How to attract girls to the tech industry

> But then last year I spoke at a conference and I heard that the numbers of women in technology was in decline and I thought, 'That isn't right.'

It is not right nor wrong! It just is. To make a statement like this is to give legitimacy to the idea that the equipment you've got tucked between your thighs is in some way relevant to your ability to do the job. Who cares? Just do the damn job and if you encounter some closed-minded fool who thinks your sex lessens you, then beat them down with logic.

Trying to kludge the world into fitting your own little vision of how it should be is a recipe for misery.

> Technology is at the forefront of the economy and women have a vital role to play. When my daughters are born I don't want them to feel like the odd ones out.

Then teach them how to thrive in the face of adversity. God knows they'll find it useful.

If a woman wants a low status / long hours / behind the scenes / support career there are a variety of socially acceptable job fields to enter. Secretary, nurse, day care worker, elementary school teacher, social worker... If a guy wants a similar job there is what, a small amount of jobs ending in -tech like large diesel engine tech aka mechanic, which are rapidly technologizing anyway into "IT plus some grease" and of course IT. And thats about it. So the girls can do anything including IT, but all the guys are stuck in IT.

I would theorize that if you made male nurses, male day care workers, male social workers more socially acceptable, the logjam of male IT workers would decline and you'd approach 50:50 both inside and outside IT.

If every frustrated male nurse / male secretary / male schoolteacher crowds into the IT classes, its going to overwhelm the small number of female exclusively IT students.

I may be off on the root causes but I think I'm onto something with the mechanism of male concentration. Maybe the root cause is a desire to enter an extremely agism oriented field, or a desire for the drama of always being on call and only being visible during disasters sort of a policeman/fireman job for nonathletic people.

Maybe rephrased the general wider class of humans that might like IT or a related field, is sorted by sex such that all the guys get stuck in IT but the women are free to choose, so "naturally" the concentration of maleness in IT is very high in IT and low in other related fields.

In short, I think the market is a much larger problem than anything else. It will happen, though.

Everyone should quit being so sexist. Women are allowed to be different :/