Women succeed in science and technology despite cultural prejudice

One of the most encouraging trends in education in Africa is that nearly half of all science and maths graduates are now women. These are the most valued qualifications in today’s work market but gender prejudice, misconceptions and an often blind refusal to believe that women can handle ‘hard’ subjects continue to hinder the career prospects of women in this sector. Lennox Yieke reports.

Africa has made commendable strides in narrowing the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. A recent report by UNECA reveals that nearly half (47%) of all STEM university graduates in the continent are now women. This represents the highest proportion of female STEM graduates globally.

STEM graduates are highly sought after in today’s labour market, with these roles often commanding some of the highest salaries and benefits. Yet, for many African women who pursue degrees in STEM, the transition from school to a successful career is fraught with obstacles.

Women constitute only 30% of professionals in the tech industry in sub-Saharan Africa, despite the increased enrolment of female students in the field. The research sector mirrors this disparity, with female researchers also comprising just 30% of the workforce.

The barriers to success for African women in STEM careers are multifaceted, ranging from entrenched gender norms and stereotypes to a lack of role models and poorly implemented affirmative action policies.

Those who have forged successful careers in STEM describe the journey as nothing short of an uphill battle, highlighting the critical role of mentorship, networking and advocacy in overcoming the numerous hurdles along the way.

Bonnita Nyamwire, a researcher with over 15 years’ experience, has spent the last five years as the research director at Pollicy, a feminist technology and development organisation based in Uganda.

She says that throughout her career in research, and even while studying subjects like statistical analysis in her university years, she has had to continually confront harmful misconceptions and myths due to her gender. “I’ve heard people make comments like ‘Why do you like studying hard things? Science and maths is hard. Technology and engineering are difficult things that should be tackled by men, not women.

“There is a perception within the society that hard things are not for women because, maybe by the nature of our creation, we are supposed to do the soft things,” she notes, identifying this as one of the main reasons why many capable females shy away from pursuing studies and careers in STEM fields. “As human beings, we often let societal opinions and myths deter us from pursuing our ambitions.”

Nyamwire notes that her success in research would not have been possible if she had succumbed to fear or heeded society’s misinformed opinions about what a woman should or shouldn’t do. “They told me research is hard, but for me, I like to take a shot. I like risk-taking. Let me explore this hard thing and see how hard it is and if I will fail to do it.”

However, she acknowledges that some women are not as bold or assertive in pursuing STEM studies or careers. She recounts her experience with young girls during one of Pollicy’s programmes on data collection and analysis.

One participant’s father told her: “Engineering is difficult, I’m an engineer, and I’ve been there. It’s hard, you won’t manage my daughter, you will fail.’ ” He suggested she focus on easy subjects like English, history and geography instead. 

Even when African women have been able to convince their parents and family to support their dreams of pursuing a degree in STEM, they still encounter discouragement from the least likely people – their own lecturers.

Kathleen Siminyu, a natural language processing researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute, said that while pursuing her undergraduate studies in mathematics and computer science, “I had lecturers who would say things in class like, ‘We can’t have a group for a technical project that just consists of the girls, because who is going to write the code? Girls are for writing documentation.’ So he literally separated the four girls in the class and said we couldn’t be in one group and he created an arbitrary rule that there could be one girl per group because we were only good for documentation.”

Role models and networks are key

Siminyu – who has had an eventful career in technology that has earned her enviable accolades, such as featuring in the MIT Technology Review List of Innovators in 2022 – believes that increasing the number of female role models in STEM can inspire more African women to advance rapidly in their STEM careers. This in turn will create a positive feedback loop that attracts even more women to the male-dominated field.

When she joined the workplace for the first time, she recalls that it was seeing another successful woman in the space that boosted her confidence and pushed her to adopt a more assertive approach. 

“I remember often thinking, ‘I am so green, all these people know so much more than me. Most of them are men.’ I was very lucky that there was one very knowledgeable woman. She was clear evidence that success in this field is not a gender thing.”

Bonnita Nyamwire echoes this sentiment: “Girls are looking for female mentors, but there is a gap, whereas the boys have many men who are mentoring them, motivating them, pushing them to go ahead. I recall that earlier in my career when looking for mentors I had to rely on men because few women pursue careers in research.”

Siminyu contends that to bridge this mentorship gap, women in STEM are uniting to build communities and networks. “There’s a network of women within these communities who work to support and encourage each other. The support on offer ranges from access to speaking opportunities, job recommendations, consultancy roles, and mentoring.”

This collaborative approach ensures that no opportunity is wasted. “If I can’t take something up, I can pass it on to another woman within the network,” she explains.

Another critical area of concern, according to Siminyu, is the gender pay gap. “Women often receive lower pay, either because they may not be as bold or assertive in negotiating for higher salaries, or because there is an assumption that they will accept lower pay without much pushback.”

Rethinking education

Siminyu notes that a key area that needs rethinking is how education is offered, particularly at the lower levels. “Because many high schools are gender-segregated, it sometimes affects which optional subjects they offer. Some girl’s schools won’t even offer physics because of the belief that more girls would perform better in a subject like home science as opposed to physics. This limits the graduate and post-graduate studies one can undertake,” she explains.

Siny Samba, co-founder and CEO of Le Lionceau, believes that it is crucial for educators in Africa to expand their focus beyond mere knowledge transfer.

She says that many students, whether in STEM or other fields, are trained to be technically competent but are not encouraged to innovate or dream big. “We tend to underestimate ourselves and don’t allow ourselves to dream big. This is the shift we need to make.”

Samba believes that with the right changes in how educators prepare learners for the world, more women will get into STEM not just as employees, but also as entrepreneurs. “This will create more opportunities for young people to have professional exposure.”

She herself made the transition to entrepreneurship in 2016 when she left a promising job in France as a food processing engineer to focus on making baby food in Senegal, her native country. “We make locally sourced and produced baby food. I realised in my home country we rely on imported food while we have very nutritious local foods.”

Samba says that one of the greatest advantages of being an entrepreneur is the freedom to use your business to drive societal impact in the areas you care about. For her, this means collaborating with women smallholder farmers within the company’s supply chain.

“Our supply chain is 100% local, we work with cooperatives and women groups of smallholder farmers and train them to adopt sustainable practices in agriculture,” she says.

She thinks educators in Africa should also focus on cultural exchanges to broaden and enrich learners’ attitudes towards women in the workplace.

“We need to be open-minded in terms of accepting positive attributes of foreign cultures,” she says, reflecting on her experience in Europe and the valuable lessons she learned about workplace attitudes towards women.

Funding and accountability

Bonnita Nyamwire argues that increasing funding for programmes supporting women in STEM is crucial. She points out that despite its success, Pollicy’s Data Ladies programme has struggled to scale up due to limited financial resources.

“Funding for Data Ladies is limited, and we often rely on our own resources. Fortunately, we’ve partnered with Uganda’s ICT ministry, which has generously provided us with free access to their ICT hub for our interventions with young people.”

However, even when funding is available, accountability and transparency in its allocation are often lacking. Samba laments that administrative costs such as travel and salaries frequently consume the majority of the funds earmarked for women empowerment projects. “The funds do not benefit the beneficiaries. We need to make it more direct and ensure it will be more impactful,” she says.

Siminyu agrees that the lack of accountability is a significant obstacle to women’s empowerment in STEM. “Policymakers do a great job developing policies, but when it comes to implementation, there’s a huge gap. We need to hold governments accountable to the things they say they are going to do,” she asserts.

She highlights that many capable learners from underprivileged backgrounds miss out on government-backed bursaries due to misallocation of funds and lack of accountability.

“Recent protests in Kenya have encouraged people to demand greater government accountability. We’re seeing that a lot of funding allocated for bursaries isn’t reaching the intended recipients,” she notes.

Siminyu argues that if bursary funds were properly allocated, more girls would reach university level, resulting in more of them pursuing STEM careers. “Financially constrained parents often prioritise educating their sons, believing them to be a better investment, which results in girls being left behind.”

Ultimately, for there to be lasting change, societal attitudes towards women in Africa must evolve, and men need to step up as allies, notes Nyamwire.

“When a woman develops a code for an assignment, they still ask, ‘Who did it for you? It must have been a man who helped you.’ The days of denying women in STEM jobs or opportunities based on gender must end. Give the woman the job and see what she can do. Have an open mind; she will deliver. There is a lot of demystifying we need to do at all levels – in school, at work and in society,” she concludes.