How to support girls' participation at projects in makerspace settings. Overview on current recommendations

Several biases and thresholds challenge the reach of girls in technology-related activities. For this contribution we collected and structured existing research and good practices on how to reach girls within projects in the field educational robotics, makerspaces, coding and STEM in general. The contribution presents general guidelines for future activities with a potential higher rate of participating girls in makerspace settings. The guidelines suggest: Announce maker activity gender-sensitive; set girls' quota and low thresholds; integrate female tutors and role models; give collaborative prompts and assignments; apply gender mainstreaming in makerspaces.Preprint version of the paper published in the proceedings of Edurobotics 2018: Moro M., Alimisis D. & Iocchi L. (eds.) (2020), Educational Robotics in the Context of the Maker Movement. Edurobotics 2018. Springer, AISC 946 (pp. 193-196)