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Maria Campbell
Wright
ENC3331-003
18 April 2015

Plan of Action: Girls in STEM

We, as a country, have seen the fight for womens rights and attitudes towards women
grow exponentially. This fight was exhibited throughout the centuries along class, cultural, racial
and economic boundaries and moved along with the equally exponential advancement of
technology. Today, employers seek workers trained in science, technology, engineering and
math (STEM). Unfortunately, there is a widespread problem within these fields: women are
barely present in them. The lack of women in STEM comes from a societal issue that starts from
the ground upboth girls and boys receive different messages throughout their lives that can
affect their willingness for certain areas. My project focuses on bringing awareness on attitudes
towards women in STEM in my own community by inviting my audience to a discussion of this
problem.
Current efforts are being made to encourage a decrease in this employment gap on
multiple fronts. Organizations like the National Girls Collaborative Project, the American
Association for University Women and the Society of Women Engineers reaches out to girls and
women who are interested in pursuing STEM fields. As attitudes towards women in technology
and science are becoming more positive, we are also seeing toys like GoldieBlox (engineering

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toy sets geared for girls) and shows like Doc McStuffins that additionally help to encourage girls
to pursue these STEM fields. These are all steps forward into making the STEM sphere as
equally representative of girls as it is boys.
Even though we are seeing some improvements, more needs to be done. According to
writer Maria Charles, most Americans believe in equality among men and women socially and
legally, but continue to see the genders as vastly different. Female-oriented skills tap into the
idealized feminine traits: being nurturing, communal, and effectively using emotions.
Leadership, logic, and analytic skills are paired with men more often because of the stereotypical
masculine traits that accompany them. When we ignore the fact that neither gender is more
specifically skilled than the other, and that certain characteristics depends on the person
themselves and not their gender, we continue to let damaging and outdated gender stereotypes
pervade the mindsets of growing children.
I am from a conservative area, and as a community that values tradition, gender
stereotypes are embraced as norm. In high school, it was usually male students who took on the
technology and science electives. According to data on test scores released by the Florida
Department of Education, girls perform less well compared to boys in my county than statewide
in some areas. In all of Florida, ninth-grade female students outperformed boys in the Algebra 1
end-of-course exam by 3-8 percentage points. In my area, this gap is lower and boys out
performed girls in 2013. In Geometry, boys outperformed girls by a greater margin than
statewide as well.
My plan of action includes, firstly, to initiate a discussion among my community about
gender stereotypes, gender schemas, and socialization and how they are influenced by these
forces, as these are at the heart of why STEM fields are lacking in female representation. In my

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Writing Across Differences class, we discussed invitational rhetoric and how it is opposed to the
Western rhetorical theories that are more confrontational. In this type of rhetoric, as explained by
Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffin, it establishes a safe context, [where] audience members do not
fear rebuttal of or retribution for their most fundamental beliefs. (10) Gender stereotyping is a
pressing, concerning issue, but unlike issues such as animal abuse or public safety, it is an issue
that virtually everyone has been accustomed to whether they recognize it or not. For animal
abuse and public safety, it is easier to see their moral components: Sarah McLachlan
commercials bring everyone to tears and anybody would be heartbroken over the passing or
injury of someone because of lack of pedestrian protection. But gender stereotypes are
systematic and involve a much deeper discussionof course, there are many who believe that
women dont belong in the math and sciences for multiple reasons. Therefore, invitational
rhetoric would allow my audience and me to confront these problems in a way that examines
their complexities and exigency in a way that is communicable and open to other ideas.
As the root of the issue falls on societal attitudes, I want to focus my audience on the one
that paves the way for the future generation: the adults. I would like to utilize social media to
engage in a discussion about girls, gender stereotypes, and their representation in STEM with
peers in my community. I plan on creating a survey asking current attitudes on girls, women, and
women in STEM, and opening up a conversation to my local community on Facebook asking
them to think about these attitudes and what they do, ultimately, on a larger scale. This method
utilizes invitational rhetoric because I want to allow my audience to have a voice for their own
opinions and solutions on how to effectively handle this issue and to gain a broader scope of the
argument.

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Additionally, if possible, I want to reach out to guidance counselors and teachers in my

community who work with young girls at a grade school level to discuss these issues and
possible solutions. Teachers and counselors are crucial in the discussion: they work one-on-one
with girls and experience firsthand the possible gender differences in STEM-related elective
enrollment and classroom cooperation. More specifically, I would want to discuss the level of
enthusiasm that these teachers and counselors see from their female students in math and science
at large compared to their male peers at large. Using invitational rhetoric, their insight would
help to provide a basis on obtainable solutions or new perspectives on how to confront the issue
at a school-level.
After discussing the issue, I would like to see my community members being aware of
my perspective and keeping this in mind as our future generation plans their future career fields.
Ultimately, seeing greater strides being made to encourage girls into STEM-oriented fields and
making more efforts to dismiss the outmoded gender stereotypes are my long-term goals as the
project exists on a local level. Nationally and internationally, the same needs to be done as well,
but working from the ground up is where it all needs to start.

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Works Cited
Charles, Maria. "What Gender Is Science?" Contexts, 20 May 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
Foss, Sonja K., and Cindy L. Griffin. "Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational
Rhetoric." Communication Monographs 62.1 (1995): 2-18. Web.
Math and Science EOC Data. Tallahassee: Florida Department of Education, n.d. Excel.