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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

#161

Post by svat »

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…

Have you looked at Danica McKellar's Math Doesn't Suck and other books (Kiss My Math, Hot X: Algebra Exposed, and Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape)? They are marketed towards girls (see book covers: https://mikeverta.com/cover-designs-danica-mckellars-math-do...), and I like this comment about them and gender stereotypes: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/math-doesnt-suck-a...

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

#162

Post by qihqi »

brlewis wrote: post #71
didibus wrote: post #9

This 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…

This calls for a full-blown essay at some point, but for now I'll just throw this comment out there. [Using the terms girl and boy to continue the language of the parent comment; not meaning to be diminutive to anybody.] Computers are inherently designed as girl toys, and boys are the foreigners in this world. With the caveat that any statement you make about half the population is going to be wrong about a lot of pe…

Parent comment seems to be asking about aesthetics. Is the black brick 'thinkpad' or silver macbook more aesthetic to boys or girls?

However, since we are in topic of risk. Things like TDD and type systems only start to ring a bell when someone is already reasonably invested in computer science. The initial exploration (click all the menu items to see what is there, etc) is a risk seeking behavior.

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

#163

Post by knodi123 »

jpindar wrote: post #126
knodi123 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a rhetorical device. The phrase "play like a girl" has already been established and associated with various advocacy groups trying to increase sports opportunities for girl who were previously discouraged from participating in the traditionally male activity. But I think that the original phrase, "(do it) like a man" was meant to contrast with "like a boy", as in "be a mature and skilled adult, not an awkwa…

I disagree that it has anything to do with man vs. boy. The phrase "play like a girl" is a reaction to "throw like a girl" and "fight like a girl", which meant to do those things in a less than effective way. Now that phrase is being redefined as a statement that girls can do things just fine and doing something like a girl does not mean doing it badly.

so when people used to say "be a man about it", were they contrasting with women? (instead of with little boys as I assumed?)

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

#164

Post by ateesdalejr »

softawre wrote: post #111
drblast wrote: post #84

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 mov…

> gamer->modder->hacker path This doesn't exist today? What about Minecraft mods, or building Redstone circuits? Game modding is as big as it was when I went through that cycle, isn't it? At least, that's what I plan to show my daughter when she gets a bit older to test her interest.

I modded/hacked my school software to get custom CSS themes.

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

#165

Post by cbHXBY1D »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #158
softawre wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gamer->modder->hacker path This doesn't exist today? What about Minecraft mods, or building Redstone circuits? Game modding is as big as it was when I went through that cycle, isn't it? At least, that's what I plan to show my daughter when she gets a bit older to test her interest.

I'd be inclined to say the gamer->modder->hacker path is generally less accessible in the mainstream today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. The above comment made me realize that's effectively the path I followed too, but can today's AAA titles be tinkered with the way Halo PC, Counter Strike, etc could be so thoroughly modified after a few hours poking through forums? I can remember the first time I used the (fan mad…

As someone who followed that gamer->modder->hacker path, I would like to see statistics of how many developers got there start that way. The cohort of CS/EE majors I went through college with in 2010 had a solid percentage who started that way, but I don't really see that in the 18 year old CS major of today.

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

#166

Post by photojosh »

didibus wrote: post #124
jandrese wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you rarely see people fretting over the low percentage of males going for primary education jobs. In many ways these jobs are just as or more important than computer programming, but nobody cares that it has such a lopsided gender ratio. Personally, I don't even care about it, but it makes me pause to consider why I have to be so concerned about the lack of women in CS. Am I being an asshole and trying to shove…

I think the two possible issues are: 1) Job availability and remuneration. CS is a high ROI profession currently. It pays well, has lots of open jobs for it, and takes relatively low investment to get into. If it wasn't so, they'd be much less talking about its gender gap. 2) The treatment of the minority gender in a particular field. There might be low males in primary education, but those that are in the field, do…

> 2) There might be low males in primary education, but those that are in the field, do they find themselves at a disadvantage?

No, they don't. They are given extra responsibility and promotions much quicker than the women. I think the staff division in our local primary school is something like 4 guys and 25+ women. Everyone loves them.

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

#167

Post by chongli »

twobyfour wrote: post #144
klipt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's just data driven marketing. "Research shows that sales and profits go up when we make girls' toys pink." "Okay then, make girls' toys pink!" Anyway, my guess is that whatever strategy would encourage the majority of women to go into programming isn't necessarily something women on hacker news would like, because women on hacker news are part of the self selected minority who already buck gender trends. You do…

You make a very good point! I'll just note that some of us who might have been most attracted to the profession would be turned off by pinkification, and that we may be harder to recruit into recruiting efforts that we perceive as ghettoizing. I quit a women's organization dedicated to a specific technology because all the meetups they organized seemed to be oriented around manicures. Someone mentioned above that law…

I'll just note that some of us who might have been most attracted to the profession would be turned off by pinkification, and that we may be harder to recruit into recruiting efforts that we perceive as ghettoizing.

You touched upon something that's critical to the whole issue: the perception of traditionally female stuff as inferior. The feminist movement has come a long way getting women through the door and into traditionally male-dominated fields. What still remains as an enormous challenge is the elevation in status of traditionally female roles and norms.

For as long as we think of silver and black and blue as high status and pink and purple as "ghettoized", we have a problem. Just as we have a problem that nursing and teaching are low status compared to other professions.

For as long as we consider care work to be inferior to business work, women will never be truly free.

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

#168

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

twobyfour wrote: post #27
curun1r wrote: post #19

Pinkifying to appeal to women...sure, it's probably patronizing and wrong-headed. Pinkifying to appeal to young girls...absolutely need more of this. Almost every engineer I've ever spoken to on the topic had Legos or some other toy that involves combining building blocks of some sort into a larger whole when they were a child. We absolutely need to pinkify these toys to build engineering instincts in young girls if…

You might be surprised to learn that girls aren't attracted only to toys that are pink and flowery or related to traditionally feminine pursuits. I find that assumption damaging. As a girl, my favorite toys were legos, blocks, and the toy cars that sadly were more often gifts to my brother than to me or to us both. Ideally all three together (racing cars down the hallway on ramps built from blocks and lego? Win!) Non…

>> But then, I was one of the lucky ones who didn't have pink things and "pink is for girls" and "girls should play with dolls" pushed on her from a young age.

Personally, I've accepted that it's very hard to convince people of this. It's like Ouija boards and divining rods. People just consistently fail to catch themselves at it. And they often get very upset when you suggest that they might have bestowed their own gender stereotypes upon their children (not least because they believe those stereotypes to be damaging). I've lost count of how many friends have told me how their daughters always make a beeline for the barbies section at the toy store etc.

Well- they're kids. That's how sophisticated their understanding of gender is. What do you expect? We don't think twice about correcting other "natural" behaviours that we consider damaging ("don't talk to strangers", "wash your hands before eating" etc). So why is this "natural" tendency to follow gender stereotypes sacred and unassailable?

But, like I say- I despair of ever being able to get my point across to others about all this. If I ever have kids, we'll see how much better I do. 'Till then I just let it go.

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

#169

Post by bigger_cheese »

Steve_T_online wrote: post #150
EncipheredBy wrote: post #65

So, one thing that this article ignores is that kids pick up really strongly on what is expected of their gender. I think the "let's make programming more pink" thing is silly, BUT hey, isn't that what toy manufacturers and clothing manufacturers all do to signal "hey girls, this is for you!"? So if you slap a bunch of pink stuff on things, yeah, you're kind of making an invitation to them to join in. BUT I think tha…

Agreed, although in fact I have found that the younger children tend to be pretty gender-neutral in what interests them when coding. It is only really when they hit 9 or 10 and above that I have started to notice the girls favouring pink or flowery items more than the boys.

An interesting personnel anecdote I work in an industrial plant the diversity statistics here are pretty bleak - we have an internal social media site - mostly it is just used for company announcements and that sort of thing. The most popular post I can recall from recent memory was a picture of a pair of purple steel-capped boots and a bit of a blurb that one of our suppliers was now offering a choice of colors. It generated hundreds of comments mostly along the lines of "wow how can I order a pair of those" a lot of the comments were from female employees the whole tone was overwhelmingly positive.

Now I'm a male and hardly what you would call fashion conscious I wear steel-capped boots because it's a safety requirement I couldn't care one way or the other what color they are. Does offering brightly colored safety equipment count as pinkify-ing my workplace? At least some portion of people seem appreciative of having the choice available.

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

#170

Post by jpindar »

knodi123 wrote: post #163
jpindar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it has anything to do with man vs. boy. The phrase "play like a girl" is a reaction to "throw like a girl" and "fight like a girl", which meant to do those things in a less than effective way. Now that phrase is being redefined as a statement that girls can do things just fine and doing something like a girl does not mean doing it badly.

so when people used to say "be a man about it", were they contrasting with women? (instead of with little boys as I assumed?)

Hmm... "be a man about it" could be taken either way, but I would tend to think of man vs. boy.
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