Dive Brief:
- Oxford University in the United Kingdom granted students in mathematics and computer science courses additional time to complete exams, reports The Week. According to internal university documents, seen by The Daily Telegraph, Oxford officials' actions were guided by evidence showing female students may be negatively affected by time pressure in these subjects.
- The move is a response to a consistent gender gap in performance on mathematics and computer science exams, with statistics from last year showing just 21.2% of female maths students graduated with first-class degrees — or the equivalent of the American standard 'A' — as compared to 45.5% of male students.
- Though the institution drew some criticism for operating under a "sexist" framework, according to the Daily Mail, officials at the institution say they are continuing to collect data on whether the tactic works and will not draw any concrete conclusions as to whether it will help close the gap.
Dive Insight:
Education advocates have long discussed the importance of closing not only gender, but socioeconomic and racial gaps in the STEM education to career pipeline, particularly as the workforce demands a greater pool of diverse talent with technical expertise. In the United States, women account for only 24% of STEM workers, despite being 48% of the country’s workforce, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
At the same time, data from National Center for Education Statistics shows from 2008 to 2015, the percentage of STEM degrees and certificates going to women dropped from 65.1% to 60.4%.
But when it comes to expanding the pipeline, the solutions are not as clear as the data being granted. There are a number of factors that impact girls' trajectory in STEM fields, which many experts would contend go beyond just expanded exam time. For instance, issues like lack of confidence, fear of being discriminated against in the workforce and limited role models are often cited as factors hindering women from completing STEM degrees or staying in that sector of the workforce.
A 2017 survey of 11,500 girls across 12 European countries commissioned by Microsoft showed 60% of respondents said they would feel more confident pursuing a STEM career if they thought men and women were being treated equally in those fields.
Administrators seeking proactive ways of targeting the pipeline might consider looking at Harvey Mudd College, where President Maria Klawe has specifically focused on expanding the gender pipeline in STEM fields. Education Dive spoke with Klawe, who said that attracting diverse faculty members is one way of not only getting more women in STEM, but adding voices to the field and providing role models for girls:
"We have to think of ways of retraining those people so if they are interested, they can work at the interface of computer science or data science in some other field," she said. "And while we are doing that...we can use that as an opportunity to teach them how to teach in a way that is highly supportive of women and people of color."
Klawe also mentioned building girls' confidence while they are young; this can come in the form of increased K-12 and university partnerships, for instance, where female scientists or engineers visit high schools and talk to girls about those fields.
On the other hand, psychology experts note, creating tactics that feed into a narrative of girls as a "weaker sex" may counterintuitively actually lead to the outcomes educators are trying to prevent.