One woman, five men. A pioneering scientist of the past and five men whose inventions influence our present and our future daily. Women’s lack of visibility in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) and the fact that girls were not considering it as a career is something Gillian Keating, Caroline O’Driscoll, and Ruth Buckley, co-founders of I Wish, realised back in 2014. Ireland, still reeling from the global recession, was desperately in need of some foreign direct investment (FDI) and Stem skills were seen as key to delivering it. “Females weren’t engaging with these roles in science and technology in the same way that men were,” Keating recalls. “And we said, if that’s the case, and these are the jobs of the future, that just means one thing: women are going to be left behind. And they’re going to be economically disadvantaged going forward. So how do we address that?” I Wish was the result. Following its inaugural event in 2014, I Wish’s emphasis has been “female first”, with its spotlight firmly focused on the possibilities Stem has to offer teenage girls. The annual showcase has “the broadest breadth of Stem role models, Stem companies” to interact with and inspire the girls who attend. 11 years on, I Wish is making a difference but progress is slow. Its 2024 survey of the girls who attended found, “53% [had] a lack of self-confidence about their ability to pursue a career in Stem,” Keating says. Still, the adage of ‘see it to be it’ applies and since I Wish began, 62,688 girls have engaged with its events, the most recent of which took place at the RDS on February 6. Below, three of those girls share their experiences of I Wish 2025. Theia Harris-Murphy, age 16, Mayfield Community School, Cork I am in transition year. I enjoy school, from the variety of subjects I do and seeing all my friends, to learning and getting to try new experiences and opportunities. My main interests are art-driven. I enjoy designing characters and illustrating stories. Last April, I published a comic as part of a teen graphic novel anthology project. I enjoy maths and business subjects as well. Out of the science subjects I study, biology would be my favourite because it is practical. I might choose biology or computer science as one of my Leaving Cert subjects. My school offers a lot of Stem subjects for Leaving Cert; they’re half of our subject options. Women are equally as capable of anything. It just depends on where your interests are. Now, you see a lot of lads going into the arts and the humanities. I think it’s really good that we’re all meshing together and gender’s not a big factor when it comes to choosing college courses and careers. It’s ‘if that’s what you want to do, you go do it’. I think I Wish opened a lot of girls’ eyes to the fact that it doesn’t matter what others think, if you want to do it, don’t let the fact that you’re a girl stop you. The CEO of Irish Rail [Jim Meade] really made an impression on me when he spoke. I think it’s incredible that they’re actively pushing for change. It’s really inspiring and comforting to know there are apprenticeships out there and they’re not just for the lads. They want to push for the girls to participate more and more. It really opened my eyes to the fact that maybe this could be something I could do down the line. It would be a good career path. I enjoyed going around to the stands and seeing everyone. There were thousands at our session and they were all girls. We’re next in our generation to go off to college and do all these careers, and even if half went into STEM, that’s incredible. In the future, I can see myself in a career in micro science, like psychology, or something mathematical or computer-related. Whatever I get into, I want it to be long-term and a secure job. Amy Donnellan, age 16, Presentation Secondary School, Ballyphehane, Cork I’ve always liked school, because there’s always something happening, whether it’s a day trip or a class I like. I’m in transition year. We do work experience every Friday. I’m in a preschool. Primary teaching is my goal, but if that doesn’t work out, I hope to work in film as a producer. My year all study science, it’s compulsory up until transition. Biology is my favourite science subject. I entered the Young Scientist this year, I was the only person from my school to go. My project was about being able to tell the difference between real and AI-generated images among different age groups. Participating was fantastic. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Our year head spoke to us about I Wish a lot; we were all very excited to go. It was way more interesting than I thought it was going to be. There was so much happening. There were women from big companies like Dell and Google telling their stories of how they got a job like that, how they found it, what they do. It was really cool to hear their takes on these big corporations. [Former EU Commissioner] Mairead McGuinness really impressed me. She talked about if you want to do something, do it, be confident in yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman, or how old you are, if you want to do it, go for it. That really spoke to me. I spent a lot of time talking to women from the pharmaceutical industry, from construction, food sciences, women from all different fields. It was very interesting. I think representation does matter. Women and girls should hear about women doing things all the time. Make it more normalised that women are doing the same things as men and they always have, and always will. They are just as capable. If you set your mind to it, you can do anything. It’s more about mindset than what sex you are. There was such a positive atmosphere at I Wish. Everyone had a smile on their face. If you get the opportunity, go. Melanija Filatova, age 14, CBS, James’s St, Dublin I was born in Latvia, but I moved a lot before I came to Ireland. I like to play sports. I like soccer, art — I really enjoy drawing — and biology. I’m studying higher-level maths. I enjoy it. I like school, it’s fun. I speak English, Russian, Georgian, I’m learning French in school and I’m trying to learn Korean. I relate to Han Ji-sung a lot. He’s a Korean singer and his music is really encouraging and motivational. Korean is hard, but when you watch movies and singers, it gets a bit easier. Before I studied science, I thought it was going to be really hard, but it’s not as hard as you think, you’ve just got to have motivation to study it. I really like biology. I feel it’s important to know about your body. I enjoyed listening to the speakers’ stories at I Wish. Their words of encouragement to all of us was really helpful. They were saying to not stop yourself. If you think you can’t do it, go for it. That really helped me a lot. I sat in the car with the first car racer in Ireland for women [Aoife Raftery]. We took photos. I came back and everyone was dancing! We also talked to [the exhibitors] about what we wanted to do in the future. Their stories made it interesting, like how they never intended to do engineering, but then ended up doing it and really liked it. I feel like it might be the same with me for science. I might do it for Leaving Cert. I feel like science could help you a lot in life, and I feel it’s important to learn about it. Lots of girls I know weren’t really into science, but at I Wish, they got really interested in it. I’m glad to see that was happening. I’m really into biology and art but I’m also really into soccer. I’m not sure what I want to be when I’m older. I’m still trying to figure it out. See iwish.ie