STEM: The Gender Statistics - Have Things Changed?

STEM at university - have things changed? Síle (Graduate Medicine, Oxford), offers advice for girls looking to go into STEM for further study/ academia.

It has never been a better time to be a female is STEM – and its getting better. Science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects have long had a male-dominated air about them. Think the old, grey, white man with curly, nutty-professor looking hair, hovered over a microscope in a lab. However, recent shifts in the way society thinks, means that this stereotype is being forgotten with more and more women entering and obtaining success in these fields. According to WISE, there are now over 900,000 women working in STEM in the UK, which has risen from just over 600,000 in 2011, an approximate 50% rise. Furthermore, there is an increasing trend in the number of girls in school taking STEM subjects such as Chemistry, IT and Mathematics, with the number of girls taking on STEM higher apprenticeships steadily rinsing. On the back of this newfound interest (or access?) for women in STEM, there is an abundance of opportunities for young women looking to get into STEM for further education. A wonderful resource is stemettes.org which has loads of events and opportunities for budding thinkers all around the country to get involved in. Another good one for articles and news is girlswhostem.com. These can be really good sources to stay up to date with what’s going on in STEM for girls and how to get involved.

However, even with all of these amazing initiatives and advances, there are still some STEM fields where we need more women like engineering, with only 12% women and IT, with only 16%. Furiously, women only make up 16% of managerial positions in STEM. Our very own ambassador, aerospace engineer, Gladys Ngetich, was one of only 8 women in a class of 80 engineers in her Mechanical Engineering undergraduate class. We are still in the business of the old, grey, white man. There is research to demonstrate that girls tend to move away from STEM subjects in the 10-14 ages, so the onus is on us to make these subjects attractive to this age group to keep girls keen. Research from Microsoft was undertaken to identify some of the barriers facing young women in following a STEM career path. Interviews were conducted with females from 10-30, with some interviewees identifying peer pressure, misconceptions about STEM careers and the lack of female role models as some of the key factors which held them back from pursuing STEM subjects/careers in the future. This data means that the likes of stemettes.org and girlswhostem.com have never been more important to reach out to budding STEM interests to keep girls in the game. We need young girls who are interested in STEM subjects to take advantages of the opportunities offered by these organisations, to get stuck in, to follow their passion and to represent women as they succeed. With the powerhouse organisation, WISE aiming to get over 1 million women in STEM employment by 2020, it has never been a better time to get in to STEM.