EAST VILLAGE — Middle school- and high school-aged girls gathered at the Lower Eastside Girls Club Wednesday to plan and build models of their own buildings using real architects' tools, at an event city representatives hope will encourage more girls to join male-dominated fields.
The Department of Design and Construction joined the neighborhood nonprofit in hosting “Introduce a Girl to Architecture, Engineering and Construction Day," giving 20 girls the tools and knowledge to bring their plans for public buildings to miniature life.
Divided into groups, the girls drew blueprints of libraries, EMS stations and police precincts, and constructed models of the structures using an architect's specialized scale ruler. After the workshop, female DDC reps spoke to the girls in a panel offering career and life advice for those venturing into the mostly male spheres.
But the event is hopefully just step one in a larger scheme to recruit more women into fields where they are currently under-represented, said DDC Commissioner Feniosky Peña-Mora.
"We understand the importance to ensure that all the people working in our agency are representative of the type of community we have in New York City. One of the things we noticed in our profession, particularly in the engineering and the architecture profession, is the percentage of women who actually pursue those careers tend to be disproportionately lower than the representation in our communities," said Peña-Mora.
"What we would like to do is demystify those careers, and one of the challenges sometimes they have is they don't have role models."
The event created an interactive space for girls to meet women working at the DDC and learn more about career options, he said, hopefully encouraging them to participate in after-school programs at the LES Girls Club focused on engineering, construction and architecture, and maybe even applying for an internship at DDC down the road.
One of the teenage participants said she was pleasantly surprised to see and hear from women in a field she'd imagined being largely male.
"I feel like architecture...it's more of a male-dominant field. I never thought there would be a woman who does the job better and enjoys it at the same time," said Jiayun Chen, 16, who said she was inspired listening to Lucy Wong, the program director for the DDC's police unit.
Chen said she has also taken the club's Maker Shop, where she first realized how interesting architecture could be. At the moment, she thinks she wants to be a doctor, but she is still "trying stuff out."
A DDC rep said the agency also partners with the club for an after-school program for girls, and plans to host similar events with the club in the future.
