If you didn’t know already, I occasionally advocate for causes I believe in. More rarely, I go so far as to actually volunteer to go meet with people. I am not exactly a people person, so I take these kinds of engagements quite seriously. One particular role I have played is acting as an effective salesperson for the Nightscout Foundation. Amid other things, one of the activities I do is show people how to build little battery powered LED lights from off-the-shelf hardware components. It’s meant to be a proof of concept, as our foundation is a maker-movement DIY group. The notion is that if you can assemble a simple LED with a little instruction, you have all the qualifications to go on and build anything. If you can build this, you can engineer your own solutions to your chronic illness.
For the adults and those who are interested in our foundation, it provides a great segue into talking about building your own treatment setups. For the kids and the casual observers, it’s a great feel-good moment and a pleasant memento. But being a DIY engineering project, even if a relatively simple and small scale one, has inspired a great variety of reactions in a great variety of people.
Some you might expect. For example, kids tend to be more enthralled with the idea of a fun project than the adults, who are by and large more interested in free stuff. These are trade shows where we’re presenting, after all. Some are a bit less expected though.
For one thing, I’ve distinctly noticed that some of our oldest visitors also seem to be the most interested in building something themselves. I had one elderly lady at the American Diabetes Association conference. She had a walker and wore an eyepatch on one eye, a pair of thick glasses over both. Her hands shook as she tried to grip the components. In her place, I might have well given up. Yet she persisted in doing it herself. Seeing the LED bulb light up, she herself lit up to match.
At the same conference was a man in a wheelchair. His hat proclaimed he was a Veteran of several different conflicts. He did not seem awfully happy to be at that particular conference on that day. Yet he was overjoyed to be able to build a simple little gadget, which he used to decorate his own wheelchair. After completing his first one, a red bulb, my mother pointed out that he ought to build a green bulb one as well, for port and starboard on his wheelchair. He agreed wholeheartedly. I don’t think I have ever seen a man more proud of his wheelchair.
Another demographic trend which I have noticed recently, which I would not have expected but perhaps should not be so surprised at: I have noticed that while children of both sexes participate in roughly equal numbers, on the whole, the girls have seemed more interested. It’s hard to quantify and difficult to explain, but I see more of that familiar gleam – that hope – when I give my whole spiel about being able to build anything.
This is of particular interest to me, because this anecdotal experience seems to be in line with some of the larger picture about STEM-related skills in American students. The data, which admittedly is still quite limited, has suggested that young girls may actually be better equipped in terms of scientific than their male counterparts, at least at a young age. This, despite overwhelmingly male-dominated workplaces in STEM fields.
There are of course other possibilities. Perhaps girls at trade shows are simply more interested because it is an arts and crafts project as much as an engineering one. Perhaps they see other people wearing their LEDs and don’t want to miss out on the latest fashion. But I don’t think so. Also, it’s worth nothing, none of these scenarios are mutually exclusive.
If this pattern is true, then it points to some very dark truths about our society and culture. It suggests that not only are we shortchanging women, and likely also many other traditionally marginalized groups, but from a technological development standpoint, we are robbing the world of their opportunity to improve life for everyone. Still, I remain hopeful. We can’t undo the past, and we can’t change our social order and culture overnight, but we can set a positive example and improve outreach. For my part, I intend to continue my work promoting DIY engineering solutions. Do It Yourself is, after all, completely gender neutral and inclusive.
The truth is that the solution to achieving genuine equality- between genders, ages, races, and all the other things that divide us – lies in enabling those that are interested and able to access the necessary resources to advance both themselves, and humanity as a whole. The solution to equality lies not in legislation, but in education. Only by encouraging self-motivated DIY engineers can we expect to achieve the egalitarian dream that we have for so long been promised.