YOUNG WOMEN BELONG IN MAKERSPACES: DEVELOPING AND DETECTING YOUNG WOMEN’S AGENCY IN MAKING

While many makerspaces are created by and cater to middle-aged males, our research has found that when supported, young women manifest their agency engaging in a multitude of making disciplines including those traditionally thought of as masculine fields such as woodworking and metalworking.Design principles, activities, findings and research tools from a program developed under an out-of-school maker project, AAMASE, are shared.The principles, activities and tools were developed to strengthen and support the agency of young African American women in a community-based makerspace in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.The project focused on agency by co-designing making experiences with minoritized secondary-school youth and centering their experiences.Making projects ranged from one-day builds such as making resin art pieces, to longer entrepreneurship-focused projects such as designing a student locker organizer product.Principles for supporting and strengthening youth's agency in making are shared and expanded upon.The paper also briefly describes the researchers' use of the object-elicitation technique to investigate the makers' processes, identity, and development of agency.Finally, the paper presents data and analysis of young women's reflections on their experiences in the program.