---
title: "Women in STEM"
chunk: 11/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:38:16.104709+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Self-affirmation ====
Researchers have investigated the usefulness of self-affirmation in alleviating stereotype threat. One study found that women who affirmed a personal value prior to experiencing stereotype threat performed as well on a math test as men and as women who did not experience stereotype threat. A subsequent study found that a short writing exercise in which college students, who were enrolled in an introductory physics course, wrote about their most important values substantially decreased the gender performance gap and boosted women's grades. Scholars believe that the effectiveness of such values-affirmation exercises is their ability to help individuals view themselves as complex individuals, rather than through the lens of a harmful stereotype. Supporting this hypothesis, another study found that women who were encouraged to draw self-concept maps with many nodes did not experience a performance decrease on a math test. However, women who did not draw self-concept maps or only drew maps with a few nodes did perform significantly worse than men on the math test. The effect of these maps with many nodes was to remind women of their "multiple roles and identities," that were unrelated to, and would thus not be harmed by, their performance on the math test.

=== Organized efforts ===
To increase women's enrollment in the STEM field, researchers believe that it should occur in elementary and middle schools. Gender differences are evident by kindergarten, and many children have developed an attitude towards math and their career. According to a study about high school and middle school students, there is evidence of a gender gap in science and math test scores. Another method to reduce the gender gap is to create communities and opportunities apart from school. 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. The research has shown that gender gap in STEM might be because of unsupportive culture that hurts woman's advancement in their career. Therefore, women all over the United States are underrepresented in tenure faculty and leadership positions.
Organizations such as Girls Who Code, StemBox, and Stanford's Women in Data Science Initiative aim to encourage women and girls to explore male-dominated STEM fields. Many of these organizations offer summer programs and scholarships to girls interested in STEM fields.
The U.S. government has funded similar endeavors; the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs created TechGirls and TechWomen, exchange programs which teach Middle Eastern and North African girls and women skills valuable in STEM fields and encourage them to pursue STEM careers. There is also the TeachHer Initiative, spearheaded by UNESCO, Costa Rican First Lady, Mercedes Peñas Domingo, and Jill Biden which aims to close the gender gap in STEAM curricula and careers. The Initiative also emphasizes the importance of after school activities and clubs for girls. That's why Dell Technologies teamed up with Microsoft and Intel in 2019 to create an after-school program for young girls and underserved K-12 students across the U.S. and Canada called Girls Who Game (GWG). The program uses Minecraft: Education Edition as a tool to teach the girls communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking skills.
Current campaigns to increase women's participation within STEM fields include the UK's GlamSci, and Verizon's #InspireHerMind project. The US Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama administration collaborated with the White House Council on Women and Girls to increase the participation of women and girls within STEM fields along with the "Educate to Innovate" campaign.
In August 2019, the University of Technology Sydney announced that women, or anyone with a long term educational disadvantage, applying to the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, and for a construction project management degree in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, will be required to have a minimum Australian Tertiary Admission Rank that is ten points lower than that required of other students.
Programs such as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) are constantly working to eliminate the gender gap in computer science. FIRST is a robotics community for K–12 students. The activities and competitions in the program are usually about current STEM problems. Students also get practice with business, leadership, and communication skills. According to a 2016 National Science Board report, 67% of men and 47% of women who engaged in the FIRST program intend to major in engineering, compared to 13.7% of men and 2.6% of women entering college in general.
Creative Resilience: Art by Women in Science is a multi-media exhibition and accompanying publication, produced in 2021 by the Gender Section of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The project aims to give visibility to women, both professionals and university students, working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). With short biographical information and graphic reproductions of their artworks dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and accessible online, the project provides a platform for women scientists to express their experiences, insights, and creative responses to the pandemic.

== See also ==

Timeline of women in science
Timeline of women in mathematics

== References ==

=== Notes ===

=== Sources ===
 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from A Complex Formula: Girls and Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Asia​, 15, 23–24, UNESCO.
 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA. Text taken from Cracking the code: girls' and women's education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)​, UNESCO.
 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under C-BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Text taken from To be smart, the digital revolution will need to be inclusive​, Bello et al., UNESCO.

=== Further reading ===
American Association of University Women (2010).  Why So Few?
American Association of University Women - official website and career development grants Archived 2020-02-13 at the Wayback Machine for women: [1]
Campero S. 2020. "Hiring and Intra-occupational Gender Segregation in Software Engineering." American Sociological Review.
Moskowitz, Clara, "Marie Curie's Hidden Network: How she recruited a generation of women scientists", Scientific American, vol. 332, no. 2 (February 2025), pp. 78–79.
Natarajan, Priyamvada, "Calculating Women" (review of Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures:  The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, William Morrow; Dava Sobel, The Glass Universe:  How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, Viking; and Nathalia Holt, Rise of the Rocket Girls:  The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars, Little, Brown), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 9 (25 May 2017), pp. 38–39.
Sobel, Dava (2024), The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science,  ISBN 978-0802163820, OCLC 1437997660
Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act
World Economic Forum "Global Gender Gap 2020"