I stated I was sending a letter to recruit girls, but I was strongly told
not to do so at my site. I'll send a copy of the letter to those who have
requested it. I'll concentrate on doing things to get girls in programming
next year. (See Anirvan's suggestions.)
Just received permission from a couple of my grads to share their
thoughts. We have a group of current and grad students who discuss
subjects of import and these are some comments on girls in classes:
========
Aaah, memories. Any old timers remember the flamewar re: women in
computing on the original NetParadox mailing list (when it was an adjunct
to my Paradox Geek Culture zine)? Fun stuff.
Some possible ideas for discussion. Bear with me. As one of the few men to
ever get an A+ in a Women's Studies class here at Cal (and before you ask,
no, it didn't do much for my social life), this stuff happens to interest
me.
[1] Conducting a women-only (or at the very least, female-centric)
introduction to programming courses.
[2] A sad fact: part of the reason women still make 72 cents to every male
dollar is because they're not equally represented in many high-paying
industries, certainly due to barriers, but sometimes out of implicit
choice. Being a history or English major (typically female domainated
areas in college) is certainly a worthy pursuit but doesn't pay the bills
anything like computer education can. Some people get into CS because of a
deep and abiding love of Code. Others do it with dollar signs in their
eyes. I'm not happy about the latter category, but exploiting it for a
Good Cause, well, might be a Good Thing. Sometime before and around class
selection time, why not advertise CS programs with facts about the
inequality of women's CS education, career information, etc. There's
definitely a lot of damned smart women in CS--the quality's there, but not
the quantity.
[3] Fun summer project. Someone start up a Riot Nrrdgrrl Empowerment
commune and spend a summer teaching de Beauvoir and K&R, starting up a
chain reaction ending up with a new breed of kickass female programmers at
MV who can hack and lit-crit through anyone chauvinist/unenlightened
enough to get in their way. Make tech-savvy politically conscious
geekiness trendy. Distribute pocket protectors with famous women in
computing in the halls. Hold consciousness raising code-offs at lunchtime.
Promote collaboration and diversity by having the geekgirls outreach with
jockgirls to hold a Title 9 anniversary celebration rally. Protest 209.
Assassinate the cheerleaders (or better yet, consciousness-raise them).
Code for charity. Be the youngest recipients ever of venture capital from
the Java Fund for a side project done afterschool and release the Next Big
Thing that's the buzz of the net for a month or three. Whine when the Fast
Company cover story starts off calling our heroines "Kim Polese-lets." Go
public. (Call Anirvan in as a consultant and give him mucho stock options
for coming up with this whole thing in the first place.)
____________________________________________________________________
Anirvan Chatterjee . anirvan@chatterjee.net . http://www.mx.org/
PGP 2048/0xE2D13BA9 . finger->PGP/geek . This space for rent
Fast & free new/used multi-bookstore searches @ http://www.mxbf.com/
Can't we blame everything on the fact that most video games are violent
and stupid and boy-oriented?
Maybe when people are signing up for classes if we had a computer science
representative to plug computer science and how it's necessary for a lot
of things and it pays well (sort of? Maybe?) and really overtly encourage
it especially for girls.
Or, you could make it a required class. At Mudd, all freshmen (and
freshwomen) take the same classes: math, cs, chem, physics, and . .
.(lemme check my schedule here) hum. I think the school district needs to
work on its required curriculum. They're letting kids opt out of taking
necessary (in my mind!) courses too easily. I think everyone should be
required to take a computer course of some sort, preferably one that
involves more than just typing or playing games.
I don't think having a meeting just for girls would be a problem; a class
for girls only might be more trouble to have. But if you got district
approval it might work. I think the main reason that girls aren't
attracted to computers is because of the image (possibly rightly)
associated with computer people as nerds (in the negative sense of the
word) who sit at some funny looking screen all day and never talk to
people. Things are changing now that computers are becoming more
mainstream (thanks to the INternet), and the computer culture is becoming
more accepted because it is a means to do non-nerd things like talking,
research, etc. with a nerdish thing (a computer). And I don't think most
girls don't know how to use a computer, most use it to play games
(solitaire?) or write papers. We need to make coding or working with
systems seem more applealing to girls somehow. I tend to like cooperative
games or stuff like Myst or the Moo. Anything to get people more
comfortable with using computers so they will want to learn more or do
more.
Maybe make it a women in science/society/feministy thing. Maybe they would
be more comfortable in an all girls class. Knowing the maturity level of
most high school boys (most, not all, I love you guys here) I would
personally feel more comfortable in an all girls class until I reached a
comfort level and (to a lesser degree, since guys tend to have more
computer background) skill level.
Now, before anyone labels me as a whiny feminist, let me say that I think
girls are just as bright and smart as guys and they shouldn't get special
priveliges necessarily, but i find nothing wrong with encouraging girls to
be challenged. And if an all-girls setting will help, so be it.
Fat chance of this ever being approved by the district, huh.
Oh well. More ramblings later. My (coed) cs class begins friday. It's in
java and unix.
Have fun in college and high school everyone. Feel free to email me, too.
Luv, Katherine
_________________________________________________________________________
Harvey Mudd. . . Harvey Mudd. . . forever let us hold our slide rules high
_________________________________________________________________________
> > >> >> > > My new address is Katherine_Wade@hmc.edu
> > >> >> > > Ps again: Out of 186 Frosh, only 38 of us are female.
> > >> >> > > Reminds me of the Beach Boys Song, "surf city": Four Guys
for every girl. . .
Again from Katherine:
Interesting fact: The first thing we got here at harvey mudd (after our
dorm key) was our email addresses and network accounts. We didn't get our
schedules until 4 days later. At Pomona, they got their schedules first,
but to my knowledge they do not have email addresses yet.
PS re 209: one of the reasons there aren't many women here at mudd is that
you're not here unless you are qualified to be here. I personally would
not want to feel that I got anywhere "just because I'm female". But that's
my personal opinion, and I do agree that we need to encourage women,
especially in high school where we can get away with it. =)
Unfortunately, the sad thing is that most of the so called "girl games"
coming out suck hard. Dressing up Barbie on a computer is considered
progress? Good grief. Like you mention later, non-gender-specific games
like Myst sell big and are a success all around; of course it makes sense
that they're few and far between. I still can't get over that
whatchamacallit recent action game I saw someone playing that features
shoot 'em up with the player's main game view being right behind a
not-very-warmly-clothed woman with perhaps medically dangerous (I'm
getting a backache just thinking about it) unnaturally sized body parts.
Thank Bob for progress.
> I think the main reason that girls aren't
> attracted to computers is because of the image (possibly rightly)
> associated with computer people as nerds (in the negative sense of the
> word) who sit at some funny looking screen all day and never talk to
> people.
That's a bad thing?! (And why are you calling my screen funny?)
Incidentally, an issue to ponder. Why is it "worse" for a woman to be a
computer geek than for a man? As an "out" male computer geek in high
school, I was lucky enough to fit a socially acceptable defined role
(granted, the social positioning of that role probably derived more from
Urkel than Microserfs...), but women have a more problematic space to fit
into.
> Things are changing now that computers are becoming more
> mainstream (thanks to the INternet), and the computer culture is becoming
> more accepted because it is a means to do non-nerd things like talking,
> research, etc. with a nerdish thing (a computer). And I don't think most
> girls don't know how to use a computer, most use it to play games
> (solitaire?) or write papers. We need to make coding or working with
> systems seem more applealing to girls somehow. I tend to like cooperative
> games or stuff like Myst or the Moo. Anything to get people more
> comfortable with using computers so they will want to learn more or do
> more.
The Internet is a really good thing for getting women (actually everyone,
but particularly women) into computers. But unfortunately, this is still
not really progress beyond the shallow application layer--most people into
"Internet" still do little beyond chat. Anything that attracts people to
computers in this light is good, but it's only a start. Chatting is easy.
Coding is hard. The challenge is to use tools like chat as bait, but to
keep people from getting hung up on it, and unable/unwilling to progress.
Think back to all the people in the MV CS classes; now how many of them
were serious, and how many of them were doing it to get access to
chat/email (and hopefully an easy A) during school?
____________________________________________________________________
Anirvan Chatterjee . anirvan@chatterjee.net . http://www.mx.org/
PGP 2048/0xE2D13BA9 . finger->PGP/geek . This space for rent
Fast & free new/used multi-bookstore searches @ http://www.mxbf.com/
===========
So Jo -- if you read this far .. what does this tell you and what do you
think of the suggestions?
==================================================================
Roseann Krane, http://www.mvhs.srvusd.k12.ca.us/~rkrane/
Monte Vista High School, UNIX System Administrator (510) 552-2859
3131 Stone Valley Road, Danville, CA 94526,
Teacher, Computer Science Department (510) 837-7507
"All students are different, schools should make them more so!"
==================================================================