(Cheer-)Leader.

When I looked around the arena at my robotics competition, I counted only three other girls out of over a thousand high school students working on their teams’ robots. Glancing at the bleachers, I watched girls parading as mascots, girls cheering for their teams, and girls dancing in the stands. But I didn’t see girls on the competition floor. Maybe in the next few years that gender balance will change, and the timid girls in the bleachers will be replaced by fearless women who are undaunted by society’s confining expectations. Someday, my all-girls team will not be the exception to the unspoken rule, but until then, we have to keep breaking it.

Sara Sakowitz: I’m an engineer, not a cheerleader. Let’s abandon silly rules about gender roles. (Washington Post)