You will no doubt be aware that women are underrepresented in Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) occupations. They make up 14.4% of all people working in Stem in the UK, despite being about half of the workforce. This is well short of the country’s goal of a critical mass of 30%. Increasing women in Stem is forecast to increase the UK’s labour value by at least £2bn.
There is a whole tangle of reasons why the gender gap in Stem exists. One is a pipeline issue – fewer girls than boys choose to study Stem subjects at secondary school and university. Interventions internationally mean the numbers of girls in Stem subjects are creeping up very slowly, but the gap remains surprisingly resistant nonetheless.
Are girls biologically worse than boys at Stem subjects at school?
Biological explanations tend to rely on the fact that boys are better at spatial tasks while girls are better at verbal recall tasks. However, these differences are very small and their link to Stem ability is tenuous.
Meta-analyses consistently show that girls and boys are on average much more similar than they are different across a range of skills. For instance, a meta-analysis of gender differences in mathematics, based on 100 studies and testing more than three million people, found that girls outperformed boys overall in primary school, there was no difference in secondary school and there was only a very slight and inconsistent male advantage for complex problem solving.
Typically, girls do as well as or outperform boys in Stem classwork but do worse on tests. The International Student Assessment (Pisa) reports on 276,165 15-year-olds from 40 countries who take identical tests in mathematics and reading. In 2015, the average difference between high-achieving boys and girls was 19 points, the equivalent of about half a year at school. But these differences disappeared when factoring in reported levels of self-confidence or anxiety towards mathematics. On average, girls were more anxious about tests than boys were, and this seems to have affected their score.
Are gender gaps socially constructed?
Luigi Guiso and colleagues used the Pisa data to explore gender differences in maths performance. Overall, girls’ maths scores averaged 10.5 points (2%) lower than the mean average for boys, but this difference varied by country. In Turkey, for instance, the gender gap is greater (boys outperform girls by 22.6 points) while in Iceland the gender difference is reversed: girls outperform boys by 14.5 points.
The researchers then classified each country on the basis of gender equality, ie how much they treated women as equal to men. In more gender-neutral countries such as Norway and Sweden the maths gender gap disappeared. They state that if Turkey were characterised by the same gender equality seen in Sweden, the gender gap in maths would be eliminated.
Then why are there fewer women in Stem careers even in more gender-neutral countries?
These cultural effects suggest the gender gap in Stem careers should disappear in more gender-neutral countries. Yet we still find a higher proportion of men in Stem-related careers than women, even in gender-neutral Sweden. A study of 1,327 Swedish secondary school students explored why more boys are attracted to Stem subjects at university and more girls are attracted to subjects in the Heed (health, elementary education and domestic) spheres.
This difference was partially explained by “social belongingness”: teenagers felt they would fit in better in subjects that had more of their own gender. But another important factor was “self-efficacy”: the belief that one can succeed in a domain. We tend to approach domains where we feel we are competent and avoid those in which we do not. Boys and girls both had high self-efficacy in the Heed subjects, but boys chose not to pursue them. The researchers suggest that this may reflect the low social value and rewards associated with careers in these spheres.
In contrast, girls on average had much lower self-efficacy ratings in Stem, despite outperforming boys across school subjects. Even in one of the most gender-neutral countries in the world and despite the evidence of their own marks, girls still seem to be succumbing to the stereotype that girls aren’t as capable in these subjects.
Where do gender stereotypes come from?
This is a complicated question, and the answer is: lots of places. Even young children can absorb and be influenced by gender stereotypes, and these can be as detrimental for boys as they are for girls but in different ways. A recent study by Lin Bian, Sarah-Jane Leslie and Andrei Cimpian has shown that five-year-old girls are just as likely to say that girls can be “really, really smart” but from six years up they think brilliance is much more likely in boys.
From this age girls are also more likely to be attracted to a game if it is described as being for children who “work really hard” than if it is described as being for children who are “really smart”. Again, this is despite the fact that girls, on average, are outperforming boys in these subjects at school. These findings suggest gendered notions of intelligence are picked up very early and start having an effect on the sorts of interests that girls pursue.
How can we attract more girls to Stem subjects at university?
Research from these different perspectives converge on the idea that there is little to no difference in boys’ and girls’ average ability at Stem subjects. This means that in order to attract more girls to study Stem subjects at university and enter Stem careers, we need to tackle the stereotypes they are exposed to and we need to do this early.
One way to encourage girls is to use appropriate role models. As part of a campaign to coincide with today’s International Women’s Day, Speakezee, a platform that connects academics with non-academic audiences, is working with the Institute of Physics and the Girls’ School Association to send young female graduate Stem students into schools to talk to and inspire young teenage girls to consider pursuing Stem topics at A-level. Professor Brian Cox may be the popular face of physics for mass viewing audiences in the UK, but young girls need individuals they are more likely to relate to if they are to be persuaded not to abandon their Stem potential.
