First Step in the Field of Science for Girls: “My STEAM Network”

Zekican Sarısoy, one of the implementers of the My STEAM Network initiative, the first online network designed for girls in fields of science, technology, education, design and mathematics, states that the project is carried out to eliminate gender inequality based judgments and their negative impacts on choices of profession.

The Human Rights Joint Platform organized a panel titled ‘Gender Equality in Science and Education’ at the Mülkiye Cultural Center for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. While discussing all aspects of gender equality in the panel, it was underlined that female role models that girls will be inspired from will be a great need for future role models. One of the speakers of the panel, Zekican Sarısoy who is one of the implementers of the “My STEAM Network” initiative which is the first online network designed for girls, evaluated the network and its work for Civil Pages.

Sarısoy, who indicated that My STEAM Network is an education initiative that started as an idea in early 2018 and was launched in late 2019 in partnership with the Support Foundation for Civil Society, the Turkish Mosaic Foundation and the Flying Broom Women’s Communication and Research Association, and is currently in the 6-month pre-study period, said: “The main purpose of the initiative is to eliminate the negative impact of judgments based gender inequality on choices of profession. We do this with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) education. Our target group is girls. We use digital media channels as a tool and adopt a model that goes beyond the physical space.” 

Stating that women who produce in different fields should be highlighted to prevent professions from being attributed specifically to women or men, Sarısoy said: “The female role model is an important tool for both visibility and motivation in a particular area. We always read the history of science, the history of technology or the history of philosophy over a few men, but there are many successful women among those fields. The fact that women are not visible in these areas and that the subjects of the areas are predominantly men as well as those who write history, affect the professional choices of children. Girls need women to connect with, other than Einstein and his language, such as Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Gözde Durmuş, and role model women who we can list for pages.”

Emphasizing that women have a 30% or less representation in the STEM / STEAM field, which is growing rapidly and generating high income in low and middle income economies, Sarısoy said: “According to the “Women in Science” report published by UNESCO, the rate of women researchers working in the field of natural sciences in Turkey is 38%, the fields of engineering and technology is 25%, in social sciences is 43% and in humanities is 42%. When we look at these data, the professional representation of women in Turkey is alarming. According to UNESCO’s “Gender Inequality in Education” report in 2015, the rate of women researchers in Turkey was 37%, while this rate was 33% in 1995. According to the OECD’s (2017) “Education at a Glance” report, female students who are new to STEM fields make up only 28% of the students participating in this field. In OECD countries, this has an average of 30%. From this point of view, it is necessary to consider what the data indicates, what it covers or not as well as to consider the scales and variables. Because a misleading perception may occur. The answer given by the activists and institutions working in the field of women’s rights and protecting the human rights of women, to the question of whether something remarkable has been done for years, can be replaced by the illusion that women are visible enough, or that there has not been any inequality. As a result, I think that the questions of who, what and how the statistics or roughly numbers contain things should always be suspended. The statistics or unequal situations or attitudes we encounter, find a response as our tools for reason, motivation and advocacy. While creating something on this area, we continually follow what is happening in our band Europe and in other locations as well as our intersections with them and renew ourselves constantly.”

Sarısoy called everyone to action by saying: “We welcome all those who say #GirlsWouldDoIFTheyWantTo and who want to support us, has a word to say or who want be a part of the change.”