My daughter is only 7, but I have shown her squeak <http://squeak.org/> (a nice smalltalk environment) and Alice <http://www.alice.org/>. I remember reading somewhere that Alice is targeted at getting girls interested in programming, but I can't find any reference to that on the site now. My son does seem to show more interest in computers and programming so far (iWeb and a bit of Ruby) but that may be more because he is 9.
I am currently one of two Java developers. The other one is the lead and is a woman. In probably half my jobs/contracts over the past 16 years, about half my managers or project leads have been women. Oddly, a much lower percentage of my co-workers have been women. Lloyd 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. > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
