Turning little girls into scientists - and why it matters

Edwin Hubble said that “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.” I would argue that children do the same thing, and yet we call it play. Our brains have evolved to ask questions, seek answers and – if no answer is found – refine the methods and do the whole thing over again. Despite this innate curiosity, little girls often drift away from science as they grow, ultimately becoming less likely to STEM (science, technology, engineering and medicine) subjects in higher education.

Women in medicine

Medicine is one of the few STEM fields where women are a common sight. In Spain, as of 2021, 52.8% of licensed physicians are women, with their absolute numbers doubling over the last three decades. However, leadership positions remain predominantly male-occupied, with women holding only 27% of public hospital leadership roles. Notably, the Organización Médica Colegial de España – the regulatory authority for doctors and probably the most important medical organisation in Spain - has never had a female president.

However, having more women in the medical workforce isn’t just about equality as a principle: it provides measurable advantages which we are just now beginning to understand. Recent studies suggest patients treated in hospital by female physicians have lower mortality and readmission rates, particularly female patients. One study found that for every 556 women treated by a female physician, one life is saved (and to put this into context, Mallorca’s main hospital Son Espases has just over 700 inpatient beds). Another study reported lower rates of postoperative complications where patients had been operated on by a female surgeon.

Of course, the data doesn’t give us the whole picture. It isn’t clear how well these conclusions apply to different cultures or countries, how the medical team’s overall composition matters, how cases are allocated in the hospital, or how other variables like time spent with a patient may influence this. It also shouldn’t be read as an absolute value judgement on female versus male physicians; simply more evidence that a mixture of backgrounds can be a powerful thing in healthcare teams.

Similarly, while we would like to think that medicine is all about using science to heal, it’s as much about understanding the experience of illness. It’s not that you need to have experienced an illness in order to treat it, but understanding the way it feels to be in a particular sort of body is of enormous benefit to the doctor. The personal experience that doctors bring to the consulting room is every bit as valuable as the things they learn at medical school – whether it’s the understanding of how it feels to be heavily pregnant or a knowledge of how it feels to have your symptoms dismissed because of your gender.

Despite the advances being made, questions still remain about women’s health: Why are women’s heart attacks under-recognised, under-diagnosed and under-treated? Why is the menopause (which causes significant problems for so many women) only now beginning to be discussed more widely? Why do women with endometriosis consistently have to wait so many years to get a diagnosis, let alone adequate treatment? Encouraging women into science isn’t a definitive answer to these questions, but it does give us the tools to make a start on answering them.

What can we do about it?

So how can we encourage our little girls into science? How can we help them to keep their love of asking questions alive, and sustain it through high school, university and beyond? It isn’t just about encouraging girls to study science; it’s about giving them the tools they need to stay in science for a lifetime, to stay curious and to have confidence in their abilities.

It’s also about raising our little boys to understand their role in creating an equal society, and ensuring that children see all kinds of scientific role models – not just women, but people of different races, sexual orientations and anything else you can think of. It should go without saying that scientific brains don’t only belong to one particular sort of body.

References

1. Burgess SN. Understudied, Under-Recognized, Underdiagnosed, and Undertreated: Sex-Based Disparities in Cardiovascular Medicine. Circ Cardiovasc Interv. 2022;15(2).
2. Merayo N, Ayuso A. Analysis of barriers, supports and gender gap in the choice of STEM studies in secondary education. Int J Technol Des Educ. 2022 Aug 29. doi: 10.1007/s10798-022-09776-9.
3. Miyawaki A, Jena AB, Rotenstein LS, et al. Comparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates by Physician and Patient Sex. Ann Intern Med. 2024;177:598-608.
4. Wallis CJD, Jerath A, Aminoltejari K, Kaneshwaran K, Salles A, Coburn N, et al. Surgeon Sex and Long-Term Postoperative Outcomes Among Patients Undergoing Common Surgeries. JAMA Surg. 2023;158(11):1185-1194.