LO – 3

Even in a junior school activity there was a lack of girls in STEM. I wasn’t sure whether this was an issue with the environment (the school, the kids’ parents, other external factors), or just an innate quality of girls. Is it even a problem? Why do we push women to pursue STEM? What if the majority of girls just aren’t interested? What if, girls are just naturally not as likely to grow to be interested in science and engineering as boys? I cannot say anything for certain.

I believe that one of the issues with the lack of girls in STEM is that girls are less likely to “try” engineering or science if they see the environment as a boys-only-club. This was the case in even the junior school Young Engineers club. Very few girls signed up.

Just my observations from the activity:

I found that the girls in the activity were not exactly enthusiastic about building go karts. It may be because of the more outgoing and confident boys that they would sit back and let them do the work instead.  There was one very skilled student in the club who already knew how to use the tools. He finished his go kart earlier than the other people and so I asked for his assistance when working with the small group of 2 girls (I needed help + he seemed bored). The 2 girls would then hand over all their tools to him and begin talking about other completely non-related topics. It is 100% okay to take breaks and relax. After all, this is just a junior school club. But it got to the point where the girls would make minimal progress. And at some point I could see that they had given up. But I don’t think this is due to some innate “girls can’t do engineering” thing. It was only natural that they would grow uncomfortable and unconfident when some random kid from another group started doing their work. I handed the tools back to the girls.

I feel that the boys in the activity were “risk-takers”, excited to try new things but at the expense of frequently breaking components. The girls on the other hand, were risk-averse. They quickly knew when things weren’t working. But then they became afraid to progress further and would give up sooner. Although from a teacher’s point of view a student who doesn’t break things is a 10/10 super star, I believe that making mistakes is the most efficient way to learn engineering.