Effect of providing gender equality information on students’ motivations to choose STEM

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 16; no. 6; p. e0252710
• Main Authors: Ikkatai, Yuko, Inoue, Atsushi, Minamizaki, Azusa, Kano, Kei, McKay, Euan, Yokoyama, Hiromi M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Francisco Public Library of Science 23.06.2021; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Biology; Biology and Life Sciences; Careers; Children & youth; Civil engineering; Computer and Information Sciences; Demographic aspects; Earth science; Educational aspects; Females; Gender; Gender differences; Gender equality; Gender equity; Girls; Humanities; Junior high school students; Mathematics; Middle schools; Motivation; Occupations; People and Places; Physics; Psychological aspects; Sciences education; Secondary school students; Secondary schools; Social Sciences; STEM education; STEM professions; Students; Study and teaching; Surveys; Technical education; University students; Japan; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0252710

The social climate for women studying STEM subjects is changing, but the proportion of women taking STEM subjects in Japan is small. Only 27.9% of university students in the department of science is women in 2019. In this study, we used an online survey to investigate whether randomly providing three types of gender equality information increased the motivation of junior high school students to choose STEM subjects and the motivation of their parents to support that choice. Information on STEM, especially about social equality, and information on math stereotypes and STEM occupations, increased students’ motivations for studying STEM. This suggests that providing gender equality information is an effective way to change students’ attitudes toward STEM.