Women make up half of the society, however they account for 40% of the labor force, according to a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2020). Data shows that globally, the number of women working in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers is still low (ILOStat, 2019). In Europe, women hold only 17.2% of ICT-related jobs and only 13.1% of STEM graduates are women (Eurostat, 2019). Data on emerging economies, such as Kosovo, exhibit similar trends. In the academic year of 2017/2020, out of the total number of active and graduated students in STEM fields at the University of Prishtina, women comprised 32% and 44%, respectively (MEST & KAS, 2018). Closing the gender gap was identified as a possibility for growth and reignition of the economies across Central and Easter Europe by a recent McKinsey report (Iszkowska et al., 2021). The need to keep up with the social, technological, and economic developments of our time has brought to the forefront the importance of preparing the new generations of citizens with skills in STEM. Indeed, the European Commission recognized that one of the most ambitious goals is to make STEM education and STEM careers attractive to youth, and that interventions to address the crisis should start early (European Commission, Horizon 2020).

Therefore, in this paper we report on our research insights aiming to have a better understanding of challenges related to women studying STEM fields. The research efforts reported in this paper have been conducted in Kosovo during December 2021. The approach used in this research was based on the future workshop method conducted with18 high school female students from two high schools in Prishtina and 9 university female students in Kosovo. Understanding STEM experiences of students during high school is important because this period represents a critical juncture when decisions to pursue STEM are made and early interventions have been shown to be particularly effective (Kim, Sinatra, & Senyarian, 2018). The main goals of these workshops were to discover what factors have influenced the choice of these students to study STEM; understand if there are any challenges they face as STEM students; as well as their prospect for employment after graduation. The rich data collected during the workshops have been complemented with qualitative inputs from relevant stakeholders, consisting of representatives from government, educational, and civil society institutions through a panel discussion setup. Preliminary data from the workshops as well as from panel discussions revealed numerous obstacles that young women in Kosovo face while pursuing STEM education. These obstacles could be clustered in in three main themes, namely: institutional (e.g., lack of information flow, institutional support and awareness); social (e.g., lack of support from parents and teachers to study STEM); and design (e.g., lack of gender sensitive design of premises).