Sitting in a dark auditorium packed with thousands of other nervous middle schoolers, I clutched my teammate’s arm in excitement. I was at the 2016 VEX Robotics World Championship alongside my all-girls robotics team called “Major Trouble,” which was created to provide a supportive community for girls at my middle school. Suddenly, the auditorium spotlights turned on, shining brightly on the stage. They revealed Debbie Sterling, the TIME “Person of the Moment,” Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, and founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, a company dedicated to making toys geared towards girls that teach basic science and engineering concepts. While standing in front of a screen reading “Girls ♡ Robots,” she urged the audience to “encourage more girls to come into this community.” After facing a year of taunts from male classmates, who often attributed my team’s successes to “brownie points” from judges for being girls, this was exactly what my younger self needed. I recognized that I belonged in a space dominated by men, and that this affirmation was backed by significant time and investment by major companies in the field. At the same time, however, it highlighted the paucity of institutional support and resources for young women in another space in which I grew up and have decided to pursue a career: global affairs.
Long before my brief stint in STEM, I became enamored by geography. First exposed to the subject as a toddler while playing with our family globe, my curiosity about the world seemed never-ending. Between the ages of eight and 11, I invested copious hours into studying the discipline and went on to compete in numerous geography bees. Yet at nearly every competition I attended, I stood out due to my gender. Although National Geographic commissioned a study in 1996 to investigate this gap, I was still only one of six girls (out of 54 state and territorial finalists) competing in the National Geographic Bee’s National Finals in 2015, nearly 20 years later. When the Bee coordinators informed me that this was the most girls at Nationals in recent memory, I was disturbed. Even after I stopped competing, I sought to understand the roots of this phenomenon.
The results of the 1996 National Geographic study revealed that although girls and boys entered the National Geographic Bee in equal numbers, fewer girls qualified for the later stages of the competition. Scholars have largely attributed this variation to males’ inherently greater spatial awareness skills, which is vital to the study of geography, suggesting that such a difference is a foregone conclusion. However, the notion of insurmountability neglects the fact that it’s entirely possible to develop one’s spatial abilities. Personally, I have tried to address this by mentoring young girls I know and sharing resources and tips that I learned. Yet, I have often been disheartened by how our societal paradigms fail to promote equity, with parents I’ve spoken to being more likely to see their sons than their daughters as geographers.
Although gender differences in childhood academic competitions may at first seem harmless, it should be seen as a pressing issue due to the broader implications of exposure to global affairs at a young age. In general, I firmly believe that exposure to geography provides a greater appreciation of the world, something that is beneficial for and should be accessible to all. However, encouraging girls to study geography could also possibly translate into increased gender equality within the field of global affairs. Personally, I’ve found that my passion for foreign policy stems from my early exposure to the study of geography. However, I am also consistently one of the only women participating in college policy discussion forums. And beyond college, this disparity is demonstrated in major foreign policy bodies. For example, in 2016, only 32.4% of Foreign Service officers affiliated with the Department of State were female. Yet, policymaking groups have recognized that women often play a significant role in successfully executing policy. Especially given the Department of State’s recent release of the First National Strategy on Gender Equality and Equity, which sees global gender equality as a “strategic imperative,” it is a travesty that more women are not involved in the policy creation process as well. However, I believe that this gap can and should be addressed in the same way it is being addressed in STEM fields — through working with young girls.
Of course, this does not mean that we should make toddlers dive head-first into the intricacies of geopolitics. Instead, we should be taking steps to ensure that young girls are exposed to the subject’s fundamentals. For instance, we could begin by dismantling societal phenomena that limit girls’ access to spatial awareness-building resources, such as the stereotypical association and marketing of toys like building blocks and puzzles towards boys. Additionally, we could advocate for the increased inclusion of geography curricula into elementary schools, democratizing access to the subject instead of restricting it to those who are fortunate enough to gain exposure on their own.
Beyond this, however, girls would also benefit from recognizing that there is institutional support for the value of their presence in the global affairs community. As I sat in that stadium in 2016, I felt appreciated and empowered by the extensive support of VEX Corporation in my robotics enterprises. I’ve witnessed a welcome shift in the world of global affairs, including via Harvard student organizations like Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative (which recently hosted a Women in Foreign Policy Conference) and Harvard Undergraduate Women in Foreign Policy. Yet if National Geographic had enacted a similar counterpart to VEX’s Girl Powered initiative during my time competing in geography bees, it may have had a tangible impact on our societal conception of who belongs in global affairs. In the future, I hope to see such moves being made, as they are vital in actualizing the following now common adage: Women belong in all places where decisions are made.
The original artwork for this article was created by Harvard College student Duncan Glew for the exclusive use of the HPR.
