Celebrate Ways You Can Choose to Challenge & Pave The Way for Girls to Thrive in STEM

Pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM by embracing the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day: Choose to Challenge. Many events are taking place during the month of March, offering ways to get involved and live the mission every day.

“A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.” Learn more about the mission of International Women’s Day here.

We choose to challenge by celebrating many ways to pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM. We commit to being, raising, and supporting STEMinists. We often seek out ways to find inspiration from women who are scientists, builders, and creators for our girls and boys to look up to and for ourselves as parents to learn from.

Here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate and pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM:

❉  The Girl Scouts offer tips to raise a STEMinist that we think are worth their weight in gold. “Think about the books your daughter reads and the movies she watches. What roles do girls and women play? If they have jobs, what kind of work do they do? When there are scientists, builders, or tech geniuses featured in a story, do they tend to be male or female?”

“From kid-friendly books about astronaut Mae Jemison and architect Zaha Hadid to inspiring documentaries about primatologist Jane Goodall and computer scientist Grace Hopper, there is a myriad of wonderful books, movies, and online videos featuring amazing women in STEM. Ask your local librarian if you need help finding them, and diversify her role models, STAT.”

We are constantly seeking out ways that our kids can be inspired by women who pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM. This is equally important for our girls and our boys, as our boys have an opportunity to be champions for female peers. More tips from the Girl Scouts to help raise a STEMinist can be found here.

❉  We can also pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM by reading books and playing games that bring the stories of female pioneers in many fields around the world to life. We love reading the stories from Rebel Girls and listening to their podcast.

❉  Kahoot! and Rebel Girls partnered to create quizzes to celebrate women who have led the way, and many of them have a tie to STEAM: Test how well you know extraordinary Rebel Girls of the past and present in these games that will leave you excited and inspired.

❉  Pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM by building models of their heroes with collections like the LEGO Ideas Women of NASA set that features four women of NASA. The collection includes three sets and four mini-figures celebrating the work of Nancy Grace Roman, Margaret Hamilton, Sally Ride, and Mae Jemison, all women whose stories pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM.

• Nancy Grace Roman’s LEGO build features a Hubble Space Telescope and a projected image of a planetary nebula.  A quote of hers that we love is, “One of the reasons I like working with schools is to try to convince women that they can be scientists and that science can be fun.”

Nancy Grace Roman was the first Chief of Astronomy in the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, and she helped fight for what would become the Hubble Space Telescope.

• Margaret Hamilton’s LEGO build features a stack of book elements, representing the books of listings of Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) onboard flight software source code. A quote of hers that we love is, “Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world. There was no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners.”

Margaret H. Hamilton, was truly able to pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM as one of the first computer scientists who helped write the computer code for the Apollo missions.

• Sally Ride and Mae Jemison’s LEGO build features a launchpad and Space Shuttle Challenger with 3 removable rocket stages.

A quote we love from Sally Ride is, “If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys.” 

Sally Ride was the first American woman to go into space when she flew on the space shuttle Challenger. In addition to her contribution as a NASA Astronaut, she was a champion for science education and a role model for generations.

A quote we love from Dr. Mae Jemison is, “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations”. 

Mae Carol Jemison is a former NASA astronaut, an American engineer, and a medical researcher. She was the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, and she continues with her inspirational teaching and embodies the mission to choose to challenge.

These and many more inspirational women pave the way for girls to thrive in STEM and to reach for the stars. As moms, we have worked hard to lead by example to show our girls and our boys that we live the “Choose to Challenge” motto.

We hope you will join us on this journey as we continue to learn and grow by discovering new ways to help build a future where diversity of thought, gender, and physicality are celebrated. You can read more about us and the mission we are on at Backpack Bytes.

#ChooseToChallenge on #IWD2021.