problem with recruiting students in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) educational
domain has been documented for a long time. The European research project “Interest and Recruitment in Science”
(IRIS) with the aim to establish an extensive empirical foundation in discussions about recruitment to STEM
(Henriksen, 2012) was enlarged in 2010 to include countries all over the world and called “IRIS-International”. This
paper present result from three different studies with the aim to discuss the influence of gender, experience and
reform effects on educational choices in STEM. One data set is statistical and concerned with educational choice in
Sweden. The other present result from the Swedish national IRIS study and the third present results from a
qualitative study focusing specifically on girl’s views on out of school experience with consequences for educational
choice in STEM.