This program doesn’t promote one sex over another. It makes opportunities available to members of one sex.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
'Girls Who Code' Non-Profit Announces New Swift Curriculum Option
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
C'mon, I wasn't kidding about some people, even some women, discouraging women in general from interests in at least math. There are all manner of quilting books promoting "no math!" and "pre-cut! pre-calculated!" Yes. 21st century, right now. I've seen quilt guilds stack this on their freebie table.
Well hey I don't see them buying a guild copy for loan of say Jinny Beyer's book on design of interlocking tesselations... and why is that? Because the book was expensive? Or because when you open it you see she's talking about different types of symmetry, mirroring, translation, mid-point and corner rotation and so forth? I asked about that one day at a guild I was visiting and saw they had a lot of books there but none on stuff like tesselation or even bargello, and she just sighed and said well "you know they don't like the math so... "
Who the hell are THEY? This whole world keeps dumbing itself down because of some mysterious THEY...
I say we make sure we're not part of that THEY.
Where did Jinny Beyer come from anyway? Where did her tesselation book customers come from? Hatched fully formed as a bunch of mathematicians? Or encouraged just by interest in having a look into how those initriguing M.C. Escher designs of impossible waterfalls and so forth worked anyway? Well she didn't just drop from heaven ready to write that book. Someone didn't discourage her from following her interest, and some editor somewhere said hell this isn't as complicated as I thought really... so her book got published and now there are hundreds of thousands of women (and, guys) who know how to create quilts with tesselating block designs. God knows where the people who bought the book came from. They like me must have thought well I'm not a complete dunce, I could probably follow her line of thought there on the geometry, after all there's pictures in there too...
Right. My problem with the qualification there is concern that the data mining itself can be systemically biased. We need more studies. We need to know we're not just trying to prove a hypothesis with the study, too.
I can't say I agree that uncovering bias or discrimination isn't helpful. The next step then would logically be to try to remedy it to see if equality of opportunity gets put to use... by enabling free choices to be made.
As to generalizations or conclusions about women or men's aptitudes or interests: It's the outliers who are our innovators anyway, no? Even within a gender? That's unless you count an otherwise perhaps average dude who just happens to bumble into something (weeds whose "loop and hook" self propagation method one day suggested to a guy what eventually became the option to force the connection tech we now call Velcro). Or someone realizes a failed project's outcome is actually valuable in its own right for some other purpose... I think Elmer's Glue might have been in that category, as what they were aiming for at first was using casein derivatives to maybe make sturdier shirt buttons or something and ended up with a sticky mess... ah, a sticky mess! Perfect!
But Marie Curie, I dunno, was she only "interested in people" or was it her obsession with radioactivity that got her two Nobel prizes and the honor of becoming the first woman to end up entombed on own merits where French citizens of distinction were buried? By all accounts she was possessed by her discoveries along the way with radioactive substances, to the point where her husband abandoned his own scientific interest in crystalline structures to assist her explorations.
I read your citation and don't dispute its data, but we do need more info... I can't buy into current studies' conclusions that women are more into people than things --which if we run on that would mean we'd encourage women "naturally" to gravitate to non-STEM without a "people are in there somewhere!" in our guidance.
Of course we might well then pitch a "people are in there!" aspect governmentally if we cannot round up enough male lab techs for sake of the nation's well being.
But that sounds far more manipulative and big-brotherish to me than either some company deciding to help sponsor a girls-can-code club, or even a govt program that says yo just please leave the door open for some chicks if they're interested, eh? Let's not forget as others have posted, that there have been clubs for little boys and for men for this that and the other interest from time immemorial.
Societal and cultural emphases are always in flux. We're likely best off if we encourage people to make use of their interests and talents as self-perceived or noticed by educators, parents... without alarm and without undue pressure either.
Right now if you think there are not mamas who freak out at the idea of a daughter picking up toads in the garden, or for that matter borrowing daddy's stud-finder and battery operated drill to hang a framed photo in her bedroom.... you ain't met some of the mamas I've met. Same with some dads who are retro enough they'll take their daughter out of a private college where she's an art history major and ship her to SUNY to finish in regular history or literature or something for the last 2 years if it turns out her younger bro got into med school.
Some of us worry about what the government's up to on career-path smoothing for our sons or daughters, and some of the rest of us like me may wonder more about what the hell kids' parents and guardians are thinking.
Finally and probably not to the liking of folk who consider human gender fixed via biological attributes, if the study you cited is correct as to its conclusion, then it would follow that a girl who turns up interested in STEM from the get-go just on its own appeal to her --yeah, as a "thing"-- is maybe actually a boy. Uh... wait up.
Ah, so segregated restaurants don’t promote one race over the other. They just make opportunities available to members of one race. Got it.
It's a club for girls who may like to learn how to code. Start one for boys if you think Fricken Google isn't boyish enough.
False equivalancy is false equivalancy
No, I don’t think you get it.
[doublepost=1566605522][/doublepost]
“The right things” being what? Because in this conversation, that’s how to code. And that’s what this program does.
Last edited:
There is nothing more insecure (less secure?) than ad-hominem attacks. There are a lot here against anyone mentioning that sexual discrimination shouldn't be a thing. Even a lot of the posts that aren't personal attacks are in a demeaning tone.
Last edited:
Because the Google has boys coming out their ears and could use the civilizing influence lol.
It tells them that it's unusual for women to code and raises pretty valid accusations of sexism. I don't see any point, girls can just take regular coding classes, especially since there's so much info freely available on the topic.
[doublepost=1566612629][/doublepost]
Society always affects you. We aren't all living in bubbles. Still, I think for the things you mentioned, people should have their rights.
If a girl wants to get a job in a tech shop she's often harassed enough at the pre-interview to let that affect her command of skills she does have to get past that point in the hiring process.
If you argue against equal outcomes then does it make sense to argue for "equal input" for boys in the sense of arguing against some nonprofit group aiming to bump up girls' tech skills and confidence in them so they can compete in the real marketplace?
If you feel bad for "people who think they need programs to get ahead" then I feel badly for you not understanding what the hell this Girls Who Code nonprofit is all about. Girls face discrimination in the tech workplace and a lot of it unfortunately has to do with the fact they're female in what some guys still think is a man's fiefdom, tech workplaces (which you know can seem pretty amazing considering women have been working in computing since before the 1960s).
The group Girls Who Code tries to bump up the chance the girls' skills are above reproach and so also help them gain confidence for interviews... assuming the guys who interview them stick to tech issues and don't throw in **** like I notice you're Muslim so probably that means you need help getting a work visa right?
I'm inclined to get snippy at this point and say about Girls Who Code and the willingness of Apple to participate by offering a Swift tutorial: "It's not illegal. Get over it."
Last edited:
It makes me laugh that all the major tech companies sponsor an after school program that teaches girls to code and MR has an aneurism...
Keep going guys..be the joke of the internet
Keep going guys..be the joke of the internet
The solution is just for others to 'identify' as a girl who codes and bingo! You are now included, even if you are a 51 year old man with a ZZ Top style beard....
Yes, just like the Boy Scouts us it’s unusual for men to camp. Or little league tells us it’s unusual for men to play baseball.
One thing I noticed about the article and survey its based entirely on women responders. It should have an equal control group for males to see if they had similar negative experiences which may explain the interview process as a whole and if its actually indicative of discrimination.
Also, I question some of their misleading wording of the article:
Article:
More than half of the respondents said they either had a negative experience while applying for engineering internships or knew another woman who had a negative experience.
Actual survey:
Overall, around half of the 1,000+ women we surveyed— most of whom are under the age of 20—have either had a negative experience applying for a job in tech, or know a woman who has.
Repeatedly used during the survey they report "They know other women who have had such experiences." "knew another woman who had a negative experience" "Respondents reported that women they know have had similar experiences"
Such data or experiences is anecdotal evidence that data should be be thrown out or never be commented on in a legitimate survey. Without direct involvement of these "Other women" questions the validity of the survey.
Such wording is also used to sensationalize the finding to make them sound more substantial than they really are.
It appears they are using "Know other woman who have had a negative experience" as a way of padding the data to increase these negative experiences.
The survey relies quite heavily on these "Other Women" who never took part of this survey.
Last edited:
Yep, anecdotes are just anecdotes until enough stack up to become stats. On the other hand what exactly does happen so that there ends up appearing to be some kind of crimp in the pipeline between computing majors in school and computing jobs in industry? Inquiring minds should want to know more, and are asking more questions, so that's progress I guess.
With competitive sports, one sex has a physical advantage depending on the age, so it's not fair to combine them. Same reason they segregate many pro sports. For very young age, probably doesn't matter. They could also just be trying to make it like pro sports, idk (every elementary school little league I ever saw was coed).
Boy Scouts is a father-son tradition, with girl scouts complementing. And at the older ages, the concerns are similar to male or female only schools, where some parents don't want their kids getting "distracted" while they're away for extended periods of time. I don't agree with the second one, but parents have their beliefs.
Last edited:
There are stats, and you could just provide stats. I remember the demographics in top tech companies being similar to the relevant college major demographics, but I could be wrong. I don't understand what a report of a few people complaining is going to prove, especially when it's one-sided.
It's not so one sided when you look at the gender distribution in up-the-ladder population of the tech companies and listen to the women who work there. And I'm not going to discount media articles of some women going on record about their pre-hiring experience. Sure they are anecdotes. They are also on the record reports of their experience. Sometimes the companies don't even bother to try to refute them. They double down on how women aren't prepared well enough. Now we have companies making an effort to help ensure they're prepared and we have guys weighing in on how that's "unfair" or maybe even illegal. Go figure.
I'm not necessarily discounting some of the women's experiences being real, as I'm sure many are real. Just how they are reporting the data seems skewed. Just as with anything else, many stories are true, it's just finding out how many.
Find that as well. Looking at college courses requirements for many STEM fields women seem to be lacking in enrollment too.
Dude, with subjective opinion anything goes... but with "truth," objective views are usually sought. That post you made earlier may have been right on the money as far as how you plan to conduct the lives of the females in your own household, but it doesn't translate well to the world we now live in.
At least you don't claim your view should be or is that of everyone else... although your suggestion that "Women dont want 2 code they hate these things that clear" is certainly not clear, since that's been one of the points of lively debate in this very thread.
Too bad someone hasn't shown your mother how to program the TV remote, it's not like it's that complicated. Could always switch things up now and teach her how to do it. Otherwise enjoy fixing it now and then until she's 110 years old and still liking to pick what shows she wants to watch.
You’re thinking safety or competitive fairness? If so, there are many posts in this thread—to say nothing of what’s available online and in academic literature—exploring and explaining how programs targeting underrepresented populations seek safety and competitive fairness.
