School Intervention Program

In 1994, at the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Beijing Platform for Action included a call for action to increase girls’ and women’s access to and retention in science and technology, including by adapting curricula, and teaching materials. We at FAT believe that if we uncover and understand the various channels of negative feedback regarding Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies that schoolgirls receive, it is possible to counter these stimuli.

A review of the available literature on women in technology suggests that the one of the main reasons for the shortage of women in technology-design and decision-making is the low uptake of tertiary education in technology among girls, and earlier still, to the self-elimination of girls from STEM subjects at the school level itself.

Self-elimination of girls from STEM fields in school can be attributed to two main causes: one is of course the larger societal environment which lays down the norms of gendered roles and expectations. The other, perhaps not as evident but as powerful, is the systematic discouragement of girl children entrenched in the very nature of the schooling system. Anecdotally, one can further trace this to the design of the curriculum, and the inequitable access of girl children to the classroom and the laboratory.

Through the Adolescent Schoolgirls Program, FAT proposes to address this second concern of the role of the school in discouraging girl children from pursuing tertiary education in STEM subjects.

The first phase of the program is aimed at exploring and understanding the underlying gender biases that determine the performance of girl children in science and technology education, and to explore means to reduce these biases within the school together. Studies will be conducted with girls from 6th grade to 10th grade to understand their level of interest in STEM subjects and the reasons affecting their choices. Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices survey will be done with their science/maths/computer teachers, the school administrators, the lab assistants etc., who form the ecosystem for learning science and technology in school. Based on the knowledge developed from these surveys, interventions will be designed aimed at promoting STEM education amongst adolescent girls.