Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Recently, our team hosted a screening of Slingshot, the documentary about Dean Kamen, DEKA, and their attempt to solve the clean water crisis. In the documentary, he makes an early point that both women and men are welcome to be on his wall of personal role models and inventors. This sparked a conversation on our team about what female engineers in history we would put on our personal walls of STEM role models. Gender equality in STEM related fields has been an ongoing topic of discussion, and it’s something we are really passionate about. We are hoping to create a conversation around the issue of gender equality in STEM and create greater insight into the issue for ourselves and other teams.

Having role models to look up to is incredibly important and motivational. Qualcomm, a great sponsor of FRC teams in San Diego and globally, does a great job of addressing the gender gap in STEM fields by hosting annual events for students to network with women in science and technology. Although our team does not have a 50/50 ratio, Team 2485 makes working toward gender equality a priority and recognizes that there is more that our team can be doing to help.

That leads us to the main point of this post. These conversations have reinvigorated our team’s drive to work towards equality. We know a lot of teams are doing great things to address these issues, and we are always looking to improve our program. It would be great if teams could share any programs and/or strategies that they use to tackle this complicated issue.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

1710 created the "You Go Girl!" program a few years ago and continues to build off of it. I would say that the main objective of it is to inspire younger girls to get involved/generate some sort of interest in the field.

An FRC Newsletter form 2013 touched on it and our website contains more info as well.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

On Team 2950 we hold a near 50/50 ratio (I want to say that it is 57% girls), we have found one effective way is to actually start the two genders seperate and then slowly merge them.

We did this by starting an all girls engineering club and 2 all girls FTC teams. This allowed the girls to build basic skills without the powerhouse students and then they have to confidence to join in with the boy on our team for winter projects in preparation for FRC.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

This is a big issue for me as a female mentor. I have been noticing the little things about FRC that can inhibit female participation (or, in some cases, just fail at improving female involvement), but that's a whole other thread.

I think as individual teams, recruitment of young women is the most visible thing that can be done, but just a small part of the strategy needed.

I have worked with my team to talk about the subtle ways behaviors and beliefs can drive young women away from a team. The young men are very receptive in my experience. These include changing the ways people speak to each other and treat each other's ideas, countering negative beliefs male students or mentors may have, etc.

We also work very hard to come along side young women on an individual basis when they are in the most vulnerable "girls aren't good at this stuff" years in late elementary and middle school. Our students coach FLL and FTC teams and work very hard to make connections with the girls on the teams and with keeping a positive environment for them as a whole.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I notice this to much on my team, which is kinda worrying. Like, a girl will attempt to help with building and later say she constantly feels excluded or belittled. We also tend to get pushed toward the more administrative jobs like attendence, financials, design, which, while being important, are not what some of us joined the team to do. Next year we plan on having everyone do like a google forms thing at the start detailing what they want to do, what they're interested in, etc, so we can make sure everyone is doing something they want to do. We also plan on marketing toward more girls and business classes, so we'll have people who are interested in business do that and people who want to work on the robot, can.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Eighty percent of girls in FRC work in the outreach/fundraising area, according to some FIRST publication I read. In our district (5 teams) we have 80% doing hands on work. This was not intentional, but I'm not sure how it ended up like that. Some of the teams do an approach where in the first year, a member has to do business or programming, and in the second they can opt for mechanical or electrical. Nearly all second-year members switch over.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

This is an area where mentors, leaders, and/or authority figures can make a big difference. In high school, my team's mentors encouraged me to go a little bit outside my comfort zone to try technical things and supported me through the process, leading to a positive experience. On the flip side, I've had many people in industry assume that I am not a "real engineer", or that I "couldn't possibly be interested in technical stuff". Of course, there are plenty of great people out there in the world too, but you can see how the frequent negative messaging can start to add up and push women out of STEM.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Our team runs on about a 40:60 ratio.

Our of our female members there is only one who is seriously interested in engineering. The rest do jobs like marketing, music development, cleaning, and sometimes nothing. This is their choice though. I wish some of the female members did more egineering but honestly if they have no desire then why push them.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Okay, I am by no means targeting you and your team specifically and i might have misunderstood your statement, but I feel like lots of people kind of automatically assume that the girls aren't into engineering. Like a girl could be into engineering but when they get assigned into sub-groups they get pushed toward design, finance etc, and if they try to work on the robot they feel excluded or unwanted. This might not be purposeful on behalf of the manufacturing team, but intentional or not it is a problem. All four of the girls are interested in working on the robot, but instead they are pushed toward scouting, attendance, design, chairman's etc.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

This is a big part of it, sadly. "Nerd" culture can be as elitist as anything else.

This ties into this I promise. Microagressions-little statements/actions that are common in speech/life and "accidentally" hurtful-are common in normal life, and there is no difference for people in FRC. (an example is assuming female-presenting members aren't on build, hardy har har.) Just being aware of microagressions can change a lot on a team's culture. Communication is also really important when confronting stuff like that.

Passion is also instrumental. If a person on the team is passionate about something they are not typically expected to be passionate of, so be it. FIRST is about reaching out even if you don't fit a STEM archetype and learning not just about engineering, but other things one may be interested in. I'm not saying it's bad to push students if they have potential, but on the other side, don't try and discourage a student from their passion because they might be stereotypically better at something else (does that make sense).

yay opinions

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Decent article by Scott Adams I read this morning. Not specific to STEM, but just an open discussion on gender bias in the workplace and how it relates to pay-gap.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1140555...-the-workplace

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

As a male mentor, maybe my appreciation of this thread may differ. I don't know what "girls" are up against, having not been in that place.
That said, our team had a female CEO last year, two young ladies this year provided most of our precision machining work. it also looks as if next years CAD lead will be female. I can't imagine what is holding ladies back in FIRST, except maybe themselves. And please, I say that not to demean anyone or any team, but to encourage all to use their talents and desire to achieve their goals.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

A lot of people have already touched upon several good points. There are very subtle ways that girls can be excluded from team activities, and it's even harder to point these things out as they're unnoticeable unless you're the one being targeted. There are some excellent programs out there that are doing amazing things to provide better representation for women and minorities, but in general, the STEM community needs to change.

The STEM community can be horribly exclusive. There's this overall impression that you have to be this natural genius to participate. I'm sure you've come across these people at one point in your life, but there are a couple of elitist gatekeepers in STEM that just enforce that stereotype, and take it upon themselves to weed out people that they consider not to be up to par. Which is really silly, because there shouldn't be an entry-level for appreciating STEM. Advances in STEM are meant to benefit everyone, so even the most basic-level of understanding deserves to be validated and encouraged.

To fight sexism the STEM community, we can’t only advocate for the girls who already excel. We also need to actively support and engage the girls who want to participate, but aren’t conventionally good at math and sciences, even if they don’t end up being STEM majors.
tl;dr http://goo.gl/mnBGvP

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Brother, I'll be blunt, this is exactly the sort of attitude that we must avoid. You can safely assume that someone pushed you / helped you to become interested in STEM. Why? Because you're a guy. Why can you not help out your fellow colleagues and spread some STEM interest around. Everyone deserves an opportunity. This is the vision statement of FIRST after all. We have to ask why are the women members not interested in engineering? Only a small reason is some students just want a place to hang out, and so don't have much interest in the team. But the big reason really is the subject of this thread and its poignant title. It's quite likely that simply being the wrong gender, they were never pushed into STEM starting at a young age.

The root cause of gender equality in STEM is a cultural problem, at least in the US. In all aspects of life, boys and men are way more likely to be welcomed into STEM. Can't find the article at the moment, but the ACM had an interesting article on gender equality by country and tried to analyze the findings. Good article though, it also echoed some of the stories being shared in this thread. But how do we fight a culture problem (I say "we" since gender equality is not a women-only problem): well we start with ourselves of course:
[Now's a good time to duck]
So men, hack your brains! Learn to be fully conscious of your words, actions, and behaviors! Ensure that you are always inclusive / encouraging / respectful to women with your words, actions, and behaviors. Remember to see the big picture. Remember STEM is not a boy's club, STEM truly is for everyone. Everyone can participate in STEM, it is the vision of FIRST.
[OK, done flinging wisdom around, you can stop ducking now]

Pretty good rant, eh?

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Something I noticed in the news today:

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

This is pretty much what I was going to say. I joined my high school team and started by writing because I wanted to write. I'm very glad I was offered the opportunity/pushed to learn some shop skills. I don't think I'd be where I am now (near completion of my engineering degree) if that hadn't happened.

We should push everybody (not just girls), because getting everyone to try everything is important. Its hard to tell if the lack of desire is genuine or from already being pushed out. Most exposure to engineering outside of FIRST-like activities are science classes and math classes, which typically are rather dull and a recent study* showed that unintentional bias gave girls lower scores in these fields (further discouraging them from STEM). Not to mention the idea of gendered toys** teaching girls to cook and nurture, while boys are taught to build and design.

*I have not read this study in its entirety, so there may be gaping holes that I am unaware of. I would love to find out this study is flawed and teachers are not unintentionally biased against girls.

**Yes, I am aware this is a comic and not a study

A lot of people are really unaware of how "little things" are actually not little things. A mentor mis-attributing an accomplishment of a female to a male, getting hit on while scouting, someone saying "she's pretty good at X, and she's a girl!", an oversight of a female students abilities... are all "little" things that can be discouraging (there are not my most subtle examples).

and yes, these are all real examples

Emphasis mine.

Chris ODonnell already made some awesome points about this. I'm going to add some of my own incite:
I was lucky enough to be pushed enough and stubborn enough to get into the shop on my team. There was another girl older than me who was less pushed/stubborn and didn't get to work in the shop despite wanting to. For a period of time, I thought that everyone should be as headstrong (and lucky) as me if they wanted to work in the shop and it was their fault if they weren't.

I was wrong. I had an older brother on the team who was a large part of that push. I was more outgoing, therefor more likely to ask for jobs. I had just the right set of factors that got me where I was, and many of them were not things in my control.

Believe it or not, girls are taught to be meek and quiet. We are called "stubborn" or "bossy" when boys would be called "headstrong" and "leaders" for the same actions. We are taught to be one way and insulted when we act against it, but its still our fault if what we were taught prevents us from doing something, such as the engineering side of things.

Your team is not every team, and honestly it sounds like your team is an awesome place to be a girl. Its great to hear about a place where girls are thriving and the environment is not hostile/toxic. I'm interested in what your team is doing because you appear to be doing it right.

To respond to OP:

In my experience, it is the whole team's job to ensure that every aspect of the team is a welcoming environment for everyone. Girls should be encouraged to try welding, boys should be encouraged to try photography. Its highly unlikely that students on a team know what is involved in/have tried all the various aspects of a robotics team and so would be unqualified to know what they do and don't like. For this reason, I encourage the use on hands-on experience with pre-season workshops or during the season.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I vehemently disagree with this statement. There are multiple studies about women in the STEM fields, women in executive roles, etc. which show that women are not the ones holding themselves back - the problem stems from widespread cultural issues. Attitudes like the one above are part of the problem, since they perpetuate the idea that if women just try harder it will solve all of the problems they face.

Edit: This is why I mentioned the importance of the attitude and approach of mentors/leadership/authority figures in my first post in this thread. The culture established and supported by an organization's leadership plays a big role in whether women (and minorities) are welcomed and can thrive, or are discouraged and pushed away.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

There are many things that can encourage or discourage anyone to participate in any given activity, and the same is true for girls in FRC. Since everyone will be attracted (or turned away) for different reasons, it's hard to list anything specific that will help everyone. But two things that I have noted in terms of ways girls seemed to be turned away:

• The first, more obvious one is to just actively discourage them from joining, think if they join it won't be for the technical aspects, or make it a less welcoming environment for them.
• However, at least to me, another issue is programs aimed at girls (or any program trying to get more girls) simplify themselves to the point where it seems to say that girls couldn't do it otherwise.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I've never had any issues with being a girl in any STEM classes with mostly boys. I haven't felt judged or discouraged because of it, and sometimes almost feel like the boys in those classes are less judging then the girls are. My main issue is the second one, which I've experienced multiple times with STEM activities aimed at girls (outside of robotics) when I did them many years ago.


In an ideal world, everyone would be shown every subject and could pick their favorite without pressure from anyone to do one over another. That might result in a 50/50 split, or it may not. Since that is a very distant goal, my recommendations to any team trying to make members of any gender (or race, economic background, education, etc.) feel welcome are:

• Eliminate any obvious discrimination especially from the mentors
• Make the environment as open as possible
• Have workshops to teach the basic skills some members may never have learned
• Don't make prior assumptions about what someone wants to do
• Don't judge them based on what they do end up doing (note this goes both ways)
• Don't treat people differently simply based on gender or anything else (I know some girls do need more encouragement, but so do some boys. I personally treating everyone similarly, and guiding those who need additional encouragement to be able to prove to themselves they can succeed like other members is ideal. Telling someone they're always right just because they're a girl isn't much better than telling them they're always wrong just because they're a girl. Both ways say that girls are inherently less capable, although the first less directly.)

In summary: make your team open, encourage those that need it, but don't do it in a way that implies they're incapable of equally good work as other members.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I could go on for pages and pages on this subject but will only state 2 things.

"Respect" Male, female, mentor, student Must respect each other. Respect is something that must be the foundation of a team. It is not something that just happens, it takes work.

At this age, 9th to 12th, the girls must learn how to play with the boys and more importantly the boys must learn how to play with the girls. This is hard and mentor involvement and interaction can really help them deal with this.

The worst mistake I made in mentoring was in 2003 when I put the 5 girls on the team into a group on a design build project. It was a disaster. I still feel bad for them. I created the exclusion. Now I strive to break up the natural tendency to for clicks of mono-sex. I strive to keep things mix up and not to let the clicks form. It's hard but once the barriers are broken down it's amazing to watch them perform and grow as a team.

A little respect and practice playing together.

I don't care what sex race or culture some one is as long as they want to play robots with me.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I have been a part of the FIRST Robotics community since I was in fourth grade and this year I will be participating in 5th year of FRC as a junior in high school. Robotics has proven to be a place for me to find comfort and fun regardless of my gender, but it isn't always easy.

For me, the biggest support to stay with the team and engineering has been the older female students taking me under their wing and pushing me to do my best. Now that I have been a part of this community for a couple of years, I'm trying to do that for future female engineers.

Each girl (and boy) should have a mentor or returning student to turn to. I encourage everyone to find someone to become a mentor for and listen to all of their opinions.

In the beginning of the year we do demonstrations of what we do. From there we have them decide (boys and girls) what team they want to be on. Simple as that. I wish there were more girls on our team into engineering but most of our female members would rather write an essay then drill a hole. There are the exceptions like our engineering vp who is a girl and we have a freshman member who doesn't come much but when she does she goes around the robot and cleans everything up (she's a perfectionist).

There are many great points listed here. I have a slightly different perspective... as a male mentor on a very small (~12) all girls frc team I see things similar and differently. In the absence of boys we still have some 'timid' girls in terms of the shop equipment, but they are all trained and strongly encouraged to use it. In terms of design concepts, using cad, math etc, they are all very willing to share ideas, opinions and use the engineering tools. The biggest hurdle we are still trying to overcome is the interactions at competition. We have actually been told by a judge that highlighting 'all girls' is hurting our chances for an award. Attempts to talk strategy with alliance members often are a no win situation: be told to do something you are not capable of doing and 1) fail trying which hurts the alliance or 2) speak up to explain your position and be shunned for being obstinate or moody or not a team player or just plain a b#&+@.
There are certainly exceptions, but for the most part larger cultural changes are required for improvements. Posts like this can be the beginning of a grass roots movement that reaches lots of our young STEM up and comers.
Best of luck in the last few weeks of competition.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

There are a lot of forces outside of your team pushing both boys and girls in one direction or another. I haven't mentored a team before, but if I ever did, I would try to do a little more than just sitting back and letting people "choose" - because there are a lot of things going into that "choice" that aren't necessarily positive.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

So you have a freshman girl who prefers to clean than participate in robot build?

Have you ever thought that maybe that's what she is comfortable doing. Perhaps her tendency to be a perfectionist is what is keeping her back from asking to help with the robot. She may be afraid to mess it up.

When I first started on my team as a student, I had the opportunity to drive the robot. That act promptly broke something on it. I immediately felt awful, thinking I had done something wrong. What helped to shape the rest of my FRC career was one mentor telling me, non sarcastically, "Nice job. Better to break something here than on the field at competition. Now we know what to fix..." and then inviting me over to see what we could do about it.

I, too, was a student who liked a clean shop and would clean around the robot. It was my way of seeing, from a safe distance, what others were doing, learning about tools, and becoming comfortable in the shop.

Now I still prefer to write (heck, I'm an English teacher), but I'm just as capable and comfortable with tools as many of my male counterpart mentors, and I am more capable at strategy than most of them. Thanks 33, for pushing me outside the box of "Girls like writing and cleanliness."

She has helped with the robot but she says cleaning and organizing is relaxing to her. Do you have any tips to see if she actually wants to clean or is just in her shell.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

It probably is relaxing to her. That's great. I also enjoy a clean shop.

Every team meeting, ask her to help with a specific robot-related activity. Keeping it specific, while asking her questions about what she thinks regarding design and strategy questions will encourage her to push herself.

Also, encourage her teammates to clean up after themselves.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Just ask her to help, invite her to help you do something. There's a really shy kid on my team who's not good at asserting himself (I'm the same way, to an extent) and just inviting them to help you test this thing or teaching them how to do another thing can go a long way.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

At the Shorewood district event in Washington there was a young lady from The IRS (1318) that gave a brief pitch about how teams should strive for gender equality in student leadership and on drive teams. Futhermore, if your team didn't have women in those roles, and you wanted one, you should do so and be an example for those coming after you. I'm not sure if the video was archived, but it was awesome!

More regions should host the equivalent of Girls Gen... That is the most inspirational FIRST event I've ever attended, and you can really see the confidence boost at work.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I'm too late to edit my previous post, but I just happened upon a relevant article on the biases pushing women out of STEM. It also discusses some differences in the experiences of women of different races. It's worth a read. Being aware of the existing biases means you can fight back against them and help to change the culture.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Its safe to assume what you're trying to say here is that women are not and cannot be power house students? Cause that's exactly what you just said regardless of how you meant it.

Personally I think this is the most disrespectful thing you can ever say. I hope that you personally apologize to every leader and powerhouse female that has read this post and has ever been involved in your program.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

This is a very complicated problem, with many differing solutions offered.

The only thing I have to say is that many of the "solutions" seem from my perspective just as sexist as the problems themselves.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

This is an issue especially dear to me- I am one of those "powerhouse" girls, or would consider myself one. I walked onto an all male team my freshman year, and it was one of the most challenging/defining moments of my life- I learned how to stand of myself, how to deal with opposition, and get involved. But there were definitely times where I felt pushed out, not included, or told I wasn't good at it. I've been exceptionally lucky- I have an enginneer and a computer scientist as parents, who have always pushed me towards STEM, and my first exposure to FIRST was through a small all girls FLL team, which is what encouraged me to seek out the FRC experience in the first place. Without those things in my background, I might have quit. After that year, I knew something had to change - and I started an all girls FTC team at my school, primarily because I absolutely knew there were more girls who wanted to be involved, but couldn't walk into that room of guys all by themselves. I was surprised to find it wasn't my "math-sciency" friends who joined me on the team, but students who were interested in all sorts of things- arts, humanities, english. We managed to make are way, figuring out how to build and put together a robot, and manage a team. But there were definitely some differences. I co-captain both teams, and I know that some of the girls who are wonderful at designing and building had to be pushed, reassured that they weren't doing something wrong, that it was ok to try and fail. They, and I, were less likely to jump in and just try something than are male counterparts- so that extra push, that explanation, can mean everything. Don't dismiss us if we don't get involved right away. Anyway, this is a great thread, and a great discussion to have. For any girls out there - you rock! Keep proving that we can do just as much and more. Try something new, be that mechanical, or programming, grant writing or photography- they're all valuable skills, for everyone.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

For the purpose of encouraging the discussion (and so hopefully shining light on current issues) can you provide specific examples of when the solutions seem to be just as sexist?

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

In case anyone is interested, here are the statistics on gender gap.

http://reports.weforum.org/global-ge...p-report-2014/

Too often we refer to "studies" and "reports" without actually validating our words. While perhaps it is common knowledge that there is a gender gap in STEM in the US, here's a global look. STEM is 70/30 male/female in the US, by the way, and this is the report that says so. (Interestingly, politics really knocks the US down a level in this ranking).

I want to re-post this article from earlier in this thread:

https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases...en-out-of-stem

It contains links to other studies that appear quite interesting. I haven't read them all, but they seem to be methodical, and I encourage your curiosity to take over.

Finally, I frequently encounter attitudes very similar to the ones in this thread... progressive men, young men, boys that treat women as their complete equal. They do not see gender in their activities, and this is great! However, they also feel that putting in extra effort to get girls and women involved might be (bluntly) sexist in itself. While I have grown to understand that this attitude is insufficient when trying to balance the scales, we can see some logic in this thought: fair is fair, and if we do things fairly, the situation should work itself out... eventually.

Maybe that's true when enough generations pass, but the timescale is not nearly as good as it could be if we are proactive instead of passive.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I just wanna bump this article real quick. Good feminism is intersectional feminism and even just being aware of things like these them is a huge step. Being nonwhite and female, even more difficulties are present when in STEM.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

One of the things I urge my teaching colleagues and fellow mentors, and current and future student team members to consider, is that when you observe something happening there are many other things that lead up to that point. If you think that providing extra or a different kind of encouragement for a girl to get involved is in itself sexist, take some time to sincerely look back and see the times that you were encouraged to get involved in STEM stuff. There is a good chance this started at a very young age. And it is entirely possible that you got a lot of encouragement. So you might not need so much right now.

Last year I had a discussion with a student who felt that need based financial aid was inherently unfair. That he was just as or more deserving of aid than a (hypothetical) poor student with similar or lower grades and scores who was getting a grant while he was having to take out a loan. I asked him if it was fair that he had parents who were a doctor and an engineer while this hypothetical student had a single parent who had never gone to college and could not afford to pay anything for his college education. His first reply was "That's different." But then he stopped and thought about it. The next day he told me "I never really thought about that way before."

I have encountered more than a few people who will go out of their way to encourage a kid who is quiet, lacks confidence or is socially awkward. They will push such kids to get them engaged. At a multi-team training session one of them (a former student of mine who was mentoring another team then) once remarked that he was uneasy giving what he perceived as "extra" encouragement to some a pair of girls to get them engaged. I asked him what he would do if he saw a pair of socially awkward boys standing to the side not engaging. He told me "I guess I am still learning Mr. King." and got those two girls to assemble and test a pair of gear boxes. I told him "That's a good thing. So am I."

It has taken us a long time to get to our current 38/34 boy to girl ratio. I think the two biggest keys for us were a strong FLL program that was getting kids involved before they got subtly pushed away and having a succession of girls who were good leaders. Those girls not only served as examples to other girls, they actively sought out more girls and helped found our "STEM Sisters" club. This year we actually had a few more girls than boys as team leaders. We had some younger boys who were not happy that they worked on a team with a girl involved. And were really not happy when a girl corrected them or offered advice. But for the most part (there are still a couple of holdouts alas) the younger boys were won over because they realized the girls were really competent.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Getting girls involved in STEM before they've had the chance to be pushed away is extremely important. I had the luck to go to a middle school with a halfway decent tech-ed/shop class where we got to build little cars and things like that, which definitely helped me define what I wanted in my future: to build cool stuff. My high school also offers the Women In Engineering/Intro to Engineering and Design run through PLTW which gave girls interested in STEM an all female environment to learn in. The teacher also contacted and brought in numerous female engineers to talk to us and give presentations, showing us that making a career in STEM is possible for a female.

However, I'm not sure what's going on, if they're still being pushed away from STEM, if they're changing their career goals, if they're moving away, but of my original W-IED class (already small with roughly 15 students) there's one left (myself), plus one other girl who transferred from another school. Next year there's likely going to be only one (myself), as a surprising number of students aren't taking the 4th year PLTW course.

I could talk for paragraphs upon paragraphs upon paragraphs about women in STEM and I have before, but I'm gonna stop myself here.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

I'm going to take a more radical, less common approach to this question. In advance I say that my opinions are mine and not Team 1257's; that being said I have a right to them, and you can agree or disagree.


It is things like this that make me wonder, "What is with people?" I mean, we're all humans right? Why should it matter at all whether we're boys or girls, or for that matter, black or white or Asian? I think that gender roles are among the most idiotic things in the existence of mankind. I think that the concept of "Cooties" and gender rivalry is immature at its finest. I think that, just like people should not be judged by the color of their skin, they should also not be judged by their X and Y chromosomes. And I think that the only place for gender differences is in the bedroom.
In other words, the only reason this is an issue is because we make it one. If children were treated the same from birth, that is, given the same toys and taught the same things, and not exposed to words like "tomboy" or "sissy" or "girlish" or "boyish", and not separated by gender, then this would not be a problem. Girls and boys should not care about what the "intended" gender of something is. In my ideal world, boys and girls alike would both watch princess movies and power rangers.
I'm not saying to force anything on anyone. They can and should be allowed to be interested in whatever it is they want. But they should be exposed to everything in an equal light. Kids aren't inherently interested in anything based on their gender. Everything they know about that is taught to them.
So if, at the earliest stages, children are integrated and gender diversity is encouraged, we won't have the underrepresentation of women in STEM. We will get as close to 50/50 as humanly possible. But as long as people nudge their boys to be boyish and their girls to be girlish, this will never get anywhere.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

Yeah, that's basically the entire problem with gender roles right there. Gender roles kinda suck, but they're a part of our society right now. In order to fix anything we as a society need to work toward abolishing our ideas of what boys should do and what girls should do. By telling girls they can and should only play with 'girl toys', we're telling them that if they want to play with 'boy toys', something is inherently wrong with them (the same goes for boys and 'girl toys' as well), and that's a problem, one that's going to be hard to fix.

Re: Gender Equality: A Work in Progress
 

My team is actually a majority girl team this year, though it greatly fluctuates year to year. Overall we are about 50/50.