I'll admit, it's probably my own fault for having boys. If I had just given birth to girls like I had originally intended then I most likely wouldn't feel this supremely encompassing guilt over contributing to the disproportionate number of men to women in computer science. At age six, my oldest son was already dabbling in game creation using Scratch and my five year-old could navigate pbskids.org better than many adults that I know. My goal of equalizing the gender gap in technology has been set back by two.
According to NCWIT, in America, fewer than 18% of all people who earn degrees in computer science are women. Women hold only about one quarter of all American IT positions. This disparity is gigantic and it's starting to affect the economy as jobless rates increase, even while nearly 3.2 million jobs sit unfilled due to a lack of qualified applicants. Computer and IT jobs are on the rise, with the number of Computer and Information Systems Managers expected to jump by more than 85% by 2018.
Before I left for college, I had no idea that computing was perceived as a men's club. Computers have been my passion since I was very young. My father had three girls and he taught us from the beginning that we could be anything if we worked hard enough. I sometimes joke that my dad raised me believing that women belong in the kitchen, but only because that's where we kept our computer at the time. He frequently warned me not to set my sights too low, because the career that I was destined for probably hadn't been invented yet. As it turns out, he was right.
Having been one of only two women in my undergrad CS classes and one of four in my Master's program, it became painfully obvious that something needed to be done. It's my personal belief that the best chance that we will get to imprint a love for computers onto a young girl's soul will be while she's still learning the fundamental workings of the world. My target? Third grade, an age when princesses are still real and Barbie(TM) is still one of her best friends.
I propose that the third grade is the perfect time to introduce computers as an additional tool to provide both fantasy play and educational structure. If we incorporate this skill when girls are young enough, they will never know a time when they are "no good" at computers, so they won't develop that negative stereotype which will have to be overcome later.
This is where "Picture Me in Computing" comes in. We at Picmecomp have instigated a world wide *digital* flash mob to bring our cause to the public eye. Together with Google, Mattel, NCWIT and the National Girls Collaborative Project, we're targeting parents, educators and children using social media. Our goal is to take over the most popular social media sites for one day, November 10, 2010 (111010) by tagging all of our uploads and status updates with #picmecomp. We encourage the full participation of anybody online, so that we can eventually reach everybody with our message: "We happily support women in computer science. Come join us!"
For more information about participating in Picture Me in Computing day, please visit www.picturemeincomputing.org.
Interesting, I did not know these calculators could be "altered." Out of curiosity I looked at the code which had transferred via a thin cord from his calculator to mine. It was incredibly readable and I instantly knew how the program was handling input/output as well as all the black-box implementation. Amazing!
I took that program as a guide and made many more. I used it for entertainment as well as necessity. I programmed it to do the bookkeeping at my first job, allowing me to finish my work in 20 minutes as opposed to 4 hours. I programmed games, phone books, to do lists, etc.
Today computers are everywhere, they are more powerful and have nice user interfaces that cloak the inner workings even more than ever. Having had the opportunity to see the guts of a tool which I could customize to work FOR me, follow my every command and give me precisely the output for which I was looking...it was exactly what turned me on to computer science. I don't want to be limited to the tools other people have developed. I want control. I want to customize. I want to create. That is why I am a computer scientist.
http://www.youtube.com/user/WICSUO
Even the under availability of qualified people will be difficult to bridge. While the younger generations have an easy proficiency with basic computer operation there seems to be a lack of interest in the details of how they work. Just like with cars, familiar tends to breed contempt. Most would rather cede the detailed knowledge to the few who care.
I wish you luck in attracting more young people and particularly women into the CS professions.