Women Still Form Only 35 % of Global STEM Graduates
UNESCO flags a stubborn gender gap in STEM degrees, warning of knock‑on effects for AI and data‑science workforces.
The Stagnant Statistic
UNESCO’s latest Global Education Monitoring brief shows that women earn just over a third of the world’s STEM degrees—a figure virtually unchanged in ten years. Researchers link the stagnation to early social conditioning that casts math and tech as “male” domains, curbing girls’ confidence despite equal classroom performance.
Impact on Tech Talent Pipelines
The imbalance creates a bottleneck in talent pipelines for high‑growth sectors such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data analytics. Hiring managers report that female representation in these roles often dips below 25 %, mirroring the graduation gap and reinforcing wage disparities.
UNESCO’s Upstream Solutions
UNESCO urges governments to intervene before the university stage: fund girl‑focused coding clubs, celebrate female STEM role‑models in textbooks, and train teachers to detect bias. Without such upstream action, the report warns, economies risk missing half their potential innovators.
