Why Not STEM? A Study Case on the Influence of Gender Factors on Students’ Higher Education Choice

Paloma de las Cuevas, Maribel García-Arenas and Nuria Rico
Additional contact information
Paloma de las Cuevas: Department of Computer Architecture and Computer Technology, University of Granada, 18014 Granada, Spain
Maribel García-Arenas: Department of Computer Architecture and Computer Technology, University of Granada, 18014 Granada, Spain
Nuria Rico: Department of Statistic and Operational Research, University of Granada, 18003 Granada, Spain

Mathematics, 2022, vol. 10, issue 2, 1-16

Abstract: The gender gap in STEM-related job positions is a fact, and it is closely related to the low percentage of women studying STEM degrees. This poses a problem because Europe, as well as the United States and the rest of the developed countries, keep demanding the best engineers and scientists to continue developing innovative products. This problem can thus be approached by answering, firstly, the following question: Why are women not studying STEM degrees? In this paper, we summarize the factors, found in literature, that influence students—both boys and girls—to not study STEM, particularly engineering, computer sciences and technology. We study these influence factors in a sample of N = 338 students from a secondary school placed in the south of Spain; we carry out a survey in order to find out if those students fill out the same answers other researchers have found and published in the related literature. Our main conclusions are as follows: The results confirm that the number of women in technical courses decreases when the level of the course increases; the lack of role models is not an impediment for girls to feel comfortable; unlike boys, girls will not choose engineering, even if their scoring in STEM is good; and we found that girls and women see themselves as not capable of studying an engineering degree more than boys and men do. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the situation regarding the gender gap in STEM fields in ages in which both girls and boys must choose their future studies.

Keywords: STEM; gender gap in STEM; engineering perception; high school education; women in science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/10/2/239/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/10/2/239/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:10:y:2022:i:2:p:239-:d:723695

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().