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A huge nationwide push is underway, funded by the nonprofit Code.org's corporate and billionaire donors, from Amazon and Google to Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, to introduce American schoolchildren to coding and to redefine it as a basic skill to be learned alongside the three R's.
Code.org's curriculum has been adopted by 20,000 teachers from kindergarten to 12th grade. But if coding is the new lingua franca, literacy rates for girls are dropping: Last year, girls made up 18.5 percent of A.P. computer science test-takers nationwide, a slight decrease from the year before. In three states, no girls took the test at all. An abysmal 0.4 percent of girls entering college intend to major in computer science [PDF]. And in 2013, women made up 14 percent of all computer science graduates down from 36 percent in 1984. The imbalance persists in the tech industry. Just this week, Google released data showing that women account for just 17 percent of its tech employees.
The problem is not only getting girls to computer class, but keeping them there.
See also girlswhocode.com.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 08 2014, @08:10AM
"trying to force men's interests on women"
You come to this discussion already biased that "programming is for men." This inherent sexism you bring builds the barriers that keep women out. Unfortunately, women do not leave programming because it is "man's work" as you would believe, they leave because they have to deal with men like you who create a hostile environment that forces us out with your narrow, uninformed world views. What's worse you have the audacity to hide behind "they aren't interested" rather than own your shit and realize you're one of the clueless privileged mass of insecure dudebros who violently defend their turf.