ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source 158
ectoman writes: Opensource.com is running an interview with Jennifer Davidson of ChickTech, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create communities of support for women and girls pursuing (or interested in pursuing) careers in tech. "In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea." Portland, OR-based ChickTech is quickly expanding throughout the United States—to cities like Corvallis and San Francisco—thanks to the "ChickTech: High School" initiative, which gathers hundreds of young women for two-day workshops featuring open source technologies. "We fill a university engineering department with 100 high school girls—more girls than many engineering departments have ever seen," Davidson said. "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are."
Kuhscheisse. (Score:4, Interesting)
It means "Cow shit."
Looking around my cube farm:
3 rows of 9 cubes for a total of 27 cubes.
3 cubes are inhabited by boxes and spare equipment, the rest by people.
Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry, but I'll bet dollars against pesos that there's a perfectly reasonable, non-misogynistic reason for at least the majority of those shortages.
Re:This is sexist (Score:3, Interesting)
I will leave this right here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem... [dailymail.co.uk]
And this more controversial one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u... [huffingtonpost.co.uk]
I will say I'm a fan of female scientists, there are some with biochemical and chemical degrees in my family (who have long since abandoned the field for hearth and home, a decision of their own choosing), but I see a lot of men who are promoting it simply trying to make women in their own image. Maybe they are dads with only one child, daughters, which is very common now or what not. But actively steering them away from traditional female disciplines just because it offends our modern senses of "diversity" and conflating equality with equal results is just as wrong imo.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:many girls are brought up to believe that (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a "skills gap" present in Math aptitude tests that appears in countries where the status of women is worse [apa.org]. There are countries where the gap is lower or even reversed -- which seems to suggest culture rather than biology.
If you can find an alternative explanation beyond "American Culture", feel free to suggest it.