A student’s aspirations to engage with higher education are shaped by their access to economic and cultural resources, as well as experiences of success in education. These ‘economic’ resources are self-explanatory: more money, and everything that comes with it. However, the ‘cultural’ resources in the home and in the classroom are more complex.

Because gender stereotypes have portrayed certain STEMM fields as masculine, leading to fewer women studying and working in STEMM, these fields tend to sustain exclusionary, male-dominated cultures that are not supportive of or attractive to women and other underrepresented groups. It is a perpetual cycle that we need to break.