Engaging Men and Boys in Gender Equity in STEM
The case for engaging men and boys in gender equity work in STEM, what the evidence shows about effective engagement strategies, and the common pitfalls to avoid.
Why this matters in practice
Gender equity in STEM is not a problem women can solve alone. Most senior decision-makers in research institutions, technology companies, and funding agencies are men. Most working environments women encounter are shaped by men's behaviors and expectations. Most graduate-advisor, hiring-committee, and grant-review interactions are with mixed-gender groups. Effective gender-equity work requires engaging men and boys as active participants rather than as passive observers or, worse, as obstacles to work around.
What works
- Structured ally programs with concrete commitments. Programs that ask men to make specific, measurable changes to their behavior (interrupting interruptions in meetings, sponsoring women for opportunities, restructuring hiring practices) outperform awareness-only programs.
- Senior-leader engagement with accountability. Where institutional leadership is publicly committed to specific outcomes and accountable for progress, behavioral change follows. Where commitment is rhetorical, it often doesn't.
- Boys' programs alongside girls' programs. In K-12 outreach, programs that engage boys explicitly in gender-equity learning alongside girls' STEM programs produce more durable cultural change than girls-only interventions in isolation.
- Mentor pairings across gender. Men mentoring women - and increasingly, women mentoring boys - produces benefits both ways. The research on this is consistent.
Common pitfalls
- Centering men's experience or comfort in conversations that should center women's substantive concerns
- Treating men's allyship as a substitute for, rather than complement to, structural changes
- Performative engagement that produces visible activity but no measurable change
- Failing to address the specific behaviors that produce day-to-day exclusion (interruption patterns, attribution of credit, division of administrative labor)
Programs and resources
Many of the major institutional-transformation programs (Athena SWAN, NSF ADVANCE, SAGE) include explicit male-engagement components. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Royal Society have run sustained male-engagement programs as part of their broader gender-equity work. Specific resources include the He For She campaign's STEM track and the Male Champions of Change network started in Australia.