Effective Strategies To Get Women Involved In STEM In Ghana

Globally, there is a large gap between the number of men vs. the number of women in STEM. The lack of women’s involvement in STEM is an ongoing topic of conversation in many countries, but I felt it would be interesting to focus on a specific country, and I chose to focus on Ghana. In Ghana, only 18% of researchers are female. The lack of women in STEM cannot be deducted to a single reason, as it stems from a plethora of factors, one of them being that historically, women have not been seen to be capable of handling a job in a field such as STEM. Therefore, they have not been encouraged to join, nor have they been provided adequate opportunities to allow them to thrive in the world of STEM like their male counterparts. Lack of support for women in STEM has been found to be a key factor that deters women from STEM fields, as it mentally stifles them from the idea that they are capable of success in such a field like STEM. This lack of support is reflected by gender norms that suggest that women aren’t as capable of handling fields such as STEM like their male counterparts. Currently, there is a lot being done in Ghana to combat this issue, with a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches which seek to get to the root of the problem and to work towards creating a brighter future for women and girls in STEM in Ghana.

Hi! My name is Raquel Odei-Morris, I am a sophomore at George Mason University, and for my Honors 302 course, I decided to research the Effective Strategies To Get Women Involved in STEM in Ghana. So globally, it has been shown that there’s a margin between the number of men and women in STEM, and I thought this was interesting so I wanted to focus in on a single country and I chose Ghana. It has been shown that 18% of researchers in Ghana are female. This lack of women in STEM can’t be deducted to a single reason. A factor that could deter women and girls from STEM is lack of role models, or what I’ll be talking about today, which is lack of support. So my research question is as follows: What are effective strategies to get more women and girls involved in STEM in Ghana? I have chosen this topic because I, myself, am pursuing a degree in STEM, I am studying Electrical Engineering, and I am from Ghana. So first we’ll talk about gender norms in Ghana. Even though we’re in 2022, there are gender norms that suggest that men are capable of certain responsibilities and females are capable of certain responsibilities, and Ghana is no exception to that. These gender norms fester into self-perceptions, either coming from the media or from teachers or parents that make girls feel less capable of pursuing a degree in something such as STEM. And lack of support for women in STEM is reflected by these gender norms, as it mentally stifles women from the idea that they are capable of pursuing a degree in STEM. In terms of what is currently being done, in my research I found a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches. For qualitative, I found some interviews that they talked to successful women in STEM in Ghana to understand what their upbringing was like and what helped them in STEM and maybe what could have helped them more. For quantitative approaches, there’s a well known tech university in Ghana, KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology), that looked into 16 years worth of enrollment data to find the trend in lack of women in STEM and as you can see, the red bars are women and the blue are men. By 2013 they implemented some strategies such as scholarship programs or mentoring to get more women involved in STEM. It increased the number of women in STEM but it went up and down a bit, as we can’t find an exact solution to get more women involved in STEM. A mix of qualitative and quantitative approach that I found was a study done by a middle school in Ghana, in which they gave students a survey to see what STEM subjects they enjoyed, put them through STEM clinics, which is where they take them on educational trips or give them motivational talks to help them through their STEM subjects, and they gave them the same survey after to see if there was a difference. So you can see in this picture here. So as they compared the two sets of data, it showed that girls tended to like certain STEM subjects after the STEM clinics but of course, some of the numbers didn’t change. As I said before we can’t find one single solution to get more women involved in STEM. In terms of next steps, I would love to travel to Ghana to conduct this research. I would like to talk to established women in STEM in Ghana to be able to get their take: what worked for them, maybe what didn’t work for them, and what they would like to see for the next generation of girls in STEM in Ghana. I would also like to talk to institutions, such as schools or different companies, just to see what they’re doing, if anything, to get women and girls involved in STEM. And to maybe suggest methods from the established women in STEM and then work towards implementation. The future for women in STEM in Ghana is bright, but I also hope that I can put in a little bit of my perspective to inch our way closer to the goal of getting more women involved in STEM in Ghana. Thank you!