2018 Women in Engineering Empowerment Essay – Gabby Kistner

As many have anticipated the portrayal of women in STEM(science, technology, engineering and math) fields has not risen in multiple years. Some fear women’s representation is decreasing. In order dissolve this concern someone must take action on this account. Furthermore, actions such as promotional , fairs, and interactive studies must be implemented into the daily lives of the world’s best and brightest, children.  Children hold dreams and can change the future for the better, so starting with the younger generation becomes the best way to improve the image of women within the STEM fields and can eventually increase the number within these programs.

One idea that should be implemented is a fair of interactive booths of different jobs in the STEM fields in which women participate. Bring the fair to the public schools.  Show the kids and others all the new and exciting and unusual jobs and careers that STEM classes can be available to individuals.  Opportunities and excitement can be presented with the idea that there is more to look forward to than being a teacher, doctor, or policeman. They can be anything they want to be a researcher, engineer, designer, mathematician, computer technician, statistician, analyst and many more.  The more encouragement we give through these fields the more kids and girls will be willing to seek out these types of career options. The biggest obstacle in implementing this will be getting people to come, which can be fixed by putting up promotionals and advertisements about the fair and where and when it will occur.

 Another idea would be to include a new course within high schools called Women throughout History. This class should include going over the important women and their jobs within the US. Not only showing what they did as regular people, but also showing and going in depth about the women, who have made a difference in our country, such as Madam Curie. The women should be those recognized in regular history books and also those that you don’t hear a lot about such as the women within NASA during the space race and what they did. This class would give others a different view on what women have done for this country and need to keep doing for it. This will also provide girls and women with different and new role models to look up to that they didn’t know about before. This will bring others to look to the influences of the past other than the models and athletes that prove to be most kid’s role models today. The class will not only provide this information through books but also biographies, documentaries, and movies.This class must implemented in most high schools and give students the chance to learn about something different.  This will hopefully shed a new light on those that have been forgotten and bring encouragement for those that have yet to be discovered.

These ideas can encourage those that have been deflated in their hopes to try again and look in a different direction because as the saying goes, “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again.”