UNDP
Maldives
UNDP in the Maldives is leveraging behavioural insights tools to increase young girls' participation in STEM-related fields. The solution prototype aims to address social and cultural barriers that limit girls' career aspirations in STEM to increase their knowledge and build confidence to undertake STEM-related education and jobs. Nudges are being designed and piloted to understand what kind of behaviour change campaign can spark the intended change. With this knowledge, the project is working with young girls and parents to counter these barriers and encourage the girls to have the confidence, awareness, and tools to enter STEM. The resulting change will see girls who are currently studying STEM subjects at O-Levels in the Maldives continue pursuing STEM subjects at A-Levels or pre-university. The key result of the prototype is to generate behavioural insights and deeper information sets on psychometrics which provided a strong evidence-base. UNDP Maldives is now working on further rounds of iteration and later scaling-up of tested strategies which would allow for more comprehensive measurement of results. UNDP and BIT have now designed and will test an intervention to engage students, parents and teachers to increase the girls’ circle of exposure and self-efficacy, confidence and understanding of STEM career pathways. For women and girls to continue pursuing STEM, they need to feel like they belong and that there are others like them in the field. Therefore, the chosen intervention will involve introducing a role model speaker. Specifically, a young Maldivian woman who currently works in a STEM career or studies a STEM subject at university (e.g., engineering, marine science, aviation) to give an inspirational talk to students and engage with them in a Q&A session. To maximize impact, the pilot will also engage parents to encourage conversations surrounding STEM and reduce harmful assumptions. Parents and teachers will receive supporting prompts and guidance to discuss points made during the talk with the young girls. Based on the insights drawn from the initial scoping phase, the proposed intervention has the potential to be incorporated into the education sector at a larger scale. Maldives Ministry of Education recently launched a national apprenticeship program conducted as part of ongoing discussions at the policy level for gender equality and women’s participation in the public sphere.