Help your school community celebrate and recognize women and girls’ participation in STEM education, training, and activities at all levels.
The Coalition has created and assembled the following resources related to girls in STEM.
- Celebrate annually International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11
- Articles:
- Podcast:
- Infographics highlighting how girls’ schools foster interests in underrepresented STEM subjects
- Infographic highlighting ten female engineers
- Films of Interest about Women and Girls in STEM
- Research reports related to girls in STEM/STEAM and statistics related to girls and women in STEM careers around the world
- Organizations:
- GAINS (Girls Advancing in STEM)
- NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
- NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology)
- littleBits to inspire and motivate STEAM learning
RESEARCH QUICK FACTS
All-girls learning environments champion the educational needs of girls as a group currently underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) majors and careers.
- Girls’ school graduates on average report greater science self-confidence than coeducated peers in their ability to use technical science skills, understand scientific concepts, generate a research question, explain study results, and determine appropriate data collection.
—Dr. Tiffani Riggers-Piehl, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Fostering Academic and Social Engagement: An Investigation into the Effects of All-Girls Education in the Transition to University
- Girls’ school graduates are 6 times more likely to consider majoring in math, science, and technology compared to girls who attended coeducational schools.
—Goodman Research Group, The Girls’ School Experience: A Survey of Young Alumnae of Single-Sex Schools
- Compared to coeducated peers, girls’ school graduatess are 3 times more likely to consider engineering careers.
—Dr. Linda Sax, UCLA, Women Graduates of Single-Sex and Coeducational High Schools: Differences in their Characteristics and the Transition to College
- During the middle school years, girls show a decline in both their performance in math and theIr attitudes towards math. Research suggests that girls’ schools may mitigate the decline when compared with coeducational schools.
—Dr. Carlo Cerruti, Harvard University, Exploring Girls’ Attitudes about Math
- Girls from all-female courses reported more academic interests in computer science or potential to pursue a computing career.
- All-girl environments with girl-only peers helped build community and increased girls’ self-reported amount of learning. Girls felt they could do computing because there were other girls doing it around them.
—National Center for Women & Information Technology, Girls in IT: The Facts
Research studies conducted around the world—Australia, Caribbean, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States—find that girls’ schools foster increased confidence and interest in math.
- At the start of university, girls’ school graduates in the U.S. rate their confidence in their math skill abilities 10% higher than do their coeducated peers.
—Dr. Linda Sax, UCLA, Women Graduates of Single-Sex and Coeducational High Schools: Differences in their Characteristics and the Transition to College
- Across the Caribbean islands, girls’ school students consistently have a higher pass rate in mathematics, as well as a higher percentage of distinctions, than girls in coeducational schools and boys in both single-gender and coeducational schools.
—Joan Spencer-Ernandez & Lois George, The University of the West Indies, Single Sex vs. Co-Educational High Schools: Performance of Caribbean Students Across School Types in Mathematics on the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate
- In Switzerland, girls in single-gender classes evaluate their math skills more positively and are more likely to attribute their math performance to their own efforts rather than to exogenous talent or luck.