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When I hear people say girls don’t stick around in math and science because they are not interested, I’d like to point them to the commercials that play on Satu
by ojbyrne 14y ago
When I hear people say girls don’t stick around in math and science because they are not interested, I’d like to point them to the commercials that play on Saturday morning cartoons or to the faces they see on the boxes in the toy aisles. If you have kids, take a minute to look around the next time you are buying toys. You might find it eye-opening. Although I haven’t seen it, I hear the documentary “Miss Representation” deals with this topic."
Certainly that was true in 1982. But since then we've had many, many, many programs promoting Science for girls.
Searching for "STEM girls programs" on Google gets 23.8 million hits. So I'm curious how many millions of dollars will be spent before the example of the toy aisles (from the eighties) stops getting trotted out.
Some notable examples:
Girl Scouts: http://www.girlscouts.org/program/basics/science/ http://www.girlscouts.org/program/basics/science/
STEM grants for girls:
http://stemgrants.com/mini-stem-grants-for-girls/ http://stemgrants.com/mini-stem-grants-for-girls/
Techbridge (STEM for girls):
http://www.techbridgegirls.org/ http://www.techbridgegirls.org/
- jfoutz 14y agoI would guess when these numbers are closer to parity. http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/women-stem-gender-gap-innovation http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/women-stem-gender-gap-innovat...
- jleader 14y agoWell, when I started as a professional programmer in 1983, I was hired by a woman. A year or two later, my boss, my boss's boss, and her boss were all women (this was in software development at a Fortune 500 computer manufacturing company). My understanding is that today, there are far fewer women in software development than there were in the 1980s. It seems to me that the billions of dollars in toy marketing (and other factors) are beating the millions in "STEM for girls".
- marlenac 14y agoThanks for posting the links to those programs. There's been some real progress in the areas of programming and funding for that kind of thing. I've worked with some of those programs and they're awesome.