LEGOs for Girls? February 27, 2012
Posted by Science Club for Girls in Gender differences?, girls in science, Guest Blog.Tags: Education, girls, LEGO, STEM, Volunteering
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Guest Post from our All-Star Vacation Week Volunteer Laura Croal
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about a new line of blocks the company LEGO unveiled this past winter. Though LEGO’s were originally created as a gender neutral toy, in recent years the company’s has focused on marketing LEGO kits for boys. However, the new line called “LEGO Friends”, which was unveiled this winter, represents the final product of Lego’s extensive market research efforts to develop…drumroll please…a Lego product aimed at girls!
Hooray you say!!! I love LEGOs! What a great educational toy! You can build such cool things! Your only limit is your creativity! Thoughtful pause…but, hey, what exactly does that mean that they made LEGOs for girls?
Well, according to the anthropologists the company hired to study how girls play differently from boys,
“girls wanted more reality-based toys that let them see themselves as the characters. Also, how girls could play with the kits after they built them was more important than it was to boys.”
Ok, this sounds reasonable so far. As the girl plays with her kit, she wants to imagine herself to be the chief engineer on a big construction project! Or the chemist in charge of building a LEGO chemistry lab! And then, after she accomplishes her goal, it’s important for her to understand and learn about the applications and uses of her product by playing out scenarios. But what’s that you say? The color schemes include pastel pinks, purples, and blue? Hmm, ok, I can deal with those colors… The settings of play include beauty shops, cafes and bakeries? Uh, well that doesn’t sound very adventurous or inspiring… The accessories designer to fit in the female LEGO character’s hands include hairbrushes and handbags. Whaaat?!?!?!?!?! How is a STEM savvy girl supposed to get any world changing work done while holding a HANGBAG!?!? (more…)
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…)
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!
Herstory of Science November 8, 2011
Posted by kyliev in Gender differences?, girls in science, women in science.add a comment
In 2005, Harvard University President Larry Summers suggested that women may be underrepresented in the higher tiers of STEM fields due to a limited aptitude for those subjects. So, what is some of the research that President Summers might have skimmed over too quickly?
In high school, girls take more advanced placement classes and get higher grades in these classes than boys. In college, women are over 50% of the student body, as well as those majoring in biology and biomedical fields. In the work place, women make up the majority of financial specialists and health diagnostics positions. With this evidence, it’s hard to conclude that inherent differences between women and science are to blame for the female underrepresentation in STEM. So, where does the stereotype come from?
The School of Household Sciences and Arts at Pratt University (1933)
The current science gender gap is a development of the twentieth century. Up until the early 1900s, science and math were, in fact, “women’s subjects.” Men were the overwhelming majority of university students. To get in to college at that time, one had to be well-educated in the humanities and classics. Women were largely excluded from attending college. Instead of “wasting time” with the classics, they were expected to study those subjects deemed more practical to them, such as math and sciences. They learned “applied sciences” such as how to remove stains (chemistry) and how to treat burns (medicine).
By the 20th century, progressive and liberal movements were championing new educational philosophies that emphasized scientific thinking and egalitarian access to education. At the same time, technological advances become an important aspect of the economy. The combination of newfound appreciations for educational equality, and the scientific and mathematical fields would seem fertile ground for women to make significant contributions through science and technology. But it didn’t happen that way.
Men were trained as future scientists and businessmen and women as future wives and mothers.
Yes, attitudes towards science and technology were changing, but social structures were not. Women were still excluded from the high-paying, high prestige positions. They were still expected to be primarily homemakers and caregivers. Up until the age of 14, men and women were both trained in practical sciences. After that, men began a track of chemistry, physics, and biology classes to prepare them for the academy while women were taught hygiene and home economics. Only occasionally were women allowed to take biology courses, but only to prepare them for careers in nursing. Men were trained as future scientists and businessmen and women as future wives and mothers. In time, as in the past and in other subjects, “innate inaptitude” was used to account for low rates of participation of women in formal STEM fields, rather than a critical examination of prevailing societal attitudes and practices.
American women protest for equal job opportunity
But such blatant discrimination did not persist for long. By the 1970s, though, women’s movements in the United States and Europe had exploded. Women organized against discrimination and oppression in all aspects of their lives, including the exclusion they had experienced in STEM. Institutions were pressured to include same opportunities and a more equal representation of women in education, training and careers. Many are beginning to realize that a pro-active approach towards equity not only enriches the respective fields. It also improves the bottom-line.
We’re grateful that countless women, teachers, and groups like AAUW, AWIS, and National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity have and continue to advocate for equitable education and training in the most effective way, but obstacles, like the immortal gender stereotype, challenge this goal. The following posts will discuss these obstacles and how they can be challenged.
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For a concise overview, check out this Interactive Time Line of female scientists at iwaswondering.org!
To learn more about the forces that shaped women scientists in the US in the late 1800′s to 19oo’s, and their role in reshaping society, don’t miss Margaret Rossiter’s two-volume work: Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 and Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940-1972
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.
