Emergence of More Female Role Models in the Sciences: The Case of Students' Academic Performance in a Nigerian Private University

Abstract

In this article, we present an empirical study to provide more evidence on the strength of the female gender in the sciences. It is on record that the percentage of women in the sciences is still low compared to the male counterpart. This paper is thus intended to make use of the performance of female undergraduates in the sciences to encourage more participation from this group. The study focused on six science courses that already graduated students from Redeemer's university for at least 4 years as at the time of the research. We compared the average performance of female students with that of male students in each program over 5 years. The results obtained suggest that female students also have great potentials in the sciences, with better performance in some instances than male students. Consequently, we encourage more women participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.