“We need more girls and women to get involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). There just has to be a heightened awareness ... It just takes all of us shouting on the topic.” Nicole Anderson, the executive director of philanthropy at AT&T said.
Fifty-seven percent of girls said if they pursued a STEM career they would have to work harder than a man to be taken seriously, found a recent study of girls and STEM careers by The Girl Scout Research Institute found. Suzanne Harper, chief girl experience innovator for Girl Scouts said that science courses don’t teach how STEM careers improve the world and this lacking information keeps female students from pursuing science careers.
Influncers "tend to push girls toward fields that are not STEM fields” Nixon-Saintil, director of education for the Verizon Foundation said. Three quarters of middle-school aged girls express an interest in science yet less than one percent of high-school aged women select computer science as a college major. In 2010 only 28 percent of the STEM workforce were women.
Research has shown kids realize they want to be scientists around third grade, Harper said. This means that right now 700,000 girl scouts are at that pivotal moment when they think they could be scientists, Harper said.
This is why Girl Scouts and its various partners, including AT&T, work to instill a love of science in girls at a young age and develop that as girls mature. The two have developed a program called Imagine Your STEM Future where women in various STEM fields come to groups around the country and talk to girls about all the different science careers they can choose from — and the ways they can benefit the world if they do.
When Verizon launched the Verizon Innovative App Challenge a few years ago, around half of the winners in the first two years were girls and girls in middle school and high school wanted to use their technological prowess to improve their communities. The girls who participated in the program were nearing the end of their high school careers, so Verizon will know in the next two years whether the program helped them decide to stick with STEM classes.
AT&T has also devised a number of programs that get girls up close and personal with women already working in STEM careers. AT&T employees talk with girls about their tech careers and the company donates money and offers scholarships to various groups, like Girls Who Code, to keep girls interested in STEM fields.
SOURCE
fusion.net
fusion.net
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