Why do women leave engineering? (MIT Article)

[jvriezen]

I found this article interesting: http://news.mit.edu/2016/why-do-wome...gineering-0615

I've typically been of the opinion that encouraging more females into STEM (and involved in FIRST) requires that mentors spend more time encouraging females to participate and dig in. If we have a shortage of females on the team, mentors need to work with the females more.

But this article points out that to get more females on the team we might also be effective in mentoring the males in how to behave on the team with respect to the females.

In other words, rather than mentors encouraging the girls to jump in, the mentors might do better to encourage the boys to encourage the girls to jump in.

Thoughts?

[smitikshah]

I totally think by having peers try encouraging other peers to join, it is much more effective that having mentors join. Gender aside for a second, a mentor originally offered the idea of me to join. Though I didn't take it too seriously. However, when my best friend told me about it and tried to get me to join, she managed to convince me in less than 10 seconds. I guess "if a friend jumps off a bridge should you?" applies here (in a positive manner of course).

Having noticed a lack of girls active in the STEM community in my district, I decided to change that by not only encouraging girls to participate by word of mouth, but by doing small little activities and camps in my area over the summer to hopefully get more involved.

I feel like having girls show other girls how awesome STEM is, and how they can totally get involved - you get the most effective outcome. Personally if a girl my age came up to me telling me how great something is, I'd be more apt to look into it, as opposed to a significantly older male. The second best option would be to have a male my age tell me about it - it would work, maybe just not as well.

The only thing I don't fully agree with is the "If we have a shortage of females on the team, mentors need to work with the females more." While encouraging women to join and get interested in STEM (something they may not have done had known about before) is really supportive, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable with the special treatment while on the team. I think mentors working more with a person only applies to girls, or anyone for that matter, that doesn't have a specific skill that a mentor would be able to teach them.

Though this is just some personal input I have. I thank you for encouraging girls in the engineering community, Any effort that you put in is worth it and greatly appreciated!

[Gdeaver]

If I have said it once , I've said it 10,000 times. The girls have to learn how to play with the boys and more importantly, the boys have to learn how to play with the girls. This can't happen unless there are enough girls on the team to make this possible. ( Many teams stuck here.) And then it just doesn't happen. Watching our younger middle school kids, they don't have a clue how to play together. It is a learned behavior. I as a mentor try my best to get them to play nicely together in some what controlled situations. Yes, mentors need to help both in this. Of course there is no text book for mentors on how to actually do this. It's been a challenging thing for me as a mentor to deal with. Especially since I never had a daughter. I've found it very help full to constantly discuss the team sociodynamics with the other mentors, the older students. It has really helped having past students that are now in college come back and help out in a young mentor role. When everyone is playing nice together we are a real powerful team and I'm very proud.

[mathking]

Our team has (slowly and not without backsliding) increased the number of girls from around 15% (of 50-70 a year) to about 40-45%. Improving the small group team dynamics has been a central part of this. Getting peers involved in the recruiting and even more in retaining team members has been even more important. For the past two years we have had a number of the most important technical leadership roles held by girls. This was part accident (which subteams kids pick early in their careers) and part because of the efforts of some of our boosters to get more girls actively engaged in FLL. In any event, those girls being leaders has helped boys alter their perceptions. This has not been without difficulty. And it takes a lot of work. This coming year we have a small and mostly male senior class, so a good chunk of the leadership will not be female. So I think it is going to take more direct mentor effort. On the other hand the junior class has a lot of really sharp girls so the year after next we may well have more female component team leaders than male again. So mentor efforts hopefully will be more indirect.

[Citrus Dad]

This was on NPR yesterday.

[smitikshah]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

This was on NPR yesterday.

Maybe because of the United State of Women summit?

[Jon Stratis]

Another view on the matter, an article from a former student of mine.

http://makezine.com/2015/05/01/build...d-better-team/

[kristinweiss]

Another thing that I have noticed is that after high school, the number of females that stay involved, either by mentoring or by volunteering, significantly decreases. It is especially apparent at competitions, particularly within the alumni group that comes back to volunteer at events, where I often find myself being the only girl or one of only two or three girls with a group of over a dozen guys, but that could just be a local thing. It's not something that has ever particularly bothered me, but I've always found it funny how hard of a push there is to get more girls involved in FIRST, but as soon as they graduate they leave.

[HelloRobot]

The makezine.com article had an interesting point that "When a girl enters a situation guarded, others will perceive it as a lack of confidence in her own ability." The thing about girls is that we don't like to put ourselves "out there" as much as boys do. That makes working in a group difficult, and I can see how that could steer someone away.

There should be more collaboration between male and female engineers. We have events and organizations for women involved in STEM (i.e. all-girls robotics teams, SWE, engineering sororities, etc.), so we've already established that, yes, women can be as successful in engineering. The problem is that some people (intentionally and unintentionally) "assume ignorance and downplay success" of women engineers, yet they want more female participation. Yes, there are male engineers who can overcome these biases, but women are still negatively affected by the more subtle biases.

It's not fair that some of us feel like we have to try harder to prove ourselves, but it's the truth. The only way for that to change is for someone to prove us wrong. Until then, we just have to keep trying to be a part of the growing female representation in the engineering workforce. It's like Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

If we have a shortage of females on the team, mentors need to work with the females more.

I feel like mentorship is necessary for girls to stick with robotics. In many cases, the male students on the team may intentionally or unintentionally leave out girls. Mentors can often observe this from an outside perspective, free from any social biases, and they are more mature. As a result, mentors could be successful in encouraging teamwork between the girls and boys.

If the boys do not include the girls straight off the bat, it is especially for mentors to take notice of the girls' skills. From my experience, it's important to a girl's confidence for her to feel appreciated on the team, even if it's only the mentors at first. This is especially true if there are only a handful of girls.

[ArtemusMaximus]

I'd like to add something to conversation.
After reading article and the comments it sounds like all the mentioned issues experienced because sole reason that person in question was a female.
While I am not denying that it may be often the case, this is not all-in-all reason.
Often we like to blame our problems on our usual suspects because those are easy targets.
I have experience many of mentioned issues myself and that is just thinking of time when I was a mentor:

• I was ignored
• I was disrespected
• My opinion was disregarded
• I was excluded from important meetings
• and list goes on

I am writing this not to dismiss previous comments and concerns, but bring different angle to this conversation.
I will finish with this: Not everything that goes wrong is simply because you are a girl. Things are not as easy for boys as some comments may imply.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by ArtemusMaximus

I'd like to add something to conversation.
After reading article and the comments it sounds like all the mentioned issues experienced because sole reason that person in question was a female.
While I am not denying that it may be often the case, this is not all-in-all reason.
Often we like to blame our problems on our usual suspects because those are easy targets.
I have experience many of mentioned issues myself and that is just thinking of time when I was a mentor:

• I was ignored
• I was disrespected
• My opinion was disregarded
• I was excluded from important meetings
• and list goes on

I am writing this not to dismiss previous comments and concerns, but bring different angle to this conversation.
I will finish with this: Not everything that goes wrong is simply because you are a girl. Things are not as easy for boys as some comments may imply.

And I think this is highlighted in part of the article I posted:

I saw males disparaging my teammates, and it generally came down to the fact that the girls, brilliant as they were, didn’t assert themselves as competent — yet they always cried sexism

Sexism in engineering certainly does exist, I've seen it. But perhaps more often it's a simple case of an individuals confidence and attitude going into a situation that defines the outcome... and when it comes to engineering, girls do tend to be more reserved and subservient while boys tend to be more outgoing and aggressive. I don't pretend to understand why that is or how we fix it, but it's important for everyone involved to recognize that we can improve if boys make an effort to be more inclusive and girls make an effort to be more assertive. It takes an effort from both sides to make it work, trying to address it from just one side won't solve the problem.

[NShep98]

This is an interesting perspective, how to keep girls involved as opposed to how to simply get them there. I feel like this is the reason for the disconnect between wanting to encourage girls to pursue STEM careers, the part that has been promoted in popular culture, and making sure the stereotypes that kept them away in the first place aren't perpetuated, the part that has not.

In certain cases, girls are up in arms expecting to be put down, only contributing to the problem. In others, boys do push girls down and assign them menial tasks. Often times it can be both. In any case, it will usually involve a change in approach on both ends.

As far as FRC goes, mentors should work with both girls and boys to make sure the girls are treated fairly and equally, and that they have the confidence to handle themselves. My team is fortunate in that, even though she is our only female mentor, our lead mentor is a woman, and she does exceptionally well in encouraging the girls along, while at the same time giving reminders to boys to make sure they get their fair chance (we're also trying to even out our gender ratio a bit). From my experience, this seems like the best solution, because as far as I can tell, the boys and girls get along fine.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by NorthernTaco

Another thing that I have noticed is that after high school, the number of females that stay involved, either by mentoring or by volunteering, significantly decreases. It is especially apparent at competitions, particularly within the alumni group that comes back to volunteer at events, where I often find myself being the only girl or one of only two or three girls with a group of over a dozen guys, but that could just be a local thing. It's not something that has ever particularly bothered me, but I've always found it funny how hard of a push there is to get more girls involved in FIRST, but as soon as they graduate they leave.

My question is, is the number decreasing in relation to the number of males?

The number of everyone decreases once students graduate. Only a small percentage of alumni actually come back to volunteer. It could have been perhaps that there were 3000 boys and 100 girls and now there is 1 girl and 30 boys.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

"I saw males disparaging my teammates, and it generally came down to the fact that the girls, brilliant as they were, didn’t assert themselves as competent — yet they always cried sexism" - Article

Sexism in engineering certainly does exist, I've seen it. But perhaps more often it's a simple case of an individuals confidence and attitude going into a situation that defines the outcome... and when it comes to engineering, girls do tend to be more reserved and subservient while boys tend to be more outgoing and aggressive. I don't pretend to understand why that is or how we fix it, but it's important for everyone involved to recognize that we can improve if boys make an effort to be more inclusive and girls make an effort to be more assertive. It takes an effort from both sides to make it work, trying to address it from just one side won't solve the problem.

I understand what you're saying, but I'll argue that this interpretation misses something. I'll explain it by amending the article quote:

I saw males disparaging my teammates, and it generally came down to the fact that the girls, brilliant as they were, didn’t assert themselves as competent in ways that are expected within the male-based environment — yet they always cried sexism"

This is often a point of confusion in discussions of the -isms. The "majority" definition of an -ism tends to concentrate on individuals' perpetration of behaviors, which understandably returns an "I'm not -ist" from truthful and well-meaning majority individuals. However, the "minority" definition of an -ism considers the entire structure of the majority system. Each group makes the definition based on what's important from their own perspective: either their own behaviors or the system that affects them, respectively.

Because of this difference, minority viewers see sexism in many instances where majority viewers do not--for instance in the above example. Neither of them is wrong. The majority stakeholders say "I'm not sexist, she just didn't abide by the norm [didn't assert herself--for instance by being "outgoing" and "aggressive"]." But the minority stakeholders say "what she did is objectively qualifying [she was demonstrably competent]. She just didn't demonstrate it in the way you wanted her to--and the fact that she's "wrong" in that (and you're "right") is part of the problem."

There is of course outright sexism in STEM, and I've faced it. But I've also had this happen, with people judging me against norms of male behavior that have no substantive benefit in the situation. And it's not just males that do this; individual females are also susceptible to internalizing male standards of behavior after years of being immersed in them in STEM (and/or having the coercively thrust upon us). Women/girls can hold these norms against others and against themselves, with the latter particularly leading to painful emotional struggles (and/or quitting) for some of us.