The Importance of Advocacy

What is STEM?

• Science
• Technology
• Engineering
• Math

Regardless of content area, middle level educators need to be concerned about advocating for this group of young adolescents.

Target Audience

• Female educators need to be made aware of the needs of young adolescent girls interested in STEM
• With a successful female STEM mentor, this group of young adolescents are more likely to succeed in their fields

Rationale

• Society tells women that they don't belong in STEM fields
• As early as first grade, students develop a sense of gender identity
• Unconscious bias associating boys with math
• Toys and clothing reinforce gender stereotypes that encourage only boys to build or engineer

Rationale

• By seventh grade, many girls become ambivalent toward these fields
• By high school, fewer girls than boys plan to pursue STEM majors in college
• Female students are likely to be outnumbered by their male counterparts in STEM programs

Rationale

• Few schools allocate funds for recruiting/retaining students in non-traditional fields for their gender
• When women enter a STEM workplace, they frequently experience an unfriendly climate that hinders their participation and progress

Rationale

• 1 in 7 engineers are female
• 27% of computer science jobs are held my women
• Women have shown no employment growth in STEM jobs since 2000

“One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being encouraged the way they need to.”

-- President Barack Obama, February 2013

How can female STEM educators (and all educators) advocate for young adolescent girls interested in STEM fields?

Support and Program Improvements

• Literature supporting women in STEM
• Identifying female STEM role models in history
• Start building interest in STEM as early as possible to avoid the "leaky pipeline"
• Providing successful female mentors in STEM fields

"Create opportunities for success and safe environments in which to fail. They'll learn to persevere and develop a growth mindset, so critical to success in STEM fields ... instead of 'this is hard, I can't do it,' they will believe, 'I can try another way.'"

-- Patty L. Fagin, PhD

Support and Program Improvements

• Hands-on, real-world problem solving activities to show that STEM is relevant and fun
• Positive exposure to different areas of STEM
• Clubs and school promotion to spark interest
• Workshops and shadowing

"Insatiable curiosity and the self confidence to make change in the world -- two qualities that are key to instill in the female innovators of the future. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics become the tools with which to explore curiosity and to create change."

-- Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director at Lift London, Microsoft Studios

Young adolescent girls interested in STEM fields need middle level educators and specifically successful female STEM mentors to advocate for them due to limiting factors at every stage of development. In middle school, minds and bodies are changing at such a rapid rate that we have a key role in helping guide these potential successful STEM students before their interest is quelled due to lack of support or opposition.

Resources

• "Engaging Girls in STEM." National Girls Collaborative Project. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
• "How to Get Girls into STEM." CNN. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
• "STEM Education." AAUW. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
• "Women in STEM." The White House. The White House. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.