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High5Girls keeps girls interested in science and entrepreneurship.
“Take the car seatbelt, for example – it’s designed for a man who is 1.75 cm tall, which means that for a woman like me, who is 1.60 cm tall, driving a car is a little more dangerous,” says Marianne Andersen. She founded the organisation High5Girls five years ago with a mission to get more girls and young women interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and translate their curiosity into education, jobs and entrepreneurship in the long run.
This interest was fuelled by 16 camps and five hackathons that High5Girls offered to girls aged 13-19 last year. With support from the Otto Mønsted Foundation, it has been free for girls to attend camps in Hundested and at Aalborg and Aarhus universities. These camps have focused on giving girls a general understanding of entrepreneurship and the textile industry, as well as inviting them into experimental research on pain using neuroscience technology. Elsewhere in Denmark, girls have participated in camps on topics such as coding or virtual reality, and in 2023, new camps await where girls can “work” as robot designers at DTU in Lyngby, while others can learn about plastics at Aarhus University. At all activities, selected women from High5Girls’ large corps of volunteer role models participate in the activities. The role models have an educational background in STEM, and their participation will help change girls’ stereotypes about who chooses STEM programmes and what entrepreneurship entails. It seems to be having an effect.
In a new evaluation report, Ramboll Management Consulting concludes that both the participating girls and role models are positive about the activities and events organised by High5Girls and that High5Girls can contribute to maintaining the girls’ interest in the long term. In this sense, High5Girls can help address the societal challenge that many girls lose interest in STEM as they get older, according to the report.
Still locked in choices
Even though virtually all other developments in society take place in sprints, girls’ choice of education has not changed much since High5Girl’s founder had to choose a direction in upper secondary school in the early 1980s and chose to go for a linguistic and not a mathematical baccalaureate.
“But I got a bit tired of all the girls in high school, so afterwards I took some single subjects in maths, physics, chemistry and computer science. That was all many years ago, but it surprises me when I talk to our role models today that it’s still pretty much the same. Things haven’t changed much, which is why I founded High5Girls,” says Marianne.
After the single subjects, Marianne threw herself into the programme as a low-voltage engineer among 32 male fellow students. This was followed by 25 years of jobs in global companies until she decided to try her hand as an independent consultant and bring other projects to life.
“Five years ago, I looked in the mirror and thought: what do you want to give back to the world? Then I thought of course it should be telling girls that STEM is also an option.”
According to Marianne, High5Girls is aimed at the many other girls for whom STEM is not such a natural choice. This is done by dispelling prejudices about STEM archetypes with the help of role models and nurturing girls’ curiosity in a safe environment where they dare to ask questions and socialise.
What are you and High5Girls giving back to the world?
“We have some major global challenges as described in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We believe that there is a need to utilise all talents that can help solve some of these challenges. And it’s a bit of a shame that 50% of the population more or less don’t choose that path and don’t contribute to finding solutions within green transition, health, etc. because we know that solutions are better when they are developed by a diverse group. For example, we know that many medicines are developed for a man, who very often weighs more than a woman, and as a society we get better technical solutions when there is diversity behind the development. It could be culture, age, etc. – but now we focus on women because it’s our own story.”
High5Girls will also contribute to a deeper understanding and desire for entrepreneurship, Marianne emphasises.
“Only 1/3 of the country’s entrepreneurs today are women, which is also why entrepreneurship is part of our concept. We teach them about choosing a process to solve a problem and finally the girls pitch their idea in a safe space with someone they’ve been with for two days. It means a lot to the shy girls, and when they come back to school, they dare a little more,” says Marianne and is pleased that this is also documented in the evaluation report.
“We often have a stereotype that an entrepreneur should be like Jesper Buch or Elon Musk and work 24/7. For many of the women I talk to, that’s not what interests them. Maybe it’s wanting to do something good for the world and at the same time have a personal life, and we can help change what it means to be an independent entrepreneur.”
