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Soap Opera for Luring Women to Tech is a Flop
Billosaur writes "The Register has an article by Mark Ballard on attempts to lure more women into the area of technology by a '...TV soap that depicts them making a success of careers traditionally pursued by men.' The Public Awareness of Science and Engineering (PAWS) Drama Fund has been attempting to develop a soap opera called 'Happy Valley' to encourage girls to pursue careers in science and technology by giving them successful role models to follow. The idea is tanking, however, as no one is willing to pick up the show. To quote the show's writer, Tony McHale: 'People say, why don't you do a science soap. My reply is that no-one will commission it, because it's boring.'"
Why do we want women in tech? I'm not saying I'm against women in tech, I just wonder why, if they don't want to do it, we should want them to want it? Someone enlighten me? I don't hear a lot of clamoring over men in educational fields or nursing or anything else that's largely female dominated. Are we pushing for "equality" without regard for whether or not they WANT to do this?
> Because there's reason to believe that women are pushed out of tech.
Yes. See the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse", about a longitudinal study of CMU CS undergrads.
Over and over, the women reported that when they were girls the family PC wound up in their brother's room and they never got to tinker with it however much they wanted to.
Undergrads enthusiastic about computers all too often transferred to other majors because they thought they were expected to emulate the MIT hacker culture in order to succeed. They were all high achievers who expected to give up parties and free time in exchange for an education, but they weren't willing to give up showers. Maybe if there were more figures like Emma Peel in popular culture they would have realized that you can both take care of yourself and gain skill.
At the risk of being politically incorrect, the book did mention that women tended to take interest in useful applications of technology rather than burrowing into it for its own sake. Where a man might write a thesis about register allocation in compilers, a woman would more likely want to invent something like Logo.