Mind the GAP! A Gender Awareness Programme for VET Teachers and Girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mind the GAP! A Gender Awareness Programme for VET Teachers and Girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Mind the GAP! was a successful two-year EU project created to address the disturbing – and ongoing – shortfall of women training and working in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). It was run as an effective consortium of five partners from the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Spain. All partners had expertise and experience in vocational STEM training or gender diversity issues.
When the project began, it was estimated that 1,300 million people with technical skills would be needed for jobs in the STEM sector by 2020. At the same time, figures showed that there were not enough STEM graduates – male and female – to fill these vacancies. Policy makers within the EU had recently called for more to be done to attract students to this area. To further compound this, statistics showed that women were grossly underrepresented in STEM careers and training.
For example, a report by the WISE Campaign in 2012 showed that, “While a few (mainly ex-Soviet) countries have around 20% women in STEM, Western European countries such as France and Spain (17% each), Denmark (16%), Germany (15%), Finland (15%), and UK (9%) all bring the European average down to 17%”.
Women made up almost half the labour market (46% of the workforce in the UK), so we recognised that encouraging and retaining more girls in STEM subjects after compulsory education was crucial for tackling the problem.
Mind the GAP! was created in this context and aspired to help:
– Fill the STEM skills shortage by inspiring more girls to stay in training and vocational education in order to gain STEM qualifications.
– Combat high levels of early drop-out rates and youth unemployment by raising aspirations amongst young women.
– Improve gender diversity in STEM by raising awareness of the current skills gap.
We worked directly with:
– STEM teachers at vocational colleges and schools
– Female students, aged 16–18, and studying STEM
and indirectly with:
– Younger girls in secondary schools
– Teachers and key staff in other subjects
– Key decision makers and stakeholders
– Organisations working in gender diversity and STEM
The project kicked off by running focus groups with both teachers and female students in order to create a realistic and useful needs analysis. Based on this, we ran a series of effective activities that aimed to:
– support and inspire girls to continue their education in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)
– help STEM teachers in vocational training colleges to recruit and retain more girls.
The project had the longer term aspiration of raising awareness among a wider target group about the importance of promoting STEM to young women and girls in schools and colleges across Europe.
Mind the GAP! achieved some great concrete results through this series of practical activities and tools:
– Mind the GAP! Gender Training Programme: Based on original materials from VHTO (NL), this was designed to support teachers to recruit and retain female students on their courses. It also provided teaching tools and inclusive methodologies for increasing teachers’ gender-awareness in STEM.
– Career Circles: Female STEM students: Based on a peer mentoring and action learning methodology developed by Inova (UK), we created and ran successful Career Circles to support girls studying or recently finishing STEM subjects. This helped them develop the soft skills they needed to further their career plans, assess their goals and build the self-confidence they would need to work in a male-dominated environment.
– Career Circles: STEM teachers: Career Circles were also developed for teachers to explore, alongside their peers, some of the issues faced by women in STEM. This helped them to understand how they could better support students, reflect on their own professional development, and share teaching methods and tools.
– Mind the GAP! Online Learning Hub: A Learning Hub with materials and resources produced by the project is now available freely to a wider audience of girls, teachers, policy makers and the community. It brings together other Open Educational Resources in a searchable catalogue to help girls and teachers find useful training materials.
– Guide for Policy Makers in Science and Technology Education: All five partners contributed to writing a policy makers guide, based on the experience of the project. It highlighted issues of gender diversity in STEM and was disseminated to key policy makers in UK, NL and ES.
– Mind the GAP! Media Campaign: A successful media and dissemination campaign ran throughout the project. It ranged from printed posters for classroom walls, through to postings on Facebook and Twitter and a range of “Spread the Word” groups.
All Mind the GAP! materials and resources are freely available online and maintained so that we can continue inspiring and supporting girls and teachers and – perhaps one day – see a more gender diverse workforce in STEM professions.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 250357,96 Eur

Project Coordinator

The Sheffield College & Country: UK

Project Partners

• WITEC asociación de mujeres, ciencia y tecnología
• FUNDACIÓ PRIVADA PEL FOMENT DE LA SOCIETAT DEL CONEIXEMENT
• INOVA CONSULTANCY LTD
• Stichting VHTO