Abstract
Women are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers, and this poses new challenges at the dawn of the era of digital transformation. The goal of the present study is to demonstrate how female role models influence girls’ preferences for STEM studies. This paper evaluates a role-model intervention in which female volunteers working in STEM go into schools to talk to girls about their careers. The study was conducted with 304 girls, from 12 years old (sixth primary grade) to 16 years old (fourth secondary grade), both before and after the role-model sessions. An adaptation of the expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation is used to test the extent to which this role-model intervention improves girls’ beliefs that they can be successful in STEM fields and increases their likelihood of choosing a STEM career. The results of multigroup structural equation modeling analysis show that on average, the role-model intervention has a positive and significant effect on mathematics enjoyment, importance attached to math, expectations of success in math, and girls’ aspirations in STEM, and a negative effect on gender stereotypes. Additionally, the female role-model sessions significantly increase the positive impact of expectations of success on STEM choices. Finally, the moderation role of the counterstereotypical content of the role-model sessions is tested. The results show that the higher the counterstereotypical character of the sessions, the higher the relationship between expectations of success in math and the choice of STEM. These results are discussed regarding their implications for long-term STEM engagement.
Highlights
The proportion of women university students has increased from 46% in 1985 to 56% in 2017, and this has helped to improve their presence in the labor market, which on average means growth from 50.8% in 1985 to 52.5% in 2017 in countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2018a,b,c)
We examine the effectiveness of a current and innovative role-model-based intervention on the perceptions that young girls have of gender stereotypes about mathematical competence, expectation of success in math, their degree of math enjoyment, and the importance attached to math, and how all of these contribute to shaping the likelihood that girls will choose STEM careers
General guidelines for the cut-off values of the different indicators suggest that an adequate fit is supported by root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) < 0.06, comparative fit index (CFI) > 0.90, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) > 0.90, and χ2/df < 2 (e.g., Byrne, 1998; Hu and Bentler, 1999; Raykov and Marcoulides, 2000)
Summary
The proportion of women university students has increased from 46% in 1985 to 56% in 2017, and this has helped to improve their presence in the labor market, which on average means growth from 50.8% in 1985 to 52.5% in 2017 in countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2018a,b,c). Gender equality in the workplace is far from being achieved This labor gender gap is especially acute in professions that tend to be male dominated, with a high technological and mathematical component (i.e., fields known by the acronym STEM, for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) (Kahn and Ginther, 2017). Advances already achieved are in jeopardy with the digital transformation of the labor market, which might increase the economic gender gap produced by the underrepresentation of women in emerging professions. In Spain (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional (MEFP), 2019), women are severely underrepresented in physical science (25.3%), electrical engineering (20.5%), electronics engineering (15.2%), computer science (12.0%), civil engineering (28.3%), industrial engineering (24.7%) and aeronautical engineering (23.5%), and they are overrepresented in fields oriented to biology and health, such as medicine (66.4%), biomedical engineering (59.1%), biology (61.8%), and chemistry (54.2%). Removing the barriers that prevent women from accessing the science, research, and technology sectors will be key to changing the current academic orientation, which is essential for combating new forms of gender inequality (Shapiro et al, 2011)
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