Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields are essential engines powering innovation that solves society’s greatest challenges. However, women remain critically underrepresented, occupying just 26% of STEM jobs despite earning 45% of STEM degrees. Shockingly, 40-50% of these skilled women exit careers within 5-7 years of entering the workforce.
New research illuminates this mass exodus stems not from family reasons as commonly assumed, but feeling forced out by toxic environments. By understanding the true issues driving attrition and implementing supportive cultures, companies can stem the tide of talent loss.
The True Reasons Women Leave
Career development platform Gotara analyzed thousands of requests from women in STEM fields, uncovering the predominant issues forcing talent out. Over 90% of women reported feeling compelled to quit, not departing for personal reasons, as exit surveys indicate.
“Gotara’s data exposes critical gaps between assumptions and reality driving the mass departure of skilled women from STEM careers,” said Gotara CEO and founder Dr. D Sangeeta.
The four major factors include:
- Feeling Undervalued: Women described lacking appreciation for contributions, being denied high-visibility assignments provided to male peers, and seeing ideas ignored only to be praised when repeated by men.
- Unsupportive Managers: Many women highlighted managers’ lack of advocacy for growth opportunities, failing to deliver actionable feedback, and taking credit for women’s work.
- Exclusionary Behavior: Some indicated isolation from crucial information shared during unofficial gatherings favoring men. Others noted demeaning office housework requests.
- No Growth Opportunities: Qualified women reported being repeatedly passed over for promotions or stretch assignments in favor of less experienced men.
“Statistics from Gotara’s analysis reveal the #1 reason cited is feeling undervalued, named by 38% of women. 21% pointed to unsupportive managers as their tipping point for leaving,” Dr. D Sangeeta said. “19% flagged exclusionary behaviors ranging from demeaning tasks to missing information shared in unofficial gatherings favoring men as primary drivers. While 16% highlighted lack of advancement and developmental opportunities despite investing time to gain expertise.”
These interlinked issues permeate workplaces, causing women to stagnate and eventually quit despite passion for their vocations.
Ripple Effects of Losing STEM Women
The economic consequences of this exodus are steep, with an estimated $9 billion yearly price tag for recruitment and retraining in the U.S. alone. Plus, losing skilled STEM workers threatens companies’ abilities to drive innovation and productivity.
Meanwhile, research shows that gender-balanced leadership teams demonstrate greater profitability, productivity, innovation and employee engagement over less diverse competitors. Yet women hold just 26% of STEM roles. Correcting the imbalance hinges on retaining skilled females already in the pipeline by addressing factors spurring attrition head-on.
Solutions to Boost Retention and Advancement
Holistic initiatives addressing interlinked cultural and systemic barriers at play are vital to retaining STEM women. Just as no singular cause drives women out, no single solution suffices to bring parity. Companies must deploy a coordinated strategy. However, working on “culture” or “systemic barriers” takes time and is difficult to do. Action-oriented strategies that enable individuals to change behavior in their circle of influence–creating more inclusive teams while leadership works on the larger, more systemic issues is quicker and more effective.
“Gotara’s research emphasizes solutions must address interlinked cultural and systemic barriers simultaneously to properly support the retention and advancement of STEM women,” Dr. D Sangeeta said.
Feeling Undervalued
Many women report feeling undervalued as a primary reason for leaving their STEM careers prematurely. They often feel their hard work, expertise, and potential are overlooked and that male colleagues get more praise and opportunities to advance. However, organizations can take concrete steps to ensure women feel recognized and empowered to thrive.
Implementing formal reward programs, setting diversity targets for leadership roles, providing better bias training for managers, and facilitating mentoring and networking are all strategies that can help validate women’s contributions. By standing up equitable systems that give talented women the platform to succeed, companies can retain more of this vital human capital.
Unsupportive Managers
Unfortunately, too many women in technical fields say they lack a supportive infrastructure from their direct managers. Women often receive infrequent or inadequate feedback, coaching, and advocacy and face unconscious bias in seeing their talents fully leveraged.
Upskilling managers to adopt inclusive leadership mindsets and practices is imperative. Offering leadership training, incorporating diversity metrics into performance reviews, supplying coaching and check-ins, and modeling the supportive partnerships women need all set managers up for success. Building this capability across every layer of management is no small feat, but necessary to create welcoming environments where STEM women can advance.
Exclusionary Behaviors
Exclusionary behavior that makes women feel sidelined or under attack is also a driving factor in decisions to leave STEM jobs. Being ignored in meetings, denied information their male peers are given, or facing discrimination creates toxic environments where talented women understandably refuse to remain.
Lack of Growth Opportunities
At some point in their careers, often after giving a company a fair chance to develop them, many STEM women hit an invisible barrier where their male colleagues begin advancing to bigger opportunities while women feel stagnated with no path forward. They may watch as special projects, stretch assignments, promotions, and succession planning spots go to others with less experience.
Ensuring high-potential and sponsorship initiatives include equitable gender diversity, setting benchmarks for balanced representation at every level of the talent pipeline, empowering women to drive their own mobility, and working to eliminate biases that overlook strong candidates are all important elements of unlocking more advancement potential for women.
The Future Requires Women in STEM
As society navigates immense challenges from climate change to global health crises, diverse insights unlock innovative solutions. Yet women’s perspectives remain underutilized, with unrealized ideas still on the sidelines. Bringing gender balance into scientific and technical realms will fuel advancement.
Workplace inclusion is imperative – beyond basic fairness, the world requires women’s talent applied in STEM fields to propel progress. Savvy leaders realize enlightened self-interest demands pulling females off the sidelines and into organizational priorities.
With strategic focus, companies can stem exiting tides, foster supportive cultures for women and position themselves to reap rich rewards in amplified innovation and strengthened competitive edge well into the future. But they must act fast – because the clock is ticking, and the untapped promise of women in STEM will not wait forever.