 64% of non-STEM students. A 2018 study on 50 Latin American women who founded a technology company indicated that 20% were Mexican, 14% bi-racial, 8% unknown, 4% Venezuelan. A 2015 NCWIT study estimated that Latin American women represented only 1% of the US tech workforce. According to Kimberly Jackson, prejudice and assumed stereotypes keep women of color, especially black women from studying in STEM fields.
Ann Hibner Koblitz reported on a series of interviews conducted in 2015 in Abu Dhabi with women engineers and computer scientists who had come to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states to find opportunities that were not available to them in their home country. This number has grown significantly in the past three decades, during which the country’s employment of women has increased by 95%. Despite strong enrollment rates, women in Kazakhstan remain underrepresented in STEM leadership roles. South Africa features among the top 20 countries in the world for the share of professionals with skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with women representing 28 percent of these South African professionals.
For instance, creating a residential program, women’s only college, and affiliation between high school and college for STEM programs will help eliminate the gender gap. Reports have shown that the presence of female teachers positively influences girls’ perceptions of STEM and increases their interest in STEM careers. This study found that girls in same-gender groups performed better on a task that measured math skills than girls in mixed-gender groups. Additionally, these researchers found that it was not the physical presence of the female experimenter but rather learning about her apparent competence in math that buffered participants against stereotype threat. A number of researchers have tested interventions to alleviate stereotype threat for women in situations where their math and science skills are being evaluated. In a study done by Ellis, Fosdick and Rasmussen, it was concluded that without strong skills in calculus, women cannot perform as well as their male counterparts in any field of STEM, which leads to the fewer women pursuing a career in these fields.
The metaphor of the leaky pipeline has been used to describe how women drop out of STEM fields at all stages of their careers. Research has suggested that women’s lack of interest may in part stem from stereotypes about employees and workplaces in STEM fields, to which stereotypes women are disproportionately responsive. In addition, the number of female department chairs in medical schools did not change from 1976 to 1996. This implies that successful women in traditionally male-dominated careers do not see their success as evidence that negative stereotypes about women’s quantitative and analytical abilities are wrong, but rather as proof that they personally are exceptions to the rule. In 1992 it was suggested that women in male-dominated occupations tended to hit a glass ceiling; while men in female-dominated occupations may hit a “glass escalator”.
“That curiosity slowly grew into a passion for mechanical engineering.” Emirati mechanical engineer Aysha Ali Samra AlShehhi, who is developing a bio-inspired robotic arm to transform aircraft maintenance, began her engineering journey long before university. Now in its twelfth year, the program celebrates women scientists whose breakthroughs are shaping the region’s scientific future. This conference, organized by UNESCO and the African Union Commission with partners, aims to build a transformative STEM ecosystem for Africa.
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