Girls and young women in STEM: a Q&A with Professor Emma Smith
We recently had the opportunity to talk with Professor Emma Smith, Head of the Department of Education Studies at the University of Warwick, about how to get more girls and young women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
Previously a secondary school chemistry teacher and special educational needs co-ordinator, Professor Smith researches social justice issues in education.
She regularly publishes her research in journals including Oxford Review of Education, the British Journal of Educational Studies, and Educational Review, and has contributed to several book chapters.
In this interview, Professor Smith shares insights on why many girls don't study STEM subjects at school and university, and what schools, policymakers, and employers can do to encourage more girls into STEM.
We began by asking her to remind us why it's important that girls get into STEM...
Why do we need more girls and young women interested in STEM?
Encouraging young people, regardless of gender, to be interested in STEM is important simply because of the intrinsic benefits gained from studying science and other STEM subjects – children are often curious and fascinated by the natural world, and science is all about studying the world around us.
There is also, of course, the importance of having a scientifically literate population who can consume basic scientific information so that they are able to engage critically with issues that concern us today – whether it is about understanding the climate emergency or the need to maintain a healthy lifestyle, as well as evaluating the risks associated with COVID and so on.
More often, however, calls for getting more girls and young women interested in STEM are related to the workforce and perceived skills shortages in the field – concerns that are not new – and, in that sense, we would want more girls and young women to be involved because we want STEM to be diverse and representative of wider society and we would want to make use of all the talent that is available to us.
What's preventing girls and young women from getting into STEM? How can we overcome these challenges?
There are several issues to unpack here.
I think we first need to consider whether something is preventing young women from getting into STEM and that any under-representation is not because of an informed and considered choice on their part. There is an expanded choice of subjects to study both post-16 and – for those who go – at university. There are also a lot of different career paths, and it may be that many girls and young women see opportunity and challenge beyond the traditionally defined borders of STEM.
Similarly, when policymakers talk about STEM subjects, they tend to be referring to a relatively narrow range of subjects – usually the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, and technology. There are fewer girls and young women "getting into" some of these subjects and participation can be highly gendered – for example, higher proportions of females studying biological sciences and higher proportions of males studying engineering.
These patterns are well-established and have been evident for a very long time and in different national contexts, despite initiatives to encourage more women to study engineering, mathematics, and the physical sciences.
Recent research with secondary-age students shows that the image of a lone scientist, usually male, "mixing things" in their lab persists
By focusing on this relatively narrow range of subjects, we may forget that there are other areas of STEM where higher proportions of women do take part, such as the behavioral sciences – notably psychology – and the medical sciences – especially nursing.
There have been decades of research into why some girls may be put off studying certain science subjects at school and various explanations have been put forward. These range from societal norms about gendered roles – which, in turn, can feed into gendered subject choices – to perceptions about what the working life of a scientist involves – perceptions that are remarkably well-embedded. For example, recent research with secondary-age students shows that the image of a lone scientist, usually male, "mixing things" in their lab persists, despite decades of interventions to widen knowledge about the breadth of STEM careers and promote the notion of "science for all."
In an environment where perceptions of the scientific career are so deeply embedded, coupled with a context where young people have a wide choice of subjects to study and careers to pursue, a scientific life – however imperfectly understood – is one that may not necessarily have wide appeal.
When it comes to the STEM labor market, and in particular the graduate labor market, we do see some interesting trends when we look at career trajectories of female STEM graduates, both soon after graduation and through to mid and later career.
Among the newly graduated, we find that women's under-representation in STEM occupations can largely be accounted for by the subjects they study as undergraduates. The STEM subject areas with the highest rates of graduate employment – such as the engineering sciences – are those dominated by male students, and those with the lowest rates of graduate employment – the biological sciences, for example – are dominated by female students.
...Women are less likely to enter STEM jobs, less likely to stay in the sector, and, when they do remain, are also likely to be paid less than their male peers.
The data also show that even women who do study STEM subjects tend to be less likely to work in STEM than their male peers. More specifically, those women who do gain degrees in areas such as engineering are less likely to work in highly skilled STEM jobs than their fellow male graduates. In fact, the largest gender gaps in both highly skilled STEM employment and undergraduate enrolment are found in the very male-dominated engineering sciences and computer sciences. There are smaller gaps in the less male-dominated physical sciences, and there is almost no gap in the biological sciences, in which more female than male students enroll.
Early occupational destinations can be reliable predictors of later career trajectories and the data show greater attrition from the STEM field among women – although they are not necessarily more likely to leave the labor market in the medium to long term.
In short, women are less likely to enter STEM jobs, less likely to stay in the sector, and, when they do remain, are also likely to be paid less than their male peers.
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What should policymakers or funders do to get more girls and young women into STEM?
Whether the focus is on a "neglect of science" a "swing from science" or "STEM skills shortages," it is important to remember that these concerns are not new, and have persisted for at least as long as science has been taught in British schools. These concerns also span different national contexts, and the tech skills shortage narrative in the US is a good example of the extent and longevity of this debate.
In Britain, there have been decades of initiatives to encourage more girls and young women into STEM. The largest policy intervention was arguably that which made science a compulsory part of the new National Curriculum in England and Wales back in 1988, so all young people had to spend at least 20% of their time studying science – most often through the GCSE double science award – up to age 16. Yet this great push towards increasing the pipeline of future STEM workers had no appreciable impact on the proportion of young women (or men) studying the subjects at A-level or at university.
One further large-scale policy that might have increased recruitment to STEM subjects and, eventually, the STEM labor market, is the widening of access to university over the last 20 years or so. But we found that this also had little appreciable impact on the number of students who study many of the traditional STEM subjects over the long term. One explanation for this is that entry to these degree programs is dependent on studying a particular set of subjects at school – such as A-levels in maths, physics, and chemistry. Students who study these subjects tend to be among the highest achieving and were already likely to go to university and so would be less affected by widening and increased levels of participation at university.
In addition, while the pool of potential STEM students may not have increased as a result of the expansion of higher education, the choice of subjects they can study will have broadened – consider the expansion of the largely female-dominated discipline of psychology – leaving traditional STEM subjects competing with these "newer" disciplines in the pool of suitably qualified students.
There is also competition from more applied STEM subjects at post-92 universities. The expansion of subjects such as forensic science and sports science is further evidence of increased choice and therefore competition for students. Although some applied STEM subjects are less likely to lead to graduate-level employment compared with subjects such as engineering.
In short, recruitment to "shortage" STEM undergraduate degree subjects has been flat for decades, not just in relative but often in absolute terms, despite the expansion in undergraduate participation more generally. Where participation has risen, it has largely been along traditionally gendered lines – more women studying the biological sciences, subjects allied to medicine, and other subjects such as psychology. Little has happened to disrupt traditional gendered patterns of participation.
The recruitment of female scientists is often framed in policy discussions as a way to overcome perceived shortfalls in the numbers of STEM workers and tends to be motivated by economic concerns rather than a desire to include more women in important and fulfilling careers. This is an important point, especially when, as our research has shown, studying STEM subjects is generally advantageous for men in terms of accessing highly skilled STEM employment but was not always associated with higher-status occupations among women.
What should schools do to get more girls and young women into STEM? How can schools support them?
The response to this does depend on the extent to which you see this as an education problem, and on what you consider to be the nature and purpose of school science education.
Science has been compulsory in state schools in England and Wales since 1988 and so millions of young people study (and have studied) science until the age of 16. Science in schools is generally well-taught and requires a huge allocation of resources to deliver, particularly in terms of providing the teachers to teach these subjects. The teaching profession tends to be the largest employer of physical and biological science graduates and so, to some extent, the cycle becomes self-serving – you need more STEM graduates to teach the next generation of STEM teachers and so on.
There are also a number of potentially conflicting roles for school science education. Is its purpose to provide scientific training for a minority in preparation for university and the labor market? Or is there a broader social aim of educating a scientifically literate population, as well as encouraging an enjoyment of learning science for its own sake?
We know that making science compulsory more than 30 years ago had little impact on recruitment to STEM subjects at university, and so it is difficult to see what further efforts schools can make – particularly within a system that restricts choice of subjects post-16, and again at university.
The notion of adding to the future output of highly skilled STEM workers through initiatives that focus on "science for all" would be a costly and arguably inefficient mechanism through which to encourage future growth of the STEM labor market.
Is there anyone else who has influence in this area? What should they do?
Unsurprisingly, employers have been central to the push for policy interventions that focus on increasing the number of highly skilled STEM workers, often through emphasizing the need to improve training and increase recruitment to STEM education programs at post-compulsory levels. While most would agree with the need for a highly skilled STEM workforce, it is important to note that most workers in highly skilled STEM jobs are not graduates and are likely to have learned their skills "on the job."
So, one focus of efforts to attract and retain more women, and men, into STEM occupations might be to focus on the quality and nature of the training that they receive when in employment. This is particularly important when the data tells us that, at least as far as graduate recruitment to highly skilled STEM jobs goes, if graduates do not enter the field soon after graduation, they are likely never to do so. STEM degree holders changing careers and moving into the STEM sector many years after graduation is unusual and so there might be scope for enhancing work-based training for STEM graduates, however rusty their knowledge, who seek a change of direction mid-career to join the STEM workforce.
As mentioned earlier, initiatives to increase female participation in STEM at all levels have been notable for their lack of success in making any large and sustained impact on levels of recruitment in both education and the labor market. As our analyses have shown, female STEM graduates are generally less likely than their male peers to work in STEM jobs, and educational participation among women was highest in the STEM subject areas that had the lowest levels of graduate employment in the STEM workforce. Importantly, existing research suggests several aspects of working in the STEM sector that might make it unattractive to women. A considerable gender pay gap exists within scientific careers, and it has been widely reported that women studying and working in the male-dominated STEM sectors face a "toxic culture" of discrimination and harassment and are overlooked for promotion.
If their experiences of studying STEM – and their experiences in their first jobs – are discouraging women from pursuing careers in the field, the traditional model of increasing supply at the earlier stages of the STEM "pipeline" will not translate into long-term participation in the sector. Given that the vast majority of graduates – regardless of degree subject or gender – go on to work in graduate-level and high-status positions by the time they are 30, female STEM graduates are likely to have many employment opportunities that appear more desirable than those offered by employers in the STEM sector.
It may be a case of "STEM needing women more than women needing STEM", and perhaps only fundamental reform to the structure of the reward system and the occupational culture will change these patterns of participation.
Further reading
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2ySo much value here, Taylor & Francis Group Thank you for sharing.