I absolutely applaud strong efforts to get more girls involved and educated in STEM fields, but I also recognize the need to develop systems for women in these careers or businesses to stay involved. I remember reading (I don't have the exact source in front of me right now) that by age 35, a majority of women in STEM fields have left. I would like to see effort and attention on that problem / issue as well. Creating an influx of new talent just to have them treated poorly in their workplace, under-compensated, marginalized or overlooked isn't really the future I want for my own daughter.
From the +The Wall Street Journal article:
"A new organization called Girls who Code is starting an eight-week program in July for 20 high-school-age girls, who will learn how to build websites and mobile apps and start their own companies. There will also be workshops on topics such as financial literacy, computer science and robotics. The group said it has financial backing from companies including Google, eBay, General Electric and Twitter."
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‘Girls Who Code’ Seeks to Train Women for Tech Fields
A shortage of female workers in science and engineering has long posed an image problem for Silicon Valley. Now a one-time congressional candidate is trying to make a difference.
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I think some of it is chicken and egg stuff: until you have a much larger proportion of women:men in STEM, you're going to have shabby treatment of the former.
Excellent point +Cindy Brown!!!
+Matt Makowsky +Ayoub Khote +Karen Elaine Lynette makes a great case.
I must still read the article –
Interesting problem. A few years ago I was horrified to see a display at a "teach with tech" conference about why girls should be encouraged to go into programming. The reasons included things like "girls are better at following instructions" and "girls are better at doing repetitive work". I had this vision of a new underclass of female workers meekly doing boring slog-work 🙁
An excellent article!
They need to start earlier which is why I had my daughter start her own blog hoping in the next year once gets the basics of posting/uploading photos, that she learn very, very simple HTML code
Ok, I am a huge believer in getting girls into STEM (I think women r the biggest issue;). But I think that women are leaving because they are moving on in their lives. Many leave because they want to leave and raise kids and I think that is nothing bad against the industries!
But for the guys…. I have to say that the only "bad" treatment many me & my friends have ever gotten is getting hit on. If there were more girls (& the guys got used to being around girls;) that wouldn't happen so much. But on the whole we have been treated as just one of the group or nicer than they treat each other;).