Female Empowerment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Higher Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Female Empowerment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Higher Education

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Female Empowerment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Higher Education (FeSTEM)

Context/background of the project
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is crucial to Europe’s innovative capacity and global competitiveness. Yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up almost half of the E.U. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce. That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in Europe. Among STEM jobs, women’s representation has varied over time. In computer and math workforce (the largest of the four STEM components), women representation has dropped 3 percentage points since 2000. Engineers are the second largest STEM occupational group, but only about one out of every seven engineers is female. Men are much more likely than women to have a STEM job regardless of educational attainment.

Project objectives
In this context, the principal objective of FeSTEM project is to promote an innovative method and pedagogy that will allow HE students to use traditional and computationally-rich media to create meaningful, shareable exhibits that will act as mentoring models for encouraging girls and women to remain active in STEM. The novelty of our approach is reflected in the activities that will make use of traditional and computationally-rich media through which we envisage to expose HE students to successful female role models in STEM and encourage the development of networking opportunities for women to establish a peer support system. The making of meaningful, shareable exhibits is based on the premise that by having students engage as scientists in a creative, hands-on, and passionate endeavor allows them to spark their motivation to remain active in STEM- a motivation that is often extinguished by extrinsic and goals and expectations of education and workplace.

Participants
The participants involved in the project include women studying and teaching in STEM-related areas in Higher Education.

Methodology
FeSTEM will deploy through the establishment of STEM MAKER teams in all partner countries which will consist of HE academics working in STEM-related departments and motivated STEM students (male and female) who will work at the project in all its different phases. STEM MAKER teams will be involved in the piloting and evaluation of the project outputs (tools, exhibits, activities and workshops), and thereafter they will apply what they have learned in a wider-scale through workshops and events. Ultimately, the project will build an active network of women in STEM (both junior and senior) that will act as a mentoring hub for encouraging girls and women to remain active in STEM.

Main outcomes
The main project outcomes are foreseen to be: a gender-sensitive teaching methodology for engaging HE students in making shareable exhibits and promoting gender-equality issues, an open source online instrument for making gender-sensitive shareable exhibits, resources in the form of examples to illustrate how shareable exhibits can act as mentoring constructs for women in STEM, a community of practive for engaging HE instructors in a sharing community of practices and ideas and a mentoring community platform for STEM HE students.

Long term benefits
The results of the project are expected to be of value for HE teachers, students, trainers, managers, entrepreneurs, technicians and researchers. More specifically, in the outputs of the project are expected to benefit those who are interested in raising gender-sensitive awareness in HE and enrich HE STEM education with a gender-sensitive approach.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 204556 Eur

Project Coordinator

TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU & Country: CY

Project Partners

• MAGENTA CONSULTORIA PROJECTS SL
• CESIE
• UNIVERSITY OF MACEDONIA
• Izobrazevalni center Geoss d.o.o.
• ARIS A REALLY INSPIRING SPACE