In Spain, only 28% of enrolments in STEM careers are women, but what are we doing to eliminate gender bias? In Spain, there are already programs and initiatives to encourage more women in the STEM sectors, but the goal of getting more women to enroll in STEM studies is still not achieved.

For this reason, the STEM WOMEN CONGRESS has prepared the ANNUAL REPORT 2020 – STEM WOMEN CONGRESS, which collects for the first time the data on the 2019 activity of the STEM Women initiatives detected in the country, that is, those public, private or mixed programs that work to get more women in the STEM sectors.

The report has made it possible to carry out an analysis of all the existing projects, locate them and see what their work focuses on, as well as to make a first approximation of the impact they have on the population.

The report analyzes three segments: inspiration, which analyzes initiatives focused on the training stage up to ESO; professional career, which focuses on undergraduate studies and the professional stage; and entrepreneurship.

The ANNUAL REPORT 2020 

This Annual was born with the aim of detecting weak points and promoting global actions and synergies between existing initiatives,” explains Eva Díaz, CEO of the STEM Women Congress. The report states that 66% of the initiatives are focused on the “inspiration” stage or school stage, 51% on career and only 7% on entrepreneurship.

It also shows that 58% of the initiatives work with 10 or fewer workers, leaving this task in the hands of altruism and volunteerism. That is why it is necessary for more institutions, companies and professionals to get involved in STEM initiatives.

The lack of resources is another need, since in the inspiration segment only 56% of the initiatives have the support of a company or institution, and also only 22% of the initiatives come from an exclusively public source of funding, although as a positive point we see that the capacity of impact on l@s niñ@s of these initiatives is 43%. “Therefore, it is necessary to have a greater involvement of the whole society, from the public sector and the private sector, to expand the action ratio and reach more girls and women and show them that STEM is the future, that it guarantees them greater employability compared to non-STEM graduates, as well as probably better salaries,” says Diaz.

Fighting against the lack of female role models 

The analysis has been carried out on a total of 41 initiatives or programmes, and the data of each segment (inspiration, career and entrepreneurship) have been analysed by age group with respect to the population of STEM girls or women in Spain. In the inspiration segment, it has been proven that 70% of the initiatives manage to impact children with the aim of breaking stereotypes, and 48% do so in order to generate attraction for technology. In addition, more than 80% of the initiatives dedicated to promoting STEM careers act in the early stages of training, which range from 6 to 16 years old, and almost 90% act in the age range of 10 to 14 years, but only 2 initiatives have been detected that work from 0 to 6 years old. In addition, all the initiatives that carry out actions in schools do not discriminate against boys and girls, but work together with both as well as with teachers and families, so that they also contribute to spreading STEM in a much wider scope.

The boom in initiatives to promote the presence of women in STEM sectors is quite recent in the last 3 years. In fact, the report highlights that the first initiative detected was born in 2012, but the rate of creation is much higher than the initiatives that impact on professional careers or entrepreneurship, which are the other two segments analysed.

Career support 

The ANNUAL REPORT 2020 – STEM WOMEN CONGRESS concludes that the actions developed by the 21 initiatives during 2019 focused on professional career development have impacted only 1.6% of a population of around 692 thousand women active in STEM professions in Spain. The final stage of training receives 85% of the impacts of the initiatives studied in the field of professional career management, “this impact represents reaching 38% of the population of women enrolled in the last years of scientific and technical studies in Spain”, clarifies the CEO of the STEM Women Congress.

On the other hand, it is observed that there is a lack of initiatives and projects that focus on the first years of the professional career, this stage, known by the name of junior, plays an essential role when it comes to students focusing their projects and defining their goals in the professional career. At this stage, 11 initiatives manage to impact 1.93% of  the population of STEM women in their first years of professional career in Spain.

On the positive side, 62% of initiatives focus their efforts on mentoring and female leadership. “This means that students who have decided to dedicate themselves to a career in the STEM sector are not alone, they can choose to ask for help to guide them in their professional decisions and thus be able to define their goals,” explains Diaz.

Finally, it should be noted that although the report aims to analyse the situation of STEM Women initiatives in Spain, the sample shows that STEM Women initiatives located in Catalonia have responded to the survey in greater numbers than in other regions. For this reason, Díaz explains that “from STEM WOMEN CONGRESS we call on all initiatives in Spain to join the next edition of the report and be able to create a standard system for measuring the activity of all initiatives. Without measurement and analysis, it is impossible to define improvements and needs. And without it, we can’t make progress towards the goal of having more women in STEM sectors. The report isn’t perfect, but it’s a start.”