Abstract:

Several studies have been conducted on gender inequality in careers related to the areas of science and technology. According to a study carried out in Brazil, in the period between 2009 to 2018, women represented on average 17.23% of students entering computer courses; the study also shows that the trend for girls entering is decreasing.

The group Girls in Computer Science of the Federal University of Paraiba (UFPB), Brazil, has as main objective to attract girls to computing through the dissemination of knowledge of the area. Since 2014, the group has been developing research and extension projects on the theme of female empowerment, since the feeling of not being able to deal with technology has been pointed out as one of the main reasons that lead to the low rate of girls seeking to enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) area.

In 2019, the students participating in one of the group’s actions called "Programming Workshops" were challenged to participate in a promoted Hackathon involving knowledge of robotics and programming through Arduino. The term Hackathon, junction of the words hack (program with excellence) and marathon, is used to designate a programming marathon with the aim of accomplishing a set of challenges. For this marathon, 3D modeling of a robotic hand was used, and the goal was to program the hand so that it would open and close its fingers, in addition to performing a creative movement of each team's choice.

The methodology adopted was to conduct a training on the Arduino platform, where the students learned about its physical components, how to program in this environment and what the rules of the competition, as well as the activation of the robotic hand, in two meetings. The first meeting was dedicated to the introduction to Arduino, how the platform can be applied in everyday life, the programming environment, explanation of the physical components that would be used and a presentation about the competition. The second meeting was dedicated to content related to Hackathon. It had the participation of 20 high school girls guided by 10 tutors, undergraduate students of the Computer Science course of the Computer Center (UFPB). The robotic hand movements required in the competition were to open and close all fingers of the hand, one at a time and another creative movement at the choice of the team, which could be the positive sign, the letter V, the sign of "ok" for example.

At the end of the activity, a questionnaire was applied in order to know the opinion of the participating students regarding questions such as the degree of motivation and satisfaction in participating in the activity, previous knowledge about the items worked and the degree of difficulty of the activity.

Although 21% of the students answered that they initially felt unmotivated to participate in Hackathon, at its end 100% of them said they liked to participate very much. None of the students had previously worked with robotics and the majority (86%) considered the task difficult but finished the activity satisfactorily. It was also reported the desire to deepen the studies on robotics and Arduino, because they are current themes and with various possibilities for research and development of solutions for day to day.

Keywords:

Female empowerment, robotics, technology education.