I don't think attempts to improve the aesthetics of coding in order to attract a more diverse audience is in any way a bad thing. Some people just need to chill.
No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
31–40 of 179 posts
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#32I don't see the problem in pinking stuff. If that's the social cue to make tech okay for a large majority of girls, what's the harm. Most people seem to want to be male or female. The more options the better, I think. We need to increase the amount of women in tech.
>We need to increase the amount of women in tech.
How about truck drivers? Do we need to increase the amount of women there too?
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#33I have noticed that some women only tech events tend to go very lightly into technical matters and lean more towards the social justice side of things and I can very easily see just how unappealing such events would be.
No, I'm pretty sure its "Code like a girl". That's the name of the submitted and is the completed form of said URL. I'm also reasonably sure that referring to women professionals as "girls" is also one of those things you shouldn't do. Right hand, meet left hand. These are adults, and they happen to be male/female/white/black/asian/whatever. (Unless we're actually talking about k-9 school aged females. Then girl is a…
Code like a girl is a play on throw like a girl, which is a reclamation of a common pejorative description on the US.
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#34My daughter is six. I never wanted her to be interested in things that were traditionally gendered - but she just is. I would buy neutral toys, but her eyes would light up when she saw the babies and pink princesses. So, is she wrong to like those things? We have done the minecraft hour of code together, (she likes minecraft too) but if there was an even more 'girly' version I an guarantee that she would be more enga…
I agree with this, and hadn't thought of the clear problem in your last paragraph.
I have 3 daughters. They all have at least a slight preference for stereotypical colors, but one will actively shun products she doesn't find frilly enough. Her interest in babies and glitter is borderline militant, and I am certain a lack of bright colors would disengage her.
I can't believe articles like this are comfortable lumping "girls" in a single group with a consistent set of preferences.
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#35This makes me wonder, have computers inherently been designed as boy toys? I don't support continuing the teaching that girls should like pink things, dresses and flowers, but it does exist quite strongly. So if we assume boys are thought or predisposed to like esthetic X, while girls are thought or predisposed to like esthetic Y. Have computers been designed to esthetic X? Basically, my point is, are computers gende…
I don't think computers themselves have been designed that way necessarily, but a much more obvious culprit is the advertising in the 80s and 90s. Computers were strongly marketed as toys for boys. NPR's Planet Money had a very interesting episode on this. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#36This makes me wonder, have computers inherently been designed as boy toys? I don't support continuing the teaching that girls should like pink things, dresses and flowers, but it does exist quite strongly. So if we assume boys are thought or predisposed to like esthetic X, while girls are thought or predisposed to like esthetic Y. Have computers been designed to esthetic X? Basically, my point is, are computers gende…
It's telling that there isn't even a term for this. You've hit a major point here.
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#37This makes me wonder, have computers inherently been designed as boy toys? I don't support continuing the teaching that girls should like pink things, dresses and flowers, but it does exist quite strongly. So if we assume boys are thought or predisposed to like esthetic X, while girls are thought or predisposed to like esthetic Y. Have computers been designed to esthetic X? Basically, my point is, are computers gende…
Is the problem that they're boy-ified in their design? Or that they're boy-ified in the way we refer to them and their users? Boy-ified in our expectations of who will be interested in them. Boy-ified in the pronouns we use to refer to users. Boy-ified in who features in the ads that suggest who's responsible for buying and using them.
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#38I too can think of more than a few pink- & flowery-themed events for women in tech that I've seen, but all that I can think of were organized almost entirely by woman who worked or were getting an education in tech. I would be surprised to learn that that trend was substantially atypical. They're weren't being condescending or stereotyping: they were being themselves. I don't see anything wrong with that. The alternative is social pressure that girls who get into tech can't be into other traditionally "girly" things which seems counterproductive and hypocritical.
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#39The real way we're going to see equity in girls going into computer science/tech is for it to be an academic requirement, or at least an honors-level course in all high schools. In my high school in the 90's, computer science was practically a vo-tech class so none of the smart girls took it - hobbyist boys were the ones with the most experience going into college. I had an engineer dad, was super into computers, and…
Totally agree with you here. I think middle school is actually the prime age to start teaching it but not the drag/drop scratch/block type stuff you see in the lower grades. It should be a requirement just like Math and English.
Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting
#40"YOU NEED TO TRY HARDER TO APPEAL TO MINORITY GROUPS." - 2 seconds later - "STOP USING STEREOTYPES TO APPEAL TO MINORITY GROUPS, IT'S OFFENSIVE." I mean, I understand the sentiment, but I can also see why many industry professionals begin to think this sort of thing is a catch-22 where smug criticisms will be levied, regardless of conscientiousness.
"YOU NEED TO TRY HARDER TO APPEAL TO MINORITY GROUPS by not stereotyping, patronizing, abusing them and creating a hostile environment " There, I fixed it for you. You can appeal to minority groups without using stereotypes.
I'm genuinely curious here: how? Isn't appealing to minority groups by definition setting them apart from other groups? If we're not going to genericize all appeals (thus introducing the built in cultural bias of appealing to most people, i.e. the dominant group) don't we have to say "this thing that is unique to your cultural group is why you should be interested"? That sounds like it almost must include some stereotype. That doesn't mean patronizing, but it does mean making some assumptions about the group in question and why they might be interested.