

Google's Helping Young Girls, But How Can We Get Women in College To Code? - rawbzeee
http://www.forbes.com/sites/yunitaong/2014/07/01/googles-helping-young-girls-but-how-can-we-get-women-in-college-to-code/

======
blisterpeanuts
This was a non-issue that has suddenly morphed into a critical problem that
requires a solution. If the majority of women aren't interested in tech stuff,
then why try to "solve" it?

It's like asking, how can we get women interested in fixing cars? The answer
is, why bother? Those who are interested, will tinker with cars and take
courses and learn how. Those who aren't, won't.

The author of this Forbes article is very young and obviously idealistic;
that's fine, but her proposals won't make a hill of beans difference. Touchy-
feely community building might draw in a few shy types, but the vast majority
are culturally inclined to different interests.

I was just at an Android development conference which, again, was 90% men.
They had a luncheon for "women entrepreneurs" which naturally took place in a
much smaller room than the main dining hall.

It's all well and good to try to encourage girls into science and technology,
and I'm all for that; I wish my office wasn't 90% male. But you can't
legislate these kinds of things, or force people to be interested in something
they're not. Probably the best thing is to provide superb science and
technology instruction in the early years of K-12, and never discourage anyone
from pursuing their interests, then let the chips fall where they may.

~~~
rrss1122
An aside on the women and cars thing: I recently read a story about a car
repair shop in France run by women and for women customers, their aim being to
prevent women from being ripped off.

Those women found a reason to get into car repair. So I guess the question is:
what reason can we give women to get into programming? Don't legislate it of
course, but give women a way to find it on their own.

------
mjfl
This past year the (now) rising junior class had the highest number of females
that we have ever had in the Physics major. We had all of the things mentioned
in the article: significant collaboration outside of class, a community of
students outside of class who were all friends, and what I thought could have
been a "critical" mass of females for them to feel not alone. However the hope
for the record number of female physics students deflated with a pffft as I
learned that 7/10 of the girls in this class were dropping the major. The
majority reason cited: it was too difficult. Perhaps it was, the physics
program at my school is known for being rigorous and difficult, however I feel
that it is not the right thing to do to fault my department for its
difficulty, it is part of our good reputation. In this way, I think it is more
important to inspire a passion for physics _before_ coming to college, so
comparatively less females drop when the going gets tough.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add a parallel track for the less
competitive students, "easier" classes that don't go into the same depth with
the material. I sort of cringe at that option, but some departments I know
have done that, and it has raised female participation. It does raise the
question of how far one can get while in such a track. Physics is unique in
that there is a relatively defined mountain you need to climb in order to be
recognized as "educated in physics" (I'm thinking the Griffith's books,
Taylor's Classical Mechanics, and the other big ones) and you really need to
put in some blood and sweat to get through them. I'd worry that you could not
get through any of them to any significant level if you insisted on ease of
learning. Definitely not far enough to go to physics grad school, but perhaps
far enough to get a finance job somewhere...

Relating this to coding. Perhaps there is too much emphasis on rigor than
there needs to be in current curriculum. Not everyone is going to become a
computer scientist or chief software architect. Perhaps it would be better to
have more project based courses that are open ended in a way for people to
just make what they want instead of "rise to a challenge" which admittedly
some people just don't have the motivation to do. Just my thoughts.

