In 2021, the Drake Institute’s fellows highlighted a troubling reality: although women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and hold half of all undergraduate degrees, they continue to represent only a fraction of the nation’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals. At that time, women accounted for just 28 percent of science and engineering personnel, and fewer than one in five bachelor’s degrees in computer science and engineering were awarded to women. Researchers pointed not to ability but to confidence gaps as a key factor in this persistent segregation. This uneven representation was not only a matter of equity; it revealed a structural weakness in our economic infrastructure.