DOI - Mendel University Press

DOI identifiers

DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7509-922-8-0073

FAKTORY A BARIÉRY ŠTÚDIA STEM U DIEVČAT

Michal Kentoš, Mária Ďurkovská

Despite the same objective performance in STEM, women are not adequately represented in the workforce in Slovakia. In Slovakia, women represent only 13.7% of IT positions. Due to age disproportions, approximately 20% of women under the age of 30 work in the IT sector, while only 9% of women under the age of 45 work in the IT sector. Velšic (2019) reports that out of 1000 women, only 29 will obtain a bachelor‘s degree in IT, only 4 of them will remain working in the IT sector. Stoet and Geary (2018) conclude that girls‘ talents are being lost during secondary and tertiary education, even though girls are performing as well as or better than boys in science literacy while showing interest in pursuing STEM fields. As a result, however, the percentage of college degrees earned by girls was significantly lower than that of boys. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of qualitative research on the barriers and facilitators that encourage or hinder women to pursue careers in STEM environments. The research was conducted with a sample of secondary vocational school teachers and focused on their experiences of female students‘ preferences for interests and achievement goals. At the same time, attention was paid to gender and role stereotypes related to STEM. Preliminary results of the research indicate social (male environment) and individual (promotion of competitiveness, individualism) barriers in relation to girls‘ intentions to study and work in STEM fields.

Keywords: STEM learning, ICT, secondary school teachers, gender differences

pages: 73-79, online: 2023



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