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Young Women Encouraged to Go For IT
An anonymous reader writes "Wednesday Microsoft Canada's vice president of developer and platform evangelism encouraged 9th grade girls to head for an IT career with a presentation that debunked key myths. Apparently IT isn't geeky or socially isolating. From the article: "Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social...They were concerned that there were limitations for women in this area of technology, and they felt there is a stigma associated with IT in terms of it not being a very exciting place to work."
Go for IT: Conference tells grade-nine girls
By: Patricia Pickett
Lasha Dekker says it was mostly chance that led her to a career in IT - but that's not stopping her from encouraging young women to consider working in the same field.
Dekker, vice-president of developer and platform evangelism for Microsoft Canada Co., was a keynote speaker at Wednesday's Explore IT Conference, a one-day event that introduced grade-nine girls to career opportunities in IT. Conference organizers estimated around 500 students attended the event, held at the Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD), the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Mount Royal College and the University of Calgary, all in Calgary.
Participants had a choice of several hands-on sessions where they could try everything from building their own computer network to generating computer animations or designing a Web site.
Dekker noted that today only 20 per cent of graduates from college or university computer science programs are women. "There is a tremendous opportunity for women in this area. For girls...interested in IT, I want to underscore that they should go for it, and for the ones that are not sure, they should at least consider it and explore the opportunities available in IT."
Dekker said her own career in IT naturally unfolded because of her early academic interests. "I just got lucky when I was in high school; sciences and math came easy," said Dekker, who holds a B.A. in computer sciences and statistics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. "It is not because I received a lot of direction (that I ended up in IT). It was really by chance that I ended up in the career I am in today. But through my keynote, I hope to provide a bit of guidance (to attendees), which I didn't receive 20 years ago...in grade nine."
Conference organizers invited Dekker, whose group at Microsoft focuses on the enterprise, academic and student developer community, to participate in the conference because of her team's connections with the latter two developer categories.
To prepare for the conference, she said she spent two hours with a focus group of grade-nine girls in Toronto, brainstorming about young women's issues and concerns about going into IT. From this meeting, she came up with her Top Ten Myths and Facts presentation about IT careers.
"Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social," she said. "They were concerned that there were limitations for women in this area of technology, and they felt there is a stigma associated with IT in terms of it not being a very exciting place to work. They also had the impression that IT workers are chained to a computer and their office for all of their days."
Dekker said she addressed these myths by talking to conference attendees about what a career in IT is really like, drawing from her own experiences. "You often have the opportunity to work around the world...and you are not chained to a computer. There are different customers to work with, and you can explore different areas of IT, including research and development, programming, sales and marketing."
Victor Doerksen, Alberta's Minister of Innovation and Science, said his government division, one of the conference's Silver Sponsors (contributing between Can$ 3,000 and $5,999), supports science awareness not just for girls but also for all young people at the event's target grade level. "This is when students (start) to make decisions about what they will take in high school and beyond. We want to encourage them to stay in math and sciences to give them more options for the future."
Encouraging technology skills development will help the province compete over the next several years as the world moves toward a global, knowledge-based economy, Doerksen said. "The skill requirements will continue to grow, and we just need more people in (technology) fields with skills and talents to make us more globally competitive."
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The girls are in 9th grade, not 9 years old.
I dont think the job is socially isolating at all. In fact programmers are much more isolated, at least in my view. Its the IT people (of course depending on exactly what you do) that get to wander around the office, talking to people, fixing things, etc. Someone ALWAYS wants to talk to the IT people, because someone ALWAYS has a problem.
snowulf.com
Check out this NSF report for some interesting data: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf04311/
SOMETHING is going on - and I would be willing to bet most of it is NOT due to biology. The percentage of women in basically all science and technical fields has increased since 1966. Engineering is a great example; in 1966 less than 1% of engineering bachelor's were awarded to women; in 2001 it was over 20% and growing. Biology didn't change that much in 25 years.... Now, obviously it is possible there are biological factors which could affect, but I daresay it looks like it will turn out to be much more even than a lot of people seem to think. (BTW, I am also sure they said the same thing about biology once - and today there are MORE women studying biology at the undergrad level than men. Though the numbers were better in 1966 fror biology than they were for engineering in 2001, admittedly.)
Maybe you ARE right, but historically the trend has been to argue women just don't WANT to work in certain fields - only to find out that is wrong. Thus my skepticism.
Now, rant aside, it is interesting that in 1966 33% of math and CS bachelor's went to women. Today that number is actually lower... What that means, I don't know, but given that in all other science fields the number of women went up, I doubt it is their technical ability. (BTW, math is, if I recall correctly from other studies, relatively even, so most of the gap comes from CS.)
I've seen guys with CS degrees go years in california without a job. Maybe in other parts of the country a degree is a job, but not in california. It's still a really hard market.
Plus you're looking at ~25K a year as a CS programmer thses days in Cali. And that MIGHT cover rent...forget about owning a car, or eating food.
I think I may have some insight to this as I am in 9th grade. I am however, not a girl. If you force non-geeky types into geeky positions, you are defeating the point of geekieness, which is bad. Geekieness is not just a label applied to you to be mocked, when it is infact a social class which we want to keep pure (god i sound fascist, but I still agree with what I said). Anyways, I know of very few girls into IT related things, but ten again there really arent that many more guys. Mabey 10(guys):3(girls) in our grade. They dont want to be around us, we dont want to be around them, and the world was. Anyways, maturity has no correlation with interest in IT fields, or even willingness to go into the fields.
IT in Canada is glorified officeboy/girl. With a university degree (4 years) plus several additional pieces of paper and several years experience to be allowed to vacuum out consoles, move furniture, catalogue software disks, and handle the paperwork for tape archives. The phrase 'Other Duties As Required" is the giveaway. Every other duty is required. In fact, you will be surprised to find out that any other duty --except what you have been trained in-- is required. Expect your boss to be a back-stabbing social climber, your job to be highly repetitive, unchallenging, and expect your efforts of toil to be ultimately unnecessary "oh, sorry, you did all that (boring) work for the last month, but we decided to go with someting else, Undo all that you did." Expect too that if there is a manual or documentation available, it won't be made available to you. You will be evaluated against your boss (who has the products problem resolution list). Betcha he does better than you. Also expect your boss to be an incompetent --if there is a problem, then it's your fault (and if others catch the boss in a lie, expect your life to get even worse). Expect the pager to go off at 3:00AM for false alarms --the user just got impatient waiting for the computer to finish (that you don't get paid for). Expect that your boss will go to the training seminar (for 10 days in another city), but you wind up with manuals to the old version of the software (oh, and it was on another platform). This is what you should expect from IT in Canada. The short answer is: if you really like computers, then do it at home. Software design/development is done in other places. Canada imports software. The best you can hope for is writing 1 or two macros (every 3-4 years). If you really like vacuuming, and being a human fork lift, then you will enjoy a career in IT in Canada.