Why Girls Don't Compute
by Kendra Mayfield
3:00 a.m. Apr. 20, 2000 PDT
"Math is hard," a talking Barbie doll told a generation of girls who
grew up thinking they should be afraid of math and science.
Sadly, some of the Barbie mentality continues. A new study claims the
current generation of girls lack technical skills and are being shut
out from opportunities to enter high-paying, technology-related jobs
because the educational system is keeping them from achieving
equality.
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Girls aren't afraid of technology, they're turned off by boring video
games, dull programming classes, and uninspiring career options,
according to a new report by the American Association of University
Women Educational Foundation (AAUW).
"They are not so much phobic, but are disenchanted," said Pamela
Haage, the AAUW's director of research.
The report, "Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age,"
culminates a two-year study analyzing previous research, teacher
survey responses, and focus groups of middle school and high school
students.
The study suggests that educators must change the way that they teach
to attract girls to technology at an early age. Instead of focusing
on what's wrong with girls who dislike computing, researchers used
their responses to examine what might be wrong with computer culture.
"We looked at the picture they presented and there wasn't a whole lot
to like," said Sherry Turkle, a sociology professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-chaired the commission
that wrote the report.
Statistics clearly indicate that women are under-represented in
technology. For example, girls represent 17 percent of Computer
Science AP test takers. Women make up only 20 percent of
information-technology professionals, and receive fewer than 28
percent of computer science degrees -- a number that is actually
declining.
With the rise of technology-related jobs in the new economy, experts
fear girls who lack computing skills might be left behind.
"We've got to encourage more women to get into the computer
sciences," said Denise Gurer, co-chair of the Association of
Computing Machinery's Committee on Women In Computing. "We've got
to get more of a critical mass."
"It's more imperative that everybody, particularly girls who are
underrepresented, have computer fluency," AAUW's Haage said.
The girls in the study had misconceptions of the types of careers
that computer fluency would lead to, clinging to stereotypes of
antisocial code-crunching programmers.
"Girls are getting a distorted view of the intellectual power of what
the computer can do," Turkle said. "It doesn't have to do with the
computer. It has to do with the cultural image of the computer."
Leah Goldberg, who is now a product manager at a high-tech company in
Palo Alto, California, was turned off to technology by early
perceptions of computer programming as an isolated activity.
"If I did have any interest in programming, it was certainly never
channeled," Goldberg said. "I hit a wall pretty quickly."
Even though she was exposed to programming at an early age, "It did
not seem interesting because it did not appeal to my life," she said.
That reticence changed when Goldberg saw the opportunities that the
Internet afforded to use technology in visual and creative ways.
"I saw the fun, creative, art-based things you could do with
computers," Goldberg said. "Once I saw it pertained to something I
was interested in there was definitely a connection."
Researchers urged that improvements should begin in the classroom.
Educators can encourage girls to use technology "by going against the
stream of assigning girls to word-processing as a point of entry,"
said commission member Yasmin Kafai, an assistant professor at the
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the
University of California at Los Angeles. "There are other ways to
get girls into computer culture."
The report urges educators to teach girls sophisticated technology
skills and to move beyond word processing and presentation tools like
PowerPoint software, which Turkle calls "the Year 2000 equivalent of
typing."
By infusing technology across the curriculum, teachers can re-engage
girls who might be disinterested in traditional computing courses.
The report also found that boys are given more opportunities to
master technology.
Girls are also turned off to technology at an early age through
computer games that are mass-marketed toward boys.
Girls dislike violent video games aimed at boys and want games that
are personalized and creative, where they can develop relationships
with characters, Haage said.
"They definitely want high-skill, not high-kill," Haage said.
Committee members diverged over the topic of "pink software" targeted
specifically at girls.
"We don't need pink software," Haage said. "We need better software."
But others think that there is room for software that goes straight
to girls' interests.
"Software is primarily aimed at boys. To counteract that, we
desperately need software out there for girls," said the ACM's Gurer.
"It's not really violence that turns girls off," Gurer said.
Repetitious, boring games are more likely to turn girls off than
violence, she said.
Researchers also stressed educating girls to be designers, not just
consumers of technology.
"We need to get women involved in making and shaping the computer
culture," Turkle said.
Researchers agreed that educators and marketers should pay attention
to girls who criticize the existing computer culture.
"Girls have legitimate criticisms," Haage said. "We need to listen to
what they're telling us."
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