Councillor calls for greater focus on women and girls in STEM

At a meeting of West Dunbartonshire Council’s Educational Services Committee, elected members were presented with the Education Delivery Plan 2025/26 End-of-Year Report, detailing the progress of the service.

 

The report contains preliminary data from last academic year, with a full analysis due to be presented to the committee in December.

 

Councillor Dr William Rooney suggested introducing a new performance indicator to monitor the participation of women and girls in STEM subjects.

 

Councillor Rooney said: “I would be really keen to understand the current level of participation by women and girls in STEM subjects and explore whether we could introduce an additional performance indicator. That would give us a way to track equity in STEM.”

 

Andrew Brown said: “We have two existing measures within our equalities performance indicators that look at the uptake of Foundation Apprenticeships across genders, with a focus on improving the number of women and girls taking up those qualifications.” “It would be entirely possible to look at this across the wider STEM area so that we could provide that as a performance indicator in the future.”

 

The committee will look at how participation varies across different subjects at a future meeting.

 

Commenting after the meeting, Councillor Rooney said: “Diversity of experience brings diversity of thought, and science is stronger because of it. Women have made an enormous contribution to discoveries and innovations that have changed our lives, from pulsars and DNA to vaccines and computer programming.” “We have fantastic women scientists here in West Dunbartonshire, and we need to make sure those same opportunities are open to the next generation by encouraging curiosity, removing barriers and creating real equity in STEM.”