2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Having more women in STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) creates more equitable fields overall. It brings diverse perspectives to drive research and innovation, providing role models for future generations. So far, women participation in STEM is strongly influenced by their experiences at an early age. A key milestone is secondary education, when young female students choose elective courses that will guide their decision on which career to pursue in the future. This is why it is key to implement actions to attract more women to STEM before and during their secondary studies, prior to their pursue of a higher education degree. That is to say that initiatives are required to support women before they encounter the admission stage, defined as the set of steps and requirements that a university establishes to enroll students in the case of a non-competitive process, or to select students applying to their academic programs in the case of a competitive process.

Through a collaborative project between European and Latin American universities, we aim to identify and transfer best practices to recruit diverse students from a wide variety of school contexts, with a gender focus to encourage more women to consider careers in STEM fields. Specifically, this study presents an analysis of 44 initiatives described by project affiliated institutions whose objective is to attract and retain female students in STEM degrees. These initiatives were analyzed through inductive coding, identifying categorical codes such as initiative purpose, location of its implementation (e.g., school or higher education institution), people in charge of its deployment, and the target audience's age.

Findings illustrate what different higher education institutions are doing to attract more women into STEM degrees, being a promising method for studying admission and retention practices for female students in engineering and science fields. Through this comprehensive analysis of existing initiatives, the aim is to enhance the inclusion and attraction of women to STEM careers in Latin America, not only by facilitating the identification of best practices but also by enabling the transfer of initiatives between institutions.