ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source

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."

Comments

Re:many girls are brought up to believe that

[Prien715]

There's a "skills gap" present in Math aptitude tests that appears in countries where the status of women is worse. 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.