Women in STEM Wednesday: What does a scientist look like?

“I’m gonna draw a girl scientist since that’s what you are” 👩‍🔬

~Ash, age 5

The prompt: Can you draw me a picture of a scientist?

DO try this at home with your kids (or someone else’s! 😂).

👨🏼‍🔬 >99% of students aged 5-18 would depict a male scientist when asked this question 50 years ago. Little girls didn’t even picture themselves in that role.

FLASH FORWARD >>>

👩🏻‍🔬 34% of students were drawing female scientists by 2016. This trends with increasing representation of women scientists.

Still, older children depicted male scientists more often than women. *

Surveys of children demonstrate that girls are most interested in pursuing careers in STEM by age 11, but that interest significantly decreases by age 15. **

REPRESENTATION MATTERS. Seeing more women in these roles, & having support and encouragement from women scientists - shows girls that these aspirations can be reality!

🖍 I would love to hear your thoughts and see the images generated by young steminists in your life! Tag me @modernsciencemom 💕

“Most scientists are still men, but as time goes on that’s changing - even in the imaginations of children” ***

References:

* - Miller, et al. (2018) Doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13039

** - Suzanne Choney News.Microsoft.com (2018) Why do girls lose interest in STEM?...

*** - Katie Langin sciencemag.org What does a scientist look like?

[Image 1 depicts drawing of a female scientist by a 5 year old. Image 2 depicts Amy, a female scientist, doing outreach. Image 3 depicts a graph displaying percent times a child drew a female of male scientist by decade and age]