New Perspectives in Science Education

In many STEM fields, especially computer science and engineering, women are vastly outnumbered in undergraduate education. This becomes even more noticeable in further education and the workforce. The gender difference is the most pronounced in high-level positions, a phenomenon often referred to as the ‘leaky pipeline’ (Corbett & Hill, 2015; European Commission, 2021). While the underrepresentation of women in STEM is often investigated starting at a very young age on topics such as spatial knowledge, learning methods, and stereotypes (Hill et al., 2010), university education is a critical time when female students will become familiar with many of the struggles faced by women in STEM, and ultimately decide to drop out of their studies or not.

In this paper, questionnaire results are analyzed from an annual German women-only STEM summer school (informatica feminale Baden-Wurttemberg) targeted at computer science students and professionals, and an annual winter school (meccanica feminale) targeted at female mechanical and electrical engineering students and professionals. These results provide important insights regarding female STEM students including motivation, discrimination, dropout and retention, and the importance of a mono-educational environment. By providing insight into the struggles female STEM students face, their reasoning for potentially dropping out or leaving the field becomes much clearer, as do potential solutions to help with these issues.