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No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

code.likeagirl.io

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Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#81

Post by randomdata »

twobyfour wrote: post #66
tzahola wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

To the degree that it's an opening to economic opportunity, then yes, why not? FWIW, truck driving (at least long-haul) is a little different from programming in one important regard: it takes the driver away from their families for days at a time. This is typically more problematic for women than for men, since women are still more likely to be responsible for care of home and family, whether they want to or not. (I…

What about agriculture? That industry has faced labour deficiencies for years, and the need is only growing with tightening controls on migrant labour. Interestingly, worldwide, women are more likely than men to work in agriculture, but in the USA the industry is overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Why isn't there a big push to get women into US agriculture like there is for US tech? Where is the government creating "farming" classes in school like they have done with coding?

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#82

Post by tempodox »

I would be genuinely interested in what “code like a girl” means in practial terms. Do girls/women code differently than boys/men, and if so, how? Since females are so exceedingly rare in our profession, I haven‘t had the opportunity to find out myself.

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#83

Post by dsfyu404ed »

tzahola wrote: post #32
LeoJiWoo wrote: post #2

I 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?

Write a letter to your elected representative. With current DOT roles anyone who isn't willing to piss in a jug to save a couple minutes is at a severe disadvantage.

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#84

Post by drblast »

The title here is misleading, I think the article is right.

I didn't get into tech because it was interesting, at least not initially. I got into computers because the movie War Games was cool as hell and I wanted to be like Matthew Broderick's character in that movie. I was 5 or 6 when I saw it.

It was only after I got a Commodore 64 that I learned that it was going to be really difficult to do the things in the movie. But the idea that with enough practice I could be like that was very appealing. I don't think girls today have anything similar.

Let's be honest, very few children are that into math or computer science where it becomes an end unto itself. That comes much later. Younger males in the industry today seem to have grown up in the gamer->modder->hacker path that didn't really exist when I was a kid, and certainly doesn't exist for girls today.

And if you're asking the tech industry full of nerds to fix this problem for kids of any gender you're going to get something completely misguided.

Complain to Hollywood. When the military wants to recruit people they don't change to be more appealing, they help make "Top Gun."

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#85

Post by stinkytaco »

ucaetano wrote: post #67
stinkytaco wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stereo…

"Isn't appealing to minority groups by definition setting them apart from other groups?" No, in a world where minority groups are set apart, appealing to them can be as simple as not setting them apart , by no harassing, abusing, discriminating, etc. You don't need pink office chairs to make an office space welcoming for women. You just need NOT to have catcalls, rapists, abusers, sexist jokes, etc. Simple stuff, rea…

The point I'm trying to make is that if we are indeed to engage to appeal to a specific group, we need to make assumptions about that group.

Your example above is a different problem. In that situation we are trying to not be hostile to a specific group. That's really a much easier problem to identify (not solve) because hostile behavior is hostile behavior, no matter who you are. It's incredibly important to solve that problem, but there we really have a universal solutions: treat people with respect, regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation, etc. Build policies that enforce that respect and hopefully build to a cultural shift where respect is assumed.

But "appealing to minority groups" is another problem entirely. We're assuming that we have a problem that is due to some inherent bias in the way our culture has portrayed or encouraged a behavior. In this case that boys are more interested in tech because they got "STEM toys" as kids or that the toys that are available appeal more to boys or that the messaging surrounding tech is unconsciously biased towards boys. None of those problems involve being hostile towards girls. We also assume (correctly or incorrectly) that adjusting that bias could bring a better balance to this area.

That involves targeting a message or policy to a specific group. In that situation we've defined a problem: "girls are not interested in technology to the same extent that boys are" and are presumably trying to say "how do we get girls more interested in technology". I would argue that "don't be hostile" is only part of the problem, it does not address inherent cultural bias. If we assume that bias exists, then we need to make assumptions about girls and build solutions accordingly.

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#86

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ucaetano wrote: post #67
stinkytaco wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stereo…

"Isn't appealing to minority groups by definition setting them apart from other groups?" No, in a world where minority groups are set apart, appealing to them can be as simple as not setting them apart , by no harassing, abusing, discriminating, etc. You don't need pink office chairs to make an office space welcoming for women. You just need NOT to have catcalls, rapists, abusers, sexist jokes, etc. Simple stuff, rea…

Most workplaces have been doing this "simple stuff" for decades and the problem appears to persist.

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#87

Post by heeen »

jorjordandan wrote: post #21

My 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…

> Give my daughter some princess engineers in pink dresses please.

like Princess Bubblegum? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDghDZaS2M

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#88

Post by vinceguidry »

jorjordandan wrote: post #21

My 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…

> Give my daughter some princess engineers in pink dresses please. She recently saw a barbie movie at a friends house (i know) and barbie was coding and it palpably raised her interest in the whole endeavor.

Precisely. Let kids get political when they're old enough to care about it. Until then can we just feed their imaginations and stop trying to shovel our insecurities onto them?

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#89

Post by Kluny »

1auralynn wrote: post #25

The 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…

How hard could it be? Make a movie like "Hackers" with a gender balanced cast and a hot, badass female lead. Heck, Angelina Jolie in Hackers was enough to pull me in.

Re: No need to pinkify – Girls get interested in tech because it is interesting

#90

Post by r3bl »

20years wrote: post #39
1auralynn wrote: post #25

The 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.

In my country, it is an obligatory class at the equivalent of the US middle school level (10-14 year old).

However, doing something as complicated as "computing and informatics" (a literal translation of the subject name) that early in the school education just made it absolutely terrible, much worse than the traditional classes were in my school.

I still excelled at it, mostly because of books (the Internet wasn't as widespread as it is today), and was a part of the state-sponsored small contests that test student's knowledge in that subject. Finished first on the municipality level, shared the second position on the regional level, and didn't go to the state level competition (was a bit too far away). That's what made me pursue IT further.

However, all I've ever learned during those four years was:

* Installing a pirated copy of Windows XP on desktops.

* "Blind typing" (typing properly on QWERTY keyboard without looking at the keyboard) and clicking on things in MS Office (2003) to make the document appear as in given screenshot.

* Mashing two malfunctioning desktops together to create a functioning one.

* Very basic programming (mostly if-else statements and loops). In QBASIC (from 1991). In 2008. (edit: This is what the competitions were about.)

My point being: You can still introduce it as an obligatory subject and fuck it up pretty badly. Including myself, two out of 120 kids in that school in my generation continued pursuing IT by joining specialized high schools (also a thing in my country) dedicated to IT. Neither me nor the second kid are female.

So, while I agree that it's a step in the right progress (the one which my country made in the second half of '00s, but fucked up pretty badly in its execution), it's far from being the final step. It brought us the equivalent of nothingness in spreading the IT. The IT is still associated as a "male field", regardless of the fact that the subject is obligatory for everyone in that age range for about 15 years.

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