All our signature Girls Get WISE Events, one-day retreats and summer camps, feature a round-robin style mentoring session where small groups of participants meet and chat with women working in various STEM careers. Upon reviewing the evaluations from these events, where we ask participants to rank all the sessions on a scale from 1-5, our role model sessions average a 4.3. This isn’t surprising to me as the participants often leave this session very excited, and this is above hands-on STEM sessions like coding or extracting DNA from fruit! The importance of exposing girls to women STEM role models cannot be understated. In Canada only 20% of STEM jobs are occupied by women (Perreault et al, 2018), even though women make up nearly half of the Canadian workforce (47.4%). Diversity breeds innovation, it allows for different perspectives and ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, just what we need to help tackle the important issues of our time, such as climate change. As the effects of climate change disproportionately impact women around the world, we need more women in STEM to be part of the solution. The majority of girls that WISEatlantic engages with are between the ages of 12 and 16, the age when they may be starting to seriously consider what sort of career they may want to pursue. Research with girls in this age group by González-Pérez et al (2020) showed that role-model intervention has a positive and significant effect on mathematics enjoyment, importance attached to math, expectations of success in math, and girls’ aspirations in STEM, and a negative effect on gender stereotypes. This study was done with 304 girls in similar role model arrangements to ours, informal with multiple diverse female role models, and ensuring that role models speak to how their jobs help society. Our own research has also shown that engaging girls in this way significantly impacts their interest in pursuing these professions (Franz-Odendaal et al. 2020). It’s encouraging to have data that backs-up what I’ve seen anecdotally through our own role model sessions; that exposing young girls to women role models in a variety of STEM careers helps them to see themselves in those careers in the future. Here is a snippet of feedback we’ve received from girls at various Girls Get WISE events, this feedback was taken from our general ‘leave a comment’ section of our evaluations: “The role model session helped to round out questions I had about university.” “The Role Model session was really great because you get to explore various careers and see how it worked for those people and how their hard work paid off.” “Really enjoyed hearing about different jobs from the role models.” It can be easy to assume that the girls would be more interested in the hands-on STEM activities during our events, and for some this is the case, but for a good portion of the participants connecting with role models leaves a lasting and positive impression. Another activity that we’ve done with participants, one we call ‘Budgeting for Life’, has been a big hit. In this activity the girls randomly choose either a STEM career or a non-STEM career and plan a budget around the typical salary for their career. The girls use a budget template on Excel and have to account for typical expenses such as rent/mortgage, transportation, food, etc. We have them search for and find a place to live that fits within their budget and discuss discretionary spending. Through this type of activity the girls learn quite quickly the typical salary difference between a STEM and non-STEM job and just how much things cost, which is always more than they expect! We’ve had comments from participants that they wished this activity was longer they enjoyed it so much. I think activities like this paired with exposure to STEM role models can be very beneficial in showcasing the positive aspects of a career in STEM, and hopefully encourage more girls to seriously consider these careers. You may be wondering how YOU as a parent, caregiver, or teacher can assist with showcasing women STEM role models to the girl(s) in your life, here are a few ways:
- Do any of your friends or family members work in STEM? If so, ask if they would speak about their career with the young girls you know.
- There are many great books out now that feature Women in STEM, we have a list of some of them on our website, http://www.wiseatlantic.ca/resources/?subject=stem
- Check out programs like Techsploration, Terranaut Club, Diversity of Nature, CAGIS, all programs that expose youth to role models in STEM. We have compiled these into a pamphlet, available at, http://www.wiseatlantic.ca/resources/?subject=edi
- Are you a teacher? Schedule a virtual Career Corner session with WISEatlantic for your class, we will arrange for 3-4 female STEM role models to interact with your class in careers of your choosing. You can arrange a session any time by contacting WISEatlantic@msvu.ca
- We also have a series of posters and career booklets featuring local Women in STEM, you can order these at any time by contacting us at the email listed above. They are also available for download on our website at http://www.wiseatlantic.ca/resources/?subject=career-exploration. Also available on this page is our Budgeting for Life activity mentioned above.
But above all, encourage girls to be curious and don’t miss an opportunity to show them that women ARE doing STEM jobs, excelling at them, and so can they! References: Franz-Odendaal, TA, French F, Joy, P and Blotnicky K. 2020. Math self-efficacy and the likelihood of pursuing a STEM-based career: a comparative analysis of girls versus boys and the impacts of an all-girls Science camp. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. González-Pérez, S., Mateos de Cabo, R., Sáinz, M. (2020). Girls in STEM: Is It a Female Role-Model Thing? Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 11. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02204 Perreault, A., Franz-Odendaal, T., Langelier, E., Farenhorst, A., Mavriplis, C., Shannon, L. (2018). Analysis of the distribution of gender in STEM fields in Canada. Version 1.1.