The Challenge:
Middle school girls can form negative stereotypes about gender roles related to STEM education, which can ultimately lead to limited career opportunities in fast-growing STEM fields
The Solution:
What If we created a program that was designed to reach elementary and high school girls when they are most vulnerable to the societal pressures of what girls can and cannot do?
To date, we have served hundreds of students and built measurable teacher training programs that bring results. We have set up programs with administrators to integrate The Community Bots program into the curriculum. We work in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Spain.
“I thought only boys did robotics.”
And that quote is often echoed throughout K-12 schools throughout the world. It is one of the reasons why The Community Bots program was developed. The Community Bots is designed to provide training and equipment in STEM-robotics for girls in underserved communities around the world. The founders, who are educators in New York City, understand the importance of learning STEM-robotics and the impact it has on the confidence, strength, and academic success of young women. As educators, they have extended their passion in the field of science and technology to leading an after-school robotics program. As leaders in their field, they participated in the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) and RoboCupJunior at the national and international levels.
Leading all-girls robotics teams has supported the pathway to get more girls to participate in robotics and or STEM/engineering fields and to ensure robotics equipment used for yearly competitions was recycled and put to use in underserved communities. With their unique perspective and hands-on experience as a guide, The Community Bots was born. The equation for success is simple, train the teachers and continue to support them while they train the students. This approach leverages our impact in exponential ways.
As part of the program, The Community Bots celebrates the achievements of women in the STEM-robotics field. This is done by sharing examples of role models and setting up interviews with local women who can share their experiences and stories with the hope to inspire young women to explore and consider the possibility of choosing a path in the STEM field by listening to real-life examples of successful women in the field.
Statistics
- Women who hold STEM jobs compared to men in USA 27%
- Computer science degrees earned by women as compared to men in USA 18%
- Women with STEM degrees as compared to men in USA 24%
Source
More statistics: The State of Girls and Women in STEM
Women of color are underrepresented in STEM fields. Doctorate degrees in science and engineering
- Black women 2.7%
- Latina women 3.6%
- White / Asian women 86%
Overall, a higher percentage of bachelor’s degrees were awarded to females than to males in 2015–16 (58 vs. 42 percent). However, in STEM fields, a lower percentage of bachelor’s degrees were awarded to females than to males (36 vs. 64 percent). This pattern—in which females received higher percentages of bachelor’s degrees overall but lower percentages of bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields—was observed across all racial/ethnic groups.
NOTE: Data are for postsecondary institutions participating in Title IV federal financial aid programs. STEM fields include biological and biomedical sciences, computer and information sciences, engineering and engineering technologies, mathematics and statistics, and physical sciences and science technologies. Reported racial/ethnic distributions of students by level of degree, field of degree, and sex were used to estimate race/ethnicity for students whose race/ethnicity was not reported. Race categories exclude persons of Hispanic ethnicity. Although rounded numbers are displayed, the figures are based on unrounded data.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), Fall 2016, Completions component. See Digest of Education Statistics 2017, tables 318.45 and 322.30.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_reg.asp
You will find more infographics at Statista Today is the day!
Be part of the change. Help us bridge the gender gap in STEM fields while bringing in equipment and training to young women and teachers around the world.