Government backed initiatives to promote female participation in STEM

Government backed initiatives to promote female participation in STEM

This essay aims to explore the UK based initiatives designed to promote female participation within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical (STEM) disciplines focusing predominately on Physics.

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The essay will consider the different teaching techniques and styles that have been researched and implemented in order to appeal specifically to a female audience and their relative success in terms of encouraging females to pursue both higher education in STEM based disciplines and careers.

It has been well documented that women in STEM based subjects are under-represented which has lead to an absence of females actively employed within STEM careers.

Women were only 12.3 per cent of the workforce in all STEM occupations including health and skilled trades in 2008. This is, however, an increase of 2.0 percentage points since 2003 (Kirkup, et al., 2010.

Women and men in science, engineering and technology: the UK statistics guide 2010. Bradford: the UKRC) showing that there has been some successful work towards encouraging females towards STEM careers.

This under-representation is no more apparent than within the science discipline of Physics, which displays the persistent problem of a lack of girls continuing to study physics after the age of 16 (physics is a compulsory part of the GCSE curriculum).

A substantial number of girls do well at Key Stage 4 but do not choose to study physics post-16. In 2005, only 14% of girls who were awarded an A* or A for GCSE Double Award Science or physics progressed to A level physics (Hollins et al., 2006).

Whilst there has been a small year-on-year increase in the number of A level physics candidates between 2006 and 2008 (Institute of Physics, 2008), there has been little change in the proportion of girls that have taken the subject post-16. In 2008, only 22% of the entries for A-level Physics were female (Institute of Physics, 2008).

These statistics can be seen clearly in the appendix where the number of female entries in 2008 actually illustrates a decrease in female uptake in comparison to 2007 of -0.3%. In addition, recruitment to biology has remained relatively stable with more females than males being entered for A-level examinations.

Chemistry entries for both male and females are relatively equal and mathematics still sees a top-heavy male count, although less dramatically than physics.

There has been an extensive amount of research into the potential reasons behind the consistently low numbers of females within Physics. The development of institutionalised education in England was based on principles of class and gender differentiation (Purvis, 1981) and many scholars attribute existing gender culture today to their historical roots where middle-class girls were to be educated to take up roles as wives and mothers of elite men.

Consequently, physics, with its high mathematical content and often abstract ideas, was a subject thought suitable only to males with girls focusing on the religious and moral aspects of science and the possibilities it provided for enhancing domestic accomplishments.

Many still believe connotations of this attitude exist today and while it is important to recognise that although ‘educational policy may change, what students, their parents and their teachers have come to understand as appropriate ways for girls and boys to be, to know and to behave, will continue to reflect the historical roots of the culture’ (Murphy,P.,Whitelegg,E .,2006).

In addition, research by Alison Kelly (1987) identifies three factors that appear to account for a lack of interest by women in science, namely women see it as likely to be difficult, masculine, and impersonal. A number of modern day initiatives and specific teaching techniques have been coined to address these misconceptions and will be explored, with their relative success critiqued, in the rema…………………………………