Understanding Rural women’s Experience in STEM and Non-STEM field in Bangladesh

This paper represents the experience of women from STEM and Non-STEM fields from the perspective of the rural area of Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, the social and cultural perspectives differ from one area to another. Previously no work has been done in Bangladesh from the perspective of the rural areas. We have come up with the motivation to work on this particular area to find out what barriers and challenges women face when they move to urban areas to study in the STEM field. From our findings, we have found some barriers from the Non-STEM field and opportunities from the STEM field. We have studied n=8 participants (5 Non-STEM, 3 STEM). Through their shared experience, they face barriers such as early marriage, excessive usage of social media, lack of support from teachers, peers, institutions, and family, challenge of Accommodation and security system outside of the hometown, and parents’ mentality towards children’s career. We have found opportunities such as parents’ educational background, female role models, and family support from the shared experience of STEM field participants. This research uncovered the barriers and opportunities that rural women face for entering the STEM field, which is very important to mitigate the barriers to entering the STEM field for rural women, which will help to create a new dimension in the HCI field. We believe that by following our work, future researchers might get motivated to contribute in this area, which will help the area to be considered as a big and an important part of the future investigation.