We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism.
Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England were up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism. The main perpetrators of this sexism were not university staff, however, but were men STEM degree students.
This research stems from the third phase of the ASPIRES project, based at UCL, which has tracked the career aspirations and plans of a cohort of young people in England from age 10/11 to age 21/22; with a focus on what shapes young people’s trajectories into, through and out of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
We know from existing research that women on STEM degree courses can experience regular sexism, but less is known about the sources and types of this sexism. Our survey of over 3,000 university students in England shows that women STEM undergraduates reported more sexism than those studying non-STEM fields. These experiences of sexism were heightened on some courses, with 50% of women studying physics and 30% of women studying engineering reporting that they had experienced sexism on their degree course.
