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ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source

Posted by Soulskill on from the more-engineers-more-cool-stuff dept.

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."

3 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kuhscheisse. by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

    Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?

    My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.

    Heck, when I was in school, the ratio was about the same in my classes, and seemed to drop as you went to more advanced classes. There were more in first year classes, but as you went up there were fewer people overall, and the number of women dropped faster for the most part. I was dating the only female in my classes for the last few years of school.

    But my experience (yes, purely anecdotal, and I don't claim otherwise) is that out of 27 cubes the most I've ever seen is 2-3 women, and that's an upper bound.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Feel good kumbaya by Gothmolly · · Score: 3, Informative

    a) there's nothing special about Open Source
    b) being excited about something is not tangible
    c) self-esteem is not the point
    d) being a career non-profit means that you never created value
    e) Oregon is full of hipsters and douches

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  3. Re:many girls are brought up to believe that by BonThomme · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://xkcd.com/385/