It has long been recognized that girls and young women do not participate in the world of engineering in numbers that would balance them with their male counterparts. The last statistic that I am aware of was a 95 to 5 percent imbalance.

There are many reasons, all well argued and dissected, which do not concern me. It’s what are we going to do about it that counts now!

When I started the Weatherly Institute for Robotics and Engineering robotics program as a club in 2004, I held a sign up at our local middle school. Twenty-five students signed up, six of them girls.

When the summer program began, only three girls showed up. As the summer progressed, one by one they dropped from the program, until at last the final young lady, who was very bright and had a great aptitude for engineering, left.

I knew this young woman’s mother very well. So I called her and asked her to speak with her daughter—not to try to convince her to return, but to find out why she left.

A few days later I received a phone call from the mom. She and her daughter had had a long conversation about the reasons for her departure. The result startled me—even in this day and age the girl had been “talked out” of being part of the program by her girl friends, who insisted that “girls” didn’t do that kind of stuff. That it was boys who played with motors and wheels and built things!

I was shaken. I wanted the girls to be involved but obviously I was not the person to try to convince them that this was a good thing!

So I called my high school boys together, a group that was looking forward to their very first robotic competition, and I told them that they were not allowed back in class until they brought two young women back with them to be part of their program. At the following meeting they showed up with the required girls.

Neither of these young women had ever done anything like robotics, but they were strong willed and determined to succeed.

One had an aptitude for electronics and she became the person mainly responsible for wiring that year’s electronics for our robot. The other had a mechanical bent and was heavily involved with building the robot’s frame.

A success story? Well, yes and no. Both girls are now juniors at their respective universities. One is following a career path in Molecular Biology, the other in Alternative Energy Engineering.

While they were part of the high school program from their sophomore year through graduation, these girls participated in my classes, but since they left I have noticed a steady decline in the number of females.

Am I to assume that to maintain participation by girls and young women in our program, a girl or a young woman needs to be present in each class? The quandary is how to get these necessary role models involved. I could certainly hold my guys up again and force them to find another two such wonderful women, but that is pushing off the responsibility onto someone else.

Stephen Kew-Goodale