Global Reach: Grantee Partners

The Women’s Foundation

Context:

In 2018, The Women’s Foundation (TWF) published a research on Gender Differences in Hong Kong’s STEM Education. The key findings were unfortunately not surprising:

• Female students not only start with a lower proportion of STEM-related electives in their education, but they are more likely to drop STEM-related courses than their male peers later.
• Female students tend to have lower self-efficacy and interest in STEM subjects and rank these subjects as less important for their future studies and careers than male students do.
• Even high-achieving female students in STEM are subject to gender biases that suggest only boys have the inborn talent to study STEM, especially Math, efficiently and effortlessly, whereas female students can only attain good results through rote learning and practice.
• Female students have a higher preference than male students to work in jobs that can help other people and that they think are meaningful, and have a lower preference than male students to take a job with STEM-related characteristics.

These stereotypical beliefs and realities in the HK society undermine girls’ and young women’s confidence and discourage them from pursuing STEM as a university major or as a future career leading to an important gender gap. Worldwide, this gender gap is particularly high in some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, like computer science and engineering. Giving (young) women in HK, especially those living at the margins, equal opportunities to pursue and thrive in STEM careers does not only fight poverty, but helps additionally to narrow the gender pay gap in enhancing their economic security – not to speak about the fact to ensure a diverse and talented STEM workforce in the future.

Organisation:

The Women’s Foundation, founded in 2004, is a leading organisation in HK dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by challenging gender stereotypes, empowering women in poverty and advancing women leaders, by the means of conducting research, running community programmes and engaging in education and advocacy. They engage both women and men as supporters and drivers of positive change for gender equality.

The four main pillars of their programmes are:

1) Community Programme for Youth: focusing on youth empowerment and challenging gender stereotypes through the implementation of sustainable programmes and initiatives. An example is Girls Go Tech Programme that we suggest to fund in this grant; another example is the T.E.E.N. Programme (Talent, Empowerment, Equality and Networking) that provided leadership and gender awareness trainings as well as mentoring (by undergraduates) to underprivileged adolescents. The programme is currently continuing as T.E.E.N. Alumni Programme focusing on investing in the leadership development of the alumni.

2) Community Programme for Marginalized Women: aiming to create positive and measurable change for women’s economic self-reliance.

3) Pipeline Initiatives: aiming to increase number of women in decision-making and leadership roles by engaging both male and female. A powerful example is their Mentoring Programme for Women Leaders where they placed over 1,100 professional women in rewarding mentoring relationships alongside personal development. Whilst they also pay emphasis on leveraging male influence on gender equality within businesses via another programme called Male Allies Initiative.

4) Research, Advocacy and Communications: focusing on gender issues in HK affecting women and girls. Campaign examples include She Objects with an award-winning documentary challenging consumers and content creators on reflecting media’s portrayal of female and gender issues, and most recently #MakePeopleCount campaign was launched to raise awareness of sexual violence in HK and call for urgent changes to legislation, employment policies and the education curriculum. TWF also have completed a number of researches, including one called Girls and STEM Education in Hong Kong that strives to explore factors affecting girls’ choices on STEM subjects and offering suggestions in gender balancing.

Current Grant:

EMpower's second grant to The Women’s Foundation Limited (TWF) will enable TWF continue to run and strengthen their Girls Go Tech (GGT) program for 1145 (Y1) and 1445 (Y2) girls and young women 14 to 18 years old. The GGT program consists of: 1) Self-directed online courses on STEM related topics offered on an online platform. 2) Real-life activities related to STEM/tech such as Company visits, Coding Skills workshops or STEM-related Career Guidance sessions. 3) Online tutoring that was piloted during our first grant with EMpower funding only yield very positive results and will now be added as a regular program activity from 2022 onwards. Apart from the fact that TWF will further increase the number and diversity of the online course offer on the platform and strives to newly offer certified courses (e.g. from Microsoft), this grant holds many new exciting components: The GGT program will be intentionally expanded to a cohort of 40 younger participants of upper primary school students (ages approx. 9-12). TWF will pilot a new work shadowing scheme collaborating with corporates. Next to the GGT Participant Advisory Group, TWF will also launch a GGT Teacher Advisory Group. Last but not least, TWF also wishes to engage much more with parents and will experiment with Parent Workshops and Parent-Kid Coding Workshops.

Primary Location: Hong Kong, China

Website: https://twfhk.org/

Funded Since: 2021

Grantee shoutouts!

Learning Together in Hong Kong

Posted 02 November 2021