Although the national average of female physics students is 15 percent, FIU has an average of 40 percent. Dr. Yesim Darici – FIU physicist, assistant provost for STEM, and director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies – and Tulika Srivastava – FIU physics student and president for the Society of the Advancement of Women in STEM – sat down with South Florida PBS to discuss the what women face when they enter STEM fields and how they’re working to close the gender gap.
Since the creation of the Center for Women’s in Gender Studies in 1982, the Center has worked to promote scholarly inquiry related to women’s and gender studies.
One of their latest projects has been FIU ADVANCE. Funded by the National Science Foundation with a five-year $3.2 million Institutional Transformation grant awarded in 2016, ADVANCE was created to develop strategies to increase the number of women and minority professors in STEM and social and behavioral sciences at the university. The main goal is to remove unconscious bias that employers face when facing women applicants in STEM fields, while also promoting gender equity.
