Gender equality in STEM programs: a proposal to analyse the situation of a university about the gender gap

Abstract

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, most of the countries have achieved gender parity in educational attainment. Furthermore, Latin America and Europe have more women than men enrolled in tertiary education. The problem arises when those numbers are analysed by degree studies. There is a gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with a low number of women enrolled in those programs and even lower numbers of graduates. The universities have a key role to steer new conceptions and understanding of the females in STEM. The higher education institutions have to define measures and policies to reduce the gender gap in the careers of the future. This work aims to provide a proposal to analyse the gender equality gap in STEM as a first step to define gender equality action plans focused on processes of attraction, access and retention and guidance in STEM programs. The proposal was applied in ten Latin American universities from Chile,

Teaching and Learning Styles on Moodle: An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Using STEM and Non-STEM Qualifications from a Gender Perspective

“…The same percentages both for Non-STEM Health Sciences and for Education Science qualifications were 9.20% and 90.80% followed by 7.77% and 92.23%, respectively. This fact initially supported the existence of a gender divide on STEM vs. Non-STEM courses, in the former towards a higher presence of female students and in the second towards a higher presence of male students [3,5,7,[30][31][32][33][34][35].…”

“…In addition, as previously indicated, the percentage of male students on STEM qualifications is significatively higher, which can explain the gender differences that have been found. It is, therefore, quite clear that there is an urgent need for teachers and students to be trained to utilize the tools that LMS has to offer [26][27][28], so as to mitigate the gender gap found as a function of the type of STEM v. Non-STEM qualification [30][31][32][33][34][35]. Along the same lines, the expert e-Learning professors utilized more resources and activities from among all of Moodle's possibilities, although not all of them employ those resources and activities with the same frequency.…”

“…The STEM qualifications attract higher percentages of male students than female students [3,5,7,[30][31][32]. In fact, numerous international projects have been under development over past years to increase the percentage of female students studying STEM qualifications [30][31][32][33][34][35]. In contrast, the percentage of students studying for Health Sciences and Social Sciences qualifications (for example, Education Science) is inversely related (the percentage of female students is much higher than the percentage of male students).…”

The Gender Gap in Engineering Programs in Colombia

“…Similar gaps were identified in math programs in Colombia (Gonzalez-Gutierrez, Sepulveda-Delgado, and Espejo-Lozado, 2018). However, this is a worldwide reality (García-Holgado et al, 2020); women hold only 26% of jobs in technology companies, and this percentage is as low as 28,8% in science. In Latin America, statistics are alarming; for example, in 2015, only 17% of engineering researchers were women in El Salvador, 17% in Honduras, 30% in Costa Rica, 39% in Paraguay, 40% in Venezuela, 31% in Uruguay, 19% in Chile, 25% in Colombia, 19% in Panama, and 25% in Bolivia (Arredondo et al, 2019).…”

“…In France, the number of women in STEM programs in higher education is only 30% (Breda, Grenet, Monnet, and Van Effenterre, 2020). Finland has a 12,39% of women students in STEM programs (García-Holgado et al, 2020). In contrast, countries such as Spain have similar enrollment indexes to South America, with 33% of women in STEM programs (García-Holgado et al, 2020).…”