Changing the future, one girl at a time
I am a student of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. Each day I go to class I am amazed to see only a handful of women. In some classes, less than 10%. So, I've decided to change that. Or, rather, help all the women who are already working towards that change.
SFU hosts an annual website design competition for young women in grades 9 and 10 called ChicTech (you can see the website at http://www.chictech.ca ). So, this year, I decided that the best way to create change was to commit to creating that change, and so, I'm co-chairing ChicTech.
Computing is an exciting field full of opportunities for research, creativity, employement, and fun. And, more importantly, computers affect many parts of our lives. These systems are overwhelmingly designed by men, and I want to be part of making sure that the world is designed by women too.
Good on you! I helped
Good on you! I helped organize as well as attend Social Tech Brewing Toronto's evening on women in IT, and one of the themes that came up in many of our discussions was definitely the lack of appropriate socializatoin that enables girls to feel comfortable at being good with technology in ways that go beyond myspace. I also spent a day during Spring Break teaching grade 7 girls how to make webpages in Netscape Composer. Many of the women attending last night's session (including female engineers and project managers working in web and software development) echoed my sentiments that this kind of socialization starts way before high school age, but it's definitely a great place to start. It's incredible to think that the percentage of women working in IT since the early 90's has actually *dropped* five percent! (38 to 33)