Challenges
north_star
Entry ID #: 3584
Created: Wed, Jan 11, 2017 7:42 AM
Girl Powered By: Sam Moss According to the National Girls Collaborative Project, only 19.3% of engineering degrees are given to women every year, while 80.7% are given to men. This shows a major gap in the engineering career field between men and women. Because of this, it is very difficult for aspiring females engineers to be taken seriously, and makes it a challenge for them to join into engineering and robotics groups within their time spent in high school and college. Girls are seen as just joining to flirt with the guys, or as just making fun of the group. This makes it so that when girls try to join, they are not included in the group, and must try much harder then the men to get into the same position. This goes to show how detrimental gender roles are to our society. This is very similar to what happened to me during my ventures to become an engineer. One day, I saw a poster on the wall at my school, advertising a new robotics club that was starting up. That sounded amazing! I had always loved robots, and have been wanting to do something like this ever since I learned what the word robot meant. After I saw this poster, I devoted all the free time I had to learning more about robotics. I learned what ever part of a robot did, the different types of robots, and even how to program! I spent weeks doing nothing but this, every chance I got. I couldn’t wait for the club to start. I wanted to show the teacher and the other kids in the club everything I could do. Finally, the day of the club meeting arrived. I couldn’t wait for school to end so I could finally go. The hours went by as quickly as dripping molasses: aggravatingly slow. The minutes turned to hours and the hours felt like entire days! At long last, the final bell rang. I grabbed my backpack, and almost ran out of the room. I walked down the halls after my last class, a smile stretching from ear to ear. For the third time, I checked the room number on the poster: Room 215. I paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and stepped through the doorway to what I hoped would be the rest of my life. The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was the people already there: all males. I felt the eyes of everyone in the room fall upon me as I walked up to an open desk towards the back, and took my seat. "Sorry I'm late." "Oh that's alright," the man standing in the front of the room laughed, "We were just about to start!" Perfect, I hadn't missed anything yet. "Wait, you're a girl!" Everyone in the class began to point, and laugh. "Leave!" I didn't. They then respected my decision, and began to accept me as part of the group.