By Tandy Lau
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, not “schools taking equity meaningfully.” So Kristel Bell founded the nonprofit Black Girls Movement in 2016 to fight system racism on two fronts: helping more Black women get into the STEM field, where they’re grossly underrepresented, and subsequently securing them high-paying jobs to combat long-standing economic inequality.
“It’s all about inspiration and aspirations, and just trying to understand the motivations as to why our high school girls do want to go into STEM and what difference are they trying to make,” said Bell. “[Maybe] there’s somebody in their family who went through something [like a health issue] that’s inspiring them to want to make a difference. That’s what our current program is focused on. That’s Black Girls Movement.”
Disparities in STEM are glaring in both race and gender. In a 2021 study, the Pew Research Center found only 9% of the field’s workforce were Black. And while women earn the larger portion of STEM degrees, they only make up under a quarter of engineering and computer science employees, with overrepresentation in health-related jobs—like nursing—balancing out the numbers.
The organization recently opened up applications for $1,000 scholarships for 25 college-bound Black girls interested in STEM. Those graduating this summer with a minimum 3.0 GPA can apply by 11:59 p.m. CST Thursday.
The Detroit-born Bell traces her roots in STEM to her computer science majoring mom, who moved to homemaking after giving birth to two separate sets of twins. She said STEM was always present at home, with coding classes starting at an early age and a household tradition of dominating school science fairs. When Bell was in her mid-20s, she and her mom felt like such mentorship should be more readily available for Black girls to bridge the gap, and Black Girls Movement was born.
This work coincides with the Republican-majority Supreme Court gutting “race-conscious” college admissions. Bell doesn’t think philanthropy can effectively plaster over entire institutional policies.
“I don’t think that it should be the full responsibility of Black business owners to bridge these gaps,” she said. “The responsibility becomes completely ours. I don’t think that’s fair … so I am looking at things within the organization to figure out what type of changes need to be made to make a bigger impact. Because a bigger impact needs to be made.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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