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By 2018, the U.S. will have over 1.2 million

unfilled STEM jobs due to a lack of qualified workers.

Girls are missing out on a world of STEM

opportunities.

Many girls aren’t aware of STEM career options, or don’t see themselves

in those jobs.

Inspiring Girls to Reach for STEM

Let’s build a better pipeline

74% of teen girls are interested in STEM...

Yet just 13% of interested girls say a STEM career is their top choice.

Women now earn 38% of STEM degrees...

But only a quarter of those graduates enter a STEM career.

THE NEED: Increase Girls’ Involvement in STEM If the U.S. is to maintain its competitive advantage in the global economy, we need to ensure that our young people—especially girls—can reach for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Girls are interested in STEM subjects. But too many do not see a future for themselves in the field. A Girl Scout Research Institute study, Generation STEM: What Girls Say About Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (2012), found:

●74 percent of girls say they are interested in STEM ●Yet only 13 percent of the interested girls say a career in STEM is their first choice ●Half of all girls feel that STEM isn’t a typical career path for girls

Despite a significant federal investment in initiatives to interest young women STEM careers, just 24 percent of scientists and engineers in the United States are women. Many leave the career path along the way.

THE SOLUTION: Girl Scouts’ Unique Approach to STEM The Generation STEM study found that the creative, hands-on, and problem-solving aspects of STEM hold great appeal for girls.

●79 percent of all girls in the study like to solve problems, ●72 percent like to do hands-on science projects, and ●70 percent ask questions about how things work and seek to answer these

questions.

Hands-on learning techniques are core to the Girl Scout program and have been since 1913, when Girl Scouts created its Electrician and Flyer badges—the very first STEM- related badges. Girl Scouts’ unique approach to girls and STEM learning is grounded in the Girl Scout Leadership Experience, which ensures that activities are girl led and involve learning by doing and cooperative learning.

Girl Scouts and STEMChanging the World with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

Girls are natural-born scientists! They look at the world around them with inquisitive eyes, experiment and push boundaries, and learn as they go.

We introduce Girl Scouts of every age to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to help them see how they can actually improve the world—whether they're discovering how a car's engine runs, learning to manage finances, or caring for animals.

We’d like every girl to explore different aspects of STEM every year, so we’ve developed a unique, "fun with purpose" K–12 curriculum to inspire girls to embrace and celebrate scientific discovery in their lives.

By inspiring girls to discover more of what they really care about, Leadership Journeys are an essential part of Girl Scouting. Girls explore a wide range of interests along their Journeys—everything from the arts to the outdoors and, of course, STEM.

For example, in the It’s Your Planet – Love It! – a Journey series - girls can explore the natural world by learning about the water cycle, completing energy audits, assessing air quality, calculating their "food print" and learning kitchen science, and figuring out how much trash is created and how to reduce it.

Girl Scouts nationwide are also taking on hacking and cybercrime as they work towards earning newly introduced cybersecurity badges that were released in 2018! Girl Scouts of the USA teamed up with security company Palo Alto Networks to devise a curriculum that educates young girls about the basics of computer networks, cyber attacks, and online safety. Women are underrepresented an hold only 11 percent of jobs globally, according to the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study: Women in Cybersecurity.

Find us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn We are supported in part by

www.gsccc.org

Girl Scouts partner with many universities, colleges, organizations and businesses to bring more STEM opportunities to girls, such as Engineering Day at Old Dominion University, STEAM Day at Thomas Nelson Community College, Science Alive at Norfolk State University and Women’s Engineers’ Badge Day at NASA. Through partnerships, sponsorships, and various initiatives, we offer girls additional ways to learn while having fun applying STEM skills.

BadGES More than half of the Girl Scout badges include elements that

support STEM discovery and financial literacy.