Google-Supported CodeGirl Documentary Makes "Exclusive YouTube Premiere"

theodp writes: As part of our Made with Code and media perception initiatives," wrote YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki over at the Official Google Blog, "I'm excited that we're supporting award-winning documentary filmmaker Lesley Chilcott — of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman [and Code.org] fame — on her next film, CodeGirl. Until November 5 Lesley's film will be available for free on YouTube, before its theatrical debut in the next few weeks." Microsoft is pretty jazzed about the movie too, as is Al Gore. Decidedly less excited about CodeGirl is film critic Inkoo Kang, who writes, "CodeGirl, a chronicle of this year's Technovation contest, is just as well-intentioned as its subject. It coasts for as long as it can on the feel-good fuel of watching smart, earnest girls talk about creating an app, but with virtually no tension, context, narrative or characterization driving the story, the documentary grows to feel like a parent describing their daughter's involvement in an international competition. The girls' achievements are impressive, but you definitely don't want to hear about them for nearly two hours.

Comments

Re:I'm upset because it's divisive.

[fche]

"It's not dividing anyone."

Oh please. The first blaring announcement in the documentary is a whine about how "fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John".

Re:I'm upset because it's divisive.

[AmiMoJo]

Actually that's not true at all. Many women wanted to carry on working after the war, but as men came home and returned to civilian life they took those jobs back again. That's fair enough to some extent, it would be unreasonable to expect them to come home to unemployment after being drafted into the war.

It's just a shame that the boom years of the 50s couldn't have provided more jobs for women too. American manufacturing was riding high because all the competition in Europe and Asia had been destroyed by war, with the US remaining mostly untouched. In fact massive government investment in manufacturing had given it a huge boost. It wasn't until the 1960s that women really started to make inroads into the workplace again.

It's true that few of them returned to driving rivets. That's because in the 1950s they had tended to pursue education and had skills, rather than going into work straight out of school. The system screwed a lot of men in that sense, although manufacturing jobs were plentiful and paid well so they probably didn't think so at the time.