Bishkek, 11 November 2022 – UNDP organized STEM (Science-Technology, Engineering, and Math) workshop as a part of the need’s assessment of STEM women in Kyrgyzstan since the COVID-19. Co-design workshop aimed to map key stakeholders in the STEM community, as well as to co-develop the action plan for promoting gender parity in STEM. The final report and the action plan will be officially presented publicly in early 2023.

STEM is the only sector that remains growing amidst the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, while hundred million of jobs were lost globally

The COVID-19 pandemic has halted progress on gender equality and women's empowerment across the globe. Global employment losses demonstrated that women suffered higher employment losses than men. For example, women's employment rate in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) is projected to be almost 15 percent lower than that of men. Despite the employment losses, demand for workers in STEM occupations has continued and is only expected to grow in the future. 

UNDP plays a facilitator role by bringing diverse stakeholders to one round table. There were representatives from 32 entities, including the government, international and national institutes, UN agencies, academy, civil society organizations, private sector, as well as unconventional partners, such as arts, religious communities and feminist groups. For some partners, this was the first time they sat together by one table. The diverse representativeness of participation enabled UNDP to bring different perspectives to the agenda, so to leave no one behind. Most importantly, promoting gender parity in STEM shall be done in a collaborative partnership with all key stakeholders. UNDP is ready to facilitate dialogues among stakeholders, and to nurture an enabling environment to empower more girls and women in STEM.

UNDP Kyrgyzstan conducts the rapid research with a human-centric approach to screenshot the changing narratives of STEM women

UNDP conducts the rapid research with the focus on STEM communities in Bishkek and Osh. Preliminary results screenshot the mainstreamed STEM narrative, that enables UNDP and its partners to identify the entry-point of early interventions and meet growing demand.

UNDP deploys the human-centric approach by following the STEM women’s personal journeys to make sense of the systemic patterns that halt their progress.  At the workshop several assumptions were tested to identify the root-cause challenges faced by women in the STEM  

After identifying the root-cause challenges, participants finally came out with the following main problem statements:

Problem Statement 1. Low level of public awareness among stakeholders (state institutes/parents/teachers/youth, etc.) on the importance and values of STEM leads to the limited participation of women and girls in STEM.

Problem Statement 2. Women and girls are not confident in their capabilities to excel in STEM.

Problem Statement 3. There is a gap between the existing gender equality policy and its practical implementation that halts the progress of women’s participation in STEM.

Later, participants ideated solutions based on their best practices and experience learnt to each problem statement. These generated solutions will be ultimately experimented by UNDP. With the final research findings and the experimentation, UNDP plans to use the best tested solutions to further scale the work.

What is expected by the end of 2022?

The final report of the "Needs Assessment of STEM Women in Kyrgyzstan" will be drafted, together with the STEM stakeholders mapping. The outputs from the STEM workshop will be contributed to the UNDP STEM action plan, that will be presented in February 2023 to the public. If there are any other partners interested in the research, and/or collaborative opportunities, please contact Jenny Jenish kyzy (Ensi Tszie), Head of Experimentation of UNDP Accelerator Lab, at ensi.tszie@undp.org

For media inquiries, please contact Ainagul Abdrakhmanova, Communication Officer of UNDP, at ainagul.abdrakhmanova@undp.org