According to a recently published report from the Girl Scouts Research Institute, the majority of college graduates (57%) and master’s level graduates (60%) today are women. However, only 40% of STEM graduates are women. Within the STEM fields, women are under-represented in engineering, computer science, and physics. Women account for about only 20% of the bachelor’s degrees in these fields. While the number of women receiving Bachelor degrees in STEM fields has increased, their proportion compared to men, has remained flat.

These numbers seem puzzling when compared to the finding that about 74% of the teenage girls are interested in STEM. What happens between the girls entering high school and leaving college that causes a significant number of them to choose a non-STEM career path?

Hill et.al. in Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics cite multiple factors leading to this steep decline:

• Gender stereotypes about the relative abilities of men and women in STEM fields
• Lack of role models and mentors
• A perception that STEM careers are incompatible with communal goals like helping people or working with people
• The culture of academic departments in colleges and universities

CNN and NYTimes also cite lack of sufficient support to navigate the academically rigorous and challenging subjects as one of the major reasons why women drop out of STEM majors.

Having access to a strong mentoring group can address many of the issues highlighted above. In Patching the leaky pipeline: Keeping first-year college women interested in science, Atkin, Green and  McLaughlin found that “having volunteers from the university community and guest speakers serve as role models was vital” to the success of a retention program. In The Strength of Numbers: Strategies to Include Women into Computer Science, Lagesen V.A. says that actions that directly change manifest appearances of gender, such as providing role models, is one of ways to encourage more women to choose Computer Science majors. This finding is supported by Professor Liz Orwin and Professor Nancy Lape of Harvey Mudd College in The Science Behind Graduating A Class With Majority Women Engineers. Active mentoring is cited as one of the three key factors in the college’s success in graduating a class with majority women engineers.

Drury et. al. in When Do Female Role Models Benefit Women? The Importance of Differentiating Recruitment From Retention in STEM say that female role models are key to the retention of women who in STEM fields. Female role models help women who might underperform because of the stereotype threat that women are not as good as men in math and science.

Manke K.J and Cohen G.L, in More Than Inspiration: Role Models Convey Multiple and Multifaceted Messages, say that role models can significantly affect the information about fairness and upward mobility within a system.  “Though marginalized group members may feel capable of success based on their abilities, they may believe that the system is unfair or biased against their group. Thus, they may believe that the unfairness of the system will not permit them the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their abilities. Consequently, they may be likely to choose another path that is less fraught with unfairness, one where they will be more likely to be given a fair chance to succeed. “

Thus, a strong mentoring network of role models who are successfully established in STEM career paths can have a significant impact in recruiting and retaining women in STEM majors.

The STEMLinks Project will help college students who have chosen STEM majors find mentors in their corresponding fields. Mentors could be either from the STEM industry or from STEM academic career paths. Mentors volunteer their time to

• Write blog posts that introduce college students to the aspects of their work that they find inspiring, challenging and motivating.
• Answer students’ questions regarding career choices and how to prepare for them.
• Participate in programs and events like Harvey Mudd’s Clinic Program or the Cape Cod Community College Mini Maker Faire .