Yet the social message landed all the same: mobility is not for you. In science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), where learning accumulates through labs, fieldwork, competitions and conferences, delayed mobility becomes delayed mastery.

This is why we worry less about individual decisions and more about the structures that shape what young people come to see as possible, respectable and worthwhile. When narrow civic expectations attached to motherhood become the default measure of women’s worth, they operate like an unofficial curriculum, quietly limiting girls’ STEM ambitions, restricting women’s mobility and time, and weakening women’s authority as credible experts in public life. The result is not a lack of talent, but a narrowing of permission: permission to be ambitious, visible and authoritative.

In STEM education, we often focus on syllabi, standards and assessments. Yet some of the most powerful lessons are never written down. They are absorbed through everyday expectations about who should speak, who should lead and who should stay close to home.

These expectations vary across regions, schools and families, but the pattern is familiar: girls are praised for neatness rather than reasoning; advised to be “realistic”; discouraged from traveling alone; and reminded to remain modest and not “too visible.”

We see this in Indonesian classrooms. A year 11 student solves a nonroutine mathematics problem at the board. When discussion begins, she withdraws and whispers her reasoning to a friend. A well-meaning mentor later tells her to “save her energy; university maths is heavy.” Nothing was explicit, nothing was punishable, yet the message landed: your brilliance is welcome; your voice is risky. The barrier is not ability; it is social permission to be ambitious in public.

An instructive contrast comes from my coauthor, an Australian National University graduate who moved from Indonesian to Australian schooling. In her Australian classrooms, STEM learning was treated as a set of civic practices, not merely a body of content. Students were expected to find problems worth investigating, justify claims with credible evidence, think critically and work collaboratively to test and refine ideas.