Attitudes toward Female Participation in Science and Technology

The pay and position gap between college-educated men and women can be attributed, in part, to their majors. Science, technology, and engineering majors typically command higher salaries than those with education or humanities degrees. Women's limited access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education continues to be a problem in the US where the STEM fields have an 85-15 undergraduate ratio of men to women, while overall college enrollments reflect a 45-55 ratio. The NSF funded project is designed to change attitudes toward women in science and technology, and in effect increase female participation in these disciplines. The project targets female and male students and their parents during the students' transition from high school to college, and demonstrates the effectiveness of several intervention strategies. The primary research question is: Will there be a detectable change in attitudes of students toward female participation in STEM as a result of the project interventions? An instrument was designed to measure attitudinal changes. Upon analyzing the pre-posttest data using factor analysis, five major factors emerged. When compared to the control group, the interventions had a positive effect on attitudes toward STEM, with respect to the five factors. The revised innovative practices are being weaved permanently into the existing general education courses at the University for long-term impact. The authors hope to create improved ISU recruitment and retention of females in STEM disciplines by increasing awareness of career options, demonstrating that STEM can be fun and challenging without being intimidating, and most importantly, increasing social acceptance of STEM females through enhanced gender-sensitivity awareness among males and the adult population involved in this project. The model exemplified in this project has the potential for replication at comparable institutions, and the results from the control group emphasize the need for curricular interventions. At the conference, the author will present the results of this study and discuss the findings. Also, there will be a discussion of course-specific strategies as well as institutional changes that promote female participation and encourage females to pursue careers in STEM disciplines.