How can we STEM the tide of women graduates leaving science? | Gender Parity - World Economic Forum

Designing a new world means we need a mixture of new policies and stories about women making waves in science, technology and innovation by Shamika Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics.

Full STEM ahead ... career choices are not free from the constructs of social barriers.
Photo: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett

Gender bias can be illustrated using a simple Google exercise. Type into Google Translate: “She is a scientist. He is a nurse.”

Translate it into a language that does not have gender pronouns, such as Georgian or Turkish.

When it comes back in English, the result shown after automatic translation is: “He is a scientist. She is a nurse”.

Just as the devil is in the detail, the bias is in the algorithm.

According to the 2015 UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030, women now account for 53% of the world’s bachelor's and master's graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) but just 30% of researchers. Women leave the sector at much higher rates than men, which represents a waste of social investment and individual effort, and suggests that there are structural problems around retaining women in STEM carriers...

Bringing women into the fold So how can we attract and retain women in STEM fields? Well, different countries face different challenges.

Recent research suggests that the reasons why STEM professions do not appeal to women in some societies are multiple and complex.

But what seems to matter most are aspirations that are molded by parental expectations, social norms and lack of information that affect career decisions, and institutional bias that constrain women’s entrance and progress.
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Source: World Economic Forum