

Why Maker Faire Matters - apievangelist
http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/05/22/why-maker-faire-matters/?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4dd9ef5ee2b7794c%2C0

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nostrademons
I was very heartened to see that there were quite a few young girls there,
daughters with their dads. And they were participating: all the hands-on
exhibits for kids were easily gender-balanced, perhaps even trending toward
females.

But there was one thing I thought a little odd: there were a bunch of girls
under 10. And there were a fair number of women in their mid-20s and thirties.
_But there were very few teenage girls_.

I wonder why this is, particularly since a bunch of studies have shown that
the teenage years are when STEM fields lose the bulk of girls that have
expressed an early interest in them. I remember that when I was captain of the
math team in high school, I had to do a fair bit of recruiting to round up
participants for math competitions. The twelve year old girls would
enthusiastically participate. At thirteen, if they were remotely popular, you
could forget about it. Oftentimes they remained exceptionally good at math
(some are working for large tech companies now, 10+ years later), but they
refused to do anything that would _show_ how good they were at math to their
peer group.

Why? And how can we make it so that STEM pursuits aren't just something your
dad teaches you when nobody's looking, but can actually be pretty cool among
your peer group too?

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lucasjung
I'm pretty sure the answer to this is a complex mix of social pressures and
shifting priorities.

Priorities shift because teenagers (both boys and girls) engage in activities
that younger kids don't: self-organized socialization, especially dating. To
spend time on these things, they have to give up time somewhere else. I don't
think we can fight this, but we might be able to redirect it a little (give up
_that_ instead of _this_ ) or possibly even usurp it by providing an
alternative to "the mall" as the place to hang out and BS.

Social pressures can be changed, but it's incredibly hard. It might be easier
to instead work around them. Girls don't want to be _seen_ engaging in STEM
pursuits? Sure, the ideal answer would be to change teenage culture so that
this social pressure is reversed. Good luck with that. It would probably be
easier and more effective to instead proivde a way for teenage girls who
_want_ to continue to pursue their interest in STEM to do so without
compromising their carefully curated social personas.

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dsl
I really liked the "old" Maker Faire, which was more focused on making stuff
and not children or dressing up in vintage clothing (no offense, it's just not
my thing). The fact that the city of San Mateo ran out of parking dosen't
really give me the right vibe.

Is anyone aware of a similar event, but with more focus on things like chip
vendor booths, demo pits for hardware projects, and a heavier hacker culture?

~~~
nostrademons
Isn't this what organizations like TechShop or Hacker Dojo are for? People who
are serious about making things usually spend their time...making things, and
it takes more than one day a year to do that. The role of Maker Faire is to
get people interested; once they _are_ interested, most people look for
something a little more long-term.

BTW, both TechShop and Hacker Dojo were at Maker Faire, as were a number of
other area organizations that make cool things.

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ronaldj
I went to Maker Faire for the first time this weekend. I definitely wish I had
more exposure to stuff like that growing up.

