Women and STEM in Europe and Central Asia
In the last decades, developed economies have witnessed significant declines in wages for low-skill workers, increases in employment in high-skill occupations, rapid diffusion of new technology, and expanding offshoring opportunities. Labor markets...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/306791618914384894/Women-and-STEM-in-Europe-and-Central-Asia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35463 |
| Summary: | In the last decades, developed economies
have witnessed significant declines in wages for low-skill
workers, increases in employment in high-skill occupations,
rapid diffusion of new technology, and expanding offshoring
opportunities. Labor markets in developed countries have
reallocated labor from manual to cognitive jobs and from
routine to non-routine work. Overall, workers are now
required to do more complex tasks than before. In a changing
labor market, education systems should impart the right
skills, ideally both foundational ones and additional skills
that will be amenable to adaptation and re-training to match
with job opportunities. This is even more important in the
ECA region given the context of the increasing share of
older people who will depend on today’s generation of
children when they join the working age population. Women’s
access to and progress in what is generally referred to as
STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics are topics that have been growing in
significance in recent years. The interest in gender
segregation in STEM, as in other sectors, arises mainly from
the role segregation plays in gender inequality in the labor
markets. Gender differences in productivity and earnings are
systematic and persistent as women exhibit lower average
productivity and earn lower wages than men across the board.
The report is organized into three chapters. The first one
looks at education - including STEM content and fields of
study that are within the education realm. The second one
follows women into the labor market and looks at employment
and wages in STEM sectors and for STEM occupations. The
final section looks at policies, from the many initiatives
and efforts in place to promote women’s participation in
STEM, with a focus on those that have documented results. |
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