What needs to be done to get more daughters into Stem careers

It is the duty of everyone — from board members to subordinates — to help plug the gap in mentorship and opportunities for women who want to enter these industries

- Abel Ang

For parents of daughters considering a career in Stem, I am sure that by now you have read, or heard about, The Sunday Times feature which called out how fewer than one in four women in these industries "believe they have support to succeed".

Stem stands for the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

According to the article, despite new sectors, jobs and technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), which allow women who did not study Stem to pursue careers in Stem industries, women make up only 35 per cent of the Stem workforce.

Given the dismal statistics at the workforce level, it follows that women are also underrepresented at the management levels.

I've heard from several women leaders in my network that they were glad to see the article openly discussing their lived realities.

It gave voice to their struggles, usually spoken about only in hushed whispers.

The barriers to women in Stem are real: lack of mentorship, unequal pay and outdated ideas of what women should be doing on the career front.

Unfortunately, the unequal standing of women in Stem has not seen the same breakthroughs as medicine.

For years, there was a quota capping the number of females admitted to study medicine at a third of the medical school cohort locally.

Since the quota was lifted in 2003, women now make up half of each freshmen medical student cohort. NUS' Yong Loo Lin medical school admitted a record 60 per cent of females in its freshmen cohort in 2025.

When they graduate, female doctors can access a growing and increasingly comprehensive network of education, mentorship and support programmes to help them develop and stay in their careers.

An example is the Association of Women Doctors (Singapore), which aims to enhance the professional development and well-being of its members in the medical and dental profession by providing a support platform for networking and communication.