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

155 points by CodeLikeAGirl 9y ago

LeoJiWoo 9y ago
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.
- tzahola 9y ago
  >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?
  - lerie82 9y ago
    Pretty good point.
  - twobyfour 9y ago
    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. (IMO that's another issue our society needs to address w.r.t. gender equality, but it's a bit tangential to the current topic of discussion.) By contrast, programming jobs are no more gender-loaded in terms of the lifestyle involved than law jobs are. There's no reason for women to self-select out of them aside from being told that programming isn't for them or being made to feel unwanted.
    - randomdata 9y ago
      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?
      - twobyfour 9y ago
        I don't know. But just because another industry isn't working on their problem doesn't mean we shouldn't work on ours.
        randomdata 9y ago
        I work in agriculture, so it is my industry and my place to work on. But realistically this problem does not seem exclusive to any particular industry, so I'm not sure it even makes sense for a specific industry to try and attack the problem in a way that only applies to that industry. There must be some solution that applies generally? Why not work together?
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    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.
    - tzahola 9y ago
      How about taxi drivers? They don’t pee in bottles too often.
amiga-workbench 9y ago
I 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.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  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 accurate.) Edit: I don't get the downmod. The first thing to change is our language. They are professionals, not girls. When our language entails using that modifier, it sets the emotion starting at that point. So, set the barrier to that of men, unless you think "son" and "boy" are acceptable ways to address other male professionals.
  - Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
    You aren't allowed opinions, my friend. Right or wrong, you must be gender biased (unless it's against females) or you mustn't raise points.
    - dang 9y ago
      Could you please not do this here? Comments like this only make the discussion worse for everyone. It's a form of peeing in the pool, and it breaks the site guidelines badly, so we ban accounts that do it repeatedly. Any good-faith view is possible to express thoughtfully, so that's what we ask of HN users. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - mustacheemperor 9y ago
      I think the downvotes are more related to the fact that their opinion seems to have been formed without viewing the actual website.
Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
The irony of the source name here is wonderful.
- menacingly 9y ago
  I think that's more a misunderstanding about what they're trying to do with the name. Perhaps the misunderstanding they're trying to address with the name.
  - Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
    I can see that, and I think I get what they were going for. But you simply can't choose to complain about using colors to attract women to tech (vs. letting the actual tech stuff be the draw) and then choose to utilize all the "Like a girl" stuff they've gone with. I see so many of these events that are branded "like a girl" "be a girl boss", etc. and it stinks of selective bias.
rcruzeiro 9y ago
This reminds my of the most cringeworthy recruitment video I ever saw for a tech company https://youtu.be/CscRkjZ6zDE https://youtu.be/CscRkjZ6zDE
whatshisface 9y ago
Do we know if pinkifying works? I mean, of course as a male I find it hard to support increasing the number of purple headings in the world but presumably people do it because they've had success - right? Just because mature, grown women (who have already been selected for liking the paint tech already has enough to learn about it) aren't motivated by pink and flowery stuff doesn't mean it can't be the weird glitch in young girl's brains that toy corporations have optimized themselves to exploit so well.
- nvarsj 9y ago
  My daughter loves Legos because of “Lego Friends”. So I think it does work. Just like my son is attracted to things with swords and explosions. The hook matters.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
shak77 9y ago
I agree with this, girls that like coding aren't usually very interested in girly stuff. I don't think you can lure feminine girls into coding just by pinkifying it. All of this is just demeaning the profession.
- lucozade 9y ago
  > girls that like coding aren't usually very interested in girly stuff You might have a causality problem here. For example, my daughter, who is definitely at the girly girl end of the spectrum sees no problem with being a lawyer or a medical doctor. That probably wouldn't have been the case a generation or so ago (at least here in the UK). > All of this is just demeaning the profession As the father of said girl, and being acquainted with a lot of her peers, I can reliably say that if our profession became more attractive to them it would not be demeaning the profession in any way whatsoever.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    What did the medicine and legal industries do to "pinkify" themselves in the last generation?
    - shak77 9y ago
      Absolutely nothing... That's the point.
    - twobyfour 9y ago
      Nothing except to start accepting women as equally capable as men and equally likely to have an interest in the profession.
      - imiric 9y ago
        At what level in the IT industry do you feel that this is not the case? Education (at home, early, primary, secondary, higher?), in the workplace (companies are biased against women?), or somewhere else (conferences, meetups, trainings, etc.)? It seems that lack of "acceptance" is thrown around to explain this phenomenon, but it's not clear what and where should be improved to change this.
Danihan 9y ago
"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.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  "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.
  - stinkytaco 9y ago
    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.
    - 1_2__4 9y ago
      It's almost as if the game is built specifically to be unwinnable. What an odd coincidence.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        This isn't a game, and it isn't about winning. The fact that you see it that way is "what an odd coincidence".
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      "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, really.
didibus 9y ago
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 gender neutral in their design? Or are they boyified? If they're boyified, then maybe we do need to alter their design, and work to make them more neutral or have girlified versions. Note: What would be the boy term for pinkifying?
- iceprey 9y ago
  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-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
- bdamm 9y ago
  It's telling that there isn't even a term for this. You've hit a major point here.
  - wccrawford 9y ago
    Until a few minutes ago, I'd never heard of "pinkifying", either. Here, I'll make one up that will be instantly recognizable: Masculinizing.
    - didibus 9y ago
      Yes, pinkifying is not a real term, but the truth is, I was trying to describe the stereotype and couldn't for boys. I thought girls stereotypes are they like pink, flowers, dresses, sparkles, dolls, etc. And then I chocked on boys, I wouldn't be able to go ahead and "masculinize" something, because I wouldn't know what that means. I'm thinking boys like fighting, to argue, the color blue or red, trucks, cars, heavy machinery, computers, video games, etc. This surprised me. My stereotype of boys is that they like things which leads directly to professions such as politic, business, engineering, policing or war. While my steteotypes for girls would seem to lead to low professional value activities in comparison, like house-wife, florist, artist, hair dresser/makeup artist, care taker. With the exception of fashion and lucrative care taking jobs like doctor, the rest doesn't pay well. I make nothing of this, I think it might be a telling observation, but I'm not making any argument of it. I do find it intetesting. What would be other people's stereotype for boys vs girls about what we might think they "like"? I think that's a good exercise, and a good place to start better understanding the problems related to them.
oculusthrift 9y ago
if this was true then why are there so few?
minimaxir 9y ago
A note to OP: using baity submission headlines in HN is counterproductive, as it’ll just get the submission quickly flagged. (And per HN rules, the source headline should be changed if the source is baity)
kradeelav 9y ago
I honestly feel like framing the debate around surface elements like color (of all things) is worse than useless, and would rather people focus on what tech-y groups have historically attracted young girls with no problem - neopets(1), for example. (The linked article below focuses on a few things that really resonates with me - emotional security paired with the freedom to play and hack, not having to ~present~ a gender to participate, having an aesthetic flexibility around your own spaces, etc.) (1) http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/neopets-a-look-into-early-2000s-girl-culture-w509885 http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/neopets-a-look-i...
- discreditable 9y ago
  Agreed. The whole thing reminds me of the old pink ponies slashdot April fools theme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#2000s
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  Some of the problem with this discussion is the fact that we talk about technology as an end in itself. We expect that people will get interested because they like tech for techs sake, not because they view tech as a means to some other end. It's possible to become interested in tech because you'd like to build things or make movies or program games. My daughter is really ambivalent to "engineering", but she'd very much like to make movies and has become fairly tech savvy as part of that process.
  - Steve_T_online 9y ago
    The pursuit of knowledge in technology can be an end in itself. Very often there is another purpose, such as your daughter wanting to make movies, so the tech knowledge happens through that greater desire. However a (small) percentage of children in my classes will quite happily play with BIDMAS equations in Python for an entire hour-long lesson, and then come back at lunchtime to see how addition and subtraction are affected by parentheses. They come back just for the kick of seeing maths equations calculated in a coding language, and they are an equal mix of male and female.
curun1r 9y ago
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 we want to see them gravitate towards engineering careers in later life.
- twobyfour 9y ago
  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!) None of them were pink. None of them were dolls. None of them involved families or housekeeping or kitchens or flowers. 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. Just make the toys unisex and be glad when any of your kids play with any of them instead of looking askance at your daughter when she reaches for the legos or your son when he picks up a doll, and they'll be fine. Legos are girls' toys too, regardless of what color they are.
  - EncipheredBy 9y ago
    I also was pretty gender-agnostic in my choice of toys as a child, and get annoyed at parents who I assumed pushed "girly" stuff on their kids. But then I got to know parents who were trying to actively discourage their kids from like princess garbage, but they couldn't stop it because the kids learn from their friends. I'm no child psychologist, but there's probably some age where what their peer group thinks is more important to them than what their parents have introduced at home. I don't know how to avoid that when having kids myself besides being careful that I'm not plopping them into a school full of girls who are being told which things they should and shouldn't want to play with.
jorjordandan 9y ago
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 engaged by it. Of course she is interested in coding because it's interesting, but if it takes some marketing to get her in the door, so what? Furthermore, I love to buy her books etc such as "Suzy shier engineer", but I wonder why all the books where girls are engineers or inventors or programmers they have to be wearing jumpsuits and glasses and rarely anything pink. I suspect it's because the books are sold based on the biases of the parents. I feel like my daughter gets the message that "You can be a pretty princess girl, or you can be a smart girl". So I say the opposite. 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.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Nobody is attacking your daughter, stop it.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  I think both problems are instances of the same ridiculous thought process. So one side we push the pink obsession by default onto all girls (I can't begin to explain how much I hate the whole boy-blue girl-pink bullshit we do with babies even before they are born) On the other, we imagine that non-girly things (tech) are so because they do not signal traditional girly things (hence the jumpsuits and large glasses and all), so if only we made them a little more pink...! If your girl enjoys pink, awesome! Buy her pink stuff. The problem is not in girls liking pink, the problem is in us peddling irrelevant gendered nonsense onto our kids even before they are old enough to express a choice in that matter.
- menacingly 9y ago
  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.
1auralynn 9y ago
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 I didn't even think of taking it. Another approach is for it to become a more acceptable hobby for girls, but the social pressure is strong still for girls in the opposite direction. I think that one's a harder battle in a lot of ways.
- ggggtez 9y ago
  Changing the education system to train children for next generation jobs? That's just ridiculous, how could that possibly help /s.
- 20years 9y ago
  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.
  - stinkytaco 9y ago
    Is there something wrong with the drag and drop approach? I find that working with kids on programming lego robots through their drag and drop approach is fairly engaging to them and does communicate concepts pretty well (loops, arrays, variables and so on). Of course you need to move them to a more "grown up" syntax eventually, but I suspect that comes as they need to solve more complex programs.
    - 20years 9y ago
      I think the drag/drop tools are great for the younger kids but once they reach middle school age they are generally ready for something more. I periodically teach middle school coding workshops. One of the top questions the kids ask at the start of a new workshop is will they be using scratch or hand coding. They associate scratch with the young kids and want more control by this age.
vinceguidry 9y ago
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.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
I 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.
- sp332 9y ago
  I think what it's arguing against is the idea that pink is what attracts women. Women are interested in the robots etc and the pink & flowers are a side effect of including women, not a cause.
sthielen 9y ago
I think there is a balance to be found between "pinkifying" and "de-blueing" (to wrangle an inversion out of that word). Many of these early education coding platforms use "play" to introduce fundamentals and concepts to kids. They're not intended as formal platforms for computer science education; they want to let kids do cool things and get excited about programming and possibly ramp up into that more formal programming education. Letting kids manipulate characters from properties to which they've already been exposed is a good way of creating that initial interest. The issue is that assets like Minecraft Steve, or R2D2, or things like that, while obviously loved by no shortage of girls, are still primarily marketed toward boys. Until we can effectively move that needle at a higher, more societal level, I think it's valuable to incorporate media properties targeted toward girls into these kinds of platforms simply in order to engender that initial interest. A kid (regardless of gender) who loves BB8 should be able to use their learn-to-code-platform-of-choice to make BB8 run in a circle. A kid (again, regardless of gender) who loves American Girl should be able to use that same platform to make Julie say something funny. My company has been doing some work with the Girl Scouts, teaching girls to build games and apps in Augmented Reality, and while the interface/platform itself is sterile and professional (& obviously if you think theming an IDE pink will help "appeal to women," this is an issue), the girls naturally gravitate to characters and assets from the properties to which they are already exposed and are already fans. This includes everything from Minecraft Steve, to Spongebob, to lolcats (which are, apparently, still a thing) to Elsa, and Barbie.
- Steve_T_online 9y ago
  I teach Computing from Years 1 to 11, and amongst the Lower Primary school students (Years 1 to 4) I use Espresso quite a lot. The children love Espresso. It has a variety of characters, and the girls in my classes will happily select characters such as vampires, monsters, cars, trucks. Equally many of the boys will choose rainbows or flowers. The gender divide differences are much more obvious in Secondary, where the students are then feeling societal pressures to conform to certain stereotypes, either consciously or subconsciously.
justicezyx 9y ago
While HollyWood is relentlessly ridicule "nerds" "tech-savvy members of the society" "scientists", some are still believing colors, nouns, wording are the root cause of gender inequality in tech industry. These people are either maliciously hiding some intentions, or are plain ignorant.
lerie82 9y ago
This is an article coming from a website named... "code like a girl", contradictory?
EncipheredBy 9y ago
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 that the "girl" version of things is also always assumed to be the "easy" version of things. Which girls pick up on too. As a woman trying to get into tech, I'm super uninterested in woman-only bootcamp type things, since I feel like the perception will be that I "couldn't make it" in the "regular" bootcamp. I do think it might be different for little kids though, as they might be operating more on the "I want to do what's expected of my gender" level than a grown up who is able to think "I don't care what's expected of my gender."
- Steve_T_online 9y ago
  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.
  - bigger_cheese 9y ago
    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.
hungerstrike 9y ago
This site is a hypocrite then because less than a third or even a quarter of the articles are about technical subjects. Most of their articles are about social justice. This is typical for just about every "we need more women in X" campaign that I've seen.
tempodox 9y ago
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.
- knodi123 9y ago
  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 awkward and timid adolescent". If I'm right about that, then "code like a girl" is humorously ignorant, since "woman" would fit better. Unless this is a children's outreach thing? I dunno about that part.
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    I believe these are all playing off of the phrases "run like a girl" and "throw like a girl" (not sure which derives from which).
  - jpindar 9y ago
    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.
    - knodi123 9y ago
      so when people used to say "be a man about it", were they contrasting with women? (instead of with little boys as I assumed?)
      - 9y ago
drblast 9y ago
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."
- curyous 9y ago
  Great thoughts.
- softawre 9y ago
  > 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.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    The path is still there, just not in mainstream titles (at least not as frequently in mainstream titles). If I may point you at my favorite crack, err, game: factorio. Modding: check. Scientific(ish) concepts: check. Mathematics: check. Encouraging automation: check.
  - jayd16 9y ago
    Games are often male dominated and the culture can be toxic.
pmarreck 9y ago
Let anyone who is interested in the thing, do that thing. And then get the fuck out of that person's way. This current obsession with gender-asymmetric ratios in various careers is ridiculous. There is absolutely no evidence that everything would be 50/50 man/woman in an ideal(ized) world. I shouldn't even have to say this, but the smartest programmer I know is a non-cisgender female.
epx 9y ago
I guess that each market, each country has a different dynamic. For example, here in Brazil, there has always been a good % of women in IT and software. But there was one thing: 99.995% of jobs were ERP development or Novell Netware. I always liked low-level software and systems development, but I kept doing that as a hobby with very occasional consulting in systems development from 1988 to 2005. Most of the few hobbyists were men as well, some even became lawyers to make a living, so scarce was the work in this area, even for the best. Now that non-ERP software development is the high-paid job and ERP development is drying up because big boys e.g. SAP are eating into the local market, everybody wants a piece of the action. So I don't feel too bad about gender imbalance in this particular branch. Nobody is preventing anyone from buying an Arduino and/or publish apps on App Store.
glhaynes 9y ago
I adore @sailorhg's (https://twitter.com/sailorhg https://twitter.com/sailorhg) work on femme techy stuff. Her zines aren't the best way for me to learn and her clothes definitely aren't for me! — but they certainly are for some people, and that's super-exciting.
Animats 9y ago
Naomi Wu, from Shenzhen, is doing this better.[1] She's become very visible and has a biting wit. The publisher of Make magazine called her a phony, she didn't back down, and he had to apologize. [1] https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg
pmdulaney 9y ago
Society does not have an interest -- using "interest" in the legal sense -- in getting girls into tech. But a fair society DOES have an interest in eliminating gender-based barriers should they choose to go into tech.
vfulco 9y ago
Tell that to all the SJWs trying to force people to do what they don't like.

155 points by CodeLikeAGirl 9y ago

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.

tzahola 9y ago
>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?
- lerie82 9y ago
  Pretty good point.
- twobyfour 9y ago
  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. (IMO that's another issue our society needs to address w.r.t. gender equality, but it's a bit tangential to the current topic of discussion.) By contrast, programming jobs are no more gender-loaded in terms of the lifestyle involved than law jobs are. There's no reason for women to self-select out of them aside from being told that programming isn't for them or being made to feel unwanted.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    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?
    - twobyfour 9y ago
      I don't know. But just because another industry isn't working on their problem doesn't mean we shouldn't work on ours.
      - randomdata 9y ago
        I work in agriculture, so it is my industry and my place to work on. But realistically this problem does not seem exclusive to any particular industry, so I'm not sure it even makes sense for a specific industry to try and attack the problem in a way that only applies to that industry. There must be some solution that applies generally? Why not work together?
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  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.
  - tzahola 9y ago
    How about taxi drivers? They don’t pee in bottles too often.

amiga-workbench 9y ago

I 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.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
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 accurate.) Edit: I don't get the downmod. The first thing to change is our language. They are professionals, not girls. When our language entails using that modifier, it sets the emotion starting at that point. So, set the barrier to that of men, unless you think "son" and "boy" are acceptable ways to address other male professionals.
- Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
  You aren't allowed opinions, my friend. Right or wrong, you must be gender biased (unless it's against females) or you mustn't raise points.
  - dang 9y ago
    Could you please not do this here? Comments like this only make the discussion worse for everyone. It's a form of peeing in the pool, and it breaks the site guidelines badly, so we ban accounts that do it repeatedly. Any good-faith view is possible to express thoughtfully, so that's what we ask of HN users. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mustacheemperor 9y ago
    I think the downvotes are more related to the fact that their opinion seems to have been formed without viewing the actual website.

Disruptive_Dave 9y ago

The irony of the source name here is wonderful.

menacingly 9y ago
I think that's more a misunderstanding about what they're trying to do with the name. Perhaps the misunderstanding they're trying to address with the name.
- Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
  I can see that, and I think I get what they were going for. But you simply can't choose to complain about using colors to attract women to tech (vs. letting the actual tech stuff be the draw) and then choose to utilize all the "Like a girl" stuff they've gone with. I see so many of these events that are branded "like a girl" "be a girl boss", etc. and it stinks of selective bias.

rcruzeiro 9y ago

This reminds my of the most cringeworthy recruitment video I ever saw for a tech company https://youtu.be/CscRkjZ6zDE https://youtu.be/CscRkjZ6zDE

whatshisface 9y ago

Do we know if pinkifying works? I mean, of course as a male I find it hard to support increasing the number of purple headings in the world but presumably people do it because they've had success - right? Just because mature, grown women (who have already been selected for liking the paint tech already has enough to learn about it) aren't motivated by pink and flowery stuff doesn't mean it can't be the weird glitch in young girl's brains that toy corporations have optimized themselves to exploit so well.

nvarsj 9y ago
My daughter loves Legos because of “Lego Friends”. So I think it does work. Just like my son is attracted to things with swords and explosions. The hook matters.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

shak77 9y ago

I agree with this, girls that like coding aren't usually very interested in girly stuff. I don't think you can lure feminine girls into coding just by pinkifying it. All of this is just demeaning the profession.

lucozade 9y ago
> girls that like coding aren't usually very interested in girly stuff You might have a causality problem here. For example, my daughter, who is definitely at the girly girl end of the spectrum sees no problem with being a lawyer or a medical doctor. That probably wouldn't have been the case a generation or so ago (at least here in the UK). > All of this is just demeaning the profession As the father of said girl, and being acquainted with a lot of her peers, I can reliably say that if our profession became more attractive to them it would not be demeaning the profession in any way whatsoever.
- randomdata 9y ago
  What did the medicine and legal industries do to "pinkify" themselves in the last generation?
  - shak77 9y ago
    Absolutely nothing... That's the point.
  - twobyfour 9y ago
    Nothing except to start accepting women as equally capable as men and equally likely to have an interest in the profession.
    - imiric 9y ago
      At what level in the IT industry do you feel that this is not the case? Education (at home, early, primary, secondary, higher?), in the workplace (companies are biased against women?), or somewhere else (conferences, meetups, trainings, etc.)? It seems that lack of "acceptance" is thrown around to explain this phenomenon, but it's not clear what and where should be improved to change this.

Danihan 9y ago

"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.

ucaetano 9y ago
"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.
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  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.
  - 1_2__4 9y ago
    It's almost as if the game is built specifically to be unwinnable. What an odd coincidence.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      This isn't a game, and it isn't about winning. The fact that you see it that way is "what an odd coincidence".
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    "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, really.

didibus 9y ago

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 gender neutral in their design? Or are they boyified? If they're boyified, then maybe we do need to alter their design, and work to make them more neutral or have girlified versions. Note: What would be the boy term for pinkifying?

iceprey 9y ago
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-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
bdamm 9y ago
It's telling that there isn't even a term for this. You've hit a major point here.
- wccrawford 9y ago
  Until a few minutes ago, I'd never heard of "pinkifying", either. Here, I'll make one up that will be instantly recognizable: Masculinizing.
  - didibus 9y ago
    Yes, pinkifying is not a real term, but the truth is, I was trying to describe the stereotype and couldn't for boys. I thought girls stereotypes are they like pink, flowers, dresses, sparkles, dolls, etc. And then I chocked on boys, I wouldn't be able to go ahead and "masculinize" something, because I wouldn't know what that means. I'm thinking boys like fighting, to argue, the color blue or red, trucks, cars, heavy machinery, computers, video games, etc. This surprised me. My stereotype of boys is that they like things which leads directly to professions such as politic, business, engineering, policing or war. While my steteotypes for girls would seem to lead to low professional value activities in comparison, like house-wife, florist, artist, hair dresser/makeup artist, care taker. With the exception of fashion and lucrative care taking jobs like doctor, the rest doesn't pay well. I make nothing of this, I think it might be a telling observation, but I'm not making any argument of it. I do find it intetesting. What would be other people's stereotype for boys vs girls about what we might think they "like"? I think that's a good exercise, and a good place to start better understanding the problems related to them.

oculusthrift 9y ago

if this was true then why are there so few?

minimaxir 9y ago

A note to OP: using baity submission headlines in HN is counterproductive, as it’ll just get the submission quickly flagged. (And per HN rules, the source headline should be changed if the source is baity)

kradeelav 9y ago

I honestly feel like framing the debate around surface elements like color (of all things) is worse than useless, and would rather people focus on what tech-y groups have historically attracted young girls with no problem - neopets(1), for example. (The linked article below focuses on a few things that really resonates with me - emotional security paired with the freedom to play and hack, not having to ~present~ a gender to participate, having an aesthetic flexibility around your own spaces, etc.) (1) http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/neopets-a-look-into-early-2000s-girl-culture-w509885 http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/neopets-a-look-i...

discreditable 9y ago
Agreed. The whole thing reminds me of the old pink ponies slashdot April fools theme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#2000s
stinkytaco 9y ago
Some of the problem with this discussion is the fact that we talk about technology as an end in itself. We expect that people will get interested because they like tech for techs sake, not because they view tech as a means to some other end. It's possible to become interested in tech because you'd like to build things or make movies or program games. My daughter is really ambivalent to "engineering", but she'd very much like to make movies and has become fairly tech savvy as part of that process.
- Steve_T_online 9y ago
  The pursuit of knowledge in technology can be an end in itself. Very often there is another purpose, such as your daughter wanting to make movies, so the tech knowledge happens through that greater desire. However a (small) percentage of children in my classes will quite happily play with BIDMAS equations in Python for an entire hour-long lesson, and then come back at lunchtime to see how addition and subtraction are affected by parentheses. They come back just for the kick of seeing maths equations calculated in a coding language, and they are an equal mix of male and female.

curun1r 9y ago

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 we want to see them gravitate towards engineering careers in later life.

twobyfour 9y ago
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!) None of them were pink. None of them were dolls. None of them involved families or housekeeping or kitchens or flowers. 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. Just make the toys unisex and be glad when any of your kids play with any of them instead of looking askance at your daughter when she reaches for the legos or your son when he picks up a doll, and they'll be fine. Legos are girls' toys too, regardless of what color they are.
- EncipheredBy 9y ago
  I also was pretty gender-agnostic in my choice of toys as a child, and get annoyed at parents who I assumed pushed "girly" stuff on their kids. But then I got to know parents who were trying to actively discourage their kids from like princess garbage, but they couldn't stop it because the kids learn from their friends. I'm no child psychologist, but there's probably some age where what their peer group thinks is more important to them than what their parents have introduced at home. I don't know how to avoid that when having kids myself besides being careful that I'm not plopping them into a school full of girls who are being told which things they should and shouldn't want to play with.

jorjordandan 9y ago

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 engaged by it. Of course she is interested in coding because it's interesting, but if it takes some marketing to get her in the door, so what? Furthermore, I love to buy her books etc such as "Suzy shier engineer", but I wonder why all the books where girls are engineers or inventors or programmers they have to be wearing jumpsuits and glasses and rarely anything pink. I suspect it's because the books are sold based on the biases of the parents. I feel like my daughter gets the message that "You can be a pretty princess girl, or you can be a smart girl". So I say the opposite. 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.

draw_down 9y ago
Nobody is attacking your daughter, stop it.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
I think both problems are instances of the same ridiculous thought process. So one side we push the pink obsession by default onto all girls (I can't begin to explain how much I hate the whole boy-blue girl-pink bullshit we do with babies even before they are born) On the other, we imagine that non-girly things (tech) are so because they do not signal traditional girly things (hence the jumpsuits and large glasses and all), so if only we made them a little more pink...! If your girl enjoys pink, awesome! Buy her pink stuff. The problem is not in girls liking pink, the problem is in us peddling irrelevant gendered nonsense onto our kids even before they are old enough to express a choice in that matter.
menacingly 9y ago
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.

1auralynn 9y ago

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 I didn't even think of taking it. Another approach is for it to become a more acceptable hobby for girls, but the social pressure is strong still for girls in the opposite direction. I think that one's a harder battle in a lot of ways.

ggggtez 9y ago
Changing the education system to train children for next generation jobs? That's just ridiculous, how could that possibly help /s.
20years 9y ago
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.
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  Is there something wrong with the drag and drop approach? I find that working with kids on programming lego robots through their drag and drop approach is fairly engaging to them and does communicate concepts pretty well (loops, arrays, variables and so on). Of course you need to move them to a more "grown up" syntax eventually, but I suspect that comes as they need to solve more complex programs.
  - 20years 9y ago
    I think the drag/drop tools are great for the younger kids but once they reach middle school age they are generally ready for something more. I periodically teach middle school coding workshops. One of the top questions the kids ask at the start of a new workshop is will they be using scratch or hand coding. They associate scratch with the young kids and want more control by this age.

vinceguidry 9y ago

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.

TallGuyShort 9y ago

I 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.

sp332 9y ago
I think what it's arguing against is the idea that pink is what attracts women. Women are interested in the robots etc and the pink & flowers are a side effect of including women, not a cause.

sthielen 9y ago

I think there is a balance to be found between "pinkifying" and "de-blueing" (to wrangle an inversion out of that word). Many of these early education coding platforms use "play" to introduce fundamentals and concepts to kids. They're not intended as formal platforms for computer science education; they want to let kids do cool things and get excited about programming and possibly ramp up into that more formal programming education. Letting kids manipulate characters from properties to which they've already been exposed is a good way of creating that initial interest. The issue is that assets like Minecraft Steve, or R2D2, or things like that, while obviously loved by no shortage of girls, are still primarily marketed toward boys. Until we can effectively move that needle at a higher, more societal level, I think it's valuable to incorporate media properties targeted toward girls into these kinds of platforms simply in order to engender that initial interest. A kid (regardless of gender) who loves BB8 should be able to use their learn-to-code-platform-of-choice to make BB8 run in a circle. A kid (again, regardless of gender) who loves American Girl should be able to use that same platform to make Julie say something funny. My company has been doing some work with the Girl Scouts, teaching girls to build games and apps in Augmented Reality, and while the interface/platform itself is sterile and professional (& obviously if you think theming an IDE pink will help "appeal to women," this is an issue), the girls naturally gravitate to characters and assets from the properties to which they are already exposed and are already fans. This includes everything from Minecraft Steve, to Spongebob, to lolcats (which are, apparently, still a thing) to Elsa, and Barbie.

Steve_T_online 9y ago
I teach Computing from Years 1 to 11, and amongst the Lower Primary school students (Years 1 to 4) I use Espresso quite a lot. The children love Espresso. It has a variety of characters, and the girls in my classes will happily select characters such as vampires, monsters, cars, trucks. Equally many of the boys will choose rainbows or flowers. The gender divide differences are much more obvious in Secondary, where the students are then feeling societal pressures to conform to certain stereotypes, either consciously or subconsciously.

justicezyx 9y ago

While HollyWood is relentlessly ridicule "nerds" "tech-savvy members of the society" "scientists", some are still believing colors, nouns, wording are the root cause of gender inequality in tech industry. These people are either maliciously hiding some intentions, or are plain ignorant.

lerie82 9y ago

This is an article coming from a website named... "code like a girl", contradictory?

EncipheredBy 9y ago

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 that the "girl" version of things is also always assumed to be the "easy" version of things. Which girls pick up on too. As a woman trying to get into tech, I'm super uninterested in woman-only bootcamp type things, since I feel like the perception will be that I "couldn't make it" in the "regular" bootcamp. I do think it might be different for little kids though, as they might be operating more on the "I want to do what's expected of my gender" level than a grown up who is able to think "I don't care what's expected of my gender."

Steve_T_online 9y ago
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.
- bigger_cheese 9y ago
  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.

hungerstrike 9y ago

This site is a hypocrite then because less than a third or even a quarter of the articles are about technical subjects. Most of their articles are about social justice. This is typical for just about every "we need more women in X" campaign that I've seen.

tempodox 9y ago

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.

knodi123 9y ago
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 awkward and timid adolescent". If I'm right about that, then "code like a girl" is humorously ignorant, since "woman" would fit better. Unless this is a children's outreach thing? I dunno about that part.
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  I believe these are all playing off of the phrases "run like a girl" and "throw like a girl" (not sure which derives from which).
- jpindar 9y ago
  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.
  - knodi123 9y ago
    so when people used to say "be a man about it", were they contrasting with women? (instead of with little boys as I assumed?)
    - 9y ago

drblast 9y ago

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."

curyous 9y ago
Great thoughts.
softawre 9y ago
> 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.
- falcolas 9y ago
  The path is still there, just not in mainstream titles (at least not as frequently in mainstream titles). If I may point you at my favorite crack, err, game: factorio. Modding: check. Scientific(ish) concepts: check. Mathematics: check. Encouraging automation: check.
- jayd16 9y ago
  Games are often male dominated and the culture can be toxic.

pmarreck 9y ago

Let anyone who is interested in the thing, do that thing. And then get the fuck out of that person's way. This current obsession with gender-asymmetric ratios in various careers is ridiculous. There is absolutely no evidence that everything would be 50/50 man/woman in an ideal(ized) world. I shouldn't even have to say this, but the smartest programmer I know is a non-cisgender female.

epx 9y ago

I guess that each market, each country has a different dynamic. For example, here in Brazil, there has always been a good % of women in IT and software. But there was one thing: 99.995% of jobs were ERP development or Novell Netware. I always liked low-level software and systems development, but I kept doing that as a hobby with very occasional consulting in systems development from 1988 to 2005. Most of the few hobbyists were men as well, some even became lawyers to make a living, so scarce was the work in this area, even for the best. Now that non-ERP software development is the high-paid job and ERP development is drying up because big boys e.g. SAP are eating into the local market, everybody wants a piece of the action. So I don't feel too bad about gender imbalance in this particular branch. Nobody is preventing anyone from buying an Arduino and/or publish apps on App Store.

glhaynes 9y ago

I adore @sailorhg's (https://twitter.com/sailorhg https://twitter.com/sailorhg) work on femme techy stuff. Her zines aren't the best way for me to learn and her clothes definitely aren't for me! — but they certainly are for some people, and that's super-exciting.

Animats 9y ago

Naomi Wu, from Shenzhen, is doing this better.[1] She's become very visible and has a biting wit. The publisher of Make magazine called her a phony, she didn't back down, and he had to apologize. [1] https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg

pmdulaney 9y ago

Society does not have an interest -- using "interest" in the legal sense -- in getting girls into tech. But a fair society DOES have an interest in eliminating gender-based barriers should they choose to go into tech.

vfulco 9y ago

Tell that to all the SJWs trying to force people to do what they don't like.