Navarra continues to narrow the gender gap and to showcase female talent in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics): the number of women enrolled on these degrees at UPNA has risen by 21% since 2019.
This figure was welcomed by the Regional Minister for Universities, Innovation and Digital Transformation, Juan Cruz Cigudosa, at an outreach event on STEM degrees attended by students from Colegio Vedruna (4º ESO and 1º Bachillerato), organised by the Association of Women Business Leaders of Navarra (AMEDNA) and held at the Confederation of Employers of Navarra (CEN).
Cigudosa likewise stressed the need to promote gender equality and highlighted the persistent gap, both in STEM disciplines and in the business and innovation spheres. UPNA’s engineering degrees have between 15% and 30% women, and the number of female researchers under 30 fell by 2% in 2023. The event sought to plant a few seeds to reverse these trends.
Áurea Rodríguez, an associate professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and a senior expert at the European Commission on knowledge transfer, gave the lecture “Better Dead than Analogue”. She argued that technology has no gender, despite the fact that only 10% of Europe’s largest companies are led by women.
In a world where Artificial Intelligence is opening up opportunities and generating problems in equal measure, Rodríguez described herself as an algorithmic feminist and encouraged attendees to try and learn with AI, because it too has biases and replaces the glass ceiling with a ceiling of bits.
Also speaking was Ángela Bernardini, PhD in Applied Mathematics and Director of Innovation and Knowledge Transfer at NAIR Center. She identified the way we talk about STEM careers as part of the problem: “Sometimes we put too much pressure on girls and we don’t encourage them. We must ensure opportunities, but each person should study what she wants.”
Bernardini noted that the digital world makes us believe that everything is very easy and that makes it harder to appreciate the effort involved. To avoid that trap, she urged students to learn to organise themselves and assured them that if a student is organised, she can certainly succeed.
