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What Motivates Girls to Persist in STEM?

Natalie Snead

Department of Writing and Rhetoric, University of Central Florida

ENC 1102: Composition II

Dr. Steffen Guenzel

April 15, 2020

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Abstract

The need for more women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is

a pressing issue that can not be ignored. Women bring unique traits and new ways of thinking that

could be highly beneficial in male-dominated STEM fields. Additionally, we need women,

alongside men, to fulfill the growing demands of the world’s STEM-related industries. The push

towards women in STEM begins with encouraging girls in school to explore the field. If more

school aged girls take an interest towards STEM and study it into higher education, consequently

there will be a greater number of women who enter into STEM-related careers. My research

question – what are the key motivational factors that affect a girl’s persistence in her STEM

education – serves to be answered by analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing interviews with

current college, female STEM majors, and past research on the topic. Research shows that self-

perception, beliefs and behaviors, and gender roles play the biggest roles in the motivation of girls

in STEM education. All three of these factors can negatively or positively influence a girl into

pursuing and persisting in her own STEM education. For us to recognize the motivational factors

behind girls’ persistence in their STEM education, will help us recognize the gender bias in

STEM professions and how to combat it.

Keywords: STEM education, Persistence, Self-Perception, Gender Roles, Belonging

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What Motivates Girls to Persist in STEM?

Being a female is hard. Even in 2020, a year that sounds so futuristic and is supposed to

bring equality, females are still given less of a voice and less opportunities to accomplish their

goals than men are. This inequality is present in science, technology, engineering and

mathematics (STEM) fields in which men overwhelmingly outnumber women. And while the

longstanding gender inequality that has existed in STEM fields has leveled out over the years,

women are still outnumbered (Leaper et al., 2012), and society needs to continue to take initiative

to encourage more girls to pursue STEM in their education and as a career path. A study done by

Sarah Banchefsky and her colleagues on STEM persistence shows that if 10% of women did not

leave their STEM majors during higher education, then the country would potentially meet its

future STEM-related national workforce needs (Banchefsky et al., 2019). Another reason why

women should be promoted in STEM is presented by Linda Sax, arguing that women offer

different traits and ways of thinking than men (Sax et al., 2016) which may be beneficial to the

highly technical projects that are associated with STEM careers. Encouraging girls to persist in

STEM is challenging, especially as they head into higher education and become more aware of

the roles and inequality that comes with being female? This is an important question to ask as

America continues their efforts to promote females in STEM. According to Joseph Cimpian,

NYU Associate Professor, there are studies that shows girls and boys have virtually no difference

in their math scores when they enter kindergarten, but as kids approach second and third grade the

math scores begin to differ in favor of boys (Cimpian, 2018). As a woman, a freshman in college

and a civil engineering major, I can attest to feeling singled out in a class of mostly males. I have

experienced male students in my class not willing to accept my feedback on a problem and

teachers who treat me with less respect than they do the boys. When girls start to experience this
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at a higher stage in their education, they may be deterred from STEM fields, or they may have the

motivation to combat the gender inequality and push through their STEM education. With this in

mind, I revise my previous question, asking what motivates girls to continue their STEM

education, to ask the more formal research question: what are the key motivational factors that

affect a girl’s persistence in her STEM education?

Methodology

To try to uncover the key motivational factors that affect a girls’ persistence in her STEM

education, I have looked to a variety of sources for reference. I have gathered information from

the database at the University of Central Florida Libraries Homepage, the internet, and field

research to reach a conclusion about the motivational factors affecting a girl’s STEM education

persistence. The database from the UCF Libraries Homepage was used to search for scholarly

articles written by experts who have done extensive research on the topic of STEM education.

Keywords narrowed down the search results to more specific information. By using keywords and

manually sorting through articles, I found a number of scholarly articles pertaining to my research

question, written by professors who predominantly specialize in psychology and STEM

education. The internet sources are also written by professionals in a STEM field; however their

work is published on a broader outlet than most scholarly sources are, perhaps.

The conducted field research comes from four separate interviews to four female, college

freshmen. The first three interviewees are in a college STEM program; for the sake of protecting

their privacy, I will refer to these three girls as Participant 1, Participant 2 and Participant 3. The

fourth interviewee has recently switched out of a STEM program to join a non-STEM program;

she will be referred to as Participant 4. Each participant was asked six questions about the support
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they have received towards their STEM education and how they feel about being a woman in

STEM. The six questions are as follows:

1. What is your current major?

2. Was there an academic subject in high school that you were most focused on

and/or interested in? If so, what was it?

3. Do you feel you have been supported in pursuing a STEM education? By whom

and what have they done to make you feel supported?

4. Do you feel you have ever been actively unsupported in pursuing a STEM

education? By whom and what have they done to make you feel unsupported?

5. How does being a female in STEM make you feel?

6. Do you believe that being a female in STEM has affected your performance in

your STEM classes? How and why?

The fourth participant, who at the time of the interview had recently made the switch from a

STEM major to a non-STEM major, was asked a seventh question about her decision to change

majors. The question is as follows:

7. What was your main reason for switching out of a STEM major?

Every question, besides question one, is designed to result in a rather conceptual answer. This is

to get a feel for how the participants perceive being a female in STEM. The results from the

interviews provide perspective on the research question and show how unique circumstances can

affect the motivational factors of girls in STEM.

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After initially gathering many sources from the UCF library, the internet, and field

research, I analyzed all my sources with more precision to see which ones would complete my

argument better. Analyzing the background, exhibit, argument, and method of each secondary

source narrowed down the number of sources significantly, All sources help explain at least one

of the three influential factors for girls’ motivation to persist in STEM education, which are self-

perception, beliefs and behaviors, and gender roles.

Results

In their 2012 report on adolescent girls in STEM education, Campbell Leaper and his

colleagues claim that the personal factors affecting motivation involve an individual’s perception

of themself and how they view the gender roles around them (Leaper et al., 2012). Self-perception

is a personal factor that affects a girl’s motivation. Leaper also claims that social factors that

affect motivation are the beliefs and behaviors of other people (Leaper et al., 2012). The beliefs

and behaviors of other people, in the context of this paper, refer to the attitudes that families,

peers, and role models have about STEM education, and how those people project their beliefs. In

this section, the effects of self-perception, beliefs and behaviors, and gender roles on the

motivation of girls in regard to their STEM education will be explored.

Self-Perception

A person’s self-perception has a lot of influence on what they can accomplish. In a recent

study, Dilshani Sarathchandra studies the relationship between women’s perception of success

and retention within their field (Sarathchandra et al., 2018). Sarathchandra finds that women are

likely to under evaluate their success and that “the underevaluation likely contributes to the lower

levels of formal success for women, especially in male-dominated fields” (Sarathchandra et al.,
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2018, p. 8). Lower level of formal success among women leads to lower retention rates because

women perceive themselves, according to Karen Tao (expert in the study of imposterism’s role in

STEM persistence), as less worthy of being in a STEM field if they are less successful than men

(Tao & Gloria, 2019). The idea that women do not feel like they belong in STEM fields is

referred to as impostorism (Tao & Gloria, 2019), and could likely originate in adolescence since it

is a critical developmental period (Starr & Leaper, 2019). Deduced from this is that girls who

continue their STEM education must not under evaluate their success, at least not to the same

extent of girls that do not continue their STEM education.

Social and ability belonging also have a part in defining adolescent’s self-perception.

Social belonging is defined as a sense of closeness between a person and their surrounding peers,

and ability belonging as a person’s belief that they can achieve the same as those around them

(Banchefsky et al., 2019). Belonging plays more of a role in women’s intentions to persist, than

men’s (Banchefsky et al., 2019) and especially in the intentions of women and girls to persist in

STEM. Higher levels of social and ability belonging increase women’s self-perception, and due to

extensive research, we can contend “that belonging – as a basic human need and motivation –

should be tied to intentions to persist in a given field” (Banchefsky et al., 2019, para. 14). Clearly,

there is a relationship between female’s social and ability belonging, the retention rates of females

within STEM fields, their motivation to persist in STEM, and their self-perception. If all of these

factors are connected, then the motivation of girls to persist in STEM education must be

influenced by their self-perception.

Gender Roles
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There is no doubt that gender roles still have an effect on the cultures of our world today.

Gender roles exasperate the gender gap in STEM fields and expose society’s inherent gender bias.

The way we view our support from others affects what we might pursue. Girls’ math and science

motivation is positively correlated with support among family and peers, and awareness of gender

equality and feminism (Leaper et al., 2012). In other words, if girls are taught the wrongs about

gender roles then they might be more likely to persist in STEM. If those who surround us

condone gender roles and believe that females are less righteous than males, then we, as females,

are more prone to settling for something less than our dream. Traditional gender roles tell females

that they are not capable enough for a job in STEM. Authority and mentoring figures in a child’s

school may not realize, but they abide by these gender roles by underestimating the ability of girls

from the time they enter school (Cimpian, 2018). Schools have a lot of impact on a child’s

outlook on life, and if negative gender roles are being personified at the school the child is not

going to feel inclined towards STEM. The ways gender roles could be personified in schools

could include offering more support to boy students in math and science classes, and encouraging

girls to stay away from STEM classes, for no other reason than gender, when girls get into high

school and college. Studies show that schools that make an active effort to include girls in STEM-

related activities have a much greater chance of having their female students go into a STEM

career in the future; sending an equal number of females and males into STEM workforces

(Peters-Burton et al., 2014). “If teachers didn’t think their female students were less capable, the

gender gap in STEM might be substantially smaller” (Cimpian, 2018, para. 7). A smaller gender

gap in STEM means that females would have had more motivation to persist in their STEM

education; therefore, teachers believing in girls has a big role on how girls view themselves and

their motivation to pursue STEM. Banchefsky states, “a number of social and interpersonal
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factors underlie the gender gap in representation within pSTEM fields ranging from personal life

choices – constrained or freely made – to unwelcoming masculine cultures” (Banchefsky et al.,

2019, para. 2). The underrepresentation in STEM can be linked to motivational factors because a

lack of motivation to pursue STEM will lead to not pursuing STEM.

Beliefs and Behaviors

The beliefs and behaviors of the people in your school, family, or your peer group are part

of the social factors that influence motivation in STEM (Leaper et al., 2012). According to

Leaper, “when peers are viewed as valuing math and science, girls may be more likely to perceive

these subjects as self-relevant during identity exploration” (Leaper et al., 2012, p. 280). This

makes sense because during school years, children rely heavily on their peers for guidance.

Multiple studies also state that girl’s math and science motivation is positively correlated with

support among family, teachers and peers (Leaper et al., 2012; Sahin et al., 2017). The support of

family, teachers, and peers motivates girls to persist in STEM. This kind of support opens girls’

minds up to the possibility of one day having a career in STEM, knowing it is a male-dominated

field. Dr. Dominique Bulls says that the biggest way you can support girls in STEM is by

intentionally including them in STEM related activities (Bulls, 2020). This is true because girls

have been discouraged from STEM in the past, so to encourage more girls to enter the fields there

needs to be an active effort to do so.

Responses from the field research interviews verify that motivation to persist is in part due

to support from family and peers. All four participants in the interview series said that they have

been supported by their families and peers to stick with their STEM education. Participants 1 and

3 mention that they were “always pushed to take STEM classes” in school and that they are
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associated with “typically being the more challenging classes.” If the association of STEM with

challenging classes means anything for motivating girls in STEM, then it is that girls should be

encouraged to challenge themselves in school. This is an example of support from family having

a positive effect on girls’ motivation. The beliefs that the participant’s parents held about girls in

STEM and the behaviors they displayed to support their beliefs translated into motivations for

their daughters to persist in their STEM education. Participant 4, who switched from a STEM

major to a non-STEM major, says that she was “supported by her high school [health science]

program,” but once she started the heath science program in college she was not interested in the

material. It seems that Participant 4 had much support from hers peers to persist in STEM and

although she did not stay in her STEM discipline, she was given the choice to continue her STEM

education because of the support she received.

Conclusion

As we see, being a female in 2020 is indeed very hard. Lots of factors can influence the

motivation of girls to persist in their STEM education. Here is displayed only three factors that

play big parts in a girl’s STEM education. After examining all the research collected, the

conclusion is that self-perception, gender roles, and beliefs and behaviors all are key motivating

factors for girls to persist in their STEM education. Gender roles provide the basis for beliefs and

behaviors. Beliefs and behaviors provide the basis for one’s self-perception. “There is no clear,

concise, easy answer to this question” (Bulls, 2020, para. 4) of the motivating factors. All

motivation is interconnected and help to explain each other, especially the three factors listed in

this paper. If women and girls seek to understand the reason behind their level of motivation for

STEM in school, they may realize if they are being pushed towards subjects they are not really

interested in. Understanding female motivation may help females realize “the systemic and
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pervasive nature of gender bias in STEM” (Sarathchandra et al., 2018, p.13) and how the gender

bias can lead to unfavorable beliefs and behaviors from peers and families and altered self-

perception. These factors that dissuade girls to persist in their STEM education tell us a lot about

how a girl can persist in her STEM education. All people must use the information in this paper to

better motivate girls to persist in their STEM education.

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References

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equity

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chalkboard/2018/04/23/how-our-education-system-undermines-gender-equity/.

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