Team profile by Tori Akin, Sophia Santillan and Lauren Valentino

Women are underrepresented in the STEM workforce, particularly in math and computational fields. This underrepresentation begins early – not because girls do not perform as well as boys at math but because, at a critical point in their development, stereotypes and cultural norms can dampen many girls’ interest in math and STEM subjects. Factors affecting this trend include a lack of female STEM role models, field-specific beliefs, mindsets, values and small gender differences in spatial reasoning. 

Our project team created Girls Exploring Math (GEM), an innovative program designed to address the gender gap in math. Duke undergraduate and graduate STEM majors lead weekend workshops for Durham Public School (DPS) middle school girls. GEM workshops are unique in that they combine mathematics problem-solving with interactive discussions of the socioemotional factors that affect persistence in STEM. 

Undergraduate and graduate student team members prepare for their role as workshop mentors in our fall course. They develop their leadership skills by teaching math in a discussion-based format while leading these workshops. Team members have gained research, web design, communication, organization and personnel management skills.

In anticipation of the workshops, the team discusses and plans activities that build an increased awareness of gender stereotypes. These discussions are guided by the project leaders and include discussions led by team collaborators. 

Each workshop includes both a hands-on math puzzle and a gender-and-STEM discussion activity. Our team employs a social identity approach to build and nurture STEM-compatible beliefs alongside a rich problem-based mathematics curriculum with a focus on spatial reasoning. Summer workshops in 2024 include laboratory and clinical visits with female STEM practitioners at Duke to provide exposure to female role models.

Our key research questions are: 

1. Does this interdisciplinary workshop curriculum positively impact participants’

• Social Identity: Beliefs about neuroplasticity and gender as related to STEM learning and achievement? STEM-compatible social identity?
• Self-Efficacy: Confidence in their math abilities?
• Cognitive Abilities: Mathematical reasoning? Math performance in the classroom? Spatial reasoning?

2. What, if any, are the associated attributions of the gender gap in STEM by adolescent girls? What impact does a social identity-based curriculum, together with a mathematical problem-based learning approach, have on these beliefs?
3. What, if any, are the associated attributions of the gender gap in STEM by U.S. adults?
4. Does the impact of the overall curriculum persist across cohorts as the program is expanded? Do social identity, self-efficacy, and cognitive outcomes differ between cohorts?

We continued to administer an IRB-approved survey instrument consisting of both a pre-test and a post-test to workshop participants. Survey questions target subjects’ attitudes and beliefs about math and social identity. The survey also includes a math assessment.

One of the key findings from the survey over the past several years pertains to how middle school students understand the gender gap in STEM. Using principal components analysis, we uncovered four major reasons:

1. Biological, in which they believe that women have a fixed disposition, ill-suited for STEM fields
2. Structural, in which they believe that societal factors like discrimination and bias prevent women from getting STEM jobs
3. Socialization, in which they believe that women are raised in a way that discourages them from going into STEM
4. Individual Agentic, in which they see women as having preferences that lead them away from STEM

Additional Information and Resources

GEM website

GEM on Instagram

Assessing and Improving Girls’ and Women’s Math Identity

Poster by Grady Purcell and Malika Rawal