Advocates for Girls Pursuing STEM Degrees and Careers

In respect and honor for a day internationally acknowledged, the United Nations held their annual Women and Girls in Science on February 11th. Advocate Okereke, Benjamin Edozie in collaboration with Medix Frontiers led a team of compassionate professionals in fields of Dentistry and Medicine to discuss the significance of this movement and to network with Urban Girls Secondary School located in Enugu.

According to Okereke Benjamin,

"The outreach was completed at the Urban Girls Secondary School located in the heart of Enugu Metropolis, a school formerly owned by the Anglican communion but now overseen by the State Government. This location offers secondary school education to students at an affordable price in comparison with privately-owned schools that a class of families may not have the means to afford. Wards of middle and low income class citizens of the state attend this campus. Students felt inspired to take home lessons learnt to their parents- who may not, for reasons including work-life balance, levels of education and domestic duties- have ample time or leisure to follow up on research about women and girls pursuing careers in STEM related fields. We believe educating these young girls will advance to educating the whole family and soon the community. Additionally, the interest of these young women were spurred into choosing a career in science."

According to the Gender Gap in STEM publication by Micheal Cournioyer, there is still a growing concern for the gap in women pursuing degrees and employment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The international database used held 472,242 data points corresponding with the performance of girls in STEM related majors and fields in comparison with their male counterpart. The data was able to convey girls performing similarly or better than their male counterparts and the sex differences in attitude correlated with the continuing STEM graduation gap.

There is a global consensus that women around the world can be empowered with education and the conversation with young women to pursue STEM related fields continues, these advocates understand the core value of starting locally.