USAID Asia, via the #IGNITE project, facilitated an intensive gender mainstreaming workshop for members of the #ASEAN Committee on Science, Technologies, and Innovation (COSTI) on March 14 to address persistent gender gaps in the fields of science, technologies, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) across the area. Advertising higher women’s participation in STEM fields is mandated by ASEAN via its not too long ago endorsed Gender Mainstreaming Strategic Framework, which is a complete-of-ASEAN policy strategy, created with help from USAID, to serve as a roadmap that advances gender and inclusion as core considerations in all ASEAN-led activities. 

For the duration of the workshop, the ASEAN-USAID IGNITE Project shared a not too long ago completed Policy Short that assessed the status of ladies in STEM across person ASEAN nations highlighting considerable gender gaps across the area. For instance, girls in five out of six ASEAN member states (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand) with readily available information outperform boys in mathematics and science in major and secondary education. However across ASEAN nations, only 19.three% of all female graduates compared to 39.eight% of all male university graduates get STEM-associated degrees. This trend continues into leadership levels exactly where most ASEAN member states’ minister -level positions for Science Technologies and Innovation are males. To rectify this discordance, the Policy Short gives suggestions for enhancing gender equity integration in STEM educational and profession possibilities for ladies and girls. 

By way of workshop trainings such as this, USAID is supporting the U.S. government’s partnership ambitions with ASEAN to boost participation of ladies and girls in STEM fields to counter structural and systemic barriers (i.e., lack of access to technologies, education solutions and facilities, lack of coordination amongst government, and so forth.) and strengthen inclusive improvement.

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