Gender Gap in STEAM Career Choice: The Case Study in Depopulated Rural Areas of Spain (Ávila and Salamanca)

The increase in STEAM (Science, Technology, Arts, and Mathematics) graduates in sparsely populated rural areas could help boost the technical, economic, and social development of these regions. One of the main obstacles to increasing the number of STEAM graduates is the underrepresentation of women in these fields. This study analyzes the factors that lead young people from sparsely populated areas of Spain to choose STEAM degrees and the reasons they attribute to the underrepresentation of women. To this end, the responses to a specially designed questionnaire were analyzed from 299 young students aged 13 to 18 from different sparsely populated areas of Spain. The results show that male students are more influenced than female students by the labor market demand for STEAM degrees, while female students are more affected by the academic guidance they receive, especially older female students. Females understand that poor academic guidance and the lack of female STEAM role models are the main causes of the gender gap in STEAM degrees, while males attribute this gap mostly to the personal preferences of females.