Disparities In STEM Education

Gender disparities between boys and girls pursuing STEM related courses is evident starting in primary school and are due to an array of factors, including societal, familial, and cultural influences. Although, access to education for women and girls have improved globally, disparities in the access to a basic education still persist, thereby influencing the gender gap in STEM education.

To demonstrate, a study conducted in the United Kingdom, found at ages ten to eleven both boys and girls equally engaged in STEM education (75% of boys and 72% of girls), and reported learning interesting things in science. Later, at the age of eighteen, these numbers changed to 33% of boys and 19% of girls learning something interesting things in science (UNESCO, 2017).
For example, in the American College Testing (ACT) publication—The Condition of STEM 2016, it reported 30,057 African American students tested in mathematics, science and STEM; of those students tested, twenty-five percent met ACT college math readiness standards, twenty-two percent met ACT science college readiness standards, and nine percent met ACT college STEM readiness standards. Comparatively, 23,102 Asian-American students took the ACT, and eighty percent met ACT college readiness standards, sixty-eight percent met ACT science college readiness standards, and fifty-four percent met ACT STEM college readiness