Girls in STEM
Girls deserve to be
part of the conversation
What's the problem?
It’s no secret that the statistics regarding women in STEM fields are bleak. As a woman in STEM, I wanted to help create a better world for my kids. My daughter and son deserve a world where people can follow their passions, no matter what their gender, race, or income level. Your kids deserve that too.
Why is diversity in STEM important?
In short, it makes life better for everyone to widen the data pool, even the people who are currently the majority in these fields. It’s simple science; the wider your data pool, the better your results. Science and engineering are all about finding answers to problems. But you can’t answer a question you don’t understand, and you can’t ask a question you don’t even know you need to ask! People living in Hawaii, for instance, don’t have to worry about snow removal. So if your snow removal company is based on a tropical island, you might not understand all the challenges that come with snow removal. If all the people in a technology or engineering company are from the same background, they will probably encounter all the same kinds of problems. Then everyone from different backgrounds gets left out, and their problems never get solved. Making sure EVERYONE has a seat at the table to both ask and help solve problems makes the answers better, stronger, and more useful.
What can we do?
In 2015, I partnered with a friend, also from a STEM field, to create the Renegade Girls Tinkering Club, a mom-run 501(c)3 non-profit providing our unique summer and after school enrichment programs for girls-only and coed groups in San Francisco, CA. Our goal is to scaffold engineering, science, and math skills, and build confidence for girls in grades k-5 through fun, hands-on projects.
We are a small non-profit, but follow the philosophy “do all the good you can, for all the people you can, wherever you can.” We reach about a thousand kids a year. Yay!