Fauste Ndikumana’s dream was to defy all odds stacked against her gender and become either a pilot or an astronaut. “I was committed. I wanted my dream to become a reality and my family was also supportive,” says the 29-year-old from the rural area of Nyamasheke district in Rwanda’s Western Province.
Ndikumana worked hard throughout school and secured a university scholarship to study electrical engineering rather than her first choice of electronics.
She opted to pursue mathematics instead.
“I believed that with mathematics, I would have an option to pursue most science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses into a masters and I could still pursue my dream,” she said.
Today, Ndikumana holds a bachelor degree in mathematics and a masters in mathematical sciences from the former Kigali Institute of Science and Technology and the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). Her class consisted entirely of men, apart from herself and one other woman.
Rather than a pilot or astronaut, she is employed as a public servant and holds a position as a product and technology development specialist (STEM) at the National Industrial Research and Development Agency (NIRDA) where she has worked on several projects, including one focused on gridded data in Rwanda and how it can help farmers become resilient to climate change.
She won a Women in STEM Rising Star Award from the National Council for Science and Technology for the project.
She believes more girls and women should be pursuing careers in science.
“Girls are able and can perform well in sciences especially when they have goals. But they have to overcome any sort of discouragement. They have to go beyond the myth that there are tasks meant for boys only. They also have to adapt to the environment whether conducive or not,” she said, emphasising the need for support from family members and society in general.
Low enrolment in STEM
In Rwanda, a majority of female students shy away from STEM-related courses and the number pursuing STEM-related courses is still low compared to males.
The University of Rwanda, which is the biggest higher education institution in the country, aims to raise the percentage of STEM students to 90% in the next 10 years from the current 52%, and to increase the female STEM enrolment to 33%, which would still be below the global average.
According to a UNESCO report, “Cracking the code: girls’ and women’s education in STEM”, women represent 35% of all students enrolled in STEM-related fields of study in higher education around the world.
The report, released in 2017, notes that the gender disparity is alarming, especially as STEM careers are often referred to as the jobs of the future, driving innovation, social wellbeing, inclusive growth and sustainable development.
In Rwanda, educationalists and experts attribute the low enrolment of girls and women to a culture that discourages girls from pursuing sciences on the basis that STEM is “too hard” for girls or is a male preserve.
According to Dr Herine Otieno Menya, the director of the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences’ Teacher Training Program, Rwanda, the gender disparity in STEM in Rwanda “has nothing to do with the ability of the girls to do sciences. In fact, there are countries where girls do much better than boys in sciences in ‘A’ Level, but you will still find more boys in STEM courses in universities.”
She said there was a widespread belief that you are either born to do well in mathematics and sciences or you are not. “Which is wrong,” she said.
Otieno, who has a PhD in mathematics education, said girls tend to learn in a different way to boys. “When people are learning, emotions are also involved and there has always been a tradition of presenting mathematics and sciences in a very dry way … that actually works against the girls,” she said.
Social goals
She said girls “tend to identify more strongly with social goals; they want to do something or be connected to something they see has benefit for the community”, she said. Otieno said girls tend to do better in biology which is connected to real life.
She said girls tend to disconnect with sciences when they are presented in a highly theoretical form with heavy emphasis on calculations rather than how it impacts life or how it is translated into something else.
“So when that happens, the boys are okay with looking clever. The fact that I can solve that question and I look very clever is ok. But girls tend to be drawn to something that is going to impact society,” she said.
Otieno said the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) works with partners to mobilise students in secondary schools by sending role models who are in universities or have graduated in science-related courses to share their experiences.
“The idea is for them to see fellow women in their context, like a Rwandan who could say: ‘I went to a school like this one and I am an engineer,’ and they will be able to show not that they were so bright, but that they worked hard,” she said.
Lack of evaluation
Otieno said there was a lack of evaluation of how sciences were being taught at university, the teaching and learning environment, and how gender responsive it was.
“There are people we lose at that level because the environment is not as gender responsive as it should be and there are no deliberate interventions at that level,” she said.
She said there was room for more work, not only in Rwanda but in Africa, on how STEM could be better promoted and taught at universities to include more women.
Dr Fabien Hagenimana, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Applied Sciences, a private university in the Northern Province better known as INES-Ruhengeri, confirmed that female students tend to shy away from STEM courses especially where mathematics and physics are involved.
“We have a small number of female students in STEM especially where mathematics and physics are required,” he said. “For instance we have 20% of female students in civil engineering and 25% of females in land surveying because there is a lot of mathematics,” he said.
“Some girls tend to pursue soft subjects after secondary, they prefer options such as tourism and hotel management and shy away from sciences,” he said.
Forum for African Women Educationalists
However, he said that together with the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Rwanda chapter, INES has managed to increase the female enrolment in biomedical and biotechnical options to 48%.
“At our university, we encourage girls and support them, female students are given priority and the majority stay in campus hostels. We have a guidance and counselling committee so that girls do not get disrupted, we organise a Miss Bright pageant where the brightest female is recognised in a bid to encourage more to do better,” he said.
According to Antonia Mutoro, FAWE Rwanda chapter coordinator, more efforts are being invested in supporting female students in education especially in pursuing STEM-related courses.
Working with partners such as UNICEF and Plan International, FAWE Rwanda currently runs two secondary schools, one in Kigali, and another in the Kayonza district in the Eastern Province. It also offers scholarships.
“So far, we have offered scholarships to over 20,494 in many schools and only 6,200 are boys. Of those, 80% have gone to universities to study STEM-related courses,” she said.
FAWE Rwanda also boasts of a number of female graduates in STEM-related fields such as health sciences. Others are software engineers, pilots and civil engineers, while others are in ICT-related fields as well as in education, according to Mutoro.
Despite these successes, there are still challenges affecting female enrolment in STEM university study, said Mutoro.
Calls for combined efforts
They include “cultural beliefs and gender stereotypes, discouragement from peers and un-informed teachers as well as low self-esteem among some girls”, she said, calling for combined efforts towards supporting girls in sciences.
The government of Rwanda is also playing a role in addressing these challenges. Dr Rose Mukankomeje, executive director of the Higher Education Council, said the government is committed to increasing the number of science students in general and female students in particular.
“It is a government commitment to increase the number of female students in science disciplines. Gender parity is a priority in education especially in sciences.”
She said the government works with FAWE Rwanda, AIMS, the MasterCard Foundation and UNICEF Rwanda, among others, to promote the sciences.
