Getting Girls Involved in STEM: 9 Experts Share Their Tips
Women have always been interested in STEM, but in the past couple of years more and more women are seeing it as a viable option for their career path. While this is great, there’s still lots of work to do when it comes to getting young girls involved in STEM. Fun creative content needs to play a big role in STEM education, and it’s been proven that girls in STEM need more encouragement than boys. Special thought needs to be put into kid-friendly content for girls, and these nine women in STEM have shared their thoughts and tips with Kidzsmart on how to accomplish this.
Poh Tan PhD ’08, PhD (ABD) is the CEO and Founder of STEMedge Academy Inc.
Poh Tan PhD (she/her)
“You’re a scientist? BUT, you’re a girl?”
“Math is not for everyone, but that means creativity is more for you!”
“Oh! You like science? That’s great! You’ll be really good in the health care industry!”
These are questions that I and my female colleagues have been asked throughout our professional and academic STEM journey. It is the year 2021 and I continue to get surprising reactions when I introduce myself as an entrepreneur and a stem cell scientist. Across Canada, the number of women who pursued and were awarded a graduate degree at the master’s and Doctorate level in STEM fields was at 37.2% and 33.9% in 2009, respectively. Both women and men have made discoveries within the field of science, yet men are recognized more, and publications authored by male researchers are seen to have greater quality than publications written by women.
Despite stereotypes of women who pursue STEM fields, it is encouraging to know that as we progress and advocate for more gender equity more women and girls are pursuing a career within the field of STEM. However, despite the increasing trend of women in STEM, in 2016 women only represented 20.06% of those employed in STEM fields in Canada. In addition to institutional and societal barriers, stereotypes about certain STEM areas, and historically gendered STEM disciplines (e.g., math is for boys, art is for girls) continues to contribute to gender inequality in STEM. A study done in 2020 showed that young girls, ages 12 to 16 years old who are connected to, mentored by, and exposed to female STEM role models, tend to “reduce gender stereotypes, increase expectations of success, strengthen the success of girls’ STEM choices, thereby increasing the number of STEM graduates” (Gonzalez-Perez et al., 2020).
Mentoring and coaching throughout my academic and professional journey has contributed significantly towards my development as both an entrepreneur and scientist. Although not all my mentors were female, all of them coached me from three core values: care, respect, and honesty. Personalized coaching and mentoring helped me realized my passion for science, education, and research, and more importantly gave me the confidence to break the stereotypical mold often am placed into as a female, BIPOC scientist.
What can mentoring and coaching do for student in STEM? As a scientist and educator, and through my experience coaching many students in high school and women pursuing their masters and doctoral degrees, personalized mentoring and coaching translates to a development of trust, commitment, growth, resilience, and independence. Experiencing and seeing another person who looks just like you become successful in a field you are pursuing builds one’s self-esteem and confidence, and thus, breaks stereotypes created by societal expectations and institutional structures.
I have many mentors and coaches whom I would like to thank for continuing to believe in me, in my passions, and who are there when life gets a little rough. You give me strength, confidence, and courage to break stereotypes and challenge the status quo towards creating and building a future where girls can proudly say “I am a scientist, AND I am a girl!”
STEMedge Academy Inc. is where academic learning coaches work with high school students through a 1:1 personalized learning model to develop transferable life-long learning skills in STEM. Poh is the Director of Strategic Partnerships Development and Fundraising for the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST), where she manages the organization’s fundraising team to build and scale innovative partnerships and fundraising initiatives, to support and empower women and girls in STEM. Poh Tan is also a two-time TEDx speaker, a published author and scholar, and an entrepreneur.
You can view her Tedx talks here:
Kelly Reina is the STEM Program Specialist for the National Girls Collaborative Project
Kelly Reina (she/her)
The ways that we (educators, guardians, and the media) introduce girls to STEM is crucial in their interest, and future pursuit, of STEM. We have the opportunity to nurture a connection between girls and STEM through representation (showing girls women who look like them in STEM), language (speaking of STEM as collaborative and part of daily life), support (allowing girls the chance to engage in STEM activities), and empowering girls to face challenges head on (there is no “failure”, only learning experiences).
This last point, empowering girls to embrace struggle, is imperative. Working directly with youth, I see girls who expect perfection of themselves, which is unrealistic and unhealthy. We need to foster a growth mindset in girls; this way, when faced with an obstacle, girls feel they can confidently work hard and navigate their way through.
To have girls and women well represented in STEM (as well as people representing all genders, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, etc.), benefits humanity, increasing diverse perspectives and attitudes, leading to more ingenuity and insights. Promoting women in STEM means promoting society, as well as STEM.
Jolene Gustafson is the Director of Digital at the National Girls Collaborative Project
Jolene Gustafson (she/her)
Even though I liked science, I quickly dismissed STEM as a career option in high school. I didn't know anyone who worked in science and, in the absence of role models, lacked the imagination to see how I might fit in. It was only later when I had career opportunities that I found my way into a career that blended my education in journalism and publishing with my affinity for science and technology. Helping girls see and meet diverse, inspiring women in STEM is what I love most about my work with the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP). I want all girls to be able to envision the many STEM career paths open to them, not be limited to the immediate role models in their lives.
The vision of the National Girls Collaborative Project is to bring together organizations throughout the United States that are committed to informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
The goals of NGCP are to:
Maximize access to shared resources within projects, and with public and private sector organizations and institutions interested in expanding girls’ participation in STEM.
Strengthen capacity of existing and evolving projects by sharing exemplary practice research and program models, outcomes, and products.
Use the leverage of a network and the collaboration of individual girl-serving STEM programs to create the tipping point for gender equity in STEM.
Donna Milgram is the Executive Director of the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science
Donna Milgram
What is the secret to recruiting women and girls to your STEM classrooms? It’s no secret at all. Women and girls need to see female role models in the workplace that look like them—over and over and over again. They need to receive the message that women can work in STEM careers and be successful and fulfilled in their work life while still having a personal life, and they need to receive this message repeatedly. When I conduct IWITTS’ WomenTech Educator Trainings, the first exercise we do is called “Messages.” We brainstorm the messages that are sent by teachers, counselors, peers, and parents/significant others to women and girls about the STEM classroom. I’ve been doing this exercise for over 17 years around the country, and wherever I am—whether it’s Idaho, Massachusetts, California, or Nebraska—the messages sent to women and girls are at best mixed and at worst overwhelmingly negative, as in “This is not a career for you.”
In light of this, it’s no surprise that educators need to repeatedly send a corrective, strong, positive message to women and girls: Yes, You Can! When negative messaging is combined with the current workplace reality—a very small percentage of women in many engineering, technology, and trades careers—it’s easy to see the importance of having an outreach campaign targeting women and girls in STEM.
Donna Milgram is a nationally recognized expert and speaker. The Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science teaches STEM Educators proven and researched techniques for increasing the number of female students in STEM education programs.
Angela DeHart is the Founder & CEO of STEM Impressionists
Angela DeHart (she/her)
Did you know that women make up 49.58% of the human population? Then why are they only 29% of people in STEM fields? Interest in STEM manifests differently in girls than in boys. Girls usually learn very early in their educational career that their interest in STEM is referred to as odd, different, or completely “wrong.
Students that I have mentored have told me that they have been called “crazy,” had robot parts thrown at them or believed that “microscopes are for boys.” All of these negative messages and toxic experiences dissuade thousands of girls from developing, exploring, and continuing to study STEM!
In fact, "although we know that diversity leads to 'better business decisions up to 87% of the time" engaging girls, especially girls of color into STEM fields is a challenge! So, the next time you want a girl to come to your STEM event do more than a tape a poster on the wall or make an announcement over the school news channel – instead:
Take the time to personally invite a girl to a STEM event. Girls like to be asked, sometimes more than once, to come to an event. They like to feel special, wanted, and/or able to bring a friend with them!
If/when they attend make sure you take the time to say hello! Their effort to take a risk needs to encouraged and reinforced. If that happens, and they have had fun, my experience is that they come back – and tell other girls!
Keep a couple of spots open for girls on a team….it may take longer to find some girls to fill the spot but they are worth waiting for! Then make sure that every person on the team knows and participates in every job needed to make the team successful. No gender allocated roles!
Make sure to acknowledge the contribution of female scientists. Get posters, STEM toys, inventions, crafts, activities, etc. that were invented by STEM women and have them available in your classroom! Make sure that there are stories of women in science in your lectures and presentations. It is much easier to believe in women in STEM when you constantly see and interact with their amazing inventions and/or hear about their valuable contributions!
Make sure that your classroom has girls on the roster and that the library has books that look like the girls that are in your classes!
When girls make up less than a third of a class of 30 kids their voice tends to get lost in the mix, but if there are 15 or more girls in the room, they feel supported and able to contribute!
Angela DeHart, Founder & CEO of STEM Impressionists, has won many awards over the past few years. She was a recipient of the Virginia Lottery Super Teacher Award in 2017 and won the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) AiC Educator Award in 2021. She has also taken part in Open Mic Night TedTalks.
The main objectives of STEM Impressionists is to introduce STEM to students and their peers, engage participants with STEM activities that they can use as evidence for their resumes for college applications, and create career path exploration by introducing girls to all of their options.
April McKnight is a Secondary STEM Educational Consultant working with international schools across the world
April McKnight (she/her)
Things are changing so quickly. Ten years from now, everything could and will be done by machines and computers so why not prepare girls for the future? This has always been in my mind my whole career as an educator. I have always believed you can be anything you want to be, and I started that early on in life. As a child, I wanted to be a neurologist and I was determined so I took every math, science, engineering and technology class I could. But I noticed I was alone in these classes as the only girl. And it became even more evident, when a physics teacher asked me why I was there and reminded me that girls don't take physics in high school. Boom! This changed the trajectory of my life immensely. I decided that day, yes I should be in physics class and I will be top in his class. I made it my goal to get girls to take these classes and show them it was fun and that they would excel.
STEM courses focus on key skills like critical thinking, problem solving and analysis and require collaboration, communication and teamwork. All of these are lifelong learning skills that everyone, all genders, need in their future careers. So how can we make STEM appealing to girls? Simply give them the opportunities to try it early on and have them see that they aren’t the first or only one there. I was modelling that the gender norms didn't apply at my schools, I was the female chemistry, physics, and computer teacher. We need to show our students and the female STEM leaders in our communities, countries, and around the world, all the possible STEM jobs out there now, and possible future careers. Let girls explore everything we can offer as examples of STEM through classes, clubs, project-based learning or field trips. If you can see women in action in STEM jobs, you can see yourself there and personalize the learning. If the learning is personal, enjoyment for learning comes, and girls will want to continue this area of study.
Elana Jacobs, M.Ed is a Special Education, Science and ESL Teacher with Chicago Public Schools
Elana Jacobs (she/her)
I am a huge fan of field trips, summer camps, Saturday schools, and 1 day STEM community events that will bring more girls into the STEM field. These same ideas will help bring more BIPOC and non-binary youth in to STEM too. These out of school STEM experiences spark curiosity in youth and inspire them to research on their own and find answers to different aspects of science and engineering. This is the responsibility of the libraries, park districts, STEM department, and university outreach to plan and implement incredible STEM experiences that inspire next generation of STEM problem solvers. Every aspect of a girl’s life is important and can be incorporated into science. People’s unique experiences lead to solving problems or finding solutions to parts of life that others did not even know were a problem.
STEM is everywhere and youth need to be empowered to tell their own story of successes and failures. Have lots of interesting after school hands-on science activities that take place on college campuses for k-12th grade youth, So that from a young age they can envision themselves at college. These activities should be led by women and BIPOC STEM leaders of all ages, and should be fun, interdisciplinary, low cost and have easily accessible transportation options that are led by women and BIPOC STEM leaders of all ages. It is the curiosity, scholarship access, academic freedom, and mentorship that will help women and BIPOC people stay in the STEM field and slog through the difficult chemistry or math classes to graduate with a STEM degree.
Suw Charman-Anderson is the Founder and CEO of FindingAda.com
Suw Charman-Anderson
Girls are fascinated by science, technology, engineering, and math when they’re young. They’re good at it too. Girls outperform boys in science in many countries, and in the UK, they outperform boys in the majority of STEM subjects at GCSE level. Girls start their lives curious, capable, and enthusiastic, but as they grow up, they start to believe that STEM just isn’t for them. At around age 10, as their self-identity begins to cohere, they have already excluded themselves from STEM careers.
Most campaigns focus on channeling positive messages towards girls, or giving them enjoyable and fun experiences, in the hope that this will encourage them to stay curious about STEM. But decades of campaigning haven’t had much of an impact. Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong direction: It’s not girls who need to change, it’s adults.
To convince girls to follow their STEM hearts, we need to convince their parents that these careers are suitable for their daughters. In the UK, just 7% of parents would recommend engineering to their daughters, largely due to misconceptions that it’s a dirty or physically demanding career. And parents admit that they generally don’t know enough about STEM careers to be able to talk confidently to their children about them. Yet parents who do emphasize the importance of math and science have a lasting positive impact on their children’s interest in STEM.
Teachers also need to know more about STEM careers, and to be more aware of the impact of stereotypes not just on their pupils, but also on their own behavior towards the girls in their classes. Math anxiety, for example, is transmissible and teachers can inadvertently pass it on to their female students.
Educators must also actively combat the gender stereotypes rife in STEM textbooks and curricula. In research where female students were presented with chemistry lessons featuring images of women, they did better than when they saw images of men. Yet many teachers are either unaware of this problem or lack the support and resources to tackle it.
We need to stop assuming that the solution lies in changing how girls think. Instead, we should put a lot more energy and money into supporting parents and educators and helping them combat unconscious gender bias and tackle stereotypes. Girls just need to keep on being the amazing, inquisitive, and gifted STEMthusiasts that they are born to be.
Finding Ada inspires and supports women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). She runs Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women’s achievements in STEM and the Finding Ada Network, an online mentorship platform.
Roshni Arun is the Founder and President of Girls in STEM
Roshni Arun (she/her)
As a high school student, women in STEM have been my role models throughout my life. Influential STEM pioneers like Rosalind Franklin, to rising community leaders like Gitanjali Rao have shaped who I am today. Giving young girls an opportunity to get involved in STEM related activities is so essential in today’s industrial world of technology around every corner. Encouraging participation in a science club, robotics team, or math competition gives girls a place to explore their interests while simultaneously obtaining real-world soft-skills like communication or collaboration.
My experience with the STEM field has been life changing. It has taught me creativity and critical thinking, leadership and problem-solving, and so much more. Between science clubs after school, to weekly robotics competitions, to coding classes on python, I’ve learned so much. The cumulation of my interest in STEM led me to start my own student-lead initiative, Girls in STEM. Now with the help of other rising leaders my age, we work to teach courses, host competitions, write blogs, hold STEM nights, and engage with scientists and doctors, with one goal in mind; bolstering a love for STEM in girls nationwide.
Girls in STEM is a student-lead initiative working towards increasing female representation in STEM fields. The organization has united and inspired elementary and middle school girls nationwide through their dedicated mentors and spectrum of offerings.
There are lots of different things we can do to get girls involved in STEM. From providing mentors and role models who look like them, offering extra encouragement, tweaking the way we teach them about STEM and more. We need to ditch the pedestal – girls don’t need to be perfect; they just need their interest and achievements to be recognized. What we need is for more men and women to work together to show girls that STEM is for THEM!
Download our free e-book “Girl Power: Helping Girls Succeed in STEAM” today!
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