When
the Gender Bias in STEM campaign was announced on the Hear Me website I
was excited by the prospect of collecting stories from kids in New
Zealand. I am originally from the United States and was interested in
gathering an international perspective to see how cultural differences
might influence ones perceptions on gender as it relates to skill.
During
an Hour of Code event in Wellington, New Zealand I collected stories
alongside programmer Seth Kenlon. We set up a booth where attendees
could choose to be interviewed in-between sessions on video game
programming and robotics.
We
had no age requirements, but our interviewees ended up being quite
young, between the ages of 8 and 11. I was surprised to hear that many
of them didn’t seem to have even entertained the notion that gender
might influence a person’s interests and skills. When we told the kids
that statistically, there are more boys who choose to study STEM topics
than girls, half of them said they weren’t aware of the statistic, then
went silent.
The
only real, strong declaration of gender bias came from a young girl,
Paisley, who proudly asserted that boys weren’t good at art. When
probed to expand upon her reasoning she said simply “I’ve seen a lot of
boys at school who don’t draw as well as girls.“ The boys we
interviewed were incredibly perceptive, most of them stating that they
thought boys and girls were equal in regards to skill. However, they
expanded on those ideas by questioning whether everyone shared the same
set of interests. Each boy supposed that the primary drive to learn
something was an interest in the subject, and the opportunity to pursue
those interests. They didn’t question where interests originate, but
didn’t attribute it to gender, either.
A
more general observation of our time collecting interviews was the
shyness of many of the kids. On many questions, they declared that they
didn’t have any opinion. I’ve yet to meet a kid who doesn’t have a
favourite subject, even if it is just lunch. They were all very wiling
to participate, but when the microphone was on they were hesitant to
speak up. Though it would be a pain from a recording standpoint, Seth
and I wonder if our interviewees might have had more to say in a group
setting where they are already accustom to making themselves heard.
As
this campaign progresses in many different cities and schools, I am
interested to hear how responses might vary throughout the pre-teen and
teen years. As a technology educator, I have witnessed first-hand the
drastic drop off of female students through the teen years in
technology-based subject. I feel getting more responses throughout a
diverse age range may provide important data. Do perceptions about the
skills sets of boys and girls change? If so, when and why do they
change? Data about this is well worth gathering and studying, to
understand the trend, and to learn how we educators and mentors
might influence this.