In addition to filling girls’ environments with STEM-inspired books, games, and toys, education experts say that dads can make a difference by engaging daughters in STEM-related outings and activities. By taking daughters to science and tech museums, going to the planetarium, and building things together in the backyard, dads can inspire an interest in STEM and grow daughters’ confidence in math, science, and technology skills. Dozens of creative ideas for at-home science projects for girls can be found at the Go Science Girls website.
For dads who work in the STEM field, volunteering with an organization that teaches girls computer programming and other technology skills can also have a major impact. There are many organizations to choose from, including Girls Who Code, TechGirlz, Girl Develop It, CoolTechGirls, EngineerGirl, and Black Girls Code. Edward Stein is an EIT Director of Distribution Systems for Cardinal Health who carved out time to volunteer as a Program Planning Team Lead for CoolTechGirls, which provides mentors, internships, and career resources for girls who are interested in science and technology. “My thirteen-year-old daughter Megan is a big motivation for me,” said Edward. “I enjoy providing her with opportunities to see herself in a future STEM career field which CoolTechGirls provides a forum for.”
Girls Who Code is an excellent place for dads of daughters to get started. Founded in 2012, Girls Who Code seeks to close the gender gap in technology through education, mentorships, and school-to-work pipelines. Girls Who Code has reached almost 90,000 girls across all fifty states, and half of the girls in its programs are from minority or low-income families. The organization has nearly 5,000 college-aged alums who are choosing computer science or related fields as their majors at fifteen times the rate of the national average. At that pace, Girls Who Code could equalize women in entry-level tech jobs by 2027. Men can volunteer to facilitate a Girls Who Code after-school club for sixth- through eighth-grade girls or teach at a summer camp. Summer courses cover a range of topics, including website design, wearable technology, and iPhone app development.
TechGirlz also offers volunteer opportunities for dads of daughters. This organization focuses on engaging middle-school girls to build technology skills through free, interactive classes called “TechShopz.” TechGirlz makes it easy for dads to run a workshop with online “TechShopz in a Box.” These toolkits include workshop plans, curriculum, materials, and teaching guides that enable anyone to run a workshop for middle-school girls in their area. Dads of daughters can select from a wide range of TechShopz topics, including programming and coding skills, podcasting, website design, mobile apps, digital mapping, graphics and animation, game design, circuitry, network communication, artificial intelligence, robotics, and virtual reality. By open-sourcing their workshop plans, TechGirlz has tripled its enrollment, reaching over 10,000 middle-school girls around the country. Men can also sponsor a TechGirlz summer camp, assist with curriculum development, or help with outreach to tech professionals.
For dads of daughters who are in decision-making positions at technology firms, girls’ coding organizations also offer opportunities for corporate partnerships. Girls Who Code has a pipeline-to-work initiative called #HireMe which allows partner companies to post job openings and internships and receive resumes from girls trained through Girls Who Code. Dads can also partner their companies with Girl Develop It, which offers software development classes to women. With programs in fifty-eight cities and over 55,000 members nationwide, Girl Develop It is always on the look-out for corporate sponsorships.
Increasing the pipeline of girls into STEM can also indirectly address the hostile work environment that plagues the tech industry. When women are equally represented in tech jobs and leadership roles, cultural shifts will likely follow. In the meantime, dads of daughters who work in the tech industry can help change their workplace culture by speaking up, empowering women to speak up, and taking women seriously when they do.
Dads of daughters are already showing themselves to be among the strongest male advocates for women in the STEM field. In 2013, researchers identified forty-seven men who were known for being gender diversity advocates in leadership positions at tech firms. Among the men in this group who were fathers, ninety-six percent had at least one daughter. When asked what had motivated them to become active in gender diversity efforts, many of them cited pivotal learning experiences with their daughters.
Mentoring women in STEM careers can happen informally on the job, or men can join an established mentoring program like the one created by Girls In Tech that focuses on professional women’s career development. The Million Women Mentors initiative for advancing women in STEM careers also provides opportunities for dads to share their expertise, or dads can participate in the Men as Diversity Partners initiative created by the Society of Women Engineers.
In all of these ways, dads of daughters have opportunities to welcome girls into STEM, support women scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and accelerate innovation. The first step is finding ways to replace the pervasive princess icon with far more powerful and exciting STEM role models for girls to emulate. That was one of Beau Lewis’s primary motivations for leaving his tech job to co-found Goldiblox with his wife. Beau’s inspiration came from the mere thought of being a potential father of a daughter. In explaining why he joined the movement to advance girls in STEM, Beau channeled the thoughts of many dads of daughters by writing a letter to his future daughter apologizing in advance for all of the ways that we inadvertently direct girls away from STEM careers and vowing to make a difference:
Dearest Zelda (daughter),
I’m afraid there is a 99.99 percent chance you won’t grow up to be a princess.
I’m afraid I would rather you become an engineer.
I apologize that I wanted to have a boy.…
I was afraid you wouldn’t want to build a treehouse with me.…
I was afraid that you wouldn’t like ninja turtles and hot wheels.…
I was under the impression that female role models existed to balance out the Barbie beauty queens, and that Bob the Builder and Lego Man weren’t the only options.
I apologize that our country has fallen behind 200 other countries where girls are actually testing better than boys in math and science.
I apologize that I haven’t done more to help improve the world for women.
I was under the impression that little girls grew up and had the same opportunities as men in the US workforce.…
I was afraid that being a feminist was not for men.
I was afraid that helping little girls might seem creepy.
I am done apologizing.
I am no longer afraid nor easily impressed.
I am inspired.…
I am doing something to make sure my daughter will know that she is more than just a princess.
Love,
Beau (Dad)
We’ve all heard the studies finding that assertive men are rewarded, while assertive women are viewed as “bossy,” “bitchy,” or “too aggressive.” We all know that women are expected to be emotional, while men who display emotion are viewed as “weak.” But those basic gender biases are just the tip of the iceberg.
Whether we’re aware of