Towards increasing of STEM-women professionals by implementing projects that reduce the gender gap - a study case in Universidad de Guadalajara.

The gender gap in the educational field has had an improvement in recent years, however, there is still some disparity around the world, only about 35% of students of higher education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas are women. In order to reduce this gap, higher education institutions have a key role in the implementation of the attraction process for young girls and guidance into STEM programs. In this regard, the CUCEI, which is the disciplinary center from the Universidad de Guadalajara that holds the majority of STEM educational careers, has been focused on implementing strategies of attraction and diffusion in order to increase the number of women that choose to study a STEM-related degree program. For the achievement of this purpose CUCEI included in their “Development Plan 2014 – 2022” activities directed to develop and reinforce the scientific vocations in basic and higher education. This work focuses on the description of the three of the major programs implemented in CUCEI for the promotion of science and gender equality in education, “Science for girls and boys”, “Technovation Girls” and “W-STEM” and the analysis of the enrollment changes in STEM programs from 2009 to 2019. The implementation of these programs has had good acceptance by the young girls. An indirect way of correlation is to determine the enrollment statistics of women on STEM careers in CUCEI, where we can observe three main behaviors: careers that had a gradual or low increase until 2013 and from there have shown a high increase of the female enrollment, careers that have been showing a decreasing in the number of women since 2009, and careers that show a balanced proportion of woman and man enrollment. We consider that the dissemination of STEM careers through programs such as Technovation Girls, W-STEM, and Science for girls and boys, have had some impact in girls, considering the general increase of women in CUCEI's careers and the sharing experiences with some of the girls, involved in the programs, with which we have maintained contact.