What happened on UCreateChange.com (19-25 Apr 2010)
Women are as inventive as men.
The Spelbots is a great example. The all-woman engineering team built robots to play soccer. The efforts of these girls paid off as they came in second at the RoboCup 2009 (Osaka). That achievement’s nothing to be sneezed at.
In fact they’ve torn apart notions that engineering is a “guy” thing. Naturally there are differences. When guys compete to showcase their ideas, women tend to be more accepting.
According to their mentor professor Andrew Williams, “There tends to be more of a social side [to it]…Teamwork basically. There’s an emphasis on collaboration, creativity, social aspects of computer science.”
In fact the social part of engineering (or related disciplines) is important for women engineers.
Like Emily Cumming’s sustainable refrigerator which runs on zero electricity and uses wet soil to keep foods and perishables cool. Her invention was sparked by a concern over dwindling fossil fuels.
So she built it, refined it, and gave the plans away to an African township during her gap year. That won her The Barclays Woman of the Year Award 2009 and Cosmopolitan magazine’s Ultimate Save-the-Planet Pioneer 2008.
All this and she’s only 22 years old.
A women’s touch equates to healing. Think of Florence Nightingale or the nurses in our hospitals.
How’s this cool?
Traditional suction healing systems cost $100/hour to rent and the dressing must be changed every few hours. Her invention costs $3 and the dressing can be left on for a few days at a time. Even more impressive, her wound pump was field tested during the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, and it came through with flying colours!
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. We know now that women engineers and inventors are just as good and whole lot more social-minded than their male counterparts.
Are you one of them?
More examples
- Cello shirt: Wearable music with movement
- The link between computers, emotions and education
- 4 children's gizmos that inspired scientific breakthroughs
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