she stem: a digital bridge between female students and professionals

“The number of women in science and engineering is growing, yet men continue to outnumber women, especially at the upper levels of these professions. In elementary, middle, and high school, girls and boys take math and science courses in roughly equal numbers, and about as many girls as boys leave high school prepared to pursue science and engineering majors in college. Yet fewer women than men pursue these majors. Among first-year college students, women are much less likely than men to say that they intend to major in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). By graduation, men outnumber women in nearly every science and engineering field, and in some, such as physics, engineering, and computer science, the difference is dramatic, with women earning only 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees. Women’s representation in science and engineering declines further at the graduate level and yet again in the transition to the workplace.” (Corbett et al. 2010)

When confronted with a design challenge on the underrepresentation of women in STEM, I wasn’t expecting to dive into a problem with such depth and unexpected dimensions. Although familiar with the topic and working hard on being aware of and fighting discrimination and bias in my community, I’m still a cis-gender man to whom such problems feel unavoidably distant and third-person narrated.

So I gathered and read articles and books about Women in STEM and the bias in the field, and talked with women in the science and technology workforce to better empathise with them, understand the problem and inform my next step: design a possible solution to help bridging the gap between women and men in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

From kindergarten to high school and from university to the labour market, the underrepresentation of women in science and technology is proven to be connected to social and environmental factors in all these areas of their lives.

During the early stages of education, science learning environments are often boy-oriented, and prevalent stigmas and negative stereotypes about girls’ cognitive abilities in science and maths, including educators and parents, affect girls’s performance in those subjects and encourage them to abandon the field.

Bias at work pushes women out of scientific, technology and engineering careers. The lack of visibility of female technical expertise and the male dominance at leading and influential positions often discourages women and objectively limits their progress in the field.

These and other factors lead to an undeniable shortage of STEM female role models and mentors, from classrooms to labour market. Young women are left with much fewer female inspirational figures than their man peers, and they have a harder time recognising women key figures in their field.

This understanding phase inspired the idea of a web-based platform where girls and young women can reach out to female professionals to get to know their stories, follow their work or even to seek mentoring, career advice or research and job opportunities. The aim of this platform is to create a sense of community and to make it easy for young women to get in touch with role models in the field and to build a supportive network in science, technology, engineering and maths. By creating a women-centred platform one could eventually say it only increases the gap between men and women. The point is that female role models are fundamental for young women to feel inspired and succeed, and gradually close the gap between genders in STEM.

The project is a simple web design which consists of a balanced combination of social media, news outlet and online forum platforms. Feed allows users to follow and share personally selected content, while suggesting similar content and enabling to sort it by categories such as science, technology, engineering, maths or all of them together. News is where the users can find the latest information about the STEM field, also possible to be filtered by STEM category or the type of content the user is searching for. Through Forum, users can openly ask questions to each other and address questions to women working in STEM, such as career advice, mentoring or debating multiple topics. The platform also includes a Resources page, where can be found information about job vacancies, scholarships, research opportunities and legal help regarding bias and gender-based discrimination. A message feature allows users to exchange mail privately within the platform and in the profile section users can keep and update their personal data and edit settings to their own taste.

I have built a simple 5 screen semi-interactive prototype using Figma, where I demonstrate how I would implement the design ideation and develop a viable solution to the proposed problem of bridging the gap between man and women in STEM.

The challenge of designing a gender-sensitive design has been a great opportunity to take empathy in design to another level: by working hard at understanding women’s needs and problems through their own voices and to extend my knowledge and awareness by immersing myself in published research and content on the topic. And above all, to design what really matters by improving the lives of the ones around us and hopefully, changing the world — a bit — for the best.

Reference:

Hill, C., Corbett, C., Rose, A. Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. (2010). USA: AAUW