By: Nivedita Nambrath and Henna Purewal
March is the official month to celebrate Women’s History. In the past, women and men did not share equal rights and opportunities. Obviously, that has changed now, and women and men share the same constitutional rights. But culturally, there still exists a divide between women and men. Women are encouraged into some fields while men are encouraged into others. This cultural phenomenon has tangible effects on the major life decisions that women and men make. Women specifically tend to be encouraged away from major positions of leadership, and positions in STEM, particularly engineering and math.
We might not see this in Biotech, which is a STEM-focused school that encourages both girls and boys equally. But, this phenomenon does exist, and it probably affects students at Biotech as well. Perhaps it is the reason for the disparity between girls and boys in classes like IB Physics.
So, we wanted to share a positive message with our peers, one that encourages confidence in girls, and encourages them to strive towards their goals, and to work hard towards success. We hope to empower women by inspiring confidence and by inspiring the idea that success in fields of leadership and STEM is absolutely possible and attainable for women, as long as you just work hard and work smart.
We’re doing this by sharing the voices of the female leaders in our school, to learn about their stories and experiences. We are surrounded by a lot of strong and inspiring women leaders, especially women leaders in STEM, which is a big theme currently, so we wanted to honor them and hear their experiences, as they might soon be ours. We learned a lot about our teachers by conducting these interviews, and we hope you will too.
Read the interviews with Ms. Laczny, Ms. Kelterborn, Ms. Jensen, Ms. Engstrom, and Dr. Rogers here