It’s Not Just the Girls—It’s the Organizations: Nationwide Study Finds Institutional Identity Is the Hidden Engine of Gender-Inclusive STEM Education

For decades, the search for why girls and women remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics has focused overwhelmingly on the learners themselves—their confidence, their interests, their sense of whether they belong in physics or programming. A new nationwide study from Germany turns that lens around and points it squarely at the institutions. Researchers at the University of Regensburg and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg surveyed 209 providers of out-of-school STEM education and found that the most powerful and consistent predictor of gender-inclusive practice was not how capable an organization believed it was, but how deeply promoting females in STEM was woven into its institutional self-image—an organizational identity that predicted every single marker of program success the team measured. Writing in the International Journal of STEM Education, the researchers argue that closing the gender gap may require changing what educational organizations believe about themselves, not only what girls believe about themselves.

At the individual level, the psychological machinery behind STEM engagement is well mapped. A strong science identity—seeing oneself as the kind of person associated with science—predicts students’ choices of optional science learning experiences and their intentions to pursue STEM careers. Forming that identity is harder for girls, who frequently face barriers in reconciling their self-concept with the stereotypically masculine norms of STEM fields, and the early development of STEM-specific self-efficacy is a critical driver of their academic choices. What has been almost entirely missing, the authors contend, is the equivalent analysis one level up. Out-of-school providers—workshops, maker spaces, science clubs, student research labs, summer academies and career-orientation events—offer hands-on learning that schools cannot always deliver and are uniquely positioned to spark and sustain girls’ interest during adolescence, precisely the period when STEM interest otherwise erodes without additional support. Yet whether these organizations’ own collective beliefs shape what they actually deliver had never been systematically tested.

To fill that gap, the team borrowed two constructs from organizational psychology. The first, organizational identity, traces to Albert and Whetten’s classic 1985 formulation: the central, distinctive and enduring characteristics that define who an institution is—”who we are and what we stand for.” The second, organizational efficacy, descends from Albert Bandura’s theory of collective efficacy, defined as a group’s shared belief in its conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment, and asks, in effect, “what we are capable of doing.” Crucially, the researchers transferred a two-dimensional model of individual science identity to the institutional plane, distinguishing between how an organization perceives itself as an actor in the field of promoting females in STEM, and how it believes influential outsiders—participants, funding agencies, STEM teachers, policymakers and the wider STEM community—recognize it. Identity sets the strategic direction; efficacy provides the confidence to act on it.

The empirical test came in the form of a nationwide online survey conducted in November 2022 on behalf of MINTvernetzt, Germany’s federally funded competence and networking centre for extracurricular STEM education. The questionnaire, implemented in Lamapoll, went to 1,504 member organizations; 527 responded, a return rate of 35 percent, of whom 414 were actual providers of STEM programs. The final analyses drew on the 209 providers with complete responses. Organizational identity was captured with a six-item scale adapted from established science-identity research, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha of .93, while organizational efficacy was measured with three items adapted from a validated German general self-efficacy instrument, with an alpha of .85, both on four-point Likert-type formats. Five theoretically derived success indicators served as outcome variables: consideration of fundamental gender-inclusive principles such as stereotype-free concepts and appropriate female role models (alpha .72); interest in networking and professional development on gender-fair STEM promotion (alpha .89); a focus on long-term support rather than isolated events (alpha .72); integration of environmental influences such as parents, teachers, peers and media (alpha .62); and self-assessed success in getting girls excited about STEM (alpha .81).

Statistically, the team computed Pearson correlations and then a series of multiple linear regression models run in two steps, mean-centering the predictors before forming an interaction term, with all analyses performed in IBM SPSS Statistics 29. Organizational identity correlated between .25 and .52 with the five success criteria and emerged as a significant predictor of all five. Its strongest effects appeared for two practices: inclusive program planning—embedding gender-fair language, role models and critical reflection on bias into advertising, design and delivery—and interest in networking and professional development, the latter being the largest single effect observed for identity in the entire study. Providers who saw themselves, and felt seen by others, as institutions committed to advancing females in STEM were markedly more likely to seek collaboration, training and continuous improvement in that domain.

Organizational efficacy told a more complicated story. It significantly predicted four of the five criteria, with its strongest effect on self-assessed success—confident organizations rated themselves as better at exciting girls about STEM. But one result inverted expectations: efficacy negatively predicted interest in networking and professional development. The more capable providers believed themselves to be, the less they wanted external exchange. The authors interpret this as a compensation effect: organizations that doubt their collective capabilities seek outside support to close perceived gaps, while highly efficacious organizations lean on internal resources and may underestimate both the benefit of exchange for themselves and their own potential role as mentors to struggling peers. Notably, identity’s pull toward networking remained high regardless of efficacy level, hinting that a strong institutional identity fuels a genuine commitment to learning rather than mere deficit-filling.

Because programs differ enormously in structure and theme, the second regression step added covariates: whether more than half of a provider’s offerings targeted girls only (12 percent of cases), four target-group categories spanning early childhood through educational professionals, four format types from hands-on labs to mentoring, and seven disciplinary fields. Explained variance rose from between 8 and 33 percent in the first step to between 27 and 41 percent with controls, and the effects of identity and efficacy remained robust, though slightly weaker. One telling shift occurred: after accounting for program characteristics, efficacy—rather than identity—became the significant predictor of integrating environmental influences, suggesting that institutional confidence is what enables organizations to weave parents, teachers and peers into their programs once structural heterogeneity is considered. The interaction between identity and efficacy, only marginally significant before controls, vanished entirely. Among the covariates, informatics programs showed the strongest networking interest and long-term focus, technology-oriented programs were marginally less likely to emphasize inclusive practice, and providers concentrated on vocational or higher education reported lower networking interest and lower self-assessed success.

The outcome measures themselves were grounded in a substantial evidence base on what actually works for girls in STEM. Prior studies show that recruitment advertisements using only masculine linguistic forms and male-typed imagery reduce women’s self-ascribed fit, interest and application intentions, while female role-model interventions—in which women employed in STEM visit schools—reduce gender stereotypes about mathematical ability and increase enjoyment, perceived importance and career aspirations. Duration matters as well: follow-up research shows motivational gains from short science interventions can decay within six months, and a systematic review of 32 interventions for secondary-school girls found roughly two-thirds lasted between twenty minutes and two weeks. A review of 165 studies on female underrepresentation found that 61 percent identified environmental factors—parental involvement, peer pressure, teachers’ gender bias—as contributors to low participation. In the authors’ framing, identity orients the organization toward these evidence-based practices; efficacy determines whether members believe they can actually execute them.

The practical implications operate on three levels. Organizationally, providers can embed gender equity in their mission statements, internal discussions and outreach materials, and use peer-learning formats, training workshops and professional networks to build collective confidence in enacting gender-inclusive practice. Programmatically, the evidence supports deliberate female role models, mentoring structures, hands-on and real-world content, long-term support structures aligned with short-term activities, and the active involvement of parents, teachers and peers in girls’ educational pathways. At the network level, the results carry a pointed warning for funders and consortia: networking offers will naturally attract lower-efficacy organizations—the ones who need them most—while high-efficacy providers must be actively recruited with different strategies, positioned not as beneficiaries but as contributors whose experience can lift an entire community of practice.

The authors caution that each organization was represented by a single respondent, that success was self-assessed rather than independently verified, and that the cross-sectional design cannot capture how identity and efficacy develop over time; several adapted scales also showed only moderate internal consistency. Future work, they suggest, should survey multiple representatives per institution, complement subjective ratings with objective measures such as website content analyses and participant feedback, and test interventions designed to strengthen organizational identity and efficacy directly. But the central message stands: the battle for gender equity in STEM is not fought only in the minds of girls deciding who they want to become. It is fought, just as decisively, in the collective self-understanding of the organizations that invite them in—and when an institution genuinely believes that advancing women in science is part of who it is, gender-inclusive practice follows.