Building and Maintaining Girls’ Confidence in STEM

Many incredible women throughout history have made monumental impacts within STEM fields, proving that there is, without a doubt, a place for girls in STEM! If that’s the case, why are girls still so underrepresented? The Society of Women Engineers shared data from the 2023 Global Gender Gap Report stating that women across 146 nations comprise just 29.2% of the STEM workforce. Though capable and qualified, some girls and women might lack confidence in their ability to excel in STEM careers, and they often face additional barriers when entering the field and seeking leadership roles.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame^® is committed to helping close the gender gap in STEM fields by helping girls’ confidence soar, introducing children to inspiring, diverse women as role models and teaching them to build 21st-century skills through our inspiring education programs.

Why Do Girls Lose Confidence in STEM?

From gender stereotypes and harmful myths to a lack of representation in the field and in portrayals of STEM roles within the media, girls are facing obstacles to STEM careers from a young age. In fact, the American Association of University Women shares that girls’ math abilities are often underestimated beginning as early as preschool age and many begin to lose confidence in their math abilities by third grade – despite research showing no obvious cognitive biological differences between men and women in math. These harmful gender stereotypes in adolescence, both consciously and unconsciously shared, can have a lasting impact on girls’ attitudes toward STEM and belief in their own ability to succeed in these fields.

To correct this troubling trend, it is crucial that educators and parents provide girls with exciting, hands-on STEM experiences and exposure to role models they can see themselves in. In addition, programs that emphasize the process of brainstorming, testing, failing and trying again will help girls build persistence as they begin to realize that overcoming challenges and making mistakes are necessary steps on the path to success. These early practices will help build confidence in STEM subjects and beyond.

Inductee and Role Model Radia Perlman on Overcoming Adversity

Though today Radia Perlman is praised for her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol, a key contribution to the development of the internet, there was a time when Perlman had her doubters.

In a video celebrating her induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Perlman explains that some of her colleagues believed the creation of Ethernet technology made her earlier work on routing links obsolete.

“When Ethernet came out I said, ‘This is a new type of link and I have to modify the routing protocol, but you still need my layer to forward data,’ and they said ‘Oh Radia, no one cares about your layer anymore.’”

Perlman did not allow others’ skepticism to stop her from pursuing her ideas. Instead, she combined Ethernet technology with her Spanning Tree Protocol design, which led to some of the first large-scale internet networks!

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To discover our full range of Inductee-inspired curricula and find new ways to empower the young learners in your life, explore our website.