Rather than seeing gender per se as being the dividing factor, it’s one’s ability to empathise and systemise that attracts or repels people from entering into STEM subjects and embarking on careers in this domain.
— Katie Klavenes
There have been a number of ineffective and stereotypical attempts to encourage girls into engineering which have failed to have a positive impact. Katie Klavenes, Research Assistant & Resource Developer at Cambridge University's Engineering Design Centre (EDC), argues that it is a brain type rather than a gender issue that encourages males into STEM fields.
Rather than seeing gender per se as being the dividing factor, Klavenes sees that it’s one's ability to empathise and systemise that attracts or repels people from entering into STEM subjects and embarking on careers in this domain. It is true that many more females are categorised as empathisers and many more males as systemisers, which may explain the gender disparity. Empathising is the internal drive to identify with another person’s emotions and thoughts, and respond to them with appropriate emotions and actions; systemising is the cognitive ability to identify the underlying rules that govern the behaviours of a system.
Klavenes conducted a small scale research study in order to better understand the causes of this gender disparity in STEM by investigating year 9 pupils' (13-14 years) relationship between their brain type, gender and their enjoyment of subjects and tasks. Using Baron-Cohen’s (2004b) survey, pupils' Empathising Quotient (EQ) and Systemising Quotient (SQ) were calculated.
Read the full story
Image: Katie Klavenes (right) working with a year 9 pupil at a Designing Our Tomorrow resources pilot
Credit: Ian Hosking
Reproduced courtesy of University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering
________________________________________________________