Debbie Sterling in Tedx

by: Noemi Melo
Prompt post #7

                                                   

I recently stumbled across a TedX video done by the CEO and Creator of GoldieBlox, Debbie Sterling. Sterling, who has an engineering degree from Stanford, realized that part of the discrepancy between the number of male and female engineers might start at a very young age. The focus of her idea was that toys marketed towards girls don’t encourage them to learn the basic concepts of engineering and that means they have no interest in it when it comes time to pick a career.

               The thing that caught my attention is the first question that Sterling asks the audience. She asks them to close their eyes and picture an engineer. Then she polls the audience to see what they were thinking about. Some pictured a nerdy guy sitting at a computer, others a train driver and some a “Mark Zuckerberg”-type in a hoodie. The striking part came when she asked how many pictured an engineer who looked like her, and there were not many hands raised. But, as Sterling points out, nearly 50 percent of the population is female, so it would be beneficial to have the female perspective when it comes to designing things that are changing the world. The problem is figuring out why this is happening and figuring out how to solve the problem.

                Girls lose interest in math and science around age six, but a new study suggests that this is a cultural norm rather than a biological effect. Researchers tested boys and girls from 65 different countries on science skills. In all the countries except for the United States, the girls outperformed the boys. The problem, she suggests, is that girls lack a true understanding of engineering and what it means to be an engineer. After all, Sterling only tried engineering on the advice of a high school math teacher. But why should it take until high school or later to realize that you have an interest in engineering when girls can start liking engineering so much earlier by providing the right tools? Showing girls that engineering isn’t just a “boy thing,” rather than just a career pathway that allows you to design and invent is what they need.

                Sterling also tells us how she struggled in her engineering drawing class. She talks about struggling with the material and wanting to quit before a classmate stuck up for her and promised help. She ended up passing the class and earned her degree. Later she learned that many women struggle with spatial skills, a main component of perspective drawing in engineering. Kids who play with construction blocks or Lincoln logs while they’re growing up have strong spatial skills. Those toys are what gets kids interested in engineering, not the dolls and makeup kits that are considered “girl toys.

                You can watch the entire video on YouTube to get a clearer understanding about what the whole video is about.  She sums up her video by saying that she doesn’t fit in, and that it is not fair, but she believes that future women will.