Roughly half the world’s population is female, but the STEM fields don’t reflect that. The 2024 U.N. Global Education Monitoring Report on gender found that about 35 percent of STEM college graduates were women. The proportion hasn’t increased much in more than a decade.

When it comes to STEM careers, the percentage is even lower. Women made up about 28 percent of the global STEM workforce in 2024, according to the World Economic Forum.

There are myriad factors for the discrepancy, including a lack of family support, some teachers encouraging only boys to pursue STEM subjects, and a shortage of female role models.

But one force is at play long before college majors are ever considered: limited access to STEM-focused educational resources for preuniversity students. Especially for students in rural communities, the limited access curtails curiosity in STEM subjects before interest can take root. Although the lack of opportunity impacts boys and girls alike, when combined with other factors it can have an outsized effect on girls in some rural regions.

IEEE Fellow Rajiv Joshi is one of the creators of the Women in Science, Engineering project. He is a principal scientist and master inventor at the IBM Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.Rajiv Joshi

One such place is rural India. The challenges of pursuing a STEM education—or any education at all—increase sharply as rural Indian girls move into their teen years. Social barriers including early marriage, traditional gender roles, and familial expectations for financial support contribute to girls’ dropping out of school, according to the Mahadev Maitri Foundation, a nongovernment organization focused on childhood education in underdeveloped areas. Dropout rates for girls spike between the ages of 11 to 14, according to the foundation.

The trend is something IEEE Fellow Rajiv Joshi and IEEE Senior Member Rajesh Zele want to change. A shared passion to keep rural Indian girls from dropping out of school and on paths to STEM careers led them to launch the Women in Science, Engineering (WiSE) project.

“Talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” Joshi says. “WiSE is one way to expand opportunities.”

Bringing the WiSE vision to life

Joshi, vice president of industry for the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS), is a principal scientist and master inventor at the IBM Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Zele is a professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), in suburban Mumbai.

They presented their proposal for the three-year initiative to the society’s board of governors in 2022 and received a grant of US $80,000.

The framework

WiSE was a five-day, hands-on learning program held on the IIT-B campus. Starting in 2023, it ran for three years and was held during the last week of March. A new cohort of 160 to 200 girls from rural and tribal areas in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka attended each year.

The event was divided into two parts: hands-on learning through Break-Make-Program (BMP) experiences and presentations by influential female Indian role models.

Zele, project manager Arti Auti, several IIT-B faculty members, and about 70 student volunteers from the institute oversaw the program.

Selecting the first cohort

With funding secured, Zele and his team on the ground in India got busy selecting attendees for the inaugural 2023 class. They reached out to administrators at 68 schools in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Although the two states are among the most urbanized in the country, each has vast rural areas where educating teen girls competes with early marriage and familial support pressure.

Teachers identified girls with high scores in mathematics and science, and community leaders recommended students who could benefit from the program.

Then outreach to their parents began. The adults were required to commit their own time, not just grant permission for their daughters to attend. They participated in quarterly online meetings that included the girls’ teachers, IIT-B student mentors, and other program volunteers after the week concluded. The check-ins held parents accountable for supporting their daughters’ continuing school attendance. The commitment to join the meetings was to last for at least four years after their daughter’s program participation ended.

Hands-on learning is key

Participants stayed in one of the institute’s dormitories for the week and attended sessions held Monday through Friday.

They worked together in small teams to build things rooted in STEM concepts. The teams were supervised by Arti, IIT-B faculty, and student volunteers.

“The idea behind BMP,” Joshi says, “was to give the girls an opportunity to take a gadget apart, then rebuild it, perfect it, or come up with a totally new idea.”

The sessions included working with bioluminescence and bacteria (introducing participants to biology and microbiology), learning about autonomous underwater vehicles, and building a remote-controlled robot. The robot construction was the capstone event, allowing the girls to combine the mechanical and electronics engineering skills they’d practiced throughout the week.

The build kits were created by students in Zele’s Advanced Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab. The girls and teachers were allowed to take the kits home to keep the learning going and spread STEM awareness.

“Many girls used those kits at different events to demonstrate their STEM skills to others,” Joshi says. One was Sushi Pawar, who built a drone during WiSE, then went on to demonstrate it to a national audience.

“I presented the drone project in 2024 to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Pariksha Pe Charcha,” Pawar says. That initiative is an annual event open for students in classes 6 to 12, their teachers, and parents. The focus is on helping students manage stress during exam time through fun and celebratory activities. The event is supported by the Indian Ministry of Education and hosted by the prime minister.

Each year, millions of students complete an online multiple-choice test to qualify to attend in person and meet the prime minister. In 2024 nearly 4,000 participants attended.

Inspiration as the foundation

WiSE was about more than hands-on learning. It also included daily presentations from “Winspirers”: Indian women who achieved success in their lives or had STEM careers. They included scientists, doctors, military officers, professors, and other women who overcame obstacles.

The first such speaker was Savita Dakle, a farmer from Maharashtra who dropped out of school after 10th grade, got married, and had two children.

Despite limited farming knowledge, she learned quickly and built a coalition of 400 female farmers from her village. She taught them how to use mobile phones and social media to share information and resources.

Today, that coalition has more than 1 million members in two online communities. They share tips on market pricing, growing crops, and more.

Zele says he views Dakle as the ideal Winspirer: someone who built a thriving business with few resources and no academic or professional credentials.

Dakle mirrors the challenges faced by many program participants, he says, noting that many girls face pressure to leave school early to marry or financially support their family. She is living proof, he says, that no girl’s circumstances define her possibilities.

The practical impact of WiSE

No empirical data yet exists to measure the project’s success, but feedback from participants shows the program has made a difference. Many from the 2023 cohort remained in school and are now pursuing higher education.

Participant Tejswini Manoj Patil credits the initiative with boosting her confidence in science and math.

“Before WiSE,” she says, “I was interested in STEM but felt intimidated by the complexity of the subjects. After participating, my interest shifted from passive curiosity to active confidence. The hands-on projects showed me that I am capable of solving real-world problems.”

Meeting female role models was important, attendee Ritu Ravindra Patil says, adding: “WiSE completely changed my perspective, and meeting the Winspirers inspired me to aim for higher education.”

The project opened career perspectives for some.

“Before WiSE, I wanted to be a doctor,” Pallavi Bharti says. “I believed engineering was very stressful and boring. When I joined the program and explored IIT-B, I was amazed. Everyone was so friendly and supportive, and the passion in students for their work motivated me. All those experiences gave me confidence to take math classes and become an engineer.”

What’s next?

The initiative ended last year, but the framework it built lives on. Groups with similar goals have adopted parts of the concept, Joshi says.

The IEEE CASS chapters in Bangalore and Kerala are likely to be among the first to advance the initiative’s ideas, he says.

Alex James, an IEEE senior member and founding chair of the IEEE CASS Kerala chapter, has adapted the framework for use in his region, Joshi says. James is a professor of AI hardware and a dean at Digital University Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram.

Joshi guided James as WiSE concepts were implemented.

IEEE Senior Members Jayesh Tanwani and Suman Dwivedi from the IEEE CASS Bangalore chapter are likely to bring program concepts into their work, Joshi says.

Tanwani, chair of the Bangalore chapter, is a system-on-a-chip design engineering manager at Intel in Bengaluru. Dwivedi is a senior manager at Synopsys in Bengaluru. They are bringing STEM outreach to remote schools in Karnataka.

Joshi and Zele say they hope to see the concept expand beyond India.

“We want to spread this across other continents and see how we can integrate WiSE into new or existing initiatives in those places,” Joshi says. He says he has received requests from countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe for information on WiSE.

Both say awareness and outreach are key things that IEEE CASS chapters around the world are well positioned to support.

“We want to make a difference in young women’s lives,” Zele says. “It’s all about giving attendees the skills to stand on their own feet and have the information to make good decisions.”