[Edu-sig] Re: [Tutor] Girls, women and Programming (- and Python)

[Bea Fontaine]

On Tue, 2002-08-20 at 03:45, Rob Brown-Bayliss wrote:

[...]

> Seriously, why does the world think "sexual equality = same as".  I
> dont.  I[*] am all for women having equal rights, equal opportunities,
> but dont turn girls in to boys and boys into girls.  celebrate the
> differences.  

First let me thank you for being in favour of my equal rights, it is
most appreciated :) I couldn't agree more, by the way. You will not find
many women who aspire at being men. We actually _like_ being ourselves
(as long as we don't look at advertising, that is).

I believe that the issue is actually one of turning girls into girls and
boys into boys.  My father recently mentioned at a family gathering that
it was his greatest regret that he never realised my intelligence and
potential when I was a kid and that he knows, nowadays, that is was
because I had an older (very bright) brother and I was the girl. Since
he is 65, I was very deeply touched by this moment of insight. Since he
was a programmer for 40 years and I ended up glued to a keyboard after
all, genetics seem to be the best explanation. I excelled at maths at
school, I just found trigonometry to be an entertaining, but intensely
useless skill at the time. So he thought I was daft... bizarre. Suffice
it to say that my best personal examples of successful female
mathematicians do NOT have brothers.

Intellectual nurturing does not turn girls into boys. But lack of
intellectual nurturing stops kids from developing brains and, at least
in my generation (born '66), intellectual nurturing was still for the
boys. There is sociological and also neurological evidence on that.
There is a fair chance that many women simply _were_ kept pretty stupid
for a long time and that attitude still has a lot of echoes in families,
schools and workplaces. I am glad we have stopped celebrating that
particular difference.

[...]
 
> So back to the girls and programming, yse, there will be girls who like
> the idea, and are great at it, but dont go pushing all girl;s into it
> just to satisfy your own ideals...  Let them take it or leave it
> depending on their own desires.

Aah, the crux lies with the economy. It has become a political issue all
over the computerized world that we require many more IT professionals
than are available, so politicians have had this wonderful idea to let
women have a piece of the cake. Hence, the doors were opened everywhere
and women did not respond as happily as expected. They finally "let
them" and women "left it". In the past, no one had made a great effort
to bridge the gap and now it is not desire but necessity that has forced
the issue. Well, women object to being "let in", they want to be _asked_
in :) Both genders operate on self-respect, that is a _similarity_ that
is not being celebrated enough yet, as far as I'm concerned.

> But, by all means do make them do an intorduction, cant make a choice
> with out trying can they?

That is precisely the issue. And since "they" are needed, it is also a
good idea to introduce programming to them in the way they desire. Much
of bad pedagogy is about spoonfeeding children with stuff they don't
want to know, and much of good pedagogy is about finding out what makes
children tick. Teaching girls how to program is just one of the latest
chapters in that particular book  and I am thrilled that this discussion
is taking place here.

> [*] I am in fact a house dad, I look after the kids while lean earns 
> the money.  Simply because we dont believe in placing young kids in
> someones care 8-10 hours a day while we both work and Leanne wanted to
> make use of her education., 

Good for you! Sadly, statistics prove that the number of families who
can live safely on one income is rather small in Europe and also that
women usually earn a good bit less than their mates, no matter in what
profession. So I am happy to hear that it works out for you.

ciao

bea



-- 

bea@webwitches.com
******************
"Women have never been wizards. It's against nature: You might as well
say that witches can be men." (Equal Rites, T. Pratchett)