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Girls Take All In $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video).
End of story.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As a woman and ex-coder, I'd say I got out of software development because of immoral companies like Google with their boot-licking race to the bottom when it comes to respect for the individual. My aversion to the field is an aversion to macho culture only to the extent that "might makes right" (i.e. "we do it because we can") is macho culture. I don't think they're appropriate in the workplace, but I'm not put off by sexist jokes, assumptions that I will fail (if anything, I've been treated too "delicately") and what-have-you.
There's been an ever-increasing push over the last 10 or 12 years to get more girls and women into tech, with almost no visible results; in fact, the number of women in tech has been declining for decades. This seems odd at first, but the reason this push is constantly being attempted at all is that it's part of a larger effort to increase the pool of applicants and decrease salaries. It's the same reason that Facebook, Google, et al. want to increase the number of H1-B visa workers.
There is nothing stopping a girl or woman from learning programming/networking/etc. if she wants to, and these increasingly bizarre, desperate, and creepy attempts to lure in women will end up pushing away the ones who might have pursued tech careers otherwise.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
I don't blame misogyny for girls not getting into programming, because I don't think computer programming is necessarily characterized by social interaction. The lone "cowboy[/cowgirl] coder" is much more of the norm than our zealous gender imbalance adjusters think.
When I was getting into programming in the 90's I certainly didn't rely on anybody else's affirmation -- I learned how to program sitting by myself at my computer(s) with very little in the way of two way communication with the outside world. I realize it's not the 90's anymore, but the argument that says you have to have a vibrant Twitter presence and go to local programmer meetups to be a coder today is, quite frankly, hogwash. It's about the code, friend.
Here's another theory that I will probably be flamed for -- maybe girls don't get into programming as often for the same reason that female deer don't bash heads against each other as often as the males do. Maybe it boils down to testosterone. Males of many species have an impulsive drive to accomplish certain things, and in humans' case this is largely independent of intellectual aptitude. Yes, girls are smart. Many could be good programmers. But do they want to? Are they driven to? Am I (at least partially) driven to my peculiar lifestyle of being glued to a screen and eschewing much social interaction because of testosterone? ("Yeah, you'd like to _think_ so" I can hear my naysayer naysaying.) But these are questions I honestly ask.
Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before, instead of trying to "lean in" on what feminists perceive as "soft skill white collar" industries.
Sounds good?
Claiming that men have no legitimate qualms when it comes to gender equality; that is sexist.
MABASPLOOM!