Women make up less than 25% of STEM workers and less than 8% of trades workers in Canada.¹ Why does this gender gap exist?

Women, girls, and gender-diverse people face structural and systemic barriers that impact decisions to take STEM courses, enter STEM postsecondary programs, and continue working in STEM fields. Efforts to close the gender gap must cover the lifespan to address different barriers experienced at different life, educational, and career stages.

It Starts Early in Life

Children are inundated with stereotypical portrayals of STEM professionals that play a strong role in shaping their perceptions of STEM professionals.^{2, 3, 4, 5}

These societal stereotypes affect children’s interests, and their exposure to STEM.^{6, 7, 8}

Societal stereotypes also affect adult evaluations of children’s competence in STEM. For example, adults tend to provide less scientific information when teaching girls compared to boys, and perceive girls to be less competent in STEM than boys.^{8, 9}

These adult behaviours limit girls’ exposure to STEM topics, and send messages to girls that they are not good at STEM. These effects can be compounded by intersectional identity factors like race, disability, and more. 

Stereotypes associating male with STEM are so powerful, they predict children’s and adolescents’ interest and intention to pursue a STEM degree.^{6, 10}

However, a great deal of evidence demonstrates that stereotypes can be broken and interest in pursuing STEM can increase.

CAGIS follows the science of breaking barriers for underrepresented youth in STEM, and uses evidence-based methods to build networks of girls and gender-diverse youth in STEM to interact with each other, STEM role models^{11, 12}, and mentors in small group, supportive environments^{13, 14}. These networks create spaces where being a girl or gender-diverse youth in STEM is the norm, rather than the exception.

Importantly, CAGIS programs provide long-term repeated STEM opportunities (shown to increase STEM interest¹⁵), and exposure to diverse topics¹⁵ with hands-on experiences^{16, 17, 18} led by diverse STEM Role Models. We do this with an intersectional lens, considering multiple identity factors and barriers participants may be facing.

These evidence-based methods work! Ninety-four percent of our graduates report (according to 2017 and 2022 surveys) that they are studying or working in STEM fields. In open-ended responses, most attributed their career trajectories to CAGIS; many discovered their careers at CAGIS events! Learn more about our impact here.

To get involved with CAGIS, learn about ways to donate, volunteer, and partner. 

To register a youth in our programs, learn about CAGIS Chapters and CAGIS Virtual.