Girls’ low participation in STEM education lowers STEM degree attainment, and that leads to lower STEM career participation, for women.
STEM careers are growing at twice the speed as other careers so it’s important to enable girls’ increased interest in STEM careers to encourage girls to attend STEM classes as much as possible to help increase their ability to pursue well-paid STEM jobs in future. Taking these STEM classes is important, but there aren’t as many classes as needed to get girls involved. Changes need to be made do that girls’ STEM education isn’t compromised by low STEM program participation early in life. For that reason a better understanding of the factors that affect girls’ participation, or lack thereof, in STEM programs is needed to inform responses to this issue.