Over the last few years, there’s been a massive cross-industry push to get more women and girls into science and technology courses. Each toy fair has dozens of toys aimed at teaching girls how to code, there are award shows recognising the few senior women there are in the field, Disney cartoons are showing more female scientists and programmers, and people are becoming more conscious of how they talk about these careers as being for everyone. Heck, even Barbie is a scientist and astronaut now.

According to a recent YouGov Galaxy poll, funded by Microsoft Store, 52 per cent of girls aged 12–17 would consider a job in a technology or science-related field, while 28 per cent were unsure, and 21 per cent straight up said no. Interestingly, overall, 24 per cent of those surveyed didn’t know enough about the jobs available in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths).

Girls are now more aware of STEM careers, but there's much more work to do. Credit:Getty Images

While it’s great to have more than half of all girls interested in a career in STEM, and it shows that the education campaign is starting to work, that number should be higher, given that most future jobs will be in STEM-related areas.

One of the problems with getting girls involved is the perceived lack of female role models. This was highlighted in the YouGov study, when only 4.66 per cent of respondents could name a single female role model in STEM; the vast majority of which named Marie Curie, who has been dead for 85 years.