Female education in STEM

Female education in STEM includes child and adult female represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM ). In 2017, 33% of female students in STEM are women due to discrimination, biases, social norms and expectations that influence the quality of education they receive and the subjects they study. Girls’ and women's under-representation in STEM is deep rooted and puts a detrimental brake on progress towards sustainable development.

Gender differences in STEM education participation at the expense of girls are visible as early as in early childhood care and education in science- and math-related play, and become are pronounced at higher levels of education. Girls appear to lose interest in STEM subjects with age, particularly between early and late adolescence. This decreased interest affects participation in advanced studies at secondary-level. Gender gaps in STEM education participation become more obvious in higher education. Female students represent only 35% of all students enrolled in STEM-related fields of study at this level globally. Differences are also observed by disciplines, with female enrolment lowest in engineering, manufacturing and construction, natural science, mathematics and statistics and ICT fields. Significant regional and country differences in female representation in STEM studies can be observed, suggesting the presence of contextual factors affecting girls’ and women’s engagement in these fields. Women leave STEM disciplines in disproportionate numbers during their higher education studies, in their transition to the world of work and even in their career cycle.

Data on gender differences in learning achievement present a complex picture, depending on what is measured (subject, knowledge acquisition against knowledge application), the level of education/age of students, and geographic location. Overall, there is a positive trend in terms of closing the gender gap in STEM-related learning achievement in girls’ favour, but significant regional variations exist. For example, where data are available in Africa, and, Latin America and the Caribbean, the gender gap is largely in favour of boys in mathematics achievement in secondary education. In contrast, in the Arab States, girls perform better than boys in both subjects in primary and secondary education. As with the data on participation, national and regional variations in data on learning achievement suggest the presence of contextual factors affecting girls’ and women’s engagement in these fields. Girls’ achievement seems to be stronger in science than mathematics and where girls do better than boys, the score differential is up to three times higher, than where boys do better. Girls tend to outperform boys in certain sub-topics such as ‘biology’ and ‘chemistry’ but do less well in ‘physics’ and ‘earth science’. Improvements have been observed over time in reducing the gender gap in science in secondary education among TIMSS trend countries, 14 out of 17 participating countries had no gender gap in science in 2015, compared to only one in 1995. However, the limited number of countries does not allow for the generalization of these findings. The gender gap in boy's favour is slightly bigger in mathematics but improvements over time in girls’ favour are also observed in certain countries, despite the important regional variations. Gender differences are observed within mathematic sub-topics with girls outperforming boys in topics such as ‘algebra’ and ‘geometry’ but doing less well in ‘number’. Girls’ performance is stronger in assessments that measure knowledge acquisition than those measuring knowledge application. This difference might suggest that although girls’ knowledge in science and mathematics has increased, they might need to work more on the application of their knowledge and skills in these fields. Country coverage in terms of data availability is quite limited while data is collected at different frequency and against different variables in the existing studies. There are large gaps in our knowledge of the situation in low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and South and West Asia, particularly at secondary level. There is a need for a broader set of internationally comparative data that covers more countries across all regions.

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