The challenges faced by women in the male-dominated fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics are well-documented, and pervasive. While more than 56 percent of college students on U.S. campuses are female, the percentages of women earning degrees in the fields collectively known as STEM hover at less than half that rate. In the workplace, women represent nearly half of the U.S. workforce but account for just 28.4 percent of American scientists and engineers, according to the National Science Foundation.

Beyond those statistics, though, are countless personal stories: withering accounts of casual discrimination; demeaning remarks that continue to sting years later; diminished expectations by classmates, professors, coworkers and supervisors; and in the most severe cases, sexual harassment and sexual assault. Those personal stories are at the heart of “The STEM Monologues,” a new play being performed by the Miner League Theatre Players at Missouri University of Science and Technology over the next two weeks.