Callie Rose Winch
Advocacy Analyst, Stemettes
We need to broaden who can pursue a career in STEM by challenging stereotypes and dominant ideas that have long excluded girls and non-binary individuals.
As part of Stemettes’s 10th birthday celebrations last year, we set out to write a White Paper aimed at tackling the current inequitable UK GCSE and A-Level STEM curriculum.
Ways to promote STEM diversity
Through multi-stakeholder roundtable discussions around the UK, interviews, surveys and text-based research, we created a series of recommendations for government, institutes, industry, educators, parents and carers to ensure a collective commitment to working towards a more diverse future in STEM.
In this White Paper, we recommend that industry nurtures environments where despite a chronic lack of awareness of ‘Herstory.’ This is celebrated and allows a diversity of current talent to become leaders and role models for future generations. Industry must seek to support educational organisations by providing funding to grassroots initiations, volunteering days and schemes and raising the profile of internal role models.
These actions demonstrate industry’s commitment to welcoming marginalised individuals into the STEM workforce and denouncement of toxic, exclusionary cultures within the sector. Ensuring everyone can feel a sense of belonging acts allows for high levels of attainment within the STEM sector and allows for marginalised folks to thrive in industry.
Industry must seek to support educational organisations.
Expanding opportunities to increase representation
Hind Naciri, Standard Chartered, Newcastle Stemettes Roundtable, says: “It’s up to organisations, like ours, that are in the STEM industry — whether that’s maths, engineering, science or technology — to come in and look at how we support our future-makers.”
By engaging in volunteering opportunities, we aim to demystify careers in the STEM industry, with organisations able to interact with girls and non-binary individuals and show their inner workings to help young people make informed decisions.
We cannot solely rely on teachers to provide supplementary diversity education prior to curriculum reform. Industry should also seek to raise the profile of internal role models to supplement representation within the formal education sector. By enabling diverse, authentic individuals within industry to stand up as role models, we increase the likelihood of relatability to representation for marginalised young people.
Read the White Paper in full, and find out more about how you can get involved with our campaign for equitable curriculum reform at stemettes.org/whitepaper
