Women and girls are still being sidelined in science- and technology-related professions due to their gender, even today in the 21st century — and this is especially true of those in STEM fields. They need to understand that they have a right to participate in these fields, both in education and employment, and a role to play in scientific advancement, and, most importantly, that they must participate in the digital economy to prevent Industry 4.0 from perpetuating these traditional gender-based biases.
According to a UNESCO Science Report, with a chapter on the gender gap in science entitled “To Be Smart, the Digital Revolution Will Need to Be Inclusive,” published on February 11th, 2021, to mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, despite a shortage of skills in most of the scientific and technological professions — ones often referred to as “the Jobs of the Future” that drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution —, women still make up only 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of computer science and informatics graduates.
Many country-members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including Australia, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States, — contrary to popular belief — have lower proportions of female engineering graduates than the global average of 28%, while some of the highest proportions of female engineering graduates can be found in the Arab States, including Algeria (48.5%), Morocco (42.2%), Oman (43.2%), Syria (43.9%) and Tunisia (44.2%), as well as in Latin America, including Cuba (41.7%), Peru (47.5%) and Uruguay (45.9%). Additionally, wide disparities can be observed among countries of the same region; there is no distinct regional pattern.
The glass ceiling also remains an obstacle to women’s careers in academia, despite some progress. And the gender gap only widens as women advance in their academic careers, with lower participation at each successive rung of the ladder, from doctoral student to assistant professor to director of research or full professor. Overall, female researchers tend to have shorter, less well-paid careers; their work is underrepresented in high-profile journals; they are frequently given smaller research grants and passed over for promotions; and, despite making up 33.3% of all researchers, only 12% of members of national science academies are women.
Likewise, female founders of start-ups continue to have difficulty accessing finance, and they remain underrepresented in both leadership and technical positions in large tech companies. As a result, they are also more likely than men to leave the tech field, frequently citing bleak career prospects as a key motivation for their decision.
Corporate attitudes towards women are evolving, however, as studies show that having a diverse workforce is associated with investor confidence and greater profit margins. And one response to gender discrimination in science is the “L’Oréal–UNESCO For Women in Science” program, which has been elevating the profile of outstanding women researchers through the annual attribution of prizes and research fellowships to change attitudes and foster positive female role models. In response to the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, which are at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the program extended its international prizes and fellowships to include mathematics and computer science in 2019.
Another means of showcasing excellence and challenging negative stereotypes about women in science is through creating databases. One example is the “Request a Woman Scientist” database, which connects a multidisciplinary network of professionally screened women scientists with anyone who needs to consult, invite, and collaborate with, or identify, a female specialist. This is in line with the mission of the Equitable Education Fund (EEF) Thailand, which is to support equitable education of girls and youth through campaigns and activities collaborating with government and partnership.
