Bahraini Women in the STEM Fields: Sticky Floor, Broken Ladder, and Glass Ceiling

The Bahraini government aims to promote gender parity in the different sectors, especially in the STEM sector. However, statistical evidence indicates a high gender gap in science. This study was carried out to investigate the reasons beyond why women are underrepresented in STEM fields. The survey findings showed that 26.7% of female STEM students feel alone, while only 11.9% of male STEM students feel the same way. 76.16 per cent of female STEM students and 91.33 per cent of males felt that their peers respected them. We only found evidence that females rated themselves lower than males with the same abilities regarding how well they thought they did. Among them, 68.33% of males and 57.72% of females thought they were in the top 10% regarding math skills. This difference disappeared, though, when we looked at the top 20% of scorers, where more women said they were in the top 20%. It seems like the effect is only at the very top. Numbers show that men are more likely to enter STI-related professions than women. This gender gap is especially prominent in engineering, where there are significantly fewer female students than males. Increased funding for STEM programs in Bahrain's universities is necessary, focusing on closing the gender gap.