Closing The Gender Achievement Gap In STEM

Hiring more female professors could help close the gender achievement gap in STEM, a new study finds.

Looking at the data from almost 10,000 students enrolled in introductory STEM courses at University of California Irvine, researchers confirmed the existence of a wider gender achievement gap in classes taught by males. The effect...

was equivalent to the difference between a B and a B+.

Interestingly, not only did female students receive higher grades in course taught by female instructors, but their male counterparts got poorer results and were more likely to fail the class. 

One of the factors explaining this reduction was that females self-reported seeking more help from female than male instructors.

In the second part of the study, the researchers surveyed their sample about motivation-related items such as engagement, self-efficacy (belief in one's abilities), interest, and utility value.

Although female students tended to be less engaged and interested than male students in general, this gender gap was narrower when they had a female professors.

The reason, the authors theorized, could be that, while female students are less likely to find STEM compatible with their gender identity, a female professor can both act as a role model and prove the possibility for women to find their place in this male-dominated field. 

Source: Solanki and Xu (2018)