Quote:
Originally Posted by Gdeaver
Find the kids male and female at a young age that have stem leanings and start nurturing them then.
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Emphasis mine. This is really the key. If you show a girl who doesn't want to be a scientist a picture of a female scientist, they aren't going to be motivated to be a scientist. It doesn't matter if the woman on the poster is as stunning as a supermodel or as ugly and masculine as a cave troll, the kid ain't gonna wanna do science. But for girls that do want to do STEM, it's a real toss up. From my personal experience:
When I was young(er), I hated the overly feminine STEM ladies. It didn't stop me from wanting to be an astronaut, but to me, it didn't seem realistic. I honestly couldn't fathom how someone who liked dolls and Disney musicals could be an engineer. My role model was Eileen Collins, the baddest of badasses, and so intimidating that she got into the first class of female test pilots despite being half an inch too short. (I asked her about this in a phone conversation once. She apparently gave the guy measuring her a death glare and he wrote down the minimum height instead of her real height. WHAT A GAL) But when I joined FIRST I met Victoria Sprague, a girl who liked dolls and Disney musicals and somehow enjoyed engineering. She preferred feminine role models, and hoped to be one herself (and succeeded the next year by making team captain and getting several "girly-girls" to realize they wanted to be engineers).
My point is that the people who make these motivational posters and videos need to be balanced in how they portray female STEM role models. For every video of how science makes your makeup, there needs to be a Rosy the Riveter out-muscling linebackers with a wrench or Sam Carter fixing old motorcycles after coming home from a hard day of interdimensional wormhole physics. And more to the original point of this thread, realism is the key here. The video from the original article? Faker than all the noses in Hollywood combined. That will turn most girls off simply because of how silly it all is. Kari Byron firing a minigun in a gorgeous evening gown? Even my super girly friends think that it's perhaps the coolest thing anyone's done in opera gloves, because that's how she is in real life. Little kids are very perceptive. They know when they're being lied to, and the study suggests that these girls would rather see real women from the industry instead of pinups and bad acting. It also suggests that girls who don't have the right mindset for STEM see these fake scientists and assume the worst, which is troublesome because, through peer pressure, girls who might have been interested are influenced to also assume bad things about ladies in STEM.
Just my insanely disorganized thoughts. I'm glad this is a topic of concern right now.