Girls in Tech — What Stops Girls Moving from Concept to Creation?
A leading charity recently noted something interesting and a little distressing. During video game design competitions split into concept and making, girls gravitated toward the concept category. The number of girls getting involved in actually making the games was much lower. We wondered, what makes girls shy away from turning their concepts into real-life creations?
A Boys’ Club
Sadly, for many years, the world of video games has been viewed very much as a boys’ club. Women in games have been treated very badly over the years. A trolling campaign in 2014 targeted multiple video game players, creators, and even journalists — simply for being women. Yet at the same time, the percentage of gamers who are women or girls fluctuates between 38 and 48% — hardly a small amount. But when women in tech industries like gaming are publicly abused or ignored, it’s no wonder that girls might stifle their desires to become makers and creators like their male counterparts.
Women and Girls in STEM
Thankfully, STEM education and opportunities for girls are improving. In 2019, there were one million women enjoying STEM-based occupations. Yet the key technology roles held by women in the UK hasn’t increased since 2009, and is still holding at 16 to 17%. Only 50,000 women work in engineering in Britain, and the percentage of women working in technician roles, with hands-on responsibilities, has actually fallen recently.
The key to this could be that STEM subjects still, even now, aren’t seen as an obvious route for girls to follow. Sometimes, this is because parents simply don’t realise that STEM is a part of daily life. It’s the social media we use, the logistics behind our deliveries, the big data warehousing behind all those annoying emails, and automated text messages. It’s part of every phone app, every medical procedure, and part of manufacturing just about any new product.
Another factor is a lack of support once girls get to the career choice route. Because less girls take STEM subjects, there’s a created (and false) preconception that less girls want to move into STEM. Tech education for girls should be at the same level as it is for boys, but because educators expect less girls to be involved due to gender stereotyping, they fail to encourage or lookout for girls who are curious, openminded, or passionate about technology or science.
Lack of Role Models
This is where the crux of the matter comes. Girls are failing to make that jump from concept to creation because they can’t see enough girls and women in tech who are making it work. If schools fail to spot and encourage aptitude in STEM subjects, the universities get fewer girls applying for core STEM degrees. There are then fewer women going out into the world of science and technology, which means fewer women to look up to.
When women get into tech roles, they often find themselves in a sideways career progression rather than moving upwards like their male peers. This can be due to confidence, the lack of peer support, or an unsupportive work environment. Again, because there are comparatively few women makers out there, the support network for ambitious and technically minded women is limited. So, who do our young makers look up to?
The Good News
The good news is that girls are beginning to move into the world of creating making things. According to Go Construct, 37% of new entrants into the construction industry are now women, shattering misconceptions about this being a “boys only” industry. The number of women architects is increasing, and there are some inspiring women leading the way in the robotics industry. However, there are still not enough young women who are encouraged to have confidence in their ability to craft and create new inventions, new ways of doing things or make innovative changes to existing technologies.
How to Help Your Girls Get into Making
Making isn’t just about preparing girls for a role in science or technology. It’s about having fun, experimenting, and that awesome sense of achievement at having created something new!
· Get your girls set up on a game like Minecraft and have fun with the “educational” section, which is much more about fun than serious learning. Kids learn about how scientific formulas work, how to mix chemicals, and even the periodic table, whilst making cool things to use in their game.
· Find a peer to peer learning group that will allow your girls to see other girls their own age or similar enjoying hands-on projects.
· Find out about robotics projects you can do at home.
· Look out for free courses via platforms like Future Learn which cover subjects like Raspberry Pi and Python, helping your kids get to grip with code whilst creating something new like an adventure game.
One of the best things you can do for your girls is to talk about the technology that’s involved in their favourite things. Do they love fashion? Talk about wearable technology and how they think it could be made better. Are they phone-obsessed? Have a chat about how they’d go about making the perfect app. When your girls understand the enormous impact technology has on their favourite things, they might just become inspired to make something amazing of their own.
