page_title: Women in STEM fields
section_title: Self-affirmation
hierarchical_section_title: Women in STEM fields / Strategies for increasing representation of women / Social-psychological interventions / Self-affirmation
caption_attribution_description: English: This chart lists a variety of methods that can help increase women's and girls' engagement with and interest in STEM fields.
context_page_description: Many scholars and policymakers have noted that the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have remained predominantly male with historically low participation among women since the origins of these fields during the Age of Enlightenment.
  Scholars are exploring the various reasons for the continued existence of this gender disparity in STEM fields. Those who view this disparity as resulting from discriminatory forces are also seeking ways to redress this disparity within STEM fields.
context_section_description: Researchers have investigated the usefulness of self-affirmation in alleviating stereotype threat. One study found that women who affirmed a personal value prior to experiencing stereotype threat performed as well on a math test as men and as women who did not experience stereotype threat. A subsequent study found that a short writing exercise in which college students, who were enrolled in an introductory physics course, wrote about their most important values substantially decreased the gender performance gap and boosted women's grades. Scholars believe that the effectiveness of such values-affirmation exercises is their ability to help individuals view themselves as complex individuals, rather than through the lens of a harmful stereotype. Supporting this hypothesis, another study found that women who were encouraged to draw self-concept maps with many nodes did not experience a performance decrease on a math test. However, women who did not draw self-concept maps or only drew maps with a few nodes did perform significantly worse than men on the math test. The effect of these maps with many nodes was to remind women of their "multiple roles and identities," that were unrelated to, and would thus not be harmed by, their performance on the math test.
caption: Strategies to increase women's and girls' interest in STEM
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