Mastercard’s Signature Girls4Tech™ Program Returns to India for the Second Year

· Program aims to drive interest and encourage STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers among girls
· Inaugural Girls in Tech Research revealed that India tops Asia Pacific with the highest interest level among girls towards STEM careers

Bangalore: As part of a worldwide rollout, Mastercard will bring its signature Girls4Tech™ program back to Pune on 5 August and Vadodara on 9 August. This launch comes close on the heels of STEM emerging as the most popular choice for studies and as a career for young girls in India, according to Mastercard’s inaugural Girls in Tech research launched earlier this year.

Girls4Tech is a hands-on, inquiry-based program that connects the foundations of the Mastercard business to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) principles and shows students that it takes all kinds of interests and skills to pursue a STEM career. With six stations that showcase algorithms, digital convergence, fraud detection, local network intelligence, cryptology and big data, Girls4Tech is based on global science and math standards and was created in conjunction with curriculum experts and top engineers from Mastercard.

As part of the program in India, Mastercard will host 24 girls from the Akanksha Foundation and 30 girls from the Sardar Dastur Nosherwan Girls High School in their Pune office, 30 girls from the Navrachna Vidyani Vidyalaya school in Vadodara and five girls from Shrimati Kamlaben Badhir Vidyalaya, a school for the hearing impaired in Vadodara. Last year, Mastercard had hosted 30 girls from the Air Force School in Gurgaon, 25 girls from the Army Public School and 25 girls from the Sardar Dastur Nosherwar Girls High School in Pune.

Georgette Tan, Senior Vice President, Communications, Asia Pacific says, “India is fast emerging as a global hub of technology and innovation and offers an exciting range of career opportunities related to STEM fields. However, women remain consistently underrepresented in STEM careers. Furthermore, our inaugural Girls in Tech research revealed that the top reasons why girls are not considering STEM careers relate to ability and perception of gender bias. Through Girls4Tech, we hope to inspire more young girls to develop their STEM skills and build the future generation of female STEM talent.”

The results of the study are based on interviews that took place in December 2015 with 1,560 girls aged 12-19 across six markets[1] in Asia Pacific. According to the study, 84 percent of girls (aged 17-19) studying STEM subjects in India see themselves pursuing a STEM career, which is the highest amongst other Asia Pacific countries. In India, a large number of girls (15-19 years old) are studying STEM-related subjects (69 percent) in comparison to girls pursuing Non-STEM subjects (31 percent).

However, despite girls’ desire to pursue STEM, gender bias is also very apparent in India. Nearly half of the respondents (45 percent) think that girls are less likely to pursue STEM as compared to boys when pursuing higher studies. One of the major reasons for this is that parents generally do not encourage girls to pursue STEM (46 percent).

Methodology for the Girls in Tech research

The Mastercard inaugural “Girls in Tech” research was conducted via an online survey with 1,560 girls aged 12 to 19 years old in six countries (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) in Asia Pacific. In India total 300 girls were interviewed for the survey. The interviews were conducted in December 2015 with parental consent.