Getting girls and young women interested in science careers should be given higher priority across Africa. Initiatives such as STEM Belle and STEM4HER are rising to the challenge.
Akin Jimoh hears about two initiatives that aim to get more girls and young women into science careers.Doreen Anene and Stanley Anigbogu launched separate initiatives to promote science careers to young girls and women in Africa. What motivated them to do so?
Anigbogu, a storyteller and technologist, founded STEM4HER after meeting a young girl at a science fair. She told him that her mother thought that careers in STEM were for boys, not for her. In this fifth episode, we meet two researchers who have taken upon themselves to do their bit to address the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers in Africa.Stanley Anigbogu 01:27
So the majority of the stories that I do tell are documenting the projects of our students while they were working on their projects, and how the project finally ended up, and probably their success story. So we edit and document the stories, and we share it with the next cohorts of the programme. … so she makes this rocket model using waste and recycled plastic pipes and also cardboard papers to make rockets that actually launch into the sky.Stanley Anigbogu 04:20
So we kind of shifted our focus to impact more girls. And we discovered that girls in the rural area, or rural communities, were mostly affected by that societal mindset that women should only be doctors, or probably, I don’t, nurses. But being part of science and technology, being innovators, inventors are using science to solve global problems. Women are not in that space.
And alongside when you’re talking about a gender perspective, a man is solving a problem as a man from his own perspective and the world around him. In my research, I’m investigating the variation in performance variables of individual hens and their association with the quality and the safety of the egg.
So STEM, for anyone who doesn’t know, is the acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. While Belle is the French word for the beautiful girl, the beautiful girl, yeah. Take for example, the effects of climate change. So women in low-income communities really suffer the brunt of climate change. There’s a lot of droughts and so many other things that you notice as a result of climate change that’s affecting their productivity affecting their profitability.
Some people even go forward to say that pilots will find it difficult to have children. You know, all kinds of stereotypes, limiting women from exploring careers in STEM, from maximizing their full potential. So our agenda is to make sure that women and girls from low-income economically disadvantaged communities are not left out in this global change that’s about to hit us.Two very different approaches. I love Stanley’s ingenious projects STEM4HER That attempt to break ceilings for young girls by showing what is possible. Using storytelling, such as the short film about Rocket Girl, can inspire young girls to dream and then make their dreams reality.
And then she thought that she didn’t want her children to go through this. And then she started indoctrinating the benefits of science and her experience to us. Now, growing up I had these stereotypes. Engineering is not for women, it’s not for these, you’re going to end up in a man’s house. There’s really no need for you to stretch yourself going through all of these.
You know, for the first few years they are being ambitious, but as they progress, then reality starts to set in. People start to say things. Sometimes even their mothers are saying things to discourage them from exploring STEM careers. So have you been able to really address, you know, key issues that relate to cultural and systemic orientation that you more or less affect, having more girls in science and research, and so on, and so forth?And one of our major strategies to address these issues is conversations, reorientation, re-education of all the stakeholders in this chain, the parents, the students, the people from the Ministry of Education, principals, community leaders.
They go to tell their parents and then you know, it kind of consolidates. So we put in all the action, we have various strategies that we have rolled out at The STEM Belle to achieve this goal. And we always have our parents come through with feedback with comments, they attend all our events. You know, it's really participatory, and really engaging, and we made sure it’s from bottom-top.
So why the guys, the boys are going into something more technical and vocational, the girls sometimes even forced to go into something “more homely”. This is in quotes, right? And then it keeps growing.And the reason is in between GSS 1 to SS three, we have JS 3. JS 3is such a critical year in the life of anyone that is going to choose science like, you know, you are forced to choose science, art, commercial and all that.
And yes, I agree. Toys play an important role. From a young age, children become very creative, they become problem-solvers. They become critical thinkers, they become nearly like scientists. So the more you expose them to toys, Montessori toys that will challenge their thinking, the more you allow them to fail, and work it out. I think that maybe there might be an association with them ending up as, you know, really critical and technical people.
So in general, I see a future where the majority of these girls are going to be leading problem-solvers. entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs or even inventors coming up with innovative solutions.
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