This last week, I was reminded of a dirty little secret. I am a girl. I was put into a situation where something was presented to me in a way that I found offensive. It was done by someone highly respected, admired and sought after for their mentoring skills. It was an unfortunate situation that left me in a very unfortunate position.
I’m not going to go into what the situation was or how I decided to handle it, because I think both of those things are personal things and the way I handled it would be different from others and I don’t want to outline that there is a right or wrong way of handling it.
I recently read this article and it really resonated with me.
So what should be done? To make the tech scene fairer and more respectful of women, Lawrence believes technology literacy must be integrated into all public education, starting with pre-kindergarten. “When girls are exposed early to technology, we increase the likelihood that they will pursue careers in those fields,” she says.
First, let me say that I don’t understand why schools are not already moving in this direction. This isn’t even a “girl” thing. It is an economic disaster thing. According to CODE2040, whose goal is to encourage more black and latino youth into the tech field….
STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) jobs are the fastest-growing category of jobs in the United States, and 70% of those jobs involve computing.
Computer science jobs command some of the highest starting salaries in the US: $77,000 per year — about twice the median household income of a Black or Latino family.
The unemployment rate for STEM workers is lower than for all workers; the unemployment rate for African-Americans and Latinos is 3x the nationwide rate.
Software developers are in demand: at the current rate we are graduating computer scientists, there will be 1MM software jobs unfilled by 2020.
Fewer than 4% of Black and Latino students study computer science and only 1 in 14 technical employees in the tech hub of Silicon Valley is Black or Latino.
The US will be majority-minority in the year 2040, and 42% of the country will be Black or Latino.
Computers are eating the world, and we will not have enough people to tame the monster. So, why are computer programming classes only offered in 11th grade in my local school district? A grade point where social biases have already been formed? Girls can’t program. If you do program, you’re a nerd. And the door for minorities just never opens because they have even fewer role models telling them that it is a viable option.
So, when I read the article, it screamed out at me (but it screamed “fairer and more respectful to everyone). We need this to happen. We need technology literacy integrated before social biases, norms, labels or prejudice would ever be formed. We need each child to be so used to seeing everyone around them working on computers so that the phrase “You’re a nerd” means something totally different. Where “girls can’t do that” is eradicated, because obviously they can because they have been doing it since kindergarten. Where minorities have teachers and mentors who are visiting the schools on a regular basis showing them that it is a viable option. This isn’t just about girls. It is about our future, men, women, white, black, Latino and everything else in between.