Speaker
Description
The world faces a huge gender gap in science. In Ethiopia, only about 13% of all scientists are women, and this fraction is even lower when considering the fundamental sciences. Girls avoid choosing STEM mainly due to a lack of support and/or information. This becomes even more evident when going to remote areas, where 80% of the Ethiopian population lives. The SciGirls project aims to improve the gender gap in science in the long-term by empowering female secondary school students and their female science teachers who are working and living in remote and rural areas through astronomy and its multidisciplinarity. In 2022 and 2024 we organised a carefully designed capacity-building workshop for 60 participants across Ethiopia, with the aim of training future STEM advocates in rural and remote areas. The girls and teachers carried out different activities in their communities after the training. Most of participants came from the regions that have been severely affected by conflicts over the past 4 years. SciGirls is one of the 2022 and 2024 projects funded by OAD. During this talk, we will share valuable experiences we have gained through interaction with girls and female teachers who work and live in very harsh conditions, where they rarely have any external support to fulfill their dreams. The SciGirls approach has so far yielded very positive results and the project can serve as a model also in other countries.
| Stream | Education Development and Outreach |
|---|