Our idea is combatting the issue of sexism in STEM subjects. Being females going into this industry we have all experienced first-hand the demotivating discrimination that occurs day to day in our field. We aim to target the existing issue of products often being tailored towards the male demographic. This often increases the risk of injury to females when the products in question are in place to ensure safety. Our idea is to enforce legislation to ensure every product is designed and tested to suit all consumer body types.
Gender bias stems from a young age and we believe this effects their future careers paths. Although all children are seen to not show gender bias until the age of 5, the toys and tv shows they are exposed to begin to implant these ideas of discrimination. Where girls’ toys are pink and catered towards the stereotypical female roles such as working in the kitchen or being a teacher. The boys’ toys are more inclined to be associated with engineering, such as tool kits and race cars.
This product design bias continues into the workplace where mainstream PPE is designed for the generic male physique, which is often uncomfortable or potentially dangerous for the female physique. Our solution to this issue is to enforce a legislation that requires new products to be tested on all body types. The data should be collected, analysed and considered for every individual set of results.
Hello everyone, I'm Chathuri and I'm your mentor for this week.
As a woman in STEM field, I'm really excited about this proposal. This is a topic that need to be discussed more in our field.
I have few suggestions and questions for this proposal.
1. As for the data collection, what kind of methods are you going to use?
2. What is the time scale for this project and it would be nice to add a Gantt chart to show the time scale.
3. As there are lot of female Engineering associations around the world, have you considered about taking advises from those associations. As most of the members have already been in the field for couple of years they will have more suggestions and might even be willing to invest in this project.
4. If possible mention about the cost of the project and how you plan to find the funds.
Those are few suggestions and if you have more questions, you can always ask me. Good Luck!!!