The Only Way To Get Girls into STEM (Boys Too)

http://www.spydergrrl.com/2014/06/the-only-way-to-get-girls-into-stem.html

by peterb • 12 years ago

46 71 12 years ago

Spooky23• 12 years ago

You need to make it part of play. Make it fun.

Computers were fun to me because I played games and was motivated to maximize the meager capabilities of my IBM XT, and wanted to cheat in games. So I learned all sorts of things there.

In computer class, there was no exploration, no fun. Oregon Trail was cool, but didn't capture the imagination.

I hated Math in school for many years, but my grandfather tutored me. Then I discovered puzzles and how to apply math to problems that had some relevance to me.

dublinben2• 12 years ago

This is just as important on the hardware side. As far back as I can remember, I had fun tearing apart electronics and computers. My junior high school had a computer club where we created Frankenstein machines out of discarded computers, and did whatever we had to to make them work.

You simply cannot have the same experience with a sealed, black box, computing device like an iPad, Surface, or Chromebook. I hesitate to even call them "computers" since they're so unlike the computers I built as a child.

ilovecomputers• 12 years ago

This is exactly why Google' "Made with Code" campaign is so good: https://www.madewithcode.com/

Look at the message, it is about how computers are fun and empowering. Even with this general message, they still market to girls by simply showing how women and girls are involved with coding. The target of the campaign is girls, but the message is universal that girls don't feel like outsiders and even boys can tag along.

eroo• 12 years ago

There are two problems that too often seem to be conflated as a single issue: (1) we need more STEM students/workers, because they will build the future, and (2) there is persistent discrimination (notably sexism) in some of the sub-specialties that can't be tolerated.

Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?

resu_nimda• 12 years ago

Yes, and I think the author is mistaken to make that conflation. To me it represents a willful blindness to your second issue. Yes, it would be great if our society was more gender-neutral, but it's not, and it never has been (in a historically relative sense, we've come quite a long way). I don't think we can just say "hey let's market toys to boys and girls equally and everything will just work itself out." Again, it's like sticking your fingers in your ears because you don't want to face the murkier, less tractable issues of human nature. The issue is real and it goes a lot deeper than gender norms promulgated by contemporary society.

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?

If you treat a field as gendered in your recruiting of kids, the sum of your efforts may ultimately balance the scales more than they're self-defeating. But don't think for a moment kids are stupid enough to hear a gender-specific, or gender-targeted introduction/recruitment to some field and not walk away with some notion that a field is "for" a specific gender, or that one is "better" at it than another.

collyw5• 12 years ago

I really don't see the need to get more women in tech. Its obvious from school age that it just doesn't interest them as much. You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.

Edit: I stand corrected, apparently there are big movements to get males into the professions I mentioned. Just that I never heard about these movements.

dublinben2• 12 years ago

You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.

This actually is a common conversation within those fields, and is certainly viewed as a problem in wider society. Some researchers claim that one reason male students underperform in school is due to the lack of adult male role models in the form of teachers. As a male with some experience in education, I have seen first hand how much my very presence in the classroom can inspire young male students. They yearn for more male teachers, and they don't even know anything about education theory or developmental psychology.

collyw5• 12 years ago

They doesn't seem to receive as much attention as IT and women type conversions. In fact I have never heard a "we need more men in" for any job role.

minikites• 12 years ago

You are 100% wrong on the second point, there is plenty of effort to get men into traditionally female jobs like nursing and teaching:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing#Increasing_numbe...

return03• 12 years ago

Still, it's not nearly as much as the reverse campaign. I have never received any messaging through media etc. about such a campaign. It exists, in theory.

tormeh2• 12 years ago

You actually do. Just not on HN.

dang• 12 years ago

Just not on HN.

On the contrary, this is discussed frequently on HN: both the claim that there are no efforts to get men into nursing or primary teaching, and the fact that indeed there are. It gets brought up so often that it's almost a cliché, with people joking about writing bots for it and so on.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=men+nursing#!/comment/forever/0/me...

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=male+nurses#!/comment/sort_by_date...

viraptor3• 12 years ago

Not sure about male nurses, but not having male primary teachers is a serious issue (at least in the UK). I keep hearing advice about guys getting into teaching kids (or really leading any kids activities) - "don't". Because the expectation is that you're likely a pedophile. Because doing something completely normal that gets some girl at school surprised will cost you time in court and being able to work with kids in the future. I'm not sure how often it really happens (anecdote != data, etc.), but I've heard enough stories of simple actions being misinterpreted with terrible consequences (I was going to teach some kids at the local sport club) that I really wish there were more male teachers. Just to break the idea that it's something unusual.

thegeomaster4• 12 years ago

I'm curious as to what kinds of actions could be misinterpreted like that. Care to give an example?

_bfhp6• 12 years ago

it just doesn't interest them as much

I'd appreciate if you'd read something: http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-...

Edit: It's telling when people downvote a comment that is nothing but a relevant link. This is a situation in which you either have convictions and are willing to defend them, or are knowingly ignorant about the subject and are willing to try to learn and engage in discourse. If those options feel constricting, all you have to do is close the tab.

kstenerud• 12 years ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted. It's HIGHLY relevant to the discussion.

rbehrends2• 12 years ago

Its obvious from school age that it just doesn't interest them as much.

[Citation needed]. What you're seeing in school is very likely the effect of early age socialization effects. Which can go both ways, if you look at other cultures, such as Iceland [1]. You may also want to familiarize yourself with the concept of "stereotype threat" [2].

You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.

As a matter of fact, this is a source of concern in the relevant circles [3, 4]. For example, much has been written about boys not having enough male role models among teachers in schools. It just doesn't get much coverage in the media because, well, these are considered low-end jobs that few people other than those involved in nursing and teaching care much about. In fact, that is a major theme: If a type of job is dominated by women, it's likely to be poorly paid (stereotypically male jobs can go either way).

[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032361...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

[3] http://www.edutopia.org/male-teacher-shortage

[4] http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/02/21/is-the-short...

lnanek2• 12 years ago

Not really. There have been monkey studies showing males like physical things like cars and girls like nurturing things like dolls. It's PC to deny genetic differences in play at this point, but it isn't scientific.

dominotw• 12 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

There are many citations in there. I don't remember who the researchers were though.

rickyc091• 12 years ago

The issues lies in that working with computers or technology is not "cool." Take a look at movies, television shows, etc. A person in tech is typically classified as a geek, a nerd, loser, etc. Middle school and high school are a big popularity contest, but that's also the age where they are very malleable. Until the negative connotations stop, people will continue to be afraid to enter the tech space.

collyw5• 12 years ago

Not sure why you are being downvoted, as I can clearly see a media bias. HN is getting very PC.

tomp• 12 years ago

Personally, I don't see any reason to get anyone into anyone. Ideally, people should choose what they want to do, whatever interests them. I chose computers because I couldn't get away from them when I was young, and they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...). I see no reason why people should be asked to get into STEM. Should they have the opportunity? Of course! Fortunately, social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory and because of fortunes made with technology (Facebook, Google, ...). But someone who is not passionate about being a programmer/scientist and is only in it for the money, will in average be less successful in it that someone who's passionate about it.

viraptor3• 12 years ago

Fortunately, social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory

I'm not a huge fan of many new action movies, but I'm also quite happy seeing people who (in the past) claimed Tolkien or comic books are for nerds only, happily go to see the LotR and Marvel/DC movies now. Movies these days can be criticised for many things - but putting a strong female character in a sci-fi world from time to time is quite a welcome change. (yeah, I know it's not done properly every time, but the shift is visible)

thegeomaster4• 12 years ago

I agree with the gist of your comment, especially the clause that someone who's not passionate about a field shouldn't be forced into that field. However, I'd like to address some other points.

I chose computers because [...] they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...)

This sounds very sad to me. How do you mean that computers interested you more than friends? I don't see how anyone could come to say this.

social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory

I think TBBT is doing more harm than good to the "geek culture", whatever you want to call the "geek culture". What it's doing is enforce and rehash the stupid "nerd stereotypes" of the old, but somehow present it as "being cool". The world doesn't need that. All cultures need less poseurs, not more.

I didn't think I'd ever cite Maddox on HN, but I agree with him spot on. Take a look: http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd

saraid2163• 12 years ago

I really don't see the need to get more blacks into the middle class. It's obvious from birth that they're just not interested in anything but subservient labor. Why, you can even look at the shape of their skull and see this plain as day.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

Oh come on, you can do better than that.

collyw5• 12 years ago

The difference is that blacks may want to join the middle class. Most women (certainly the ones I have come into contact with) don't aspire to be techies.

Very poor comparison.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

Well, first off, you're technically correct in the general sense that women don't need tech jobs, and that the tech industry doesn't need women specifically. But STEM does need more people since the number of applicants for STEM jobs is dangerously low in the USA, and our science literacy as a nation is dangerously poor. So since there's all these women on the planet, and they're underrepresented in the STEM field, it makes sense to increase the number of STEM jobs by taking that underrepresented population and moving it toward STEM. Getting more women into STEM helps everyone.

As for why you believe there isn't a demand for these things, it's basically confirmation bias. You don't personally hear a need for more people in these sectors so you assume the need doesn't exist. But in fact there's been a lot more need for nurses in the past decade, so male nurses would definitely be welcomed in terms of increasing the applicants for those jobs. Teachers less so because they have a hard enough time making ends meet with miniscule budgets without adding more teachers to the roles.

All these industries are different and have different motivators as to whom they try to get more jobs to. But behind any great push to get more people into an industry you'll probably find economic motivators, not a demand for social justice. So focus less on the fact that it's women, and focus more on the fact that it's half the population not going after STEM jobs.

geebee• 12 years ago

Part of the problem is that it may be individually rational for US citizens to avoid STEM jobs.

At the graduate level, the RAND institute concluded that the American aversion to STEM degrees is rational and market-driven:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html

A professor at the University of Washington, William Zumeta, reaches a similar conclusion

http://www.issues.org/19.2/p_zumeta.htm

Now, STEM is broad, and software development is a different thing. But a lot of people are surprised to learn that the median wage for registered nurses in San Jose ($122,990) is actually higher than it is for software developers in San Jose ($116,610). In San Francisco, dental hygienists earn 106K a year, only a bit less than software developers (110K a year). I don't really have any problem with this, I'm happy that these workers make good salaries, but it is remarkable that we talk about the urgency of getting more people into an field where there is a severe shortage when other fields in these high cost areas earn about the same amount, and perhaps with considerably better career security as you enter middle age.

(see http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings)

There are good reasons to want to do one or the other, but I certainly wouldn't say that the intangibles clearly break in favor of software development. Silicon valley leaders act like the shortage of STEM workers or software developers is a foregone conclusion. I'm not saying that there's no case to be made for it, but I the evidence suggests that salaries in software development are not remarkable on average, and there are considerable career risks long term.

We need to consider the possibility that avoidance of STEM is actually a very economically rational decision for a high talent student. It may be why Americans are avoiding the field, and it may be why women are avoiding it.

shadowfox• 12 years ago

There are, in fact, some initiatives to try to get more men in to nursing for various reasons. For example, see this (http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/men-nursing). The article has a few references at the bottom which also make for interesting reading.

Of course we come across more articles about women in tech because we frequent tech forums. But the topic (of men in nursing, teaching etc) do come up on the relevant forums.

_bfhp6• 12 years ago

Our society markets cultural gender references to the extent that we instill into girls a dislike of “traditionally male” interests from early on.

So could one say that we do need to focus on girls, to the extent that we recognize the socialization they receive in a society where gender roles are a thing? I agree with the article in general -- though I don't see anything wrong with programs for girls who have already found themselves teenaged and without the resources to get the necessary programming/STEM experience, and/or being uncomfortable around teenage boys in a field that the boys have been taught is their turf.

The media should promote some more female STEM role models. It would make up for the years of degredation and exclusion of women in STEM on TV, in the movies, etc -- especially in kid's media, where girls and women are usually token side-characters when they aren't princesses (see reelgirl.com for thorough documentation). It'll never happen, of course, despite that it would hurt no one, because the necessary critical thinking, along with the knowledge of women's history, to keep ourselves from shouting "gender bias!!!" at anything helping women succeed, is absent.

jmromer3• 12 years ago

I wonder if anyone has done a longitudinal study of children raised in environments where they were strongly incentivized (to put it mildly) to favor activities that we typically see taken up by members of the opposite sex. No IRB would approve this nowadays, but maybe someone started one back in the day?

Even without such a study it should be intuitive that steering neurotypical (in the broad sense) boys toward typically female preferences and activities, and vice versa, will end up being cruel along some margin.

(Just as it's certainly cruel for an atypical girl to be forced into typically female behaviors and preferences, which is what you're describing.)

The question is, where's the margin?

_bfhp6• 12 years ago

NYU sociologist Emily Kane's book The Gender Trap documents the closest we'll probably get to a study that explores that notion, in this century. I highly recommend it http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=11234

The synopses of the book that are on the internet don't inform of the degree to which it's an actual study by a sociologist; it's not a pop-parenting book.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

I don't think Lego can be blamed for Lego Friends. They made gender-neutral lego toys for years and years, and never made the kind of spectacular traction they got with girls through Lego Friends.

_bfhp6• 12 years ago

A LEGO block is sex-neutral, but the decades of marketing and LEGO character pieces certainly were not. LEGO can't take all the blame, given that many parents probably didn't buy LEGOs for their daughters given their own internalized stereotypes, but it could have recognized that this was a phenomenon and aggressively worked to include girls in their "neutral" toys.

As usual, the actual problem is deeper than symtomatic entities like LEGO. We will see the end of this issue when we see the end of the world's obsession with sex and sex stereotypes.

doctorfoo3• 12 years ago

It really all starts with Lego IMO. Give all children male/female a box of Lego on their first birthday. Either they'll take to it or they won't. Problem solved!

rockdoe2• 12 years ago

Looks like one of my kids wants to go into management, and the other into demolitions.

doctorfoo3• 12 years ago

...maybe I should also add: A doll and a hair ribbon or something, too.

Hey, while not dolls, I had great fun with my teddy bears as a kid. Served up some mean teddy bear picnics. With the participation of my sister, made some teddy bear magazines for them to read. My mother baked them some miniature cakes. Of course, the bears went parachuting and such too.

angersock• 12 years ago

You're going to have a lot of kids choking on legos...

doctorfoo3• 12 years ago

An important life lesson, surely?

Actually, I remember now, before Lego I had some large wooden bricks. Building towers and bridges was pretty neat. Playing physics based puzzle games is still great fun!

rockdoe2• 12 years ago

Lego has "DUPLO" which is their baby-safe version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Duplo

paxtonab• 12 years ago

I think focusing on children is the right way to tackle this issue. Per the author's point she works in an environment with an equal mix of male/female. Teaching kids from an early age that their gender doesn't limit the career they pursue will make this more the norm than not.

numo16• 12 years ago

Teaching kids from an early age that their gender doesn't limit the career they pursue will make this more the norm than not.

I believe this is one of the main issues. We tell kids they can "be whatever you want to be", and then look at a girl funny when she wants to be an engineer or make fun of a boy for wanting to be a nurse. Society has ingrained certain ideas into what a person in a given career looks like that people are deterred (consciously or subconsciously) from that career if they don't fit the norm.

For example, what is the first image that pop's into your head when you think of a nurse? This seems to be one of the fields that has been pushed so hard into a female career in our societal consciousness, that an entire genre of porn exists around this single occupation (I want my male naughty nurse Halloween costume, damn it!).

It's at a point where societal norms would need to be broken down from the ground up, with regards to gender roles and careers, starting with kids.

return03• 12 years ago

I don't think that's it. The differences in percentages between men and women in STEM are just too big to attribute them to "early conditioning" anymore, esp. after so many years of campaining [1]. Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun", or men find STEM more fun than women. I believe, at least in Europe, there is no lack of exposure to STEM subjects.

The idea of interwoving them sounds a little bit silly: a sci-fi text will bore a student who is literature-oriented in the same way that a mathematical model of romance will sound cheesy to a math nerd.

1. http://techpageone.dell.com/business/study-women-stem-career...

option_greek• 12 years ago

I wonder what the scenario is in Nordic countries which (supposedly) have much more female friendly society.

tsax• 12 years ago

It's called the gender equality paradox. The more supposedly 'equal' the opportunities between genders are, the more the outcomes seem to diverge. Scandinavian countries have strong gender-based career divergence as well.

j2kun• 12 years ago

Make no mistake, there are plenty of literature-oriented sci-fi novels. Frankenstein was one of them that's taught regularly in schools, but there are plenty of modern examples as well. And I remember very recently a handful of stories on HN describing mathematical dating models. The problem is that the literature teachers aren't trained enough to discuss the STEM parts in any real depth; they're trained to think that readers are just supposed to accept the sci-fi assumptions in order to generate an interesting narrative conflict. And while that's partly true, it also results in throwing out a lot of really interesting discussion.

SolarNet3• 12 years ago

Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result. It really is our entertainment, half of all television shows for children show men (boys) being innately superior in intelligence [1]. Even worse, there are no children's shows with primary female genius characters (they are all male), and when they do show up as non-primary characters their intelligence is often overshadowed by their feminine attributes.

It's even worse in teen TV, where the smart female characters are more often portrayed as being love interests for male characters over being smart.

And lets not even get into the rampant sexism in most mainstream video games (and their communities), even more important for software engineering and computer science since modding/making/playing video games seems to be a common factor for many male entrants, and relatively uncommon among female entrants to the field (at least in my recent but anecdotal experience).

This all leads to a situation where computers, engineering, science, and math are more often seen as male disciplines. We may have cleaned up a lot of blatant sexism, especially in modern workplaces, but our media is still teaching our children gender bias, often with a detrimental effect for both genders (for example decreasing college rates for males, how many male teen characters care about getting into college, have their shit together, etc).

[1] http://www.truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6656

return03• 12 years ago

Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result

It may mean that what the campaign thinks is right is not what people want. It doesn't help that social sciences research on the subject is kind of taboo.

lsc4• 12 years ago

Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun"

Another possible explanation is that perhaps there is cultural pressure on middle-class men to make a lot of money, regardless of how much pain is involved in getting said money. If you are only getting an undergrad degree, a STEM degree is probably the most remunerative course of action you have open to you.

Now, my perception is that society puts a lot less pressure on middle-class women when it comes to making money... but I'm not a woman; it is quite possible that my perception here is in error.

bsdetector• 12 years ago

I have a controversial view of this. That is, why are so many men forced or pressured to go into a STEM career? This is the exact same question, just framed from the perspective that there are plenty of other jobs that pay well enough and are easier.

Computer science for instance is sitting behind a desk all day every day more or less constantly using your brain and concentrating. This is kind of a bad choice of occupation even though it appeals to some and has some upsides.

We know from the "pay gap" that women's lower pay is balanced by fewer hours, shorter commute, better environment, and other benefits of that kind; there's essentially no actual discrimination for the same work. This makes me wonder whether women are choosing this result, or whether men are steered away from working easier, less well-paying jobs.

It could be that women aren't going into STEM in equal numbers simply because they have subjectively better choices available. If that's the case, then programs to equalize the numbers will doubly discriminate against men by being forced into it in the first place and then getting less compensation in the second.

The Only Way To Get Girls into STEM (Boys Too)

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