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General Motors has announced a new partnership with education nonprofit Girls Who Code that's intended to encourage more young women to pursue STEM subjects. The auto manufacturer will offer up a $250,000 grant to help fund after-school STEM clubs in schools, universities, and community centers.
"Becoming an engineer paved the way for my career," said GM CEO Mary Barra in a statement posted to the company's website. "It's one of the reasons I am passionate about promoting STEM education to students everywhere. Partnering with Girls Who Code is one more step in GM's commitment to inspiring and growing diverse future leaders."
[...] GM and Girls Who Code are pursuing this collaboration is [sic] response to the decreasing proportion of women in jobs related to computing, even as the field continues to grow. In 1995, 37 percent of the computing workforce was comprised of women, but today that has shrunk to 24 percent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:57PM
In 1995, 37 percent of the computing workforce was comprised of women, but today that has shrunk to 24 percent.
So what is the point of this? Girls are smarter than boys so we should add lead to their drinking water until the percentage goes up again?
Wheres the 1/4 million dollar bribes to get men into early childhood education, cheerleading, K12 education, HR, ballet, nursing, womens studies ...
And why has the women percentage shrunk? It is because jobs are sent to India and most H1B are male so naturally the percentage goes up? In that case graduating more women who won't get jobs because H1B will have their job doesn't really accomplish anything other than making unemployed female grads work at starbucks instead of the liberal arts grads, so who benefits by art history majors being unemployed instead of baristas? Perhaps its ageism and they fire all the women who have a family so naturally women are getting the hell out, and why unless you're a sadist, would you want more women in the system so more suffering can occur?
Why is numerical gender parity a good thing? Do I get a better API if I know the gender of the author and I prefer that gender? I can sorta see a tortured argument for service industries where "we should" be a better society if people equally enjoy services from a male nurse as a female nurse. But with something rather non-personal and non-service and non-sexual like "computing workforce" I'm not seeing the societal value in knowing a woman terminated the cat-5 cable in that wall outlet vs a fucking white male terminated the cat-5 cable in that other wall box. If I got a sex change would my code naturally improve? Clearly gender doesn't matter WRT whats produced.
There are almost no women in EE but "computing" is comparatively swarming with women up to a quarter the population, and I haven't noticed a hell of a lot of difference. Actually that brings up a good point, why "girls should code" when a quarter are already girls, when basically no girls solder? You'd think you'd get better growth rates starting from almost zero than from halfway there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:01PM
But soldering is so icky! We girls want to sit at a desk in a nice office... of course, the darn chauvinist patriarchy keeps the office thermostat too cold for us ladies.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:18PM
Wheres the 1/4 million dollar bribes to get men into early childhood education, cheerleading, K12 education, HR, ballet, nursing, womens studies ...
Yeah! It's so unfair that there are no scholarships, [collegescholarships.org] organizations, [aamn.org] or anything [nursejournal.org] like that [discovernursing.com] aimed at getting men into nursing. [allnursingschools.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:21PM
Yeah I tossed you a softball there, now try womens studies and ballet.
With a side dish of infinite journalist coverage and corporate press releases wringing hands about not having enough men in womens studies.
I have a perfectly good coworker who needs a diploma, any diploma, to amuse HR to progress further in the working world and we've been egging him on to sign up for Arizona State U's online womens studies degree program. All HR wants is to see is that BS degree, and how hard can an online womens studies curricula be?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 11 2017, @10:26PM
Yeah I tossed you a softball there, now try womens studies and ballet.
Ballet: Boys’ Scholarship Dance Program [metropolitanballetacademy.com]
"Women's" studies: Teaching Gender Studies to Straight Men [insidehighered.com]
Education: Men Teach [menteach.org]
Cheerleading: Colleges with Male Cheerleading Scholarships [ehow.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @04:40AM
Knew a guy who did the womens studies thing, said once you got past the death threats, and vandalism to your vehicle and any other unattended property, it wasn't really worth it.