education

Sandra Guy’s profile of Ford’s Explorer design team schooled us on how to highlight women in engineering by making the women’s work smart but not too girly:

[Jennifer] Brace, a user interface engineer in Ford’s Human-Machine Interface Group, said she made sure that the buttons on the touchscreens accommodate the touch of a woman’s fingernails.

The reality is that many women have long nails. Even my nails get on the longish end of the spectrum, so the idea that touch screens would recognize nails is awesome.

A mom with kids might prefer to see the most fuel-efficient route to her destination, or ask the SUV to find the nearest ice-cream parlor and watch the directions pop up.

Clearly someone knows parenthood. And it’s presented in a non-judgmental way and not in a “oh, look, a mommy car!” way.

Drivers of the new Explorer can give vocal commands for the SUV to “find Starbucks,” or “find parking” or, Richardson’s favorite, “find a shoe store,” and the vehicle’s navigation technology does just that.

Cause what woman doesn’t drive around once in awhile thinking, “If only I could find X?” but can’t take time to stop and type that question into the GPS system? And yes, by using shoe shopping, it targets women, again without being condescending.

Though female engineers are widely scattered among small, medium and large private companies, these women — who are based at Ford Motor Co. headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. — represent the 12.2 percent who work for companies with 25,000 or more employees, according to the National Science Foundation’s 2006 Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System surveys, the latest available.

Julie Levine and Julie Rocco, commonly called the two Julies, work alternate days except for Wednesdays, when they tag-team their job.

In preparing for the Explorer’s introduction at the Ford plant, the two women met many times a week to pore over a matrix with 1,400 items covering 13 pages, trying to figure out solutions for each issue.

Loved this part the most! Guy presents the big issue in the field – the lack of women – but frames it as a positive WITH a solution as to how two of the women stay in the field – job sharing!

The two Julies describe their job-sharing arrangement like a marriage, and credit it with providing them the type of work-life balance that allows them to be involved in their children’s activities.

“We trust each other completely and work toward the same goal,” Rocco said. “That’s what makes it successful.”

Ahhh…such a wonderful end to an inspiring story AND it helps to debunk the myth that women can’t work together in a positive, respectful and empowering manner, especially when working in a dude-dominated field.

This isn’t Guy’s only example of tooting the horn of women in science, engineering and technology without painting it in pink and giggles. I only wish the Sun-Times archives went back further to show you! But there was just something about her latest column that really hit me in the heart and gut. Maybe it was because my campus’ fall semester had just started and I was still on that high I get during the first weeks of reconnecting with returning students and basking in the new energy of new students. Maybe I’m just getting old and sappy. Or maybe I am just damn tired of people thinking that the only way to get girls interested in science is to paint it pink and throw glitter on it. And I love glitter! Instead Guy takes the time to find amazing women doing interesting and socially important (something that is important to many women and girls!) things with their science skills and profiles them. Hopefully parents and teachers are cutting these profiles out and using them in science classes from kindergarten on up to college.

Thanks Sandra Guy!

The things that become viral are unpredictable. Earlier this month a few friends on Facebook posted a link to a Fermilab webpage that showcased 31 seventh graders drawings of scientists before and after a visit with actual scientists. I re-posted it and then a few others did as well. I saw others on Twitter tweeting it. It wasn’t the double rainbow guy viral, but it certainly seemed to be spreading.

All the children learned something about who a scientist is. Sometimes their drawings didn’t change much, but their description did. The biggest difference I noticed was that the myth of a lab coat died that day. All the scientists the kids met that day seemed to wear jeans and sweaters or button down shirts. Which is pretty much what most of the scientists I know do wear.

A few of the drawings really touched me, especially Sandra‘s. Not only did she start off already picturing a woman as a scientist, but after meeting some scientists she tossed the lab coat and commented about all the fun things that scientists do in their lives. Plus her drew a woman and a man holding hands. Awww…

But wait…I started to notice that some of the girls (I tallied 4) started off with a white male scientist and then evolved to a woman scientist. One girl might have gone from woman to man. So what about the boys? All of them stayed with a male scientist drawing. Eric seems to be the only student to change from a white scientist to a non-white scientist. That is a bit unclear as crayon skin tones are hard to decipher in some of the drawings.

Does this mean that boys only met male scientists? Or did they simply draw scientists who they connected with? Did the boys leave Fermilab that day with the idea that girls can be scientists too? Will they support their girlfriends who want to take AP Computer Science? Support their wives who need to embark for three-weeks in the field? Yes, I know I’m being totally heteronormative, but this is where some tension develops.

My job is to ensure that the women majoring in science and engineering on my campus have a supportive community. But you know what, we have a few awesome men who attend our events and request mentors. I like to think it’s because our office is delivering a great service and some men could care less that the program they are attending is run by women, for women and featuring women because in the end, it’s still all science and engineering. And for me, that’s progress.

So while I’m all “Go Girl!” I also know that if we ignore our boys, the revolution will never be complete.

By the way…this drawing experiment? It’s ten years old.

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The amount and length of graduation ceremonies has proliferated a great deal since my days in K-12. Not only are 5^th and 8^th grade promotions growing ever more elaborate (with increasingly questionable choices of attire), now there are even kindergarten and pre-school ceremonies.

A friend recently shared with me that her eighteen-month-old was put in a cap and gown at his daycare graduation. What’s next, popping a miniature tasseled hat on newborns to honor their graduation from womb to non-umbilical-cord-dependent-existence?

Another acquaintance noted he has twenty-two graduation ceremonies to attend. Twenty-two??? I hope he is flush considering each graduate likely expects a gift!

I get the importance of honoring achievements and communally celebrating life’s passages, but our culture’s graduation overload runs the risk of cheapening worthy accomplishments. When you get photos, gifts, and pomp starting with “daycare graduation,” might’nt the allure of a college graduation have a been-there-done-that type of feel by the time one gets there?

The popularity of graduation ceremonies and parties in our culture is further evidenced by the endless consumer opportunities: Buy professional photos of your three-year-olds pre-school graduation! Purchase a kindergarten-promotion DVD! Get your hummer limo rented now for 5^th grade graduation Pay for a select group of your classmates to have exclusive entry into an amusement park! Get your graduating 8^th grader a new laptop or designer purse! Or, as this mom suggests, offer a trip to wherever they want to go in Europe! For your high-school graduate, how about a new car or new boobs? What better time to surgically alter yourself “for the better” before you head off to college?

From the cards to the flowers to the photos to the gift certificates, if you are not spending on your young grad, the message is that you must not care. And this – the conflation of achievement with expenditure – is problematically championed from birth on.

This commodification of achievement is further evidenced via the fashion at such events. At my daughter’s 5^th grade promotion, high heels adored the tiny 11-year-old feet and some of the dresses rivaled those seen at Hollywood awards ceremonies.

When young people are schooled to believe achievement is consecrated via consumerism, academic accomplishments go by the wayside. Instead of celebrating brain power, dedication, and hard-work, graduates are encouraged to focus on the cut of their dress, the height of their heels, the size of their after-graduation party.

Whatever happened to good-ole graduation certificates/diplomas and perhaps a few flowers? Those days are gone it seems in this culture of consumerized kids…

Sexy geek. Sexy nerd. Tina Fey.

Lately it’s been just fine that women are smart…as long as we’re also smoking hot.

In a recent article at WomeneNews, Danica McKeller revealed the name of her upcoming and third in a series of math books for girls – “Hot X: Algebra Exposed.” Oh my.

At the 2010 Chicago Women in Science symposium a speaker’s talk was about how women can use our womanly skills to get ahead in science. It wasn’t a talk about wearing short skirts, but rather embracing ones femininity and the apparent skills that go along with that like multi-tasking. One of my former students told me she was offended by part of that presentation. Another student told me she felt that if she emphasized her girlishness, she would be kicked out of her lab for not being serious or at least not taken seriously. Both agreed that there were some excellent points in the presentation as well.

On one hand, there is still a strong stereotype of who does science and math: a nerd. There are some people who believe that this stereotype is one reason why we don’t have more women in science, technology, engineering and math. Even if this is 10% of the reason, is the answer calendars of nude students? What about model engineers?

Back to McKeller’s book title. She’s making a career out of pinkifying math and making, like, math all girly with questions about text messages and shopping. So what does it mean that she’s making a sexual innuendo in the title of a book aimed at the algebra set? Nowadays, high schools expect kids to be taking algebra freshmen year, if not sooner. So that’s what, 14-15 years in age? Grown women with PhDs modeling is one thing, hell even college students stripping down for a calendar (which will haunt their Senate campaign one day) is a different discussion. They are adults. But should a math book for teens be sexualized? Aren’t their lives sexualized enough?

We have a lot of issues to tackle on this road to fairness and equity. Do we really need to add sex into the mix?

Contrary to what Tina Fey said in “Women News” about no one caring, I care that there are four women in space. But I get what she means. While this accomplishment did make some headlines, it wasn’t given the coverage that a certain golf tournament was given. And that’s really sad.

One of the women orbiting our world is Stephanie Wilson and she took the opportunity to encourage women and women of color to apply to the astronaut program. But before we can get more women to apply to be astronauts we need to get more women and girls to believe that they can do it. Not just outer space, but math, science and engineering.

Last month AAUW released a new report called “Why So Few?” AND they attempted a live webcast of the report release and expert panel. I say attempted as there were some technology issues, but I give them a lot of credit for even attempting a webcast of a live event. We need more webcasts like this. As I was on trying to listen to the presentation, a good number of my colleagues from around the country were on the webcast watching and chatting. We exchanged ideas and resources. How else would we get together like this? So big thumbs up! You can watch the day’s events on the archived video too.

You should also read the report too. It’s a good read for the general public. In other words, you don’t need a Ph.D. to get it. It goes into a lot of basic things, but the one theory I want to leave you with is this: We don’t teach our kids the beauty of struggle.

We far too easily praise our kids when they do something easily. I’m guilty of this with my daughter.

But when was the last time we praised our kids when they struggled? When they took a few attempts to get a math problem correct? To sound out a word and attempt to look it up?

Science is about the struggle to find an answer. When we don’t teach that, we set our kids up to fail when they stumble. Especially our girls, who too often strive for perfection.

Since this report, I’m trying even harder than before, to show my daughter that I am flawed, that I make mistakes and that I struggle to get to an answer. Whether this will get her to be launched into space in 30 years…Who knows? By then, I hope to be vacationing up there.

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Last month I held a giveaway and Kim won! In an effort for people to not think I rigged it for one of my good bloggy friends, I asked Twitter to pick a number 1-3 and ratsamy said ‘2.’ Congrats to Kim!

Here’s what I had to say in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

I confess: I dread this time of year. It might sound strange coming from the executive director of the National Women’s Studies Association, but Women’s History Month reminds me of our education system’s failures.

I hope you’ll read the full op-ed, and especially my ideas for solutions, and let me know your hopes for this time next year.

Happy Women’s History Month Girl w/Pen Family!!

The best and worst part of being a science grrl is that most people in my life know that I’m all “Women can do math and science!” I’m such a big cheerleader for math and science that some people are fearful to admit to me that they think science is boring or they hate math. When I go into mini-lectures diagnosing why someone thinks they are bad at math or is in fact bad at math, I usually discover that there was a bad teacher who specifically told my friend that they couldn’t do math, sometimes because my friend was a girl. There are times when we chat and realize that science and engineering was never fully explained or explored.

That’s why I love science documentaries! How else is a kid in the middle of Kansas going to know the amazement of marine biology? How else was math going to reel me in if it weren’t for Donald Duck and his magic billiard shots in Mathmagic Land? We, grown-ups/parents/mentors/awesome aunties, need to find ways to show how awesome science, math, technology and engineering can be for the young people in our lives.

In that spirit, the Smithsonian Channel launched a new series of shows on Sunday focused on women in science with “A Woman Among Wolves.” The show is exciting, highlights women and did I mention exciting? Toss out the old image of scientists stuck inside with shiny white lab coats! They are outside with wolves and bats.

So what if these shows don’t spark an interest in science? Use it as a springboard to talk about other fields. Are the bats too gross? What other animals would the kid in your life want to follow around and watch? Maybe animals aren’t their thing? Plants? Stars? Their MP3 player?

Science is everywhere and with the proper prompt a great conversation can help you introduce a kid to science or engineering. Need some help? Catch the 6th Annual 24 hour Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering. Find a website like SciGirls.

Most of us were raised to think of math and science as intimidating. Something for the chosen few. As a chemistry professor I work with likes to say, “If I can do it, so can you.”

And to start you off in the wonderful world of science and fun, I am giving away a gift pack from the Smithsonian! Leave a comment with your email address and that’s your entry. That’s it.

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Do you live in the Cleveland area? Come meet me at the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women at Case Western Reserve University on Thursday, March 18th at 7 pm for “Translating the F-Word: Defining Feminism in a Multicultural Society” with Siobhan Brooks and Courtney Martin.

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My daughter turned eleven this week. Though I agree with Allison Kimmich’s earlier post, which argued that it’s great to be a girl here in 2010, I can’t help but worry that growing up female in our culture still results in growing down.

Some examples to ponder:

When my daughter and I went to the mall to have her ears pierced last Saturday, we were deluged with anorexic size mannequins in thongs and barely-there bras.

Later, at the movies, we watched yet another film with a male protagonist (which included a male sidekick who ogled females throughout the entire movie).

For school, she worked on yet another dead white male report.

On television, she is still inundated by stories that focus on a girls looks and emphasize romance and/or beauty as the most important pursuits for a girl.

In music, there are undoubtedly many power-house female musicians, but this seems dampened by all the singing of ‘ho’s’ and ‘get-lows.’

Yet, there are positive aspects to each of these observations. At the mall, my daughter noticed the sexualization of the mannequins and complained about it, showing her awareness that our culture objectifies women in damaging ways (and revealing what I like to think is more feminist awareness in the culture generally). As for the film we watched, it did include one rockin’ strong girl character – only one, but one is better than none. As for books, we are able to find many feminist-friendly reads to fill her endless reading desires (and she subscribes to New Moon, a great feminist magazine for girls). Television may be the area most difficult to put a positive spin on, but at least there are more girl-driven shows. As for school, in general I think there is more emphasis on a diversified curriculum, one that offers more than the hetero white male view of the world.

However, I wish we had come further since I turned eleven back in 1982. The Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass that year, and has yet to be ratified. Laura Ingalls was still rocking the prairie feminism in “”Little House on the Prairie,” and my mom watched a show driven by the super-heroines “Cagney and Lacey.” Sure, Daisy wasn’t wearing much in “Dukes of Hazzard” and Suzanne Sommers was the stereotypical blonde ditz “Three’s Company,” but at least we had the strong mom and daughter trio of “One Day at a Time.” In music, female power abounded via the likes of the GoGos, Joan Jett, and Stevie Nicks. And ET, the top grossing film of the year, gave us one of my longtime favorite female actresses, Drew Barrymore. It was the year Women’s History Week was officially recognized, which has happily expanded to an entire month. (Ah, would that we could have inclusive history year round!)

In my hazy recollections of being eleven in 1982, I recall feeling I could be or do anything I set my sites on. I think here, in 2010, my daughter feels the same despite the fact popular culture still inundates her with the message she is only a sex object, only good for how she can please men, only important so long as she “plays by the rules” and shrinks to fit the mold of the “ideal female.”

As her world expands to include more ideas and experiences, her body is still expected to shrink to fit ever smaller and tighter fashions. As she grows up, the “queen be” culture at school seems to become ever meaner and more judgmental. As she is able to watch “more grown up” television and films, she is introduced incessant sexualization, dehumanization, and silencing of females. And, as her body starts to show the markers of womanhood, she will undoubtedly become more battered by the male gaze of a culture that is more pornified than ever.

Alas, growing up for girls in our culture in many ways still means growing down – but with feminist moms like ourselves guiding our daughters as they grow, I take heart in the fact that many girls are given the opportunity to expand their thinking, their horizons (and yes, even their bodies) without exhortations to “be quiet and diet.”

This month BODY LANGUAGE welcomes Suzanne Kelly, writing her first guest post for Girl w/Pen!, as she takes to heart the literal matter of body language.

Suzanne teaches in the Women’s Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz.

A few weeks ago, scanning The New York Times for something weighty, I fell upon feminist science writer Natalie Angier’s thoughtful retelling of a new study in the burgeoning field of embodied cognition. The study revealed how our ability to process information is not a function of the brain alone, but of language’s perpetual play with and through our bodies as a whole. Angier explained how when study participants were asked to think of a past event, for example, they consistently “leaned slightly backward,” and when they were asked to envision what was to come, “they listed to the fore… ”subliminally act[ing] out metaphors in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.”

That “the body embodies abstractions the best way it knows how: physically,” as Angier put it, that it literally “takes language to heart,” comes as no surprise to me. When I’m writing and it seems as if the words won’t budge, I’m also often crumpled up at my desk – legs tucked under, torso rounded. If I stretch, realign, and maybe go for a run, the flow usually returns. When my ideas are at their stickiest so too, it seems, is my body.

That our thoughts, however intangible, are more than the sum of what goes on inside our skulls is also hardly a revelation to those of us who have long positioned the body’s knowledge at the heart of feminist theory and practice. Still, studies like this (and brilliant writers like Angier who are skilled at bringing their importance to light) always give me hope, especially when they’re given voice by the mainstream media. Might this be a sign of a new legitimacy of the body, one from which feminism could no doubt benefit?

I have written elsewhere about the value of “the sensuous classroom,” of education that takes seriously the presence of the body. If our “bodies embody abstractions…physically,” as this study suggests, what do we learn, not only from our own bodies, but from being in and around the bodies of others? In thinking about the transmission of ideas and the potential for changing consciousness, what is lost, for instance, in teaching Women’s Studies classes on-line, engaged in conversations about bodies, while removed from each other’s? How do we significantly combat unattainable body images, or think seriously about questions of disability, when our bodies are not part of the venue?

These same questions hold for our activism, as well. Would consciousness raising groups have proved as powerful had they happened on cell phones? What did those women’s bodies communicate to one another that gave them the courage to leave unhappy marriages, end the cycle of violence, and love other women? That enabled them to fight for legal abortion, childcare, and better wages?

Because body centered issues remain central, if not heightened, feminist concerns today – from the image of the female body, to eating disorders and the foods around which they revolve, to abortion and contraception, to health and its care, to intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault, and, of course, to sex itself – it seems more vital now than ever for us to place our bodies front and center, to give them substance in our conversations as well as in our collective actions.

Of course, as we speed toward a near-virtual future and as our physical distance from each other exponentially grows, it becomes more of a challenge to find ways to speak, to share, to formulate conversation, to engage thought and transform it into action – in the flesh. But we can do better.

No doubt, our bodies know it.

Last month a research paper hit the education wires with a vengeance. Apparently girls can learn to be anxious about math from their teachers. Holy crow!

Considering that the vast majority of teachers in elementary schools are women, can we pin the dearth of women in science & engineering on Mrs. Hart (my second grade teacher’s real name!)? Ashley doesn’t think so:

But could the girls’ math anxiety be passed on from their male teachers as well?  We won’t know from this article, because no male teachers were part of the study. I also believe that this study does show us some interesting data about female teachers and their female students.  But I also believe we cannot blame female teachers for this whole problem, and in order to figure out what really changes girls’ attitudes toward math and science, we need to conduct a study that is fair to the teachers and the students, and that requires a study that includes teachers and students of all genders.

She has some good points, but after reading the study, I have to disagree. The lack of men teachers in the study is the lack of men teachers period. I also believe that at this moment, we need to focus on why girls learn to be anxious about math. Because despite girls being well represented in higher math classes in high school, they still don’t believe they have what it takes to go into science & engineering. Women who drop out of science and engineering have the same GPA to women who stay [PDF]. And women who leave science & engineering do so with higher grades than the men who stay [PDF]. Anxiety is a real issue with women and girls and we must address it. I also think we need to reexamine how we teach “success” to girls and women.

Tracy Ormsbee confesses that as a mom she has said math anxious things to her daughter, but studies have shown that parents and teachers are two of the top influences in how children choose career paths. If Mom is always avoiding math and Mrs. Gerry (hey to my 1st grade teacher!) is too, what message does that send to a young girl? A girl in the midst of puberty trying to figure out if it’s true that boys don’t like smart girls?

Mrs. Gerry & Mrs. Hart never sent a whiff of math anxiety my way. In fact they never let me slack when it came to math. They set a standard that other teachers carried on until I was in high school.

While I don’t blame women teachers for their math anxiety or for the lack of women going into science & engineering, I do think it is something to examine and address.

I just had the honor to listen to President Shirley Ann Jackson and one of her points about increasing our production of American-born scientists & engineers (men and women) is to increase the scientific literacy of every teacher out there. How can they steer a girl with mad math skills towards computer science if they don’t know what computer scientists do?

Instead let’s take this study and look at how much math and science our elementary teachers do need to know. Let’s look at what their continuing education is teaching them about science & engineering (another point from Pres. Jackson). There isn’t time for blame. There’s only time for action. Let’s get to it.