Thursday, October 22, 2015

Documentary on Young Women in STEM

Greetings from the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) offices, where I am attending the screening of the documentary "Big Dream Movement" about seven young women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). The first was about Cassidy Williams, but I had difficulty understanding her Iowa accent and it was all a bit too "TED Talk". I found I could understand Martha Chumo from Kenya better. One of the later segments had a very disturbing scene where all the students of what appeared o be a school stood to first recite a pledge of allegiance and then some sort of religious prayer, coming out of a public address system (it all looked something from a totalitarian state). The segments about Asya Mohamed Al Jabri & Marwa Saud Al Habsi were a little less frantic and provided a nice change of pace. The documentary is informative, fun and would provide role models for young women to see it is okay to do technology (as much as an old male like me can tell). The documentary is glossy and predominantly US in outlook, but not annoyingly so. Some of the spontaneous scenes appear rehearsed, like a fictional documentary. One problem is that it is orientated to the "start-up" culture and it would be worth pointing out that there are still good STEM careers in traditional corporations and government.

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