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There are numerous interventions worldwide targeting young people’s participation in STEM. While gender imbalance seems to be a focus of many of these interventions, it is not clear how many specifically target females, and from those that do, what their characteristics and strengths are. We address this gap in the existing literature by conducting a systematic review of STEM interventions that target secondary school girls. Through the review, we identify thirty-two (32) interventions that we analyse to categorise their relevant characteristics, goals and evaluation approaches. This analysis reveals a lack of clarity around defining and describing the interventions themselves, as well as a wide variety of degrees of rigour when measuring and reporting intervention success. Using an intervention’s ability to influence decisions to undertake STEM tertiary studies as a determinant of success, we uncover the importance of repeated or sustained engagement activities. Further, we find that successful activities enable STEM identity formation by combining inclusive curriculum and pedagogies with exposure to female role models. Finally, we argue that longitudinal evaluations of interventions have great potential to enrich both research and practice in this area.

Understanding determi-nants of gender differences in economic andsocial domains has been of interest, both in ac-ademic and public debates. Previous researchhas shown that gender differences in funda-mental economic preferences are importantin explaining gender differences in economicoutcomes, such as for occupational choice, fi-nancial investment, or educational decisions,among many others. However, gaps remainin understanding the sources of gender dif-ferences in preferences and their variation.

This meta-analysis integrated 16 nationally representative U.S. public opinion polls on gender stereotypes (N = 30,093 adults), extending from 1946 to 2018, a span of seven decades that brought considerable change in gender relations, especially in women’s roles. In polls inquiring about communion (e.g., affectionate, emotional), agency (e.g., ambitious, courageous), and competence (e.g., intelligent, creative), respondents indicated whether each trait is more true of women or men, or equally true of both. Women’s relative advantage in communion increased over time, but men’s relative advantage in agency showed no change. Belief in competence equality increased over time, along with belief in female superiority among those who indicated a sex difference in competence. Contemporary gender stereotypes thus convey substantial female advantage in communion and a smaller male advantage in agency but also gender equality in competence along with some female advantage. Interpretation emphasizes the origins of gender stereotypes in the social roles of women and men. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Women’s right to exercise choice has been one of feminism’s central political claims. Where second wave feminism focused on the constraints women faced in making free choices, choice feminism more recently reorients feminist politics with a call for recognition of the choices women are actually making. From this perspective the role of feminism is to validate women’s choices without passing judgement. This article analyses this shift in orientation by locating women’s choices within a late modern gender order in which the ideal of choice has increasingly been associated with a new form of femininity characterized as self-determining, individuated and ‘empowered’. Instead of offering an effective analysis of the changing social conditions within which the relationship between feminism, femininity and individual choice has become increasingly complicated, choice feminism directs criticism at feminist perspectives characterized as overly prescriptive. This critique fails to appreciate how feminist ideals have been recuperated in the service of late capitalism and neoliberal forms of governance. By failing to engage critically with processes currently impacting on the social organization of gender choice feminism aids in the constitution of an individuated neoliberal feminist subject which performs cultural work vital to the reproduction of neoliberal governmentality.