Though it’s tightening just about every year, there remains a fairly sizeable discrepency between the number of male students pursuing STEM compared to females. Despite conscious efforts from school and educational leaders, it’s tough to get girls as interested in STEM as their male counterparts. In fact, a great deal of female students lose interest by the time they’re in third or fourth grade. Why this may be is anybody’s guess, but some of the top reasons include the belief among these students that they’re not as qualified as males and just a legitimate lack of interest. We know, however, that the STEM fields are incredibly important and hope to find a way to narrow the gender gap on a consistent basis.

Why do so Few Girls Study STEM Subjects?

To better understand how educators can get more girls interested in and pursuing STEM, it is, of course, important to understand why they are not already doing so. We can speculate about the lack of interest and perceived lack of ability, but, through research, educational leaders should be able to pinpoint some more precise factors. The lack of women in STEM professions does often result from a much smaller percentage of women who decide to major in and attain a STEM degree, however. Even with intervention programs designed to shrink this gap, the number is closing only very slowly. Besides this, there is also the notion that young girls commonly develop—based on a whole pool of factors—that they are biologically inferior to boys when it comes to science and intelligence, something that seems innocent, but has an important link to the gender gap.

Another reported factor in the persistence of the gender gap is the pressure girls face in school. As we all know, test scores make up a significant portion of grades and it’s been found that this anxiety causes worse performance on tests, ultimately deterring female students from pursuing STEM. Then, there is the social side of things and, as much as we don’t want to admit it, the way female students see themselves often hinges on how they are portrayed in the media and in society. Researchers in some countries have even speculated that the STEM gender gap would disappear if males and females were portrayed more equally. Girls develop gender-based biases about intelligence very early on and, unfortunately, this often ends up coming back and playing a role in whether or not they have an interest in the STEM subjects.

Despite these preconceived beliefs, there is actually little evidence to back up the idea that males and females have different abilities when it comes to STEM skills. Still, the best way to stop these stereotypes from forming is to attack them early. Whether it’s helping young girls find inspirational role models or making STEM seem as appealing as possible, the crucial time is right around 6-8 years old. Perhaps it’s because there aren’t a whole lot of female STEM teachers, but young girls in today’s classrooms need guidance and excitement or there will continue to be an underrepresentation of women in the STEM workforce and in STEM classrooms. To help curb this trend, it’s important for educational leaders to get involved with the schooling of young girls and to consistently encourage them towards STEM subjects in both obvious and subtle ways.

The Programming Gender Gap Develops Early

Research shows that when it comes to coding and other STEM disciplines, there is a perceived gender gap between males and females. It also indicates that this perceived separation is not entirely created by girls themselves, but that the way they are treated in schools by male classmates also has a significant effect on girls’ attitudes towards STEM. What’s a bit more troubling is that almost three-quarters of high school girls understand that programming skills are likely to be very important to them in the future, but still are not interested in pursuing STEM anyway. When it comes to coding and programming specifically, boys are nearly twice as likely to pursue further education in this area. Since coding makes up a large part of the modern workforce, this feedback is somewhat of a cause for concern.

The difference between males and females is much larger than educational experts expected and obviously this is not something we want to see. Especially when the tech sector is focused on fostering gender equality and the amount of STEM jobs is increasing, girls need to be staking their claim as part of that workforce. There is already an overwhelming skills shortage in the tech industry and no signs to indicate there will be any less demand for skilled workers. Discouragement among girls begins as early as elementary school and, by high school, many of them are completely dissuaded from exploring STEM, especially in co-ed environments. For that reason, educators need to do a better job not only of inspiring girls, but also making them feel more welcomed from an early age.

Not surprisingly, there are tons of different cases in which girls drift away from STEM because they don’t feel welcomed due to a lack of female peers. This is even causing the girls who do want to pursue coding and computer science to have second thoughts and, a lot of the time, abandon their goals. Conversely, in all-girls coding classes, the environment is much more welcoming and generally leads to girls sticking with the subject for a longer period of time. Although not all that practical, this could be a potential solution to encouraging more girls to stick with programming during their high school years. Confidence is generally the key when it comes to a student deciding to pursue something STEM-related in the long-term and girls in the early grades need their confidence built up so they feel like they belong in these environments.

How to Stop the Gender Gap in Tech and Coding

The gender gap in the current tech industry stems from the gender gap that’s created in our education systems. People often ask why there are so few women in STEM professions compared to men and the answer can often be traced back to their early years of schooling and what their education system does and does not do for them. What starts in the education system transfers later in life to the technology industry and the notion that coding is predominantly for males is persisting as a problem. Female students, despite their interests, rarely hear about other women making a splash in the STEM professions and it’s just as rare for them to have friends who are also interested in something like game design or robotics and this, unfortunately, deters many girls from giving STEM a fair chance.

One approach that’s show promise in getting girls interested in STEM is the introduction of afterschool coding clubs. These clubs can be very informal, but can also offer girls a comfortable environment in which to explore their interests and build important STEM skills. This can also help improve female students’ perception of coding and STEM in general, especially if they experience positive results from the get go. While it may not alleviate all the apprehensions girls have about exploring STEM, it could at least help them develop some key skills that could very well come in handy a few years later. Creating a space for girls to code and engineer could help end this stigma and help them see that STEM is not just for boys.

In order to close the STEM gender gap among adults, efforts need to begin when girls are in school. As we know, sometimes it becomes too late for them to transition to a STEM profession if they had not had enough experience throughout their lives. It’s probably not a good thing that the gender biases six, seven, and eight-year-old girls witness are swept under the rug with so much frequency. Although it seems harmless because they are so young, they are also incredibly impressionable and we’ve already made it clear that a lack of interest in STEM begins very early in a girl’s life. Eliminating the gender gap, especially in STEM, requires more than investing money in programs. It requires a more important investment—one in wiping out centuries worth of cultural conditioning, which has made women feel inferior to men because now that’s making its way into a very male-dominated tech workforce.

Is the Gender Gap Hurting the Economy?

We hear time and again that, despite being the greatest nation in the world, the United States is behind other leading nations in key educational and economic areas. While this gap is probably not too enormous, we are definitely suffering from a bit of a STEM crisis, which is hampering the country’s economic growth to a certain extent. Many argue that we are facing a computing skills crisis as well, which is stunting our economic growth because so much of the current economy is reliant on STEM professions. And, a lot of those people are quick to point out that a potential solution to this equation lies with girls and young women. For some perspective, there are approximately 500,000 vacant computing jobs today, about 40,000 computer science graduates every year, and women make up only about 7,000 of them.

Doing some quick math, it’s revealed that if the number of male and female computer science graduates were not separated by 33,000, there would be much less of a shortage of skilled workers. Women make up half of the talent pool, but hardly any of them are obtaining degrees and becoming part of the STEM economy. Even despite new efforts to make computer science education appealing to everyone, the percentage of women in the computing workforce keeps dwindling and has fallen below 25 percent. Girls Who Code took this a step further and concluded that this number will shrink down to 22 percent by 2025 if the way girls are taught computer science in grade school does not change.

Obviously, with all of the unfilled STEM jobs and the lack of female representation in the industry, the gender gap is taking a bit of a toll on the economy. This, oftentimes, goes back to how girls are being taught computer science in school. They are being taught—just not always in the right way. Research shows that girls are more likely to study and take an interest in computer science if they have a female teacher. Okay, schools can try to incorporate this. And, again, girls shy away from STEM because of a perceived gender imbalance that they get from the media. Okay, educators can try to eliminate this. It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do, but narrowing this gap of 33,000 some odd workers requires tailoring computer science to girls in a better way and beginning to do so in elementary and middle school.  

What’s Being Done to Close the Gender Gap in STEM

Money and a renewed commitment to inspiring girls to pursue STEM are each important in getting more girls into computer science and coding, but there is another piece of the puzzle, too. More and more, state officials are proposing and passing bills to make it more difficult for girls to turn away from studying STEM. While it may seem like this could be portrayed as forcing them into something they might not want to do, the intentions are clearly to help them develop their skills to improve their futures and work towards closing the tech industry’s gender gap. These federally funded programs are not necessarily intended to get girls coding during the school day, but to provide them with a comfortable space—as we discussed earlier—where they can explore STEM at any time.

One of these programs has been dubbed the ‘Code Like a Girl Act’ and was revealed last summer with bipartisan support. With the passing of the bill, lawmakers were focused on finding new ways to break barriers and get girls participating more in STEM so they can build the necessary skills to enter the workforce. With this particular bill, research is going to be done to uncover better ideas for how to get girls aged 10 and younger in particular to explore computer science in the classroom. Girls obviously have minds that are just as intelligent and creative as boys and this bill was passed with the intention of closing the gap that’s been depriving our country of utilizing these talented minds to solve some of the most challenging problems.

Along with being supported by a number of active politicians, the bill also received endorsement from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing. This group works to promote the increasingly growing presence of women in computer science professions. With the increased funding allocated for closing the gender gap, it’s certainly a step in the right direction, though some might argue that using those funds for creating STEM programs geared specifically towards girls would be money better spent. In any case, the bill should allow experts to more accurately pinpoint the root of the long-standing underrepresentation of women in STEM. Hopefully, in the near future, there will be more legislation that helps boost female interest in STEM and we can start actively closing the gender gap in tech.


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