Females in STEM work: Essential. Needed.

According to the daily tidbit on my desktop recently, only 6.7% of STEM graduates are female.  6.7% !   6.7 out of 100. I did a little digging and it looks like women hold approximately 24% of STEM jobs.    This matters.  And these numbers are detrimental to society.  If women held more STEM jobs, our world would look much different.  It could be argued that we live in a world designed by men.  And any woman who has helped design a home or a building alongside a male will agree, men simply don't think of everything.  Heck, if not for Margaret Hamilton (pictured), we may have never found our way to the moon!

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math careers, in many ways, determine the functionality of a society. STEM minds design roads, bridges, medical breakthroughs, vehicles, bras, tampons, diapers, baby formulas, LED lights, and IV machines.  They advise us on banking, they design communications systems and create computer programs that dramatically streamline our lives.  And all of these useful, essential means of STEM related work, according to the data, have incredibly limited input by women.  WHA?!

The female and male experience create unique  lenses with which to interpret and navigate  the world and human experience. They just do.  When a significant amount of same-gendered people  invent, create, and theorize,  the possibilities for the whole of the society become incredibly limited.  The possibilities guiding the future and design of everything from  gadgets, appliances, transportation, medical advancements, financial investments, homes, buildings and communities are substantially limited when a whole gender is nearly eliminated from the table of innovation.

We've got to get earnest about attracting more females to these fields. Our futures depend on it.

As a college freshman, one way to get extra credit in Art History was to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art and/or the Walker Art Museum and write a reflective composition of the experience.  It was April of 1991, and I set off to the the Twin Cities to visit the museums.

I'd hatched a plan to stay in the dorms on the University of Minnesota campus with my cousin, an engineering student at the University of Minnesota. She invited me to attend classes with her for a day and  I was thrilled to do so.  My cousin was a brain...and she worked hard at it.  She'd tape herself reading her science notes before a test and then use the tape to help quiz herself prior to the exam.  She was serious about her education.  But she was also a ton of fun and easy to laugh and a completely normal  - not some socially awkward, grade-based lunatic unable to get along with normal humans in the real world.  That said, I knew that attending class with her would be completely different than the courses I took college that were more focused on communication and feelings.

There was no doubt her electrical engineering classes would be drastically different than my Literature and Psychology classes, but what blew my mind (beyond the long formulas on the chalkboards) was the blatant discrepancy in gender equity in the lecture halls.  Rooms holding close to 100 people per class, were overwhelmingly male.   It astounded me.   I'm talking maybe 3 females in a class of 100 people.  I had never witnessed such an imbalance in gender in an situation that was not designed according to gender.  It was bizarre.  I had assumed her classes would be half full of other young women like my cousin - gals who enjoyed a good grapple with an insane mathematical mystery - and half full of dudes. I was wrong.  Where were the other women?

That was 1991.  Today things haven't changed much with only 6.7 of every 100 STEM graduates being female.

Why aren't girls venturing down STEM paths?  Are there really that many more boys who are better at STEM related content than girls?  I don't think so. My 7th grade daughter would strongly disagree.

The gender lens in the STEM paths matters.  The gender lens in any industry matters.  And corporations, ideas, innovations, inventions, medical advancements and the future of humanity will all be stronger when the brains behind design, medical breakthroughs, city planning, and environmental engineering include those of both men and women.

We've simply got to get more females at the table - in every sector - and particularly in the STEM sector. I can't help but think that if STEM graduate numbers were equally male and female, our future as humanity  would be exponentially more advanced, a hell of a lot more functional and quite frankly better.

Copacetic. A little poem about a couple good moments.

Copacetic

I silently peeked around the doorway
to check on the dog
and he turned his head toward me,
simultaneously. He felt me before I got there.
I looked at my daughter
as she walked toward me in the hall
and she said,
"I love you, too, mom."
She had read my heart, my eyes, me.
These are moments I adore.
Moments of love in balance.

Northern Winter: A chilly little poem

Northern Winter


White northern winter.  Snow
til spring.  Never disappearing.  Piles growing
higher.

Frozen.
Rare respite.
Deadly.

Chickadee songs inject warmth in the crispness.
Wolves and coyotes fill the sky with howls.
Snow machines' growls burn through icy air.
Ice house villages populate frozen water.

Curling, Skating and Hockey
Jazz band, Orchestra and Art Exhibits
Basketball, Speech and Play Practice
Dance, Pottery and Pilates
Piano Lessons,  4H & Skiing

Life goes on

Oppressive cold and blinding white,
yet the sun shines, eagles soar, owls hunt,
deer roam and fish somehow swim.

People smile, work, run errands and create

and they move
thru
the frozen world

Bundled.

Art Magic: Practicing Piano Produces Positivity

My daughter was sad about something after school a couple Wednesdays ago.   In the midst of the tough time, she had to get to her piano lesson.  Her mood was gloomy when she stepped out of the car. There was a big sigh and a slammed door before she lumbered slowly away and into her teacher's house.

Half an hour later, she emerged.  She was a sparkly, new person - relaxed,standing taller,  more confident, lighter in spirit.  It was like the clouds hanging over her had dissipated.   The piano lesson had pulled her away from the negativity, busied her mind in another way, and as a result, her practice had inspired the release of endorphins, oxytocin and other posi-hormones in the brain - making her feel good on a molecular level.  Her participation in the music lesson improved her state of existence.
Yay.

I used to think I wanted her to take piano because it would be good exercise for her brain to work in a motor, auditory, sensory, visual, linear and creative way all at the same time.  She's involved in community theater and I thought it would help with reading and learning the songs for musicals, too. But I hadn't really considered music practice or lessons as a means to a higher level of mental health, and, quite honestly, an almost instant an anti-depressant until that day.

And it is in a way, an anti-depressant.   I witnessed its magic with my own eyes.

My kid often plays music as she passes by the piano in our house.  She'll just hold up and stand there playing a song or two and then be on her way... Before school, she plays through several songs.  Her music fills the house, she's working her skills and at the same time she's magically tweaking our reality in a fun way, all while, on a biological level, she's washing her own brain with feel good hormones - ensuring a more positive lens with which to view the day.   Like she's shining her soul right before school.

Makes me wonder if people who make opportunities for music regularly in their lives are more emotionally light than those who don't.  They just have to be.