Simpson_Jr:
One thing I've thought a lot about, but unfortunately have no answer to, how... could one persuade more girls to start experimenting with electronics/arduino ?From a male perspective it's hard not think... female -> lillypad -> Leds on clothing, but there should be a lot more making them think "Hey, that's interesting !".
The most logical I often met while working with 4-12 year old kids were... in fact the ladies. They do tend to get mature much faster and maybe gentlemen get more capable in technical stuff on the long run, but there should still be a lot of girls who're more then capable enough to understand and work with an Arduino.
Anyone have any ideas on this one ?
There seems to be large peer pressure to girls around middle school to conform to what other girls do. It's a difficult thing to break. I have 30 students in my electronics class and only 3 girls. Most of them are physics majors and some CS, MME, chemistry or math. It's been that way since maybe when my dad was in college some 53 years ago. Yes, there's more women engineers and scientists but you don't see anywhere near 50/50 man/woman.
I wish to go to high schools to demonstrate to those kids what science and engineering is about and there are very interesting topics but to make an impression to girls around age 12-15 I need girl presenters. I was presenting at a women engineering on campus event for that age range girls but after almost a full day of presenting, only less than 10 showed up. The campus organizers didn't do their work and I consider it was wasting my time to present three sessions to an average of 3 girls each session for 1 hours each.
Hell, I'm a guy. How should I blame them for only sending out registration forms to high schools? They should personally go the the high schools, show pictures of the past event and encourage more girls to come. You can't magically convert a bunch of girls from loving what society tells them to do as young girls into liking science-engineering subjects. This takes numerous time and effort. As of where arduino stands in this battle, I wish I had an answer. What projects may interest young girls of that age?! Any parents here? Anyone speaking their language? I know a lot of girls like biology, which could be a point of entry for arduino.