Building the future of Latin America: Engaging women into STEM

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Building the future of Latin America: engaging women into STEM Funding: European Union. ERASMUS + Capacity-building in Higher Education Call for proposals EAC/A05/2017 Project type: European Coordinator: University of Salamanca Project leader: Francisco J. García Peñalvo Partners: Universidad del Norte Oulu University Politecnico di Torino Technological University Dublin Nothern Regional College Tecnológico de Monterrey Universidad de Guadalajara Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica Universidad de Costa Rica Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja Universidad Técnica del Norte Reference: 598923-EPP-1-2018-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP Time: 15/01/2019 to 14/01/2022 Budget: 862.268€ Abstract: The participation of Women in STEM in the Latin-America region is a very complex problem in which necessarily call for actions from different actors, such as governments, private sector, families, as well the different levels of education (since childhood to higher education). In order to make concrete contribution, Higher Education Institutions need to focus on those needs and situations in which it has certain influence for making real progress, such as: Significant minority of Women choose and access to STEM programs at tertiary level. The lowest rates appears in science and engineering programs. Data is scarce, showing a need for analytical and systematic methods, which reflect actual participation of women in STEM at HEIs. Tertiary studies with a high math component such as STEM seem to be excluded from the studies options by girls in secondary schools. Lack of bridges between public policy and institutional actions led by HEIs. In this way, and aligned to the Erasmus + Capacity Building priority for improving management and operation of higher education, in terms of access to and democratization of Higher Education, the W‐STEM Project aims at Improving strategies and mechanisms of attraction, access and guidance of Women in Latin-American STEM Higher Education programs. For achieving this main objective, W-STEM project, will Measure the gender equality in enrolment and retention rates in STEM programs. Implement Universities’ policies, strategies and organizational mechanisms for improving attraction, access and guidance at undergraduate levels in STEM programs. Promote STEM studies vocation and choice in girls and young women in secondary schools as well as guidance in the first year of the STEM program. Develop an online training package for Higher Education Institutions to implement effective strategies to enhance attraction, access and guidance of Women in STEM programs.

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Author: search.filters.author.García-Holgado, A.Author: search.filters.author.García-Peñalvo, F. J.

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    Definition and Implementation of W-STEM Mentoring Network
    (CEUR-WS.org, 2023-01-13) García-Holgado, A.; Segarra-Morales, S.; González-Rogado, A. B.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    The lack of women in STEM careers is a problem that affects all higher education institutions, not only in Latin America but also in Europe and other regions of the world. Improving access, retention, and orientation mechanisms in universities is fundamental to ensure that more women interested in these areas effectively pursue a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. The W-STEM project seeks to establish strategies to improve these mechanisms in Latin American institutions. Since 2019, it has addressed the improvement of attraction, access, retention, and orientation mechanisms. The W-STEM Mentoring Network is part of these strategies. Specifically, it aims to empower women and encourage their active participation in STEM programmes. The mentoring model implemented uses a three-way relationship: a mentor teacher, a mentor-student and the mentee. The Network provides guidelines for the implementation of mentoring programmes, but each institution involved has adapted them to their contexts and needs according to their Gender Equality Action Plan. This paper describes the guidelines developed through a collaborative co-creation process involving all project institutions under the coordination of the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (Ecuador) and the University of Salamanca (Spain).
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    D2.5.3 Framework para definir e implementar la red de mentorías W-STEM
    (W-STEM Consortium, 2022-10-15) García-Holgado, A.; Segarra-Morales, S.; González-Rogado, A. B.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    D2.5.3 Framework para definir e implementar la red de mentorías W-STEM
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    A Model for Bridging the Gender Gap in STEM in Higher Education Institutions
    (Springer, 2022-05-25) García-Holgado, A.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    Women present a historic and worrying gap in science and technologyrelated disciplines, generally knowns as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), except in the case of health professions. A holistic approach is needed to support policymakers worldwide in bridging the gender gap in STEM, in which higher education institutions have a crucial role. Promoting this active implication of the universities in this problem, in the European project Building the future of Latin America: engaging women into STEM (W-STEM), a model to modernise the government, management and operation of higher education institutions in Latin America to improve attraction, access to and retention of women in STEM programs has been developed. This situation is not exclusive to Latin American countries, it is a global problem, so the results of the W-STEM project are also applicable to European partners and transferrable worldwide. The main goal of this chapter is to describe the W-STEM model based on three years of working on strategies and mechanisms to improve the attraction, access, guidance, and retention processes to engage more women in STEM programs. The model has been thoroughly tested in eleven institutions in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico, involving public and private institutions with different gender equality situations.
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    El Proyecto W-STEM y la Mujer en la Ciencia
    (Grupo GRIAL, 2021-11-11) García-Holgado, A.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    Conferencia invitada en el Encuentro Internacional de Investigación e Innovación en Ciencias Básicas, organizado por el Departamento de Ciencias Básicas de la Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga (Colombia), el 11 de noviembre de 2021. En esta conferencia se destaca el papel de la mujer en la Ciencia, con especial atención a las disciplinas STEM, y se presenta el proyecto europeo W-STEM (European Union. ERASMUS + Capacity-building in Higher Education Call for proposals EAC/A05/2017 - Ref. 598923-EPP-1-2018-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) que tiene como principales objetivos 1) mejorar las estrategias y los mecanismos de atracción, acceso y orientación de las mujeres en los programas de educación superior STEM en América Latina; y 2) garantizar la transformación de la situación actual en las instituciones de educación superior en Latinoamérica.
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    Facilitating Access to the Role Models of Women in STEM: W-STEM Mobile App
    (Springer, 2020-07-19) García-Holgado, A.; Verdugo-Castro, S.; Sánchez-Gómez, M. C.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    W-STEM is a research project funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ program in order to develop concrete actions to mod-ernise the government, management and operation of higher education institu-tions in Latin America to improve women’s access to STEM programs. Among the main objectives of the project, there is the development of a mobile app to be used in attraction campaigns conducted by the Latin American higher education institutions involved in the project. Specifically, the app aims to facilitate access to the role models of women in areas related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The main content inside the app will be a set of video interviews with women from different ages, cultural backgrounds, profiles, sharing their experiences about their careers, occupation and future plans. This work aims to describe the prototype of the mobile app and the exploratory study conducted with a group of students from secondary education to know their perceptions and opinions about the proposed app and the video interviews.
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    Construyendo el futuro de Latinoamérica: mujeres en STEM
    (Asociación Colombiana de Facultades de Ingeniería – ACOFI, 2021-09-21) Camacho, A.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.; García-Holgado, A.; García, L.; Peñabaena, R.
    En la actualidad en el campo de la educación y en el ámbito laboral, todavía existe una brecha de género en las profesiones STEM (ciencias, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas), aunque en las últimas décadas se ha dado un progreso relativamente significativo en el avance para la igualdad de género en diversas dimensiones de la vida humana; esta brecha presenta diferencias entre países y es más profunda en aquellos países que presentan sesgos por estereotipos de género o normas culturales que influyen en el comportamiento femenino y del entorno familiar de las niñas y mujeres. Según el Foro Económico Mundial, las mujeres en el ámbito académico y en el laboral tienen baja representación en los campos relacionados con STEM, y menos de un tercio de las estudiantes de educación superior eligen estudiar asignaturas con contenidos en matemáticas y propios de la ingeniería. De hecho, solo alrededor del 30% de las investigaciones realizadas en el mundo son desarrolladas por mujeres y quienes trabajan en áreas de conocimiento STEM publican menos y, a menudo, reciben menos remuneración. Si bien esta es una problemática mundial, se ve agudizada en América Latina y el Caribe en donde sólo 5 de los 33 países analizados tienen un índice de desarrollo humano considerado "alto", según la UNESCO. Este contexto plantea un reto a las instituciones de educación superior de América Latina, por lo cual y con el propósito de formular e implementar soluciones frente a esta problemática desde la educación superior, se conformó un consorcio de universidades europeas y latinoamericanas, 15 socios alrededor de 10 países, para el desarrollo del proyecto: “Building the future of Latin America: engaging women into STEM (W-STEM)”. Este proyecto está siendo financiado en el marco del programa de la Unión Europea para creación de capacidad en América Latina, por medio del programa ERASMUS +. W-STEM tiene como objetivo mejorar las estrategias y mecanismos de atracción, acceso y orientación de las mujeres en los programas de educación superior STEM de América Latina. Este trabajo presenta las principales actividades desarrolladas en el proyecto y los resultados logrados por el consorcio, particularmente los de las universidades colombianas, a manera de ilustración.
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    Strategies to introduce gender perspective in Engineering studies: a proposal based on selfdiagnosis
    (IEEE, 2020-04-27) González-González, C. S.; García-Holgado, A.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    Gender inequality in STEM careers is a global problem and avoid bias in education can be a solution. This paper presents a framework for inclusion of gender perspective in engineering courses. The methodology followed in its design was divided into two phases: the developed of different educational innovation projects and a co-creation workshop. Several instruments have been created and validated, such as questionnaires, canvas model and rubrics. The framework includes elements such as the self-diagnosis and redefinition of curriculum, conte
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    W-STEM Action Point after technical meetings in Torino and Dublin
    (W-STEM Consortium, 2020-05-08) García-Holgado, A.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    The W-STEM ERASMUS + Capacity-building in Higher Education European Project (Ref. 598923-EPP-1-2018-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) had scheduled two technical meetings at the beginning of May 2020, the first one on May 4th-5th in Torino (Italy) and the second one on May 7th-8th in Dublin (Ireland). Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, these meetings were held online, but organized by the corresponding local partners, in the scheduled dates and maintaining the meeting goals. The action points after both meetings are presented.
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    Gender equality in STEM programs: a proposal to analyse the situation of a university about the gender gap
    (IEEE, 2020-04-27) García-Holgado, A.; Mena, J.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.; Pascual, J.; Heikkinen, M.; Harmoinen, S.; García-Ramos, L.; Peñabaena-Niebles, R.; Amores, L.
    According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, most of the countries have achieved gender parity in educational attainment. Furthermore, Latin America and Europe have more women than men enrolled in tertiary education. The problem arises when those numbers are analysed by degree studies. There is a gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with a low number of women enrolled in those programs and even lower numbers of graduates. The universities have a key role to steer new conceptions and understanding of the females in STEM. The higher education institutions have to define measures and policies to reduce the gender gap in the careers of the future. This work aims to provide a proposal to analyse the gender equality gap in STEM as a first step to define gender equality action plans focused on processes of attraction, access and retention and guidance in STEM programs. The proposal was applied in ten Latin American universities from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico, and five European universities from Finland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom.
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    Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit of the University of Salamanca
    (W-STEM Consortium, 2019-11-28) García-Holgado, A.; García-Peñalvo, F. J.
    Best practice about the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit of the University of Salamanca presented into the First Benchmarking Round session within the 2nd face-to-face meeting of the W-STEM ERASMUS + Capacity-building in Higher Education European Project (Ref. 598923-EPP-1-2018-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), which was held in Uninorte, Barranquilla (Colombia), 27-29 November 2019.