It seems like every other week there’s a new acronym to get our heads around. But whilst some come and go, ‘STEM’ seems to be the mother of all acronyms, that has become a household name. Science, technology, engineering, maths – aka “STEM”. These are the (few remaining) subjects where women are underrepresented in education. It is an acronym that has given us wonderfully cliche images of young women in white coats high fiving, or others peering into microscopes with a big smiles and thumbs up. But whilst the artwork is humorous, the numbers don’t quite add up. As what people don’t know about ‘STEM’, is that it is just yet another politically motivated term, that has manipulated the data to give us misleading perspectives. Because actually 54% of STEM students are women, not 35%. And we can only arrive at 35% by ignoring the many, many, sciences where women continue to dominate. Biology, psychology, neuroscience, medicine, veterinary science… These are all sciences… all areas where women dominate… and none of them are considered STEM subjects. Yes. Biology. Not a science. Somehow. Meanwhile the crisis of men and boys falling behind and dropping out of education remains ignored. Yup, the crisis of educational attainment continues to look in the wrong direction. So what is to be said about STEM? And can we drop the acronyms and political neologisms, and look at the whole picture? ~ HESA Data  Definition of Stem (pg10)  Benjamin Lehman, Pawel Czerwinski, Gradienta from Unsplash. #stem #stemeducation

2023-09-02