Every STEM Needs a Flower

My 7-year old daughter was so excited to start her week of Robotics Summer Camp today. She’s talked of little else but how much fun it will be to build her own robot and control it via remote.

“And I’ll get to make new friends,” she told me last night. As an only child, she loves to meet new kids.

Unfortunately, her extroverted nature all but vanished when we arrived this morning. The camp was being held in one of the training rooms at the massive Boy Scouts’ Center in town (it was slated for a hotel conference room when I signed up, although there was a disclaimer that the location could change).

“Are you sure girls are allowed inside?” my daughter asked when we pulled up.

I assured her they were, but her doubts seemed founded when we entered the training room. There sat twenty-five boys, ranging in age from seven to fourteen, in front of twenty-five robot kits. My daughter, dressed in pink from head to toe, didn’t exactly fit in. She was told to place her lunch in the corner with the others and find a seat in front of a robot kit.

I can’t explain how incongruous her hot-pink Barbie lunchbox looked in that sea of camo, superhero, alien-ninja bags.

She surveyed the room, her body pressed against my hip, and whispered, “I don’t want to do this.”

My heart broke.

It’s been several decades, but I can still remember that first-day-at-a-new-school feeling, the sweaty-palms panic of everyone looking at you, judging you. Rejecting you. I hate that she had to experience that.

I reminded her of how cool it would be to learn how to build a robot, and I helped her find a seat. She was unnaturally quiet, but she did seem interested in the circuitry inside her robot kit. I kissed her goodbye and left, and although I was a little anxious for her I have a feeling she’ll have made a new friend by the end of the day. At school, she plays with the boys as much as the girls. She’s just never been so vastly outnumbered before.

I should have anticipated this, of course. The number of women in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — is disappointingly low. Even more troubling is the realization that there are no signs of improvement.

Citing a 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Forbes reported last month that only 1 in 7 engineers is female. Worse, women have seen no job growth in the STEM fields since the year 2000. Despite awareness of the gender gap, women have had over a decade of stagnant employment in these deeply critical areas.

Here’s another staggering figure: although 60% of all bachelor’s degrees are held by female graduates, less than 20% of computer science bachelor's degrees go to women.

The problem begins as early as grade school, where girls are seldom encouraged to participate in science and math (and robotics camps, apparently), and are instead steered toward the arts and humanities. The idea of brains belonging to boys and beauty to girls is everywhere.

Remember when JC Penney was (rightly) pressured to stop selling this shirt to young girls last year? In case you can't make it out, the shirt reads, "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me." The shirt was sold online with this nauseating blurb: "Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out?"

The shirt "controversy" occurred in 2011, a full EIGHTY-SEVEN years after this 1924 Palmolive ad, which states: Most men ask “Is she pretty?” not “Is she clever?”

You’ve come a long way baby? I don’t think so. And neither does Jean Kilbourne, who offers the fantastic “Killing Us Softly” series, which examines how advertising “traffics in distorted and destructive ideals.” I dare you to watch the trailer (it’s under five minutes) and not be moved.

I like to think I’m doing my part to change the trend by sending my daughter to robotics camp, but perhaps I’d be better off destroying her Barbie lunchbox instead. Is that the solution? Refusing to buy her disproportionate dolls and rescue-the-damsel Disney princess movies? Is it even realistic to imagine I could shield her from the 3,000 ads she’s subjected to each day? And wouldn’t a no-Barbie policy be akin to abstinence-only sex ed, making her all the more interested in that which is taboo?

I just don’t know. This parenting thing is hard. Almost as hard as math (wink, wink).

I do know I was awfully damned happy to see a family with twin fourteen-year old girls enter the facility before I left. I mentioned my daughter’s fear of being the only girl in the camp, and the twins immediately headed to her table, choosing seats on either side of her. I’m not sure if they’ll stay together, as the class will be separated by age group. Still, it was nice to see a few more X chromosomes in da house.

Does anyone have suggestions for fostering a love of all things STEM with my little girl? Know any affordable, at-home science projects we could do? I'd love to hear your STEM success stories!