A constant need to prove themselves

Sophomore Jin Cho is the president of the Bionic Bruins robotics club, the most visible engineering group on campus with nearly 50 members.

Although initially not interested, the club’s adviser, Barbara Schremp, pushed her to join given her math and science leanings.

Now Cho has been a part of Bionic Bruins for two years, but she said she constantly gets asked about her robotics expertise.

“People will walk in the meetings and ask me ‘How are you president?’,

‘What are you good at to be president?’ and just ask general questions about my qualifications,” Cho said.

Though Robotics Club’s main focuses are competition and coding — they will be heading off to Texas to compete in the Vex Robotics World Championships — Cho still finds gender representation in STEM fields to be important and has been growing.

“It's needed,” she said. “There’s a lot more active efforts to include women in those fields, and people are just more generally aware about the reality difference and aren't letting previous biases control them.”

Though the robotics club’s membership skews dominantly male, she said anyone can join.

“There’s just a general atmosphere within the student body where female students will be less motivated to take difficult STEM classes, but we had a lot of events in the beginning of the year to recruit anyone and that aren't just specifically geared to women,” she said.

One of Robotics Club’s biggest events that they run is the annual Hackathon, a full-day event held on Mar. 26 in the cafeteria, where students districtwide were invited to compete in a coding challenge to come up with an innovative solution to a specific problem. Cho said that through this event, the coding community can collaborate and gain more exposure.

“We want to create a space where people can learn from each other, the workshops and the teachers and collaborate in a safe space for everyone with no bias and be as inclusive as possible,” she said. necessary, and we accept all kinds of formats as and can come up with an idea.”

Future plans for women in STEM

Senior Nithila Vasant has been an engineering of her four years in high school and plans to pursue curently enrolled in Project Lead the Way’s engineering ment (EDD) class.

At first, Vasant harbored a dislike for engineering field by her parents. But as her involvement in it grew,

“I thought it would be really boring, but taking ing classes made me realize that engineering can with other people and come up with a brand new Vasant said that she does not face sexism for being the footnotes, women have made profound impacts in STEM II, where they initially entered the workforce in replacement of opportunities in predominantly male-occupated fields. up 25.8% of all STEM jobs, ninth for women’s representation representation in STEM fields has become more widespread, repre disproportionately low, and factors such as sexism, the wage gap and continuously prominent in STEM occupations.

Academy of Science a few years ago reported that female scien tists and engineers are less likely to receive research funding, promotions, and job offers than their male counterparts, even when they have similar qualifications and experience. The disparity is also seen at Branham, where enrollment in engineering classes is about