The FIRST Robotics Competition high school team (Mechanicats, from Chicago) and I were testing our robot late one night this February. While we were munching pizza, exhausted, a girl from the team came to me and asked if I enjoyed what I do (I'm the software mentor for the team). The reason for the question, she said, was that she was torn about what to study in college. She told me that her grandmother, who lived in California, told her that she should learn programming! The grandma said she heard that, since there are so few women in tech, her chances would be much greater in getting a good job. I was flabbergasted (this is a South Side school and she's not coming from a well-off family, how the grandma came with this info is anybody's guess). I told her that's absolutely true and she should go for it. She's now enrolled in the rPi based python class I'll start next week.
So there you go, there's the solution to the "too few women in tech". Show young women that this is an huge opportunity, they should seize it. Tell them about the $5k for women in Hacker School. Tell them to participate in hackathons. Unfortunately, many of people focus on negative aspects of this situation. They have a lot to learn from my student's grandmother.
Please teach this to as many girls you can influence.
I recently won a competition, which is great and all, but I always wonder in the back of my mind if I won it because I was the only woman in the competition.
And I know that's probably crazy but judging some of the HN comments about these kind of things, people clearly do think that way. I just want to be recognized solely for what I accomplish and not "Good for you, you're a FEMALE software developer!"
plight of all assisted minorities, gender-wise or racial
I think the key is to stop focusing on individuals, and start focusing on the systems. It isn't about the one woman who wins, it is about the other however-many who get to have a glorious disaster and learn valuable lessons about time management. It is about the men who see those women as peers instead of oddities.
We don't need heroes: we need a better normal.
This is a slick idea, something I personally felt I would need - I watch WWE RAW with a delay, and sometimes they post news to their facebook feed, which unfortunately spoils part of the fun.
However, I haven't implemented it. I didn't know of anything like it. You did it, great hack. It's something that I would personally use.
Let the naysayers saying you got an award just because of some characteristic that does not define a "hacker" prove you wrong by creating stuff instead of posting stuff that only prove they are the dummies.
Creating stuff is what really defines a hacker.
And you suffer this now, in your generation, so maybe the next generation will have so many women succeeding that this idea will no longer make sense. Having examples to strive towards is always cited as an important part of deciding who you become in life.
You didn't ask to do this. Your post makes that much clear. Very rarely to we really ask for the roles society casts us into. It is simply how it happens.
Reminds me of an old quote, from the film Zulu about the defense of Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879:
Private Cole: [After Mr. Witt's carriage rides off, Mr. Witt screaming the British soldiers are all doomed] He's right. Why does it have to be us? Why us?
Colour Sgt. Bourne: Because we're here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.
Aside from that, this is why contests are stupid. And most things in life are contests. What's great about selling products, instead of being employed or consulting, is that you win if you solve the customer's problems, not if they think they should give you a break.
When she does go on to get a job, does she tell herself "I got this because I was the only girl" or because she has confidence in her abilities to be the best overall candidate? We need to remind girls they have the potential to be the best, not just the best female.
We need to hear what kind of life learning a technical skill will open up to us. Seeing someone else have the passion for their work in tech is the biggest inspiration. This is shown by how the father of the hackathon winner told stories of his latest hack and made his enthusiasm contagious. This is how I was influenced in my childhood.
Focusing on the 'huge opportunity' is akin to saying "Quick! There's a gap, get in now while you're a unicorn, you'll regret it once ratios are more equal & you actually have to be talented to get hired".
Also by getting girls into tech on the sole basis of the advantages of being the 'token female' could develop a dynamic a few years down the line where women feel their worth within a team deminish with every further female hire. This is why I feel talent and enjoyment should be emphasised from the start.
Please emphasise WHY you love what you do, ask where her interests lie. Don't recommend it to every girl. Yes there is a gap but surely we should be saying to girls, gap or no gap - if you feel a sense of connection to creativity & technology & see your future in it, go for it regardless!
As I always whisper to my own daughter, "the computer can't tell you're a girl."
In the world we live in today, the word "girl" in the title is relevant to the story. I eagerly await the day when that story would be no-less-interesting with that word left out.
"Let’s focus on how one teenage girl, Jennie Lamere, defeated a room full of smart, motivated, experienced, full-grown men. This would seem to be instructive to the greater argument about women in technology, and besides, it has the added bonus of being -> based in fact rather than opinion <-"
As if the argument for women is based primarily on opinion.
“It’s also important to note that Jennie’s idea is a completely universal, gender-neutral one"
Is it? Last time I checked gender-biased ideas can be just as valuable as gender-neutral ones. Why does Jennie need to 'prove' herself capable of producing gender-neutral ideas?
> As if the argument for women is based primarily on opinion.
I'm not sure I buy the article's notion that hackathons aren't based on opinion, but your swing misses the mark in the other direction. It's pretty silly to fault someone for pointing out that the evidence is especially strong for a point you agree on. A lot of people really do have question about women in tech, why they're in the position they're in, what could be done to improve it, what successes really count, etc. So inasmuch as this is an objective measure of one girl's ability to succeed on an even playing field, it's pretty interesting. The article isn't expressing shock or anything, just promoting the strength of the data point it's presenting. It's a bit like an article came out saying, "discovery of additional irrefutable evidence that evolution happened" and you're like, "Ha! As if the theory of evolution was based on refutable evidence..."
> “It’s also important to note that Jennie’s idea is a completely universal, gender-neutral one"
I read that to mean that she competed with the men on their own terms, not by building something in a different category that had to be compared apples to oranges. She was running the same race. If she built a system for tracking Barbie dolls, she'd be in the position of, "isn't that cute, she made something no else here cares about..." like it's really the Best Woman Project award. The quote is preemtively shooting down potential "that wasn't real" counters.
Not "the argument", it's just that many arguments for women are based on opinion.
Edit: and yeah I totally agree about the "gender-neutral" thing. I was kind of disappointed actually! I wanted to see something unusual, something the room full of dudes wouldn't have thought of :)
In this case, however, I think the motivation in pointing out that the winner was a GIRL and a TEENAGER, is to inspire other young women to study programming. On the other hand, I could totally see them reading this article and thinking "man, they are making a huge deal out of this.. guess I should stick to fashion"
The second statement you call out is important because -- and I wish I could find the interviews -- many female entrepreneurs admitted that it was difficult to get funding for projects that didn't have a female skew. That is not to say that gender-biased ideas aren't valuable, but pushing women to work on women-centric issues is already a problem.
It seemed this young woman acted identically to any young individual interested in tech.
Learned about tech. Lived tech. Talked tech. Practiced, practiced, practiced.
Didn't need any self-victimizing pink ghetto look at me give me an advantage because I'm a poor damsel in tech crapola.
I like GitHub and believe it's full of good people. But when they invited me to speak as part of their Passion Project, the invitation package included a hoodie with a pink octocat logo on it, and stickers: Audrey Hepburn octocat wearing pearls, and some other girlie octocat I didn't recognize. Now there's a culture I am turned off by.
Fact: Everybody discriminates against everybody, all the time. Assuming women hate whatever "male-dominated culture" means is just as bad as assuming they like Breakfast at Tiffany's.
To be good at programming (not even great), you need to love it, and to love it requires a special kind of perversity. Your "hundreds of women who could make it" -- do they have that special kind of perversity?
Actually building software is an epic and enormous pain in the ass. You have to love controlling, beating and dominating the computer. Otherwise you'll come to a point where it simply won't be worth the time and aggravation to proceed.
Probably the best way to attract a more diverse set of programmers is to change what programming means, not try to reform the Trekkies who were drawn to the way programming currently is. (Or the women who assume woman programming = wants pink hoodies.) It is the mold that shapes the pot, not the other way around.
Not everyone has the convenience of having a parent in the industry to get them interested and keep them going, spurring them with ideas and creative solutions along the way. She landed there by chance and look what she's done. Everyone deserves such opportunities.
And yes, it would be good to give everyone, regardless of gender or age such opportunities.
If you actually are interested, see this post and all of the comments: http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-...
I admit I don't understand the downvotes.
danilocampus invited me to a comment war, I graciously declined with a bit of humor.
“This is a terrific story, and proof that young girls are an untapped resource of innovation,” said Change The Ratio co-founder Rachel Sklar, when we told her the news. “More and more role models in the space are showing girls like Jennie (who is now one herself!) that this is a place for them, and for their talents. And now organizations like Girls Who Code are providing the infrastructure to get there. The floodgates have opened — the ratio is changing.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_playing
Victim playing (also known as playing the victim or self-victimization) is the fabrication of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy or attention seeking.
And if it still isn't clear to you, have someone read to you what others, including women, have written in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5636111
In all these threads, and around the web, and in meatspace too, many women, from all sorts of backgrounds repeat the same messages, and contemporary feminists dismiss them or worse, call them chill girls and queen bees. http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2012/09/10/a-note...
This sort of contemptuous, dismissive, insulting, ignore them, pat-them-on-the-head-and-tell-them-to-stfu behavior is what passes for state of the art contemporary feminist argument. And better, it's is deeply reflective of the sort of patriarchal argument that contemporary feminists claim to be against but actively work to implement for themselves.
http://phawrongula.wikia.com/wiki/Witch_of_the_Week
See also https://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia+american+women+nov... and ask yourself, if you favor scholarships, contests, special projects for American Women Novelists, but presumably not for American Men Novelists, why shouldn't American Women Novelists be cloistered into a pink ghetto category? The sponsors of such projects are saying women are lesser creatures that cannot be expected to compete with men and need special protection, special incentives, special prizes, and special attention.
I reject this thinking and am saddened people think women cannot compete on an equal footing with other humans.
"If you remember one thing from this article, it should be that the father of this prize-winning girl hacker (Paul Lamere, director of developer community for The Echo Nest, which publishes Evolver.fm) did not, as one might suspect, force, cajole, or otherwise convince his daughter to take up hacking."
Jennie's father is a part of the website which published an article about Jennie. It doesn't detract from my understanding of the story much, but I felt this fact diminished Jennie's accomplishment in some small way. Not in any meaningful way of course, but I wonder if this story would have been published if Jennie's father was not part of Evolver.fm's parent company.
> "The best part is the feeling of accomplishment and knowing that I made a hack that people reacted positively to."
Amazing what positive feedback can do.
Jen is as smart and motivated a 17-year-old I've ever met, and she solved a real pain point of mine with nothing but one day of a two-day hackathon and a greasemonkey script.
But.
If I were her, and the judges were commanding applause from the audience with specific references to my age and gender (this happened twice) instead of my app and skill - if I became this symbolic object of a story we all want to tell - I don't know how I'd feel about that. I wonder how she feels about it, especially in light of stmchn's comment on winning.
Personally, I wish we lived in a world where this headline could read "Smart kid wins with cool hack." I guess when stories like this are no longer news, we'll know we've achieved normalcy.
At our last CodeDay in Seattle, a 17-year old HS student built an app that's received over 175,000 downloads on Google Play. http://www.geekwire.com/2013/student-programmer-creates-succ...
We've run CodeDay in five cities so far, with 30-100 students attending each event. If anything, it's a good sign that we can change the culture at the high school level and get more students into technology.
Sadly, a lot of high schools don't even offer this class in the first place. I think the program at my old high school even got shut down.
YMMV, this is judged from local state college/community college.
about the education system, I'm of the opinion that high school is mostly a waste of time; I dropped out 2 years early and got a GED instead. (Don't try this at home.)
In other words, I'd expect the AP Computer Science class to be roughly equivalent to "CS 101" or "CS 1A", or whatever they happen to call the CS class where you learn what about conditionals, loops and basic variables is.
