What influences young females to choose stem courses?

This paper presents results on a rare opportunity to study the reasons why a group of young female high school students chose to study STEM subjects. In 2022 at the Gap State High School in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, for the first time in the history of a STEM subject offered at the high school, a large number of young females choose to study this STEM subject. The authors took this opportunity to run a unique study that tried to under- stand the influences on this decision. We ran a structured survey with Likert scale or Yes/No responses on an anonymised group of survey participants to better understand the influences behind their choices to study STEM in year 9. Most studies in this field ask young females why they did not choose a STEM subject but this study provides one of few studies surveying high school students at an early point in their school journey (instead of during college) finding out why they did choose the STEM subject. The results from the survey are then compared against policy choices showing there is disagreement between some chosen policy decisions and the recommen- dations here. The recommendations from the data presented here also provide schools with a practical and useful framework to support young females in choosing STEM subjects.