Online learning platform sees rise in women eager to develop STEM, digital skills
Women appear to be closing the gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and digital disciplines when it comes to online learning, with four in 10 Australian enrolments for STEM courses in 2021 being women – up from 34 percent in 2019, according to a report by global learning platform Coursera.
Coursera’s Women and Skills Report 2021 – which features data from 40 million new learners who registered between Jan. 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, and compares it to pre-pandemic enrolment – 51 percent of new learners from Australia for all courses were female – slightly higher than the overall global share of 50 percent.
The increase in female representation among online learning over the past two years is most likely due to the fact that women have been affected by the pandemic more than men, according to Betty Vandenbosch, chief content officer of Coursera.
“[Women] had the burden of taking care of their families,” says Vandenbosch. “The number of employed women in 2021 was 13 million fewer than 2019, while men were about the same – that’s something that has focused women on how to learn.
“Women have a lot of constraints and so that’s how they move forward.”
Online learning can also provide ground-floor access to STEM and digital skills for women and other diverse groups, as well as provide instructor representation. Vandenbosch says that her organization is seeing women registering for introductory programs in STEM and digital fields and those programs guarantee that they will gain skills for particular positions. In addition to the rise in STEM registration, the proportion of Australian enrolments for entry-level professional certificates who were women increased from 29 percent to 35 percent since 2019 (25 percent to 37 percent globally), the report found.
The report also found that women learners enroll more than men in courses taught by female instructors, with women accounting for 49 percent of enrolments in such courses. Vandenbosch notes that one of Coursera’s most popular courses in Australia is one teaching Excel skills for business, which features two female professors. This signals the importance for women to see instructors like themselves to encourage learning, she says.
“Australia has the benefit of really strong female professors on our platform and women respond well to female teaching. We need role models. I’ve been in STEM my entire life and I’ve never had a female professor.”
Vandenbosch notes that some of the most popular courses taken by women deal with leadership skills such as communication, management, and entrepreneurship, along with STEM-related subjects such as machine learning, data analysis, and statistics. In addition, half of government learners and 38 percent of business learners on the platform are women, according to the report.
Vandenbosch says that more women gaining “hard skills” for STEM digital, and leadership occupations creates an opportunity for both the Australian government and employers to emphasize learning and development and create a more diverse workforce. If they don’t, the gender gap in these occupations will increase and women will remain more vulnerable to major disruptive events such as the pandemic, she says.
Employers can play a role in supporting this trend by ensuring that every slate of job candidates includes women and diverse people and making more effort to hire women, says Vandenbosch.
“This has been a hard nut to crack, but with online learning, women have the opportunity to develop and grow into skills and jobs that are disruption resistant,” she says.
