Gender and access to STEM education and occupations in a cross-national context with a focus on Poland

ABSTRACT

A comparative gender framework and cross-national data are used to examine women’s access to STEM education in Poland and cross-nationally. The transition to STEM occupations is also considered. Findings on indicators of girl’s achievement in STEM education at the secondary level in Poland show gender imbalance, but Poland is doing better than some countries. With regard to STEM occupations, Poland is among the countries with the lowest representation of women. Country level socio-economic, cultural and political factors including GNP, number of women in Parliament, gender inequality, overall equality, and religion are examined as possible factors associated with these trends in Poland and elsewhere. Detailed Polish data are used to provide additional insights into girls’ and women’s access to STEM education and ultimately occupations in Poland. The Polish data show areas for improvement but also areas of success. The research is placed in the context of Poland’s unique historical, cultural, political, and socio-economic arrangements.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• STEM education
• STEM occupations
• cross-national
• Poland

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the Sociology Department and Fulbright for their support. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Fulbright organisation or the Jagiellonian University Department of Sociology. Finally, the materials on gender and religion were written by the first author given her area of expertise. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the second author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The use of the term ‘access’ to STEM is common in the STEM literature (e.g. Reinking & Martin, 2018). We use it here to refer in general to girls and women’s participation or representation in traditionally male dominated STEM education and occupations as well as their opportunity to gain STEM knowledge and learning. The notion of access goes beyond the term ‘participation’ in suggesting the difficulty of gaining entry as well as the fact that it is not just participation but opportunity to learn that is taking place. The United Nations (UNESCO) refers to girl’s access to science as the equal opportunity to study and work in science (UNESCO, 2017).

2 Solidarity was a social movement striving to democratize and implement profound political reforms in Poland under communism. It was institutionalized as Independent Self-Governing Trade Union ‘Solidarity’, founded in September 1980 (becoming thus the first independent labour union in a country belonging to the Soviet bloc) and forcibly suppressed in December 1980. ‘Solidarity’ reemerged in 1989, becoming the first opposition movement to participate in free elections in a Soviet bloc nation since the 1940s.

3 See Appendix Table A1 for a brief overview of the research questions, variables, and data sets.

4 See source information provided with each table and figure for more detail.

5 According to PISA (2015), literacy reflects the ability to apply ‘knowledge and skills learned both in and out of the classroom. (…) [W]hen assessing science, PISA examines how well 15-year-old students can understand, use, and reflect on science for a variety of real-life problems and settings that they may not encounter in the classroom’. Students are classified into science literacy levels according to their scores, which are reported on a scale from 0 to 1000.

6 The best measure of percentage women in science and technology occupations was available in 2012.

7 Given the number of countries examined, this is the 4–5 countries scoring at the top or bottom of the measure.

8 Note that Appendix Table A2 uses different measures than those used in the next section focusing specifically on Poland. There is some diversity in how organisations measure STEM. It is important to note the organisation, year, and measure when making any statement about women in STEM. Additionally it should be noted that this Table includes a small section of a larger Table used elsewhere to provide a general description of indicators of STEM without an emphasis on Poland (Hanson et al. 2017).

9 Note the disconnect between countries doing best on girls in STEM education and those doing best on women in STEM occupations. For example, Dubai is among the highest on girls in STEM education and lowest on women in STEM occupations.

10 In basic vocational schools there are less than one per cent of women in the field of Engineering and related trades (ISCED-F 2013). Since this level of education does not continue on the tertiary level it is not analysed here in detail.

11 International Standard Classification of Education. ISCED 1997 on levels of education was valid until 2013, and on fields of education until 2015. Since 2014 levels of education are classified according to ISCED 2011, and fields of education according to ISCED-F 2013.

12 Full detail on the measures and data sets are provided in methods section and in tables.

Additional information

Funding

This work was in part funded by a 2018 U.S./Poland Fulbright grant to Sandra Hanson for work at the Department of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, in Krakow, Poland.