New Research Grant: Girls Only

Iris Groher (Institute of Business Informatics - Software Engineering) and Barbara Sabitzer (School of Education, Department of STEM Education) will be working together on the “Girls Only” project starting in October. The project partner is the Montanuniversität Leoben.

Girls Only Project

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry as part of the call for funding for the empowerment of girls and women in education, work and society with a focus on mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology.

Girls are unfortunately still severely underrepresented in STEM professions. This underrepresentation does not begin in their professional lives, but is already evident in the choice of appropriate schools and later in the choice of studies. There are many reasons for this, often gender stereotypes, prejudices and a lack of role models that are still strongly anchored in our society. Measures are urgently needed to counteract this, and they must be implemented as early as possible to awaken interest in the STEM field. Once this interest has been successfully awakened, the goal is to maintain it in the long term.

The goal of the Girls Only project is to create a seamless program of STEM support activities with a focus on computer science and computational thinking for girls and young women of all ages, specifically designed to meet the needs of the relevant groups. The program will start at kindergarten age, continue in schools (elementary and high schools), and then continue at universities. As part of the intended support, the focus will be on computer science, but the model will be developed in such a way that it can be extended to other STEM fields. The offer at the university for female students and young researchers will be developed for all STEM fields and, in cooperation with the Montanuniversität Leoben, will also be aligned for montanistic sciences.