On average, the American university president is a white man in his early 60s. Progress has been slow for women in this role. This study examined the university presidency with a focus on the woman president experience. The hypothesis was that based on factors such as the glass ceiling and glass cliff, gender affects the experiences of women…

Women remain underrepresented in engineering and broadening participation has recently become the focus of education reform efforts. Increased emphasis on K-12 engineering education calls for the design of learning environments and curricula that increase interest and conceptual understanding of engineering work, beginning in the early years of…

The gender gap in physics in Australian secondary schools remains a significant issue. This study aims to address this problem by examining how physics teachers perceive girls' participation in physics, and how these perceptions influence their approach to gender issues and their potential impact on girls' physics identity. The study uses a…

Background: Students from low-socioeconomic status backgrounds (LSES) are underrepresented in STEM education, including in the biological sciences. As one of the foundational STEM disciplines, biology represents an interesting case study in that women earn the most undergraduate degrees, a trend that holds across racial/ethnic groups. However,…

Research has shown that university students approach STEM fields with preconceived notions that has the ability to influence their future STEM trajectories. Several scholarly investigations have explored pedagogical methodologies that not only recognize but actively validate the varied proficiencies that these pupils possess. This nested mixed…

Undergraduate student participation in out-of-class activities yields a range of documented benefits and represents an area of study that can inform efforts to increase persistence in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) majors, particularly for underrepresented groups. This study was designed to explore the impact of selected…

The construct of science identity has been gaining attention across various domains in the educational arena. To date, however, no studies have used a person-centered quantitative approach within science identity research that is based upon traditional identity theory. Hence, there is an absence of a theoretical underpinning of the number of…

Being lectured by a woman physicist can benefit students' performance, motivation, and engagement with physics. However, due to the severe underrepresentation of women physics faculty, these instances may be scarce. Through semistructured interviews with seven women physics lecturers, we used expectancy-value theory to understand the situative…

Computer programmers in the U.S. labor force are facing a shortage. Focusing on recruiting females has the potential to address this shortage. Computing is a male dominated field which provides an opportunity to recruit the other 50% of the population, females, to fill the open positions. This work studies gender differences in computer…

Numerous policy interventions promote gender equity within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) higher education enrolments and careers. Despite this, women in many countries continue to be under-represented and encounter barriers to access and career progression. These concerns are often attributed to gendered…

Although women are increasingly earning degrees in STEM, they remain under-represented in these fields. An empirical study was undertaken to explain the phenomenon of missing women in STEM in China from the viewpoint of achievement motivation and gender socialization, using data from the Third National Survey on the Social Status of Chinese Women.…

Within the education-to-career pathways, what is largely absent from the literature regarding women and underrepresented minorities' (URM) participation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines are a complete understanding of their entrance into the employment sector immediately following the completion of a doctoral degree…

Self-efficacy can affect performance, career goals, and persistence. Prior studies show that female students have lower self-efficacy than male students in various science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains, and the self-efficacy gap is a factor that contributes to the low representation of female students in STEM. However,…

Understanding why women are consistently underrepresented in STEM fields has been a constant puzzle, with a consistent feature of the puzzle being performance in math. This study uses data from TIMSS exams to investigate cross-national gender differences in math-related affect, more precisely liking mathematics, confidence in mathematics, and…

Recent work in environmental psychology and education emphasizes environmental identity as important in predicting a broad array of environmental behaviors. However, there are gaps in understanding how other social identities interact with environmental identity. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 undergraduate students from diverse…