February 11 is celebrated the International day of women and girls in science, born in 2015 at the behest of the UN. The Valore D association launches the # valored4stem awareness campaign to raise awareness of the large gender discrepancies that exist in the scientific-technological sectors contained in the acronym STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering e Mathematics).
Valore D, committed to inclusive culture and gender equality since 2009, is an association that includes more than 280 companies in 11 different sectors and aims to encourage girls to overcome stereotypes and embrace a career in science. # ValoreD4STEM is a multi-channel campaign (on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and Who the Twitter link) with which we want to bring attention to the issue of gender inequality and relaunch the need to overcome the national costume so that girls are inserted in sectors that are still almost exclusively male prerogative.
The weight of the stereotype
The data of the XXXIII survey on the profile of graduates, published by Almalaurea in 2021 on data from 2020, draw a very fragmented reality in which women, while constituting the majority of recent graduates with 58.7% (an almost constant figure over the last 10 years), they still struggle to follow scientific study paths as confirmation, citing one data above all, the ratio between women and men in the technological-computer faculties which is 14.3 %, or one woman for every six men. On the other hand, observing the faculties of more humanistic expression, women are in numerical superiority, up to the apex of 92.8% in the faculties related to education and training.
A not just an Italian situationso much so that the European Institute for Gender Equality (Eige) speaks of a widespread inequality and that, for example in ICT, women occupy two out of ten jobs.
The general manager of Valore D, Barbara Falcomer, underlines: “The prejudice that girls are not trained in scientific subjects is unfortunately still very widespread and it is necessary to change this narrative, not only because it does not correspond to the truth, but above all because it creates inequality of opportunities in access to those professions that are increasingly in demand from the market. Stereotypes must be broken down so that more girls choose STEM paths if we do not want women to be disadvantaged once again in the world of work “.
The teacher is of the same opinion Amalia Ercoli Finzithe first woman in Italy to graduate in aeronautical engineering with a past in NASA and in the European and Italian Space Agency: “We need women who work in engineering, scientific research, experts in mathematics and above all in technologies , because these, the STEMs, are the spaces in which our future will be articulated and being cut off from them means handing over to others, men, the power to build it as they want ”.
The school
A survey promoted by Valore D among 61 companies belonging to the association found the density of STEM professionals in Italian companies, discovering that 62% of women who responded to the survey have followed up on their passion for scientific disciplines and that 20% were encouraged by teachers who made them passionate.