Female role models who work in STEM careers

[Missandra]

I really hope you don’t mind me asking this.

I work in education. I don’t work in a school but deliver work shops and similar to primary schools.

I am developing a program of activities to deliver to primary school girls with the aim of encouraging more girls to consider STEM careers in the future. I know it’s very young for them to think about careers but all the studies I’ve read show that children can have very fixed stereotypical ideas about the sexes by the time they are in Year 6. My hope is to challenge this by showing them how exciting the STEM subjects can be. Girls are so unrepresented in the world of STEM.

I am looking for female role models that I can talk about but they need to be as young as possible because I want them to be relatable. I can think of lots of amazing older woman but despite a lot of searching I’ve hardly come up with any. The only one I can find is a young teenage girl who has joined the NASA cadets, she was feature in a cbc programme a while ago.

I’ve fought so hard to get funding and feel so passionately about it I really want to get this right.

Thank you all for the links and recommendations. I’ll have a good read of them all tonight

I haven't read all the responses so this might have been said already but maybe don't just focus on the 'exceptional' stem women but the broad range of stem roles in day to day jobs; get local companies involved. Maybe contact code club.org and the raspberry pi www.raspberrypi.org/
Show that stem is a broad range and that involving yourself in stem subjects can also be creative; graphics design, marketing analyst etc so something to keep an open mind on and develop skills. Also FB group women in edtech (Think quite US based) might be of interest www.facebook.com/groups/womeninedtech/?ref=share

That reminds me to mention - my DD used to get vaguely pissed off by anything specifically aimed at girls, I think a reaction against well intentioned 'othering', possibly found it patronising.

One of the London unis - iirc KCL though that could be wrong, and I may be misremembering the detail slightly - had some sort of policy where at their school events, they didn't do anything special for girls. They just asked mixed sex schools to send equal numbers of girls and boys. So it didn't 'other', nor did it allow STEM to be seen as 'boys stuff'. That perhaps is a commendable approach, and from what I remember had a positive effect.

simone giertz on YouTube is cool, she make kinda childish inventions by having about a lot engineering skill and knowledge, but maybe not the most PG person

There's asking unis but at work we had a female (games) developer intern and I think she might have been the only one or one of two on her course so there might not be that many though hopefully more and more now. I (also a developer) have been trotted out because I'm a female black developer and I didn't love it because it came off as virtue signalling rather than because of my own merit. I agree with PP about boys needing to see that women work in these fields too because I have had some experiences.

Might be harder but if you could look for STEM employers and ask if they have any young women who didn't got to uno that would be nice too, I remember someone coming and talking to us about Tech careers and it was a bit of a flop when they went pretty hard on uni is a must when most of us weren't planning to go. Just because you're not the uni "type" doesn't mean that you can't work in STEM.

Also building the self confidence to put yourself 'out there' and not being afraid to make mistakes on the way and rock the boat (within reason!) Is such an important ability to develop ( alongside genuine team working). Wish I had learnt that when I was younger and now I feel too old. I really admire that self confident quality in the women (and men) I work alongside in stem.

Maybe contact some of the larger engineering companies. Most of then would jump on this sort of thing

@olderthanyouthink I totally agree. I have a background in engineering and did an apprenticeship rather than go to uni.

@ErrolTheDragon

That reminds me to mention - my DD used to get vaguely pissed off by anything specifically aimed at girls, I think a reaction against well intentioned 'othering', possibly found it patronising.

One of the London unis - iirc KCL though that could be wrong, and I may be misremembering the detail slightly - had some sort of policy where at their school events, they didn't do anything special for girls. They just asked mixed sex schools to send equal numbers of girls and boys. So it didn't 'other', nor did it allow STEM to be seen as 'boys stuff'. That perhaps is a commendable approach, and from what I remember had a positive effect.

That’s really interesting thank you and something I do need to consider.

I will be piloting this before rolling it out to lots of schools. It might be that it doesn’t work. I will be asking for feedback from teachers and students too.

Smallpeice trust

Do you know about the Smallpeice trust. They promote stem to school age children.

Rebecca Riley is a good shout.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Bonnin

Liz Bonnin presents a lot of science shows on tv
LB

What are your parents like? The DCs school asked for parents to come in and talk about their jobs (very MC school). I'm a scientist and some of my (female) colleagues went in and talked about what we did to some of the youngest kids. Work loves us doing outreach so we got the time off work paid and a lot of learning materials for the kids which made us very popular. We did a bit of a presentation, and a couple of child friendly experiments. The kids were extremely appreciative. IME the majority of STEM ambassadors are female (lots of Mums but also lots of the youngest scientists).

Also Children Challenging Industry is a good option to look into. Not specifically aimed at girls though.

@Zipitydoodah

Also building the self confidence to put yourself 'out there' and not being afraid to make mistakes on the way and rock the boat (within reason!) Is such an important ability to develop ( alongside genuine team working). Wish I had learnt that when I was younger and now I feel too old. I really admire that self confident quality in the women (and men) I work alongside in stem.

I do agree with this. It took me until I was in my 40’s to find my confidence and to stop being so afraid of getting things wrong.

I might even get this completely wrong

@Missandra
Do not forget to talk to your local Science Learning Centre
and check out STEMnet
as you are joining a very crowded field so you need to know what your niche will be

Going to have to duck out now and do homework with the kids. Sorry I’ve not replied to everyone but each post has been really useful and very much appreciated

If you have seen it already I recommend this website
icould.com/
I’m a science teacher and I use lots of the clips of you women in STEM careers to expose my students to the possiblities.

I would say start with parents first, then women who work at local firms, then the "exemplars".

I went into computers because my whole family were or had been in the field. Mum was programming the traffic lights in London before I was born.
I have now had a whole career in computers and could talk about all manner of fun things I've done, places I've been etc. Surprisingly I have also got to use my foreign language qualifications in a few jobs.

I ended up doing stuff I wouldn't otherwise have considered because I saw people do it or knew people who did it and then you think, "that looks fun, how hard can it be?"

Normalize it normalize it normalize it.

And get a few "men in CHEN" (childcare, education and nursing) to come and talk about their work too, so all the kids get their career horizons broadened

Seconded 🙏

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Aderin-Pocock

look for STEM employers and ask if they have any young women who didn't got to uno that would be nice too, I remember someone coming and talking to us about Tech careers and it was a bit of a flop when they went pretty hard on uni is a must

There are many women in tech roles who haven't come through a traditional path of maths a-level, computer science at uni, computing grad scheme. Women are far more likely to have followed an unconventional path than men are. A degree can be useful- quite a few big employers like candidates to have a degree because they're common enough these days that you can be that picky. But not all employers insist on it, and even when they do, it doesn't have to be in a tech area. We have quite a few history grads, languages, too. I think it can make for more rounded employees, because they have a broader perspective on things.

Obviously there are some STEM roles where you need to have focused on sciences all the way through, but tech isn't one of them for many jobs. There is a huge range of tech jobs these days, so diverse experiences will be relevant somewhere in the industry, because who doesn't use tech in one form or another these days?

www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/n-to-s/lori-passmore/

Agree with looking for young women in your local community. If you want to point to school aged girls success with STEM, last year all US national middle school science prizes for the Broadcom Masters went to girls:
learningenglish.voanews.com/a/us-girls-take-top-science-prizes/5157173.html

Try railway companies. Doesn’t help you as we are in Australia, but my engineering SIL who specialises in railway signalling systems, is in high demand at girls in STEM events. Pretty much everyone loves trains.

The gender stereotyping video from 2016
I'm sure you've seen this but it is soo good

Hannah Fry; amazing mathematician, very funny and an all round lovely person

Have you heard of Ada Lovelace Day, OP? It’s all about women in STEM talking about their work & encouraging girls to get involved. Brilliant movement.

findingada.com/

Brilliant video thank you. It made me feel a bit emotional for some reason.

A huge thank you to everyone for all your input. It’s been a real help and has given me lots of ideas