Despite making up nearly half of the workers in the US, women are still vastly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.  As of 2019, women accounted for only 26% of STEM employees.  Women are also represented unequally across different areas of STEM.  For example, women are overrepresented in health-related jobs, but only 15% of engineers are women.  Within STEM jobs, there is also a wage gap, with women in full-time STEM careers making less money than their male counterparts.

Here are some ways to encourage girls into STEM fields:
1. Early exposure and education is key to fostering interest in STEM.  Elementary schools can introduce children to computer science, engineering, and math concepts through hands-on activities and experiments.  Parents can encourage interest in STEM by encouraging play with toys that utilize the imagination to build simple machines or structures and by celebrating their child's success and efforts in STEM.

2. Providing girls with female role models and mentors in STEM can make a huge difference.  Seeing and interacting with women who are successful in STEM roles can motivate girls to pursue similar paths.

3. Making STEM relatable encourages all children, not just girls, to stick with STEM as they grow.  For instance, showing students how to use math to create a community garden or calculate the cost of a small business makes math engaging and fun.  Using local examples of how STEM affects their lives shows students that these are not abstract principles, but tools that can help us understand and improve our communities.

4. Having a supportive school culture is key to keeping girls interested in STEM.  Teachers should be trained to recognize and fight against gender bias, both their own unconscious biases and those they observe in others.  Girls' achievements should be recognized and celebrated to reinforce to them that they are capable STEM students. 

5. Equal access to resources and opportunities can help empower girls to succeed in STEM.  This can include access to the Internet and computers, as well as scholarships, internships, and apprenticeships targeted at girls.

Keeping girls interested in STEM requires parents, teachers, and communities to work together to encourage and support them as they grow!

Meet computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Marissa Mayer. 

Marissa Mayer has been involved with tech companies since the beginning of her career.  She joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20.  She started out writing code and advanced quickly to a managerial role within the company.  In 2005, she became Vice President of Search Products and User Experience.  She stayed with Google in an executive capacity until 2012 when she moved to Yahoo!.

Mayer was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo! in July of 2012.  As CEO of Yahoo!, she oversaw its acquisition of Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion.  She later oversaw the selling of Yahoo! to Verizon in 2017 for $4.48 billion.

Since leaving Yahoo!, Mayer has started Lumi Labs, later rebranded as Sunshine, a company focused on artificial intelligence and consumer media.

For Women's History Month, we are using this opportunity to highlight women in STEM that are making a difference now.  Meet Fig O'Reilly.

Fionnghuala "Fig" O'Reilly is an Irish-American model, data analyst, and fierce advocate for women in STEM.  In 2019, she was crowned Miss Universe Ireland.  She made history as the first woman of color and Black woman to represent Ireland at the Miss Universe pageant.  At the Miss Universe pageant, O'Reilly used her platform to highlight the need for diversity and women in STEM.  O'Reilly is a correspondent for the television series Mission Unstoppable with Miranda Cosgrove, and a data analyst for NASA.

In 2022, O'Reilly founded the organization Space to Reach, which is a platform that connects employers to Black and Brown women in technology and engineering.  Members gain access to resources, workshops, and programming designed to enhance their skills and knowledge.  O'Reilly travels around the world to speak about women's empowerment and diversity in STEM.

Throughout the month of March, we are highlighting women in STEM who are making history.  Today, meet the godmother of AI, Fei-Fei Li.

Fei-Fei Li is a computer scientist known for establishing ImageNet, a large visual database used in visual object recognition software.  Li created ImageNet in the 2010s to improve the data available to train AI algorithms.  ImageNet uses more than 14 million images to advance computer vision and deep learning programs.

Li is the Sequoia Capital professor of computer science at Stanford University and former board director at Twitter.  In 2017, she co-founded the non-profit AI4ALL, which works to promote diversity and inclusion in the field of artificial intelligence.

Li is a member of the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board.  In recent years, her research work has expanded to include artificial intelligence in healthcare.

March is Women's History Month, and we thought we would celebrate by introducing you to some women who are making STEM history now.  Meet theoretical physicist Katherine Freese.

​Katherine Freese is the Director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics as well as the Jeff & Gail Endowed Chair of Physics at the University of Texas, Austin. She is also Guest Professor of Physics at Stockholm University. She served as Director of NORDITA, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, from 2014-2106.

Freese works on a wide range of topics in theoretical cosmology and astroparticle physics. She has contributed to early research on dark matter and dark energy.  She has been working to build a successful model of the early universe immediately after the Big Bang.

Freese received her B.A. in Physics from Princeton University in 1977, her M.A. in Physics in 1981 from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in Physics in 1984 from the University of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the William Rainey Harper Award Fellowship.

She was awarded the Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society in 2019, “For ground-breaking research at the interface of cosmology and particle physics, and her tireless efforts to communicate the excitement of physics to the general public.”

Freese's students consider her to be an engaging professor who makes her students feel like independent thinkers.