Girls don’t leave STEM once; they leave three times. First, in primary school when “I’m bad at maths” becomes a personality. Second, in high school when they drop senior tech for “something more cool.” Third, in first‑year engineering when the boyish culture and difficulty finally wear them down. I’m a mechatronics engineer who is terrified of coding and still somehow convinces girls to give it a chance. By being openly honest about my fear, connecting code to real hobbies, and normalising failure out loud, I turn anxiety into curiosity - and keep more girls in the room.
This talk is for Python educators, mentors, and community organisers who care about women in tech but keep watching girls disappear at every stage. I’ll share what I’ve seen as an educator and volunteer across schools and outreach programs: three crucial dropout points for girls - primary school, senior subject choices, and first‑year engineering - and how my “I’m terrified of coding” honesty weirdly helps.
We’ll look at why coding felt impossible for me: no safe space to fail, classes that only praised people who “got it first go,” and an unspoken rule that struggling meant you didn’t belong. I’ll show how I now use that experience to design environments where girls are allowed to make mistakes, laugh about it, and try again.
You’ll hear stories of turning K-pop obsessions, arts and craft, and even sport into coding gateways, and how linking Python to real hobbies flips girls from “this isn’t for me” to “wait, that’s kind of cool.” We’ll break down the three dropout moments with concrete tactics you can apply: how to support curious primary‑schoolers, how to keep tech‑strong teens from drifting away, and how to make first‑year/early‑career spaces less hostile and more human. Attendees will leave with practical ideas to make their classrooms, workshops, and meetups places where girls don’t just show up - they stay.
Gwyneth de Guia is a Brisbane-based mechatronics engineer and STEM educator with a passion for making coding feel accessible, creative, and genuinely fun. She has spent years volunteering across girls-in-STEM and community programs, and brings a refreshingly honest, funny, and relatable perspective to engineering education. Gwyneth is especially passionate about helping girls feel less afraid of coding and more curious about what they can create with it. She believes STEM should make room for personality, creativity, and a bit of chaos - and she’s always happy to show that you can love the impact of engineering even if you don’t always love the code. She’s honest about not fitting the traditional engineering stereotype and proves that there’s more than one way to be a woman in STEM.
