My oldest daughter is 2 years ahead in math. My second daughter has skipped a year already and is a another year ahead in math. They are doing much better than I ever did.
They DON'T want to write software. It sounds boring to them. They came to work with me while I was at Amazon.com. They loved the place, not as much as I loved it, but they had no desire to do that kind of work. The professions they see influence their goals heavily. They see their teachers, people in the medical profession, people running retail stores. That is what they see and aspire to. When I was in college I studied chemistry. It never dawned on me that I could write software as a profession. I changed majors in college and went the software route and have loved it. Kids though are not exposed to it until they are teenagers. Perhaps there is a lot of peer pressure about what profession you want to go into. How many girls do you know would tell their friends that they are going to write computer programs? Many think college is a joke and get talked out of it. My girls know they could do the same thing I do and make a good living. But they have no interest in it right now. It is not exciting to them. It is not glamorous or prestigious, or anything like that. I'm not going to push them though into a computer career. I don't think they need to make a decision until they go to college or have been there for a year. Right now it is about expanding their view of the world so they can choose what excites them the most and turn that into a career. On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Dianne Marsh <[email protected]> wrote: > > So now that I have at least SOME people's attention on the gender thing, > I'm wondering if I can engage those of you who are dads ... or uncles > ... or influential adults. One of my employees said that she was > strongly influenced into computer science by her parents. There's no > reason to limit that to moms. I bet that the dads are equally baffled > about why their daughters might not be interested in computer science. > So let's get the dads involved. > > What can you do? This is a smart group of people. Can we brainstorm a > bit? Women tend to view this as "our problem", but why? We don't have > all of the answers, just because we're women. And face it. If ALL of > the women developers worked to impact their daughters' decisions of a > profession, we STILL wouldn't make a very big dent. You GUYS, OTOH, ... > you have NUMBERS in your favor! I think that if we want to increase the > number of girls in CS (and other math/science), you're our best hope. > > BTW, this idea of getting the dads to influence their daughters was one > of my employee's. She said that she was strongly influenced by her > parents, and brought up the fact that DADS are the ones that can make > the difference in a male-dominated profession. Turns out her mom is a > software developer (and only 2 years older than me, but that makes me > wince, so we don't usually talk about that). > > So ... any chance you guys want to brainstorm a bit on how we might be > able to influence a 50/50 gender mix at the [Java?] Posse Roundup 2025? > ;-) > > Dianne > > > > Robert Fischer wrote: > > It's not just baffling to you. Women not being attracted to science, > math, and software development > > has been a huge issue since people started paying attention. But despite > huge amounts of money > > being thrown at the problem and all kinds of systems intended to > support/encourage women in that > > direction, general adoption remains low. Why that's the case is baffling > to everyone, and people's > > answers to those questions tend to have less to do with evidence and more > to do with people's > > pre-conceived paradigm on gender issues. > > > > ~~ Robert. > > > > > > > > -- Robert Casto www.robertcasto.com [email protected] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
