Women in STEM: Beyond Enrollment

Despite policy interventions, corporate diversity initiatives, and educational reforms, women remain highly underrepresented globally in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

- JOHN J KENNEDY

Despite policy interventions, corporate diversity initiatives, and educational reforms, women remain highly underrepresented globally in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). According to UNESCO's 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report, women constituted only 35 percent of STEM graduates, and their share had seen negligible growth over the previous decade.

This is striking given the rapid expansion of STEM-linked industries and the increasing demand for technical expertise. The underrepresentation of women is even more pronounced in cutting-edge disciplines such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and engineering, where female participation drops to 12-26 percent. These disparities raise critical questions about the structural and cultural barriers that exclude women from the fields of the future.

A closer examination of the data reveals a paradox: girls often perform as well as boys in mathematics and science during early schooling, yet their confidence in these subjects erodes over time. UNESCO's findings suggest this decline in self-assurance, rather than aptitude, is a decisive factor in deterring girls from pursuing STEM careers. The reasons can be traced to deeply ingrained gender stereotypes that position technical and analytical fields as inherently masculine domains. Educational systems often unwittingly reinforce these biases through gendered career counseling, a lack of visible female role models, and pedagogical approaches that fail to engage girls in hands-on STEM learning, leading them to internalize the notion that they do not belong in these spaces.