When Dr. Nicola Fox returned to the University of Surrey for recent graduation ceremonies, she saw something she could not have imagined three decades earlier. Rows of women in caps and gowns, collecting degrees in physics and engineering. The sight stopped her. She remarked afterward that it was amazing to see how many girls were graduating in fields that, during her own time, had felt almost exclusively male.
Fox now leads all of NASA science. As Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, she oversees about 100 missions exploring everything from the Sun to the far reaches of the universe. But her path to that office began in a lecture hall where she was one of four women among more than 200 students pursuing a master’s degree in telematics and satellite engineering. That 1991 cohort at the University of Surrey was not unusual for its time. It was, statistically speaking, typical. And the distance between that room and the graduation halls she visited decades later is the story of women in STEM in microcosm: undeniable progress, still far from finished.
Fox grew up in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, about an hour north of London. She attended St Francis College, an all-girls school in Letchworth, and credits that environment with shielding her from gender stereotypes that might have steered her away from science. She never heard the message that physics was unusual for girls because at St Francis, girls studied every subject. It was not until she reached university and encountered surprise at her choice of field that she realized others saw it differently. It did not really occur to her that it was unusual, she later reflected, because no one had ever told her it was.
Her father sparked her fascination with space by showing her the moon landing on television when she was about eight months old. Her mother, Fox has said, gave her determination. Even though she may not have wanted to walk on the moon herself, Fox explained, her mother was determined to make sure her daughter had every opportunity if she wanted it. When Fox felt like giving up, her mother pushed back: not with pressure to succeed, but with permission to try and fail. Let us just give it a go, she would say, and if you fail, then we will go do something else.
That blend of curiosity and persistence carried Fox through a BSc in Physics at Imperial College, an MSc at Surrey, and a PhD in Space and Atmospheric Physics back at Imperial. She joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 1998, becoming chief scientist for heliophysics and project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, humanity’s first mission to touch the Sun. In 2018 she moved to NASA as Director of the Heliophysics Division, and in 2023 she was named Associate Administrator for the entire Science Mission Directorate.
Her career is a testament to what is possible when talent meets opportunity. But it also raises a question that cannot be answered by any single biography. If one woman can rise to the top of the world’s most prominent space agency, does that mean the system has changed? Or does it mean the system can accommodate exceptions while the underlying structure remains the same?
The data suggests the answer is both.
The Pipeline, Measured
According to STEM Women, an organization that tracks participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the number of women working in STEM fields has risen gradually over the past decade. In the United Kingdom, women now make up about 27 percent of the core STEM workforce, according to 2025 data from WISE (the campaign for gender balance in science, technology and engineering). That is an all-time high, up from about 17 percent a decade earlier. The absolute number of women in core STEM roles has passed 1.4 million and is projected to reach 1.7 million by 2030 if current trends hold.
In the United States, women represent about 29 percent of the STEM workforce, according to the Society of Women Engineers. Globally, the figure sits at approximately 28 percent. UNESCO reports that 35 percent of STEM graduates worldwide are women.
These are real gains. The trajectory is upward. But at the current rate of change, parity remains a distant horizon. WISE projects that women will reach 30 percent of the UK core STEM workforce by 2030, still less than a third. Broader estimates from organizations tracking the gender gap in technology suggest that, at present speed, parity could take anywhere from 30 to 70 years. The economic gender gap in tech, measured by the World Economic Forum, is projected to require more than a century to close.
The pipeline narrows at every stage. Girls and boys show similar interest in science around age 11, but by age 15 many girls have lost that interest, frequently because of a shortage of visible role models and the persistence of stereotypes. In the United States, women earn about 20 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees, down from a peak of 37 percent in 1985. Among UK A-level students, girls account for only 23 percent of physics entries. Those early gaps compound into workforce gaps, which compound into leadership gaps. Women are more likely than men to leave STEM roles before age 35. In senior leadership, the numbers shrink further. Only about 13 percent of women in STEM data roles, for example, report holding management or advanced analytics positions.
The disciplines where women have reached near-parity tend to be the life sciences and healthcare-adjacent fields. In engineering, computing, and physics, the traditional domains of Fox’s own career, progress remains stubbornly slow.
The Value of Visible Change
Fox described being struck by the transformation at Surrey because it was visible. She could see the difference with her own eyes. That kind of visibility matters. Research consistently shows that the presence of female role models in STEM increases girls’ interest and persistence in those fields. Fox herself credits her all-girls school with insulating her from stereotypes during the critical years when many young women internalize the message that science is not for them.
When Fox offers advice to young women interested in science, she does not tell them to be brilliant. She tells them to be curious. People often think scientists must have all the answers, she has said, but the key is to love asking questions. If someone says girls do not do that, that is just not true.
The advice is simple, but the context is not. The young women graduating from Surrey today are entering a workforce that is more welcoming than the one Fox entered in the 1990s, but still structurally unequal. The same data that shows slow improvement also shows persistent pay gaps (women in UK tech earn about 16 percent less per hour than men, according to 2025 figures) and a culture that many women describe as exclusionary. Surveys indicate that more than 70 percent of women in tech report experiencing a bro culture at work.
Fox’s own story proves that individual barriers can be overcome. Her trajectory from one of four women in a master’s program to the head of NASA science is remarkable by any measure. But the pipeline that produced her is not the same pipeline that will produce the next generation. It is wider now. It leaks less. But it is not yet whole.
The graduation halls at Surrey today hold more women than Fox could have imagined when she sat in that room of more than 200 students with only three other women. That is real progress, and it deserves to be celebrated. But the statistical horizon still stretches decades into the future. The two truths coexist. The view from the podium has improved. The view from the data shows how far the journey still has to go.
References
- BBC News. Babs Michel and Danny Fullbrook. “Nasa Boss from Hitchin Praises Rise of Women in Science.” July 26, 2026.
- NASA Science Mission Directorate. “Dr. Nicola Nicky Fox” bio page. science.nasa.gov/people/nicola-fox.
- NASA. “Nicola Fox” bio page. nasa.gov/people/nicola-fox.
- WISE Campaign. “Workforce Data September 2025.” wise.theiet.org.
- STEM Women. “Women in STEM Statistics: Progress and Challenges.” stemwomen.com.
- Society of Women Engineers. “Global STEM Workplace Research 2025.” swe.org.
- UNESCO. “Gender Equality in Education: STEM.” unesco.org.
- WomenTech Network. “Women in Tech Stats 2025 UK.” womentech.net.
- World Economic Forum. “Global Gender Gap Report 2024-2025.” weforum.org.
- Kahua. “40 Women in STEM Statistics for 2026.” resources.kahua.com.
- Role Models. “Women in STEM Statistics 2025.” role-models.eu.