
On Girls, Boys, and IT Careers - babyshake
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9059265454566485886
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Tichy
OK, she is the one who has done research in it for 20 years, but it all seemed
too cliched to me. Honestly, I don't believe that girls are always only
thinking socially, nice and eco-friendly, while boys dream of guns and bombs.
Too bad she only presented anecdotal evidence, which makes me suspect they
only saw what they wanted to see. For example, it would have been interesting
to see 20 pictures drawn by girls and 20 pictures by boys, instead she only
presented one each.

Maybe women have more choices in their work life (because they can always
marry and have children, so they do not have to worry as much about their
career), so they tend to choose more attractive professions (less stressful or
higher social status - I hear a lot of women are becoming doctors and
lawyers). That is my theory (I know it sounds a bit cynical), at least I think
that is a factor. Now to me personally software development is attractive, but
only so so - I like to build and create things, not necessarily the part where
one sits in front of the computer all day, hardly talking to anyone.

Also, where are the campaigns to make more men become school teachers and
kindergarden workers?

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rw140
"For example, it would have been interesting to see 20 pictures drawn by girls
and 20 pictures by boys, instead she only presented one each." Well, yes, but
to me it looked like she was trying to show a typical example from each
category. This is a presentation, so the emphasis is necessarily on story-
telling, rather than detailed analysis. I would imagine she could have shown a
whole load of charts and graphs, but I that would have been rather boring.

"Honestly, I don't believe that girls are always only thinking socially, nice
and eco-friendly, while boys dream of guns and bombs." Neither do I. But I
think there's a useful point she was making about thinking about the way
things interact / what they allow users to do, rather than programs that work
fine by themselves but do not play well with others (every morning I load a
bunch of stuff and watch them steal focus from each other) and implementing
features because it's quite cool that you can do this thing we'll find a use
for it later (yay, bloat!).

"Also, where are the campaigns to make more men become school teachers and
kindergarden workers?" I don't know. We should probably ought to have some,
but expecting them to be provided by the tech industry is a little optimistic.

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warwick
It's almost cliche to say that we need more females in tech. Most of the time,
these kinds of arguments center around the disproportionate male/female ratios
and talk about how we might correct them. They never really say /why/ we need
more females in tech.

The speaker in the video presents a real and compelling argument. The female
way of looking at technology, at how interactions occur, at how tech shapes
the world and how the future will happen, all of this is different from the
male perspective. And it's a valuable perspective. Having females in the tech
workplace isn't just a matter of being politically correct. It's a matter of
not dismissing a fascinating and helpful way of looking at the world.

