Getting Girls Into Tech
Meanwhile the girls are taught to be self-effacing, quiet, and that their main goal in life is to get married to a man. Mom sets such an awesome example-- she gives up her own name when she gets married, husband is the boss, boys are slobs with no household skills. Mom wears idiotic, non-functional women's clothes and hairstyles that get in the way of doing anything other than posing decoratively. Girls pick up after the boys. The world is wide-open to the boys, while the girls are steered into gentle, passive pink pursuits.
What kind of toys do little girls get? Dolls and playhouses. Boys gets guns, bikes, and tools. Little girls are taught manners, while little boys get to take things apart and figure out how to put them back together. Girls play with mommy in the kitchen, while the boys go outside with dad and blow things up. (Out here in farm country, anyway.)
A lot of schools are still mired in the '50s. Girls get home ec, boys get shop and sports.
In children's literature and entertainment, the main female characters are still delicate little princesses who need to be rescued by handsome princes. Maybe it takes an outside observer with no kids of her own to see how pervasive the old stereotypes and behaviors still are. I have vivid memories of my own childhood, which was beastly. There were no female role models for a kid like me, who liked all the traditional "boy's" activities, and I took rafts of trash-talk and discouragement just for wanting to do the fun stuff, instead of being content with posing decoratively by the kitchen stove. Even music was divided by the sexes-- I wanted to play the saxophone, by dang, but no. Girls played flute.
Most kids need a lot of encouragement and support to discover and pursue their real dreams. It's the rare maverick who is born with enough inner strength and stubbornness to persist in the face of continual opposition, and the most difficult kind to resist is the gentle, well-meaning kind from people who think they know what is best for you. The FOSS world is the best playground of all for anyone who is seriously interested in high-tech; I'd like to see it become a lot more child-friendly, and especially girl-friendly.
1 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Getting Girls Into Tech.
TrackBack URL for this entry: https://swarm.jupitermedia.com/mt-tb.cgi/7474
Links for the day ... Read More
While I won't deny that there is a significant gap between men and women in terms of representation in technical careers, I'm not prepared to say that all boys and girls are raised by the same standards as I was when growing up in the 1950s and 60s. Your description of girls as being "taught to be self-effacing, quiet", and that their "main goal in life is to get married to a man" seems like a throwback to the days before feminism. Sure, there are probably families teaching that, but they're not the only families around.
I can't speak for all families, but I can tell you that no power on this planet will ever get my daughter to be "self-effacing and quiet" and I can assure you that her main goal in life is *not* to "get married to a man" (she's straight, but the concept of marriage isn't her reason to exist).
Actually, her main goal in life is to finish her degree in graphic design and start her career, with a possible side-trip to Japan, returning for awhile (she lived there for a year as an exchange student while in high school) to teach English.
I think the factors that keep girls out of technology (for the most part) have far more complex causes than every 21st Century American family raising their kids in Ozzie and Harriet Nelson's household (please excuse the archaic TV reference). I do agree that more needs to be done to encourage girls to consider a career in technology. I know there are such programs in high school, but I think the encouragement needs to go back to Elementary school and perhaps earlier.
We won't be able to "reprogram" each individual family relative to their values around gender roles, but we (society) have and can continue to encourage the world around us to allow equal access to all resources to all people, which is what we're really talking about.
Ultimately, it's not really about just encouraging girls into this career goal or that; it's about encouraging everyone to explore all of their options and to consider all paths as equally available. Once we do that, blog posts such as this one will happily be unnecessary.
Thanks for the access.
"Ultimately, it's not really about just encouraging girls into this career goal or that; it's about encouraging everyone to explore all of their options and to consider all paths as equally available."
Well said, and I agree.