OUR STORY
All over the world, and especially In Japan, there is a persistent gender gap in student performance in STEM subjects. Research studies reveal that the Japanese school system suffers from large inequalities from a gender perspective. In PISA 2012, 15-year old Japanese boys outperformed Japanese girls by 19 points on average in mathematics. In the 90th percentile (at the top 10 percent), this gap was even greater at 29 points.
What explains this gender gap?
Studies have shown that the factor that explains this gender gap can be attributed to non-cognitive skills like self-confidence, self-efficacy, and motivation.
Self-efficacy is one's belief in his or her ability to succeed in specific situations or to accomplish a task. This is particularly true among female students in Japan, where there is a low level of self-efficacy among adolescent girls. This means that there is a large number of female students in Japan who think that they are not good at math or science, which are fundamental skills and knowledge required to pursue advanced degree or careers in STEM fields. This often leads them to get into the humanities track as early as high school, resulting in fewer girls pursuing traditional STEM topics in post-secondary education.
Also, Japan lags behind many other OECD countries in entrepreneurial activities. Further, the GEM index also suggests gender gap in entrepreneurism in Japan.
When we look around at a place like Stanford and Silicon Valley more broadly, there are amazing examples of women STEM professionals. They are blazing the trail and transforming the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
As Japanese women who've received education in Japan, graduated from Stanford Graduate Schools and raised our children in Silicon Valley, we have witnessed and experienced how young minds in Silicon Valley are exposed to different elements of STEM very early on. Using evidence-based research, we decided to introduce something new to the education sector. We wanted to raise the self-efficacy and confidence of girls in Japan, raising their motivation to explore possibilities in STEM fields. So we founded SKYLABO in 2016 with the hope of harnessing our expertise in Education, Humanities, and Social Sciences to close Japan's STEM gender gap.
In order to nurture the next generation of female STEM professionals, innovators and entrepreneurs, we provide educational workshops for Japanese middle and high school girls every summer to equip them with the confidence and skills to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
WHAT IS SKY LABO?
SKY Labo is a non-profit education social venture with the goal to ignite students’ curiosity and interests in Science, Technology, Engineering, Liberal Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) fields so that they cultivate their love for learning and become creative, confident problem solvers. To do so, we employ design thinking as a method of learning to hone their critical thinking skills, with an emphasis on socio-emotional learning and cross-cultural understanding.