On the 1st of May, the STEMM Opportunity Alliance (SOA) announced STEMM Equity and Excellence 2050: A National Strategy for Progress and Prosperity at the 2024 White House Summit on STEMM Equity and Excellence, co-hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The overarching goal of the national strategy is to help 20 million people from historically excluded and marginalized communities enter, contribute to, and thrive in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medical (STEMM) fields. SOA is a nationwide initiative committed to tapping America’s culturally rich, innovative, and diverse talent pool to expand the STEMM workforce. Along with unveiling the national strategy, SOA announced that its partners, which have more than doubled in size since the December 2022 launch (200+), have collectively committed more than $2 billion to realize the vision of the national strategy. “America’s diversity of thought, derived from our diversity of geography, background and identity, is one of our nation’s strongest assets,” said Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “Growing the STEMM workforce to its greatest potential enables us to create a world where every child, regardless of their background, sees participation in STEMM as their birthright.” Each SOA partner has aligned new or existing commitments and projects under the metrics laid out in the national strategy, all committing to multi-lateral, cross-sector collaboration to achieve systems-level change. Additionally, SOA announced 10 organizations to serve as anchor partners, each of whom will facilitate working groups within the strategy’s foundations, five pillars, and capstone. The anchor partners will build strong networks, drive toward ambitious, measurable goals, and realign SOA partners’ support, systems and accountability measures.

For women in STEM, seeing themselves in the media is rare. As of 2023, 72% of young women and girls said they wish there were more STEM women characters in movies and TV. But when they do, the impact is huge. Studies have shown that women’s mindsets are impacted by what they see in the media. For instance, it’s been shown that seeing powerful women in the media decreases negative self-perceptions and increases interest in leadership roles among women watching. The same effect occurs when women in STEM see characters who look like them in movies, TV, and books. While the overall number of women in STEM displayed in the media has stayed static in recent years, STEM characters who are women of color increased 13% between 2017 and 2022. As a result, women of color feel encouraged to pursue a career in STEM. In surveying girls about the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, 72% and 68% of respondents said characters Shuri and Riri had a positive influence on their STEM interest, respectively. In addition to fictional characters, there are multiple real women in STEM who have documented their stories on the page. Here are a few books to check out for high school and college women in STEM.

SWE's recent case study underscores the critical role of female STEM mentorship programs. Mentorship programs function as gateways to professional networks and provide essential support resources for women in STEM. Women remain vastly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Recent statistics paint a concerning picture: globally, only 35% of STEM students are female, and this number drops to a mere 28% for doctoral students. Addressing this imbalance and closing the gender gap in STEM participation and success have become a global priority. In 2022, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) hosted research roundtable discussions with individuals from Austria, Germany, and the United States to gather insights and recommendations to address the gender gap in STEM education and the workforce. These roundtables highlighted the significant impact effective mentorship programs have in supporting women in STEM - both on a global international scale and as an emerging powerful tool for empowerment and support. Recognizing the crucial role of female STEM mentorship programs, SWE conducted a qualitative study involving interviews with international participants in identified female mentoring programs at universities in Austria and Germany. The selected programs were aimed at retaining women in STEM graduate studies and faculty. The research objective focused on understanding what factors make a university STEM mentorship program truly impactful for women and examined “What are the key factors that contribute to the effectiveness of university STEM mentorship programs in promoting the advancement and success of women in engineering and technology fields within the specific contexts of Austria and Germany?” Findings from SWE’s case study report shed light on female mentorship program effectiveness, program design, best practices, and lessons learned.

The female empowerment portrayed in the book and television series Lessons in Chemistry may have been ahead of its time. The experiences of a woman chemist facing sexism in science in the mid-20th century seems an unlikely topic for 21st-century popular culture. Yet, Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry1 focuses on just that and has experienced tremendous success. The book, published in 2022, spent 51 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list as of November 2023, was named Amazon’s Best Book for April 2022, and was Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year for 2022. And in November 2023 Apple TV released a limited television series based on the book. Lessons in Chemistry aims to depict, in an approachable and humorous way, the difficulties women experienced if they attempted to enter the world of science in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Elizabeth Zott, a talented, aspiring research chemist, enters a graduate program in chemistry in the late 1950s but soon falls victim to sexual misconduct and the university’s unwillingness to do anything about the misbehavior of a male professor. She leaves for a job at a research institute, where she becomes romantically involved with a brilliant, successful, but unorthodox male chemist. With his support, both psychological and institutional, her career as a researcher begins to show signs of taking off. Unfortunately, he dies in an accident and Zott is subsequently fired by the research institute, whose staff resented her and refused to see her as anything more than a parasite feeding off her late partner’s success.

This webinar is for undergraduate and graduate students who aspire to make a difference in the world of STEM. Don’t miss this opportunity to unlock the doors of opportunity within the Department of Defense! Join NCWIT for an informative event about the esteemed Department of Defense (DoD) SMART Scholarship program. At 2 pm PT | 3 pm MT | 4 pm CT | 5 pm ET, delve into the comprehensive benefits and unparalleled opportunities offered via SMART Scholarship, an initiative designed to empower the next generation of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) leaders. A panel of speakers will share invaluable insights into the program’s structure, eligibility criteria, and application process. Participants will discover how the SMART Scholarship program fosters a dynamic environment where scholars engage in cutting-edge research, collaborate with learning experts in their fields, and contribute to critical defense initiatives. From full tuition coverage to stipends, internships, and post-graduation employment opportunities, the benefits of the SMART Scholarship are extensive.

The Council on Foreign Relations hosted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger to discuss developments in the tech industry, the implications of geopolitical conflicts on global trade, and leadership lessons learned.
In this clip, I, on behalf of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), ask Mr. Gelsinger about any initiatives at Intel that may be helping to retain women and other underrepresented groups in the tech workforce.

The 2024 NCWIT Summit will take place May 20–22, 2024, in Kansas City, MO at the Loews Kansas City Hotel. This year, the Summit will be in-person, with livestreams of sessions taking place on the plenary stage available for online participation. With NCWIT being the trusted source for research-based strategies that facilitate reform in computing classes and technical organizations, the NCWIT Summit continues to be the world’s largest annual convening of change leaders focused on significantly improving diversity and equity in computing.

Each year, the NCWIT Virtual Career Fair connects Workforce Alliance members with over 24,000 technical women, genderqueer, and non-binary individuals in the AiC Community. This robust and engaged talent pool is comprised of high school students, college and graduate students, and professionals who are eager to meet with company representatives and learn more about internships and job opportunities. Event access is free for members of the AiC Community and Workforce Alliance members!

Diversity Matters Even More is the fourth report in a McKinsey series investigating the business case for diversity, following Why Diversity Matters (2015), Delivering Through Diversity (2018), and Diversity Wins (2020). For almost a decade through our Diversity Matters series of reports, McKinsey has delivered a comprehensive global perspective on the relationship between leadership diversity and company performance. This year, the business case is the strongest it has been since we’ve been tracking and, for the first time in some areas, equitable representation is in sight. Further, a striking new finding is that leadership diversity is also convincingly associated with holistic growth ambitions, greater social impact, and more satisfied workforces. At a time when companies are under extraordinary pressure to maintain financial performance while navigating a rapidly changing business landscape, creating an internal culture of transparency and inclusion, and transforming operations to meet social-impact expectations, the good news is that these goals are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, our research suggests a strong, positive relationship between them. And in an increasingly complex and uncertain competitive landscape, diversity matters even more. For this report, the fourth edition of Diversity Matters, they drew on our largest dataset yet - spanning 1,265 companies, 23 countries, and six global regions, and multiple company interviews. They also extended our research and interview focus beyond the relationship between diversity and financial performance, for the first time exploring the holistic impact of diversity on communities, workforces, and the environment.

Women working in the sciences face obstacles at virtually every step along their career paths. From subtle slights to blatant biases, deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science and technology entirely. Women in Science Now examines solutions to this persistent gender gap, offering new perspectives on how to make science more equitable and inclusive for all. This book shares stories and insights of women from a range of backgrounds working in various disciplines, illustrating the journeys that brought them to the sciences, the challenges they faced along the way, and the important contributions they have made to their fields. Lisa M. P. Munoz combines these narratives with a wealth of data to illuminate the size and scope of the challenges women scientists face, while highlighting research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles. She presents groundbreaking studies in social psychology and organizational behavior that are informing novel approaches for combating historic and ongoing inequities. Through a combined focus on personal experiences and social-science research, this timely book provides both a path toward greater gender equity and an inspiring vision of science and scientists.