Jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are still predominantly filled by men, most of them white or Asian, but the Syracuse-based Spanish Action League - La Liga is hoping to inspire more Latina girls to consider STEM futures.
This week, the organization partnered with Micron to host a variation on the company's initiative to inspire more girls to go into STEM fields. Namely, Girls Going Tech Español, during which dozens of Latina eighth graders built robots, learned binary code and met with STEM mentors – all in Spanish.
That cultural choice was aimed at inspiring the girls "to dream big and manifest bigger,” said La Liga Executive Director Elisa Morales, and to make sure that nothing was "lost in translation" for those who haven't been in the country long enough to become fully fluent in English.
“Our kids are great ambassadors," said Morales. "Now they're going to go home, they're excited about the activities that they did. ... And so they're going to share that with their families. And hopefully, the older and younger generations are going to be impacted and inspired by that as well."
Morales hopes that impact translates into family support for the girls "to continue on with their education and do something where they're going to college."
New York already has one of the largest gaps in graduation rates between white and Hispanic high school students in the country, and Morales says most of the girls at Girls Going Tech Español had never been to a college or considered attending one until they visited Onondaga Community College, which hosted the event.
"I feel very special coming because I've never been to place like this," said Lillian Estrada, one of the many of the eighth graders who said the event also made them feel proud of their culture, and of the fact that being bilingual could put them at an advantage in tech workplaces.
That's the kind of inspiration, says electrical engineer Natalia Montilla, that will hopefully lead to greater numbers of Latina women across STEM fields. Morales was one of the event mentors, answering questions about general career opportunities and her own journey working as a Latina woman in STEM.
“It has definitely been an interesting experience,” said Montilla, an OCC alum. “Still, in this day and age, there’s not many of us.”
A 2023 report by the National Science Foundation (NSF), based on census data, on the demographic divide across STEM fields in the U.S. found that Hispanic or LatinX employees comprise just 15 percent of the overall workforce and have some of the lowest median wages (along with Black and American Indian or Alaska Native STEM workers).
However, despite the inequity, the NSF found that the numbers are changing. Underrepresented communities and the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to Hispanic and Latinx students nearly doubled in some STEM fields between 2011 and 2021.
Eighth grader Andrea Reyes, one of the few participants who said she was a "robotics champion" at her school last year, said Girls Going Tech Español only furthered her desire to keep building on that knowledge.
Reyes found it particularly fun "to create [a robot] of your own. And it's really inspired me to be an engineer, because you learn new stuff that you never learned before in your life."
