Concerns over the number of women opting to study science (and STEM subjects in general) at all levels of education is often highlighted by the media.  Equally, looking at the statistics, the number who study science but then do not opt to pursue related careers is disappointing.  Although the numbers for this are evidenced by the data the reasons why this is the case are often more anecdotal.

Encouragingly, in the UK, the number of female students taking science at school has been rising since 2009 (WISE, 2014), although this trend seems to now have plateaued.  Of the students taking an A’ level in biology, 59% are female, but the percentage taking chemistry is lower at 48%, and only 21% of students taking physics are female.

These proportions are replicated at undergraduate level with the data showing that uptake for bioscience subjects is still well balanced, with 59% of those graduating with degrees in bioscience being women.  In postgraduate study the percentage drops to 56% at masters level, and 52%, those achieving doctorates.  In chemistry the numbers are slightly lower with 49% of graduates gaining masters being female, and of those completing a doctorate 39% (Matson 2013).

In terms of employment the statistics are less easy to align by subject (often grouped as STEM), but according to WISE (2014) 42% of ‘Science Professionals’ are female and just 28.5% of ‘Research and Development Managers’ are female.  Much of the data for employment encompasses the wide range of STEM subjects incorporating data for engineering which has a more male bias (table 1)

Table 1: % females taking Biological Science and Engineering subjects

*DfE (2009)

**WISE 2014

It can be seen therefore that women graduate with degrees in the biosciences in comparable numbers to men, but there then seems to be a barrier to them following related careers, so the reason is not a lack of recruitment to education but in continuing into employment in science.  The aim of this study is to uncover whether a potential reason may lie in their initial perceptions and how these are altered during undergraduate study. Here I will report some initial findings of a study that is being carried out at both Newcastle and Northumberland University’s in both bioscience and engineering cohorts.

The start point for this study involved asking fresher students, in the first weeks of their university career, to fill in a questionnaire.  Initially they were asked demographic questions to establish the student’s background and gender (for example whether they were 1st generation university students and if their parents or guardians had a STEM background).  We then asked them to ‘Draw a Scientist’.  The instructions were minimal:

“Q. Please spend a few moments thinking of a ‘xxx’ and the activities they undertake on a day to day basis, where and how they work etc. Then draw your vision of that person in the box below. Please use labels if you wish. Your artistic skills are not important- a labeled stickperson is as informative as a work of art!”.

The images were assessed for ‘level of stereotype’ using a published methodology.  It is not possible to go into the data in depth in this report, but some main findings related to gender were:

• Gender was indeterminate in half the images
• Where gender was identifiable, the majority of images portray a single female
• A small number of images portrayed groups (both male(s) & female(s)), but these were only drawn by female respondents
• Only one male respondent drew a female image
• Females drew twice as many female images as male images
• The ‘grooming’ in images is gender biased with images identified as being female being more ‘neat’

The outstanding finding was that male participants almost exclusively drew male or gender non-specific scientists whilst female students drew both genders.

Other significant conclusions related to demographics.  Although parental education and occupational status seems to make a difference, there is no straightforward association between STEM background and reported level of influence on motivation to study STEM subject. In contrast to what is seen to happen at this early stage of their scientific career there was very positive indication that the students intended to remain in STEM with the majority seeming to have an awareness of what their career might involve.

This is work carried out with University of Northumberland and was lead by Dr Helen Hooper

DfE (2009) Subject and course choices at ages 14 and 16 amongst young people in England: Insights from behavioural economics

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/182677/DFE-RR160.pdf

Matson, J. (2013) Scientific American Women Are Earning Greater Share of STEM Degrees, but Doctorates Remain Gender-Skewed Volume 308 (5)

WISE (2014) Wise Uk Statistics 2014 https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/uploads/wise/files/WISE_UK_Statistics_2014.pdf

Dr Damian Parry, School of Biomedical Sciences