Discussion on All-Girl events

[smitikshah]

Originally Posted by teku14

While this debate is going on, I couldn't help but remember an interesting study that I had found a few weeks ago.

Here is the link:

http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built...what-happened/

I felt that it was relevant to the debate at hand and urge everyone to consider the results that were found.

TLDR for those who didn't read, the real problem seems to be that women are more likely to give up at a given field after an attrition event, than men.

Thanks for sharing!

That is a very interesting study.

I did some super quick research to find more details about women retention rates in STEM overall and found this review.

For those that won't read it I'll highlight some points here:
The attrition of women in STEM has been extensively investigated and some major findings are:
1.) Qualitative studies indicate their decision to persist in STEM is influenced by the perception of self-efficacy
2.) Others factors affecting persistence are positive relationships with advisors, mentors, and interest in
STEM classes
3.) Women may need assistance to function in mixed-gender teams, especially when dominated men
4.)Women exhibit lower self-confidence than males even when academic preparation and performance are
equal or superior
5.) Professional role confidence is a critical factor in the persistence of women in STEM

"Self-confidence appears to be a key variable, with diverging self-confidence scores between those who persist and switchers. This disparity was not correlated with actual performance, as measured by GPA. Other barriers were: feelings of isolation, discouragement based upon grades, poor teaching, and unapproachable faculty."

"In examining gender-based difference several indicators point to a decline in the self confidence of women as they progress through STEM courses. Women tend to rate themselves as less capable problem solvers with fewer of them planning to continue to graduate school. While women seem to internalize failure and credit others with their success, males (particularly Caucasian) tend to do the opposite. "

The article goes on and on but basically keeps restating the fact of "women tend to value themselves less even though objectively they are of the same, if not then greater, caliber than their male counterparts."

The way to fix this, and encourage females to build their self confidence in certain fields of STEM that they might not be a 100% confident in. Because females feel bad about themselves after a small little failure in something they may not have been too confident to begin with.

Events like these that promote females to learn and fail/succeed in a comfortable environment where a lot of others are in the same boat help females realize that it's okay to fail, and they shouldn't take it to heart. It helps build a female's self worth.

Getting to be on drive team as coach this year (I do believe I genuinely earned the position), helped me learn to value myself and be more confident in my abilities. I can imagine that if for one day females got to be on a drive team and be more involved in the technical aspects of the program, it could boost their confidence and help retention rates later on. This event could help the next female who might develop a world changing program or invention build up the persistence they will need later on in life to keep doing what they are doing.