What’s equity in politics got to do with parity in science and engineering? March 22, 2012
Posted by Connie Chow in Executive Director Musings, STEM pipeline efforts, women in science.Tags: gender equity, women in science
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A version of this post appeared first on Aspire Wire, Wheelock College’s blog on Advancing Social and Educational Policy, Practice, and Research
Worldwide, merit alone has not led to gender equity in appointments in public office, business and certainly not tenure in science and engineering. Disappointingly, a recent report suggests that it will take another 40 years before 50% of new academic hires in STEM in the United States will be female. Supply and attrition are significant contributors. The degree to which personal choice, institutional practice, and societal norms are involved can be debated.
“Quota” is often a dirty word in the United States. And that puts us behind many countries, such as Rwanda, Namibia and Bangladesh – countries that have used this temporary measure to increase the number of women officials at the highest levels of government. While India still has fewer than 10% women in parliament (because of continuous opposition to legislation to reserve seats for women by the lower house), Dr. Pam Rajput of Punjab University has been instrumental in putting over a million women in local office, which does have a 33% quota, by methodically and doggedly training urban and rural women, uneducated and with higher degrees, in the last 30 years. This has resulted in significant changes in policies around education and public health, improving not only the lives of girls and women, but entire communities.
While a quota system (hopefully voluntarily implemented by institutions) may accelerate change for women and girls in STEM, it will not be enough.
Current efforts to broaden participation in STEM for girls and women and those from underrepresented groups at all levels, from outreach programs for K-12, research opportunities and scholarships for university students, mentoring programs for graduate students and initiatives like ADVANCE, are essential but not sufficiently far-reaching. A practical tool increasingly used by government, businesses and academia in the EU and other countries is called a gender audit, or gender sensitive budgeting.
Instead of just having a numerical target for equity, this tool encourages thoughtful review and discussion of recruitment and hiring practices, workplace or program policies, and other elements that can hinder or promote equity. Moreover, gender auditing asks for the collection of gender-disaggregated data (as well as race, class or other factors as are relevant), that helps set baseline data, identify gaps, monitor progress and test effectiveness of program changes. Recommendations are not just hortatory. Review and reallocation of the budget ensures that proper resources are provided to go the extra mile in implementing necessary policies and slowly reverse any discriminatory practices, intended or otherwise. Importantly, it is an educational tool that opens the eyes of individuals, departmental units and institutions so that women and underrepresented groups don’t carry the full burden of advocating for themselves.
And this is why participation of gender-sensitive women and men at all levels of decision making becomes important if we are to transform the ivory tower, especially for STEM. When a more diverse group of people are committed AND have the ability to direct resources to creating girl- and women-friendly policies in our society, which are at the end family-, human- and earth-friendly policies, then more people in turn can make decisions about who can do science, what engineering research is legitimate, what are appropriate applications of science, technology and engineering. Then and only then can we escape the shackles of business as usual and incremental change. Let’s not let the wait be any longer.
Promoting Out-of-School-Time Science at the National Conference on Girls’ Education February 14, 2012
Posted by Connie Chow in Executive Director Musings, Gender differences?, girls in science, Guest Blog, STEM pipeline efforts, women in science.Tags: gender difference, girls, resilience, STEM
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I had the pleasure of organizing a workshop, “It Takes a Village: Building Sustainable Partnerships Between Scientists, Community Organizations and Girls,” with Dr. Linda Kekelis, executive director of Techbridge in Oakland, CA and Jameela Jafri, Senior Manager of Curriculum and Professional Learning Communities at Project Exploration in Chicago, IL. It was presented at the first National Conference on Girls’ Education in Washington DC, hosted by the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools.
There was much emphasis on building girls’ resilience, their “internal resume” as Rachel Simmons put it, and the importance of practice at critical junctures for the development of the brain “muscles” associated with socio-emotional and other cognitive functions, as preparation for leadership, and for life.
The approaches of our three organizations towards working with girls (and boys) from urban communities, and what we need to do as scientist-educators to meet them where they are were very similar and we each learned from the other groups. I particularly like Jameela’s framing of the collaboration between youth and adults as a community of practice. Since she was swift to produce an excellent summary, I have (with her permission) excerpted her observations below.
“The conference was an opportunity for organizations—particularly public charter and private schools—to share practices and raise issues that are relevant to educating and nurturing young women today. Engaging girls in STEM pursuits and building leadership skills were among the main themes of the conference.
Project Exploration’s presence at the conference was important as one of the voices for effective science education for girls from communities that have been traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. I had the pleasure of co-presenting our model of engaging girls and scientists in meaningful science programming with Dr. Linda Kekelis, executive director of Techbridge in California, and Dr. Connie Chow, executive director of Science Club for Girls in Massachusetts. Our presentation, entitled “It Takes a Village: Building Sustainable Partnerships Between Scientists, Community Organizations and Girls,” was well attended by schools that are developing and growing science outreach programs for their female students and scientist mentors. Many of these schools were eager to identify effective strategies for recruiting and working with scientists who would be able to mentor and provide science activities for their girls.
- What do scientists need for a meaningful outreach experience with youth?
- In terms of access, what do youth—particularly minorities and girls—need when engaging with scientists?
I framed these two questions around the social learning theory of community of practice, where people come together around similar questions, ideas, goals, and practices. I discussed how “building a village” with adults and youth is really about developing a community of practice, where both parties are engaged in learning and doing science. This is particularly important, I noted, given that we need to consider normative adolescent development and the needs that young people have from a psychological and developmental point-of-view in order to form an identity in science.
The big take away from the conference was that gender-specific programming (both in and out-of-school) is important for the developmental needs of girls. (more…)
Moving STEM equity training up the pipeline February 1, 2012
Posted by Connie Chow in Executive Director Musings, STEM pipeline efforts.Tags: community college, gender equity
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This was originally posted as a guest blog on Aspire Wire: Advancing Social and Education Policy, Practice and Research at Wheelock College.
As one whose life work is to encourage girls and women, especially those from underrepresented groups to embrace science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and to pursue careers in these areas, I must admit that I do so with mixed feelings. On the one hand, these pursuits can lead to economic independence, personal fulfillment and a better world. On the other hand, I know many will have a rude awakening when they leave our nurturing environment where sisterhood and mentorship are emphasized, and enter higher education where they are likely to be discouraged by gatekeeper classes and discriminatory professors and fellow students. More than one alumnae have shared those stories.
Source: Adam State College
So reading about the Educators’ Equity STEM Academy gave me great hope. This NSF-supported initiative to help girls and underrepresented groups succeed in STEM studies addresses the psychological impact that subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination has on attrition. This initiative brings in the rich experience of the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation to make sure classroom environments and teacher attitudes and behavior enhance rather than hinder the learning experience and outcome for all. Infusing high school teachers and community college teachers with this training will have the effect of unclogging the STEM pipeline.
At Science Club for Girls, we work with the assumption that for most girls and those from marginalized groups, entering a STEM classroom or STEM field is equivalent to entering into a new cultural space. “Am I welcome? Do I belong? Are they expecting the same from me as everyone else? How do they expect me to behave?” Our job is to help them explore this space safely, and allow them to build an identity that encompasses their “place of origin” and this new territory. If all adults that girls encounter develop this awareness and are actively working to understand and address the stereotypes they hold personally and professionally, I will no longer be ambivalent about sending these young women to explore this exciting STEM frontier.
This blog entry was written in response to “Program aims to help girls, minorities succeed in math and science” – an article from the Baltimore Sun on January 9, 2012 that is accessible here.
Drawing Scientists & Drawing Conclusions about Who Can. Girls and Science in Primary School November 15, 2011
Posted by kyliev in Gender differences?, girls in science, STEM pipeline efforts.add a comment
The “Draw A Scientist Test” is a technique to test elementary school students’ notions of who scientists are. As the title suggests, students are simply asked to draw a scientist. The results are almost always the same: children envision scientists as men, grey haired, white, and wearing glasses. Some studies note that the drawings tend to be of particularly ugly men. When asked to draw a teacher, the drawings are almost all of women, and women who tend to be particularly more attractive than the scientists.
Old, white, and scary: a scientist in the eyes of elementary schoolers
By the time that girls are in elementary, their ideas of who is and is not a scientist are already formed. They may feel that they are not meant to be scientists, or that science is not meant for them. In one study, two classes of students were given the same science test. In one class, the teacher told the students that usually girls don’t do well on this test. When the test scores came back, the girls indeed did significantly worse than the boys. In the other class, the teacher made no such claim. In this class, the difference between boys’ and girls’ scores was only marginal. When confronted with the stereotype, girls conformed to it. Otherwise, they performed just as well. This is what is called the stereotype threat.
In one class, the teacher told the students that usually girls don’t do well on this test. When the test scores came back, the girls indeed did significantly worse than the boys.
While the solution in this case may be to just stop telling girls that they are bad at science, in reality it is not so simple. Implicit social cues can contribute more to girls’ lack of confidence in STEM subjects than explicit ones. One study tested the effect of female teachers’ confidence with their own math skills on the confidence and performance of their students. In classes with more anxious math teachers, girls were more likely to agree with the stereotype that girls are not as good at boys at math. Girls who endorsed the stereotype performed significantly worse than did boys overall and girls who did not endorse the stereotype.
SCFG campers build a see-saw out of K'nex
Parents as well as teachers can affect their children’s relationships with science. The daughters of parents who encourage them to pursue interests in science are more likely to have confidence in those subjects than other children. The children of mothers who talk to their children about science tend to view the scientific abilities of boys and girls more equally than other children. Both at school and at home female role models shape the way students view science and women. When their interest and abilities are encouraged, girls are more ready to challenge the stereotype, perform better in math and sciences, and have confidence that they can do so.
Between elementary and middle school, girls’ interest in science drops dramatically. Not only do many girls think that they are bad at science, but they are not interested in it. They view science as something that is done in a lab, in solitude, without direct consequence in the daily lives of people. When science is presented as “tangible” and applicable to everyday life, girls’ interest is piqued. Hands-on science experiments that use household materials, investigating the chemistry of tie-dye, and learning the physics of soccer can draw in girls who otherwise would not relate to science.
Check out Discovery Kids, GirlStart or our Try This At Home page for science games and activities for girls, and boys!
Change the Equations. Girls = scientists. Science = Everyone October 31, 2011
Posted by kyliev in Gender differences?, girls in science, STEM pipeline efforts.Tags: girls, STEM, stereotypes
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Imaginative. Cooperative. Independent. Objective. Hands-On. Emotive. Practical. Risk-taking.
Which of these words describe do you associate with girls? boys? scientists?
In 2011, the stereotype that boys are better suited for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and girls are better suited for the arts and humanities still persists. It seems so 1900’s to ask if science is inherently masculine, or if women and girls are inherently uncut for technical fields. Women throughout history have challenged these ideas: Merit-Ptah was a noted as a “chief physician” in 2700 BC (that’s almost 5,000 years ago!) and Marie Curie was the first person–not woman, person–to win two Nobel Prizes (in physics and chemistry) in 1911. Even if you cry outlier, the differences in achievement in STEM subjects have been decreasing between men and women, and women have made great strides in many STEM fields in the past half-century. Much of the recent accomplishments can be ascribed to the women’s movement.
A painting depicting "chief physician" Merit Ptah
In many ways, the accomplishments of women surpass those of men: women regularly make up over half of medical students in the US and European countries. In other ways, advances have been less overwhelming. Women represent less than a third of those employed in mathematics, engineering, and architecture. Between 2001 and 2006, the percentage of women among those earning bachelor’s degrees in statistics and computer information actually decreased. Why are there still so few women in so many STEM fields?
The problem is not just that society see boys as better scientists, but see better scientists as boys.
When you first associated the adjectives at the top to the group they best describe, did you find more commonality between the set describing boys and scientists, or girls and scientists? The problem is not just that society see boys as better scientists, but it sees better scientists as boys.
The characteristics that we admire in scientists–bold, assertive, adventurous–too often are the exact qualities that we discourage young girls from showing. For decades girls have been discouraged from going into science. At the same time, has the scientific culture and STEM fields been discouraged from being more open to girls?
The first two time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie
At every stage of her education and career, obstacles from blatant stereotypes to subconscious associations discourage women from STEM subjects and careers. This blog series will look at the relationship between girls and science from elementary school to the work place. Each post will cover a particular age group and their experiences with science. The goal of this series to give an overview of the challenges girls and women face in the STEM fields and ideas as to how to resolve these obstacles.
