Avoiding a single-gender death spiral in self-selecting maker programs

[Jonathan Bijur]

reDiscover operates a number of self-selecting upper elementary and middle school maker programs: after school club and classes, camps, lunchtime drop-in, etc. In some programs, we have a substantial gender imbalance, like 80:20 or greater boy:girl. In these situations, we have struggled mightily to increase female participation and have instead faced a drop off in the number of girls who sign up from one semester to the next, including some that have declined to 0% female participation. This is a problem for the girls not signing up for our programs, for those who do but feel out of place, and  for the boys in single sex activities facing the creative poverty of monoculture. In our classroom programs where students are assigned to us, at 50:50 gender balance, participating girls and boys both show full engagement and equal outcomes in terms of design and build quality. Our basic program prominently features power tools and woodworking underlying an integrated art-engineering-play curriculum.

Have you faced a similar problem in self-selecting maker programs? How have you pulled out of the death spiral back towards gender parity? I am looking at our culture of acceptable behavior, the community norms we instill, the activities we offer, the tools and techniques available and encouraged, the language we use in our programs, and our marketing language and images. I'm hoping to identify and break the barriers keeping girls out of the makerspace rather than lifting girls over those barriers into the makerspace, i.e. change culture to welcome and engage all participants rather than create girls-only sessions. I'm open to anything here.

[Katie Ree]

Hey Jonathan,

I've found it helpful to have girl mentors/teachers. Also if you can identify some of the girls with a group around them and get a leader involved others will follow. 

I think it is incredibly important for girls to see other woman doing these things as they are then more likely to identify themselves as a maker. If possibly I'd start with finding female mentor/teachers.

Hope this helps,

Katie

[Jenn Beach]

Jonathan,

   Thank you so much for bringing this up! It is a topic near and dear to my heart and I am always inerested in what approaches others have done. All-girl groups are interesting regarding the momentum going, but I don't think it is a long term solution because they aren't grappling with the issue of genders needing to learn to work together. I can't wait to hear what others say.  @Katie Ree, I love your suggestions, seeing women and men in the role is important for the girls to see that they can belong, as well as for the boys seeing that as well.

Jenn

[Dylan Ryder]

Hi Jonathan,

What do the girls say when you ask them about this issue? We often overlook open dialog with our students as a strategy. They’ll tell you what they’ve noticed.

I also agree with Katie’s excellent point. Consider hiring more female staff to work with your students. Make your team diverse if you want to attract and retain a diverse group of students.

Best,

Dylan

[jackson perrin]

Jonathan-

Thank you for bringing this issue into focus. I had the good fortune to be hired to run an all-girls after school STEM enrichment program for 4th - 6th graders this year. Our girls all chose to be in the program.  We had wonderful year together, exploring woodworking, digital fabrication, electronics, CAD, programming and robotics. We started with just a few girls, but by the end of the year we had a waitlist to get in. I'd echo others suggestions: we had a female high school assistant (who began with no tech skills): she and the girls bonded instantly and was integral to the popularity of the program. The girls never hesitated as they approached each new experience; I'm not sure if that's because there were no boys present, or if was the makerspace ethos we tried to nurture: giving them basic skills with tools and then encouraging them to be creative with how they used them to solve challenges. We had a strong presence in the local paper and they became quasi-celebrities after they entered and won a few robotics competitions. They were proud and identified strongly with their group: they named themselves the STEMinists and made T-shirts whose tagline was "Actually, I can." Next year the program will probably double in size. 

The boys meanwhile asked why they didn't have their own group, to which we replied that they could, if they would commit, but they never did. There has been a significant transfer of the girls' interest and intrepidness into my off-campus makerspace, which is co-ed, and to which almost all of the STEMinists regularly attend on their own time.

On Tuesday, June 19, 2018 at 9:30:37 AM UTC-7, Jonathan Bijur wrote:

[Connie Liu]

Would love to chime in as well :) I'm a mechanical engineering alum from MIT, engineering and design teacher at a makerspace in San Mateo, CA, and run Project Invent to start high school invention teams that solve real-world problems. Definitely agree with the idea of hiring more female mentors, but of course, that's a longer time scale solution (hiring cycles are usually a full year or longer). All female teams is also one way, but as Jenn said, it's more of a band-aid. What are some easy things you can try now?

In my work, I've actually found it really effective to just reframe the narrative around engineering. This could be as simple as a class title change and changing how you talk about engineering! The perception is often that engineering is only for people who are good at math and people who like robots. If students decide they don't fit into that demographic, they won't elect into the classes. Instead, I've started pitching engineering as a way to solve real problems and make a difference in the world. This is an unfortunately under-represented depiction of engineering. I offer classes like Design Engineering for Social Good and Making Impactful Wearables and have 60+% enrollment of females in those classes. Not wanting to confound this with the fact that I am a female mentor, I also teach Introduction to Robotics, which still consistently gets only 10% girls enrolled. 

If you want to read more about my thoughts on this subject, feel free to check out this blog post I wrote recently: https://medium.com/@ckliu95/good-byes-uncertainties-4e04c99e24de

On Tuesday, June 19, 2018 at 9:30:37 AM UTC-7, Jonathan Bijur wrote:

[Lucie deLaBruere]

So many great strategies included in the answers above including

Katie's suggesting of  hiring female mentors and having female role models  (having female role models when you don't have a 'hiring' opportunity can work in many different ways.  I created an event called Power Lunch with Women in Tech event  where girls got to meet and interview female role models.  Our bank of high school girls, college women and girls, and women in the field has grown over the years and now we can use that bank for other opportunities. 

Creating a pipeline takes explicit strategies over time.

Several schools in our state have been part of programming by   National Alliance Partnership For Equity focusing on explicit strategies over time (i.e. increasing awareness of micro-messaging) 

https://www.napequity.org/stem/

Dylan's suggestion is spot on!  I have been surprised by some of the answers when I've taken this approach.  I would suggest developing an activity that leads to a discussion about the WHY in your gender balanced class where you will get suggestions from both girls and boys (I see potential for a design thinking exercise here)

I would also want to have conversations in all female  small groups where girls might be freer to share their thoughts.

Connie Liu's suggestion about new class options that may attract a different demographic is also an strategy that I've seen work in computer science.  Carnegie Mellon has been successful in getting its ratio of women in Computer Science up to 40% through a series of explicit strategies such as this.   Here is a blog post I wrote about  Carnegie Mellon's success as part of a 100 days of blogging related to girls in tech

http://techsavvygirls.blogspot.com/2015/01/where-are-girls-carnegie-mellon-is-tops.html

I feel that anything written by Dr. Lenor Blum from Carnegie Mellon on increasing representation of women in CS  would also apply to other STEM fields.  One of my biggest takeaways from Lenor Blum was the ability to articulate why single sex activities are so important as PART of the strategy.  Without the rest of the strategies in place for connecting the dots from a single sex activity to integration in mixed gender environments, it indeed can be a bandaid.  But when done as part of a broader plan to increasing nontraditional representation,  single gender activities provide women and girls with the same opportunities that are available to their male counterparts - the chance to learn and network with their friends and peers they connect with. 

https://www.women.cs.cmu.edu/Resources/Papers/

I so appreciate of Jonathan's question and interest in changing the story.  As long time supporter of Tiffany Bluemele's work, especially her recent project  Change the Story,  I believe it is essential to have both men and women asking these questions.  These are questions that have long term economic impact for the young women in your school! 

http://changethestoryvt.org/malechampionsforchange/

Thanks Jonathan for being an advocate of change! 

Lucie

On Tuesday, June 19, 2018 at 12:30:37 PM UTC-4, Jonathan Bijur wrote: