A career in STEM is challenging in the first place and women are often misled with stereotypes like ‘STEM is not for women!’. Breaking those stereotypes and propelling thousands of women into STEM careers is ‘Stemettes’. Founded in 2013 with a team of volunteers, Stemettes has gone on to win the backing of the corporate and academic world. In 2015 alone, Stemettes managed to deliver 37 workshops and 8 public events across the UK. Stemettes is mainly supported by industry partners like Salesforce, Accenture and Deutsche Bank.
Their motto is to inspire the next generation of females into Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) fields by showing them the amazing women already in STEM via a series of panel events, hackathons, exhibitions, and mentoring schemes. The events organized by stemettes mainly target girls between the ages of five and 21. Stemettes aims at helping girls to make informed decisions about careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM), so that eventually women can be proportionally represented in the field. So that 30% or more of the UK’s STEM workforce can be comprised of women, as opposed to the existing 21%.
“Girls are often deterred from following STEM career paths, which needs to change.We don’t just want to preach to the choir; we want girls to tell us how we can support them. However, with Salesforce, we can not only simplify how we manage events, but also how we measure their impact” says Stemettes’ Co-founder Anne-Marie Imafidon.
“We want to enable girls to make informed decisions about careers in STEM at the right point in their education,” adds Jacquelyn Guderley, Stemettes’ other co-founder.
Imafidon and Guderley have both personally experienced the challenges faced by today’s generation of Stemettes. At university, Imafidon was one of just three women in a class of 70 studying math and computer science. “There won’t be more women leaders if we don’t encourage more women into STEM careers,” says Imafidon, who interestingly holds the world record for the youngest girl to pass A-level computing and she was just 11 years old when she did this feat!
Stemettes has an interesting technique to measure their progress where-in they ask participants to provide ‘pre-back’ and feedback to gauge how their interest in STEM as a career has been amplified by one of their events. One brilliant example was that, following a panel event in Chester in 2014, the number of participants interested in pursuing STEM subjects as a career increased from 35% to more than 50%.
By recording this data in Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), Stemettes can spot trends and share metrics with schools and sponsors that fund the events. With Salesforce, they were able to spare some spend time for reaching out to new Stemettes and less time was wasted on shuffling paper.
Stemettes doesn’t just want to inspire girls at one-off events and then disappear from their lives, it also wants to nurture long-term relationships and turn internships into careers. Its Outbox Incubator programme provides seed funding, intensive mentoring, and support to girls who have innovative business and technology ideas.
The Stemettes’ team also captures individual success stories as girls leave education and embark on their careers with the STEM workforce.
“Every Stemette is a future role model. We need to be able to prove our achievements, so we can continue to attract sponsors, customers, and mentors,” adds Imafidon.
Till date, 95% of attendees have increased interest in Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths after just one Stemettes event and about, 40,000 young people have attended events, workshops and Stemette experiences for free across the UK & Ireland.
