Creating a hacking environment for girls in Chicago | Hacker News Reader

Creating a hacking environment for girls in Chicago

piggybackr.com

24 pointssabdalla11 comments

The Chicago Girls in Computing group is aimed to create an environment for young women in computing to come and hack. The group will sponsor regular meetings, as well as programming classes, and Arduinos for use by members. This organization is the first of its kind in the Chicago area.

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Awesome!

To head off the "it's unfair" crap that this is sure to bring:

At my local programming group there are a few women in their early 20s. Each of them was told in their high school education, explicitly, that girls don't need to know math or logical thinking, that it was for boys.

One was part of a school system that graded girls on effort in math, and never given valuable teacher time or feedback or help, because "they will go on to the humanities anyway" and actually learning the stuff "would waste time" for the teachers. She is really interested in programming, and struggles with the college classes she's taking because the basic mathematical thinking was denied her. It isn't that she can't grasp it - the other day when started going over code exercises, she just needed some explaining and practice on variables because her algebra teacher didn't care to go over it with her. Her programming teacher doesn't want to "coddle" her. But with a bit of explanation and basic concepts review, she grasped it just fine, and deduced implications on her own. You know - getting it.

What the heck does this have to do with anything, blah blah unfair I predict you whining. Well, it's this -

If someone is denied the chance to do something, and the system she is part of is the reason for denial, then perhaps a good response is to provide the opportunity by other means. Boys aren't being denied. In fact they were explicitly getting something extra as a result of being the girls being denied.

So we give the girls the same thing. We don't give it to the boys, they would then be given extra, and not the same chance. That is why this sort of thing is needed.

Oh, BTW all of the women I am referring to are from Illinois, some in more rural parts, some in Chicago.

And yes, we need to fix the system that does this to prevent future occurrences. At the same time, let's provide these girls who are being denied a chance as well, instead of writing them off.

I agree with you, and want to thank you fleshing out the thoughts on this topic for me to consume.

Here are my questions/concerns (and I know that no one is claiming this is universal solution to everything).

This type of thing is a [great but] local/temporary/band-aid to a systemic problem, and that mismatch, combined with the murky territory of gender, seems vulnerable to problems. How do transgender-ed people fit in this, they could certainly be/have been targeted by the same anti-math-stuff discrimination?

If you have a group/club for each under-represented demographic (female, black, trans, etc.), does that, in some way, promote some sort of isolationism?

What if this/a service/hacker-space is the only one in the area and/or the only one offering a specific thing (python vs ruby, or the only one with google glass or focused on UX)? Is it then still 'fair' to deny access to an individual based on something like their gender? Of course, females are systematically under-valued (if thats the right term) in this (and many other) fields, and so this is a drop in the ocean on the global gender/computer score board, and its not like it is their fault that no one else teaches UX or Lisp (having limited options at all to start with is sub-optimal), but it is not like said individual probably has anything to do with this type of repression. I guess this question regards how much the average 'male' (gender is vestigial and evil, see: post-genderism) human in computers has a leg up due to general repression.

This is not to dismiss the fact that having gender exclusive clubs might foster a more trusting or encouraging environment or something for some. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for expressing interest in our endeavor.

I agree that by having the word "girls" in the organization's might make the organization seem isolationist. The idea is to target a specific demographic that is underrepresented in technology. If anyone interested in joining the group feels uncertain about whether they belong, they should know that they definitely do. This organization is community, and communities are built on love.

Once again, thank you for you interest in our organization.

Roger that, thank you for the response, and best of luck in this project. Getting both younger and underrepresented people familiar with computers/coding, even if they do not go on to be developers, is important (Alan Kay says we don't teach kids math/science/music just so that they can all become mathematician/scientists/musicians).

This is great. They have python/ruby bootstrap programs in San Francisco, and once in a while we'd discover a future CalTech prof, or something like that.

There was one woman who worked in an art gallery, and if i remember correctly, didn't even own a computer but only needed everything explained once re: vim, python, linux etc. It was definitely nontrivial stuff, and then she could put up working code, just like that.

Tanya Khovanova, a gold medalist at the International Math Olympiad seems somewhat hesitant (although not completely against it) about girls-only math enrichment programs: http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/?p=60. I wonder if there might be another co-ed approach that would encourage girls while not forcing them to be segregated.

Everybody's entitled to their opinions. I think there's actually been a decent number of studies that have shown that girls tend to perform better at a younger age when kept in all-girl environment....at least with respect to school. This effect may generalize to other things like the article, or maybe it doesn't. I think the merits are there to warrant giving it a try, though.

I would actually be interested in seeing these studies because it seems (based on my teaching experience) that how girls feel in a class with male students may depend to a large extent on how the teacher manages the class. I'm not even talking about teachers who discourage girls, but teachers who let boys dominate the classroom (which should not happen).

This sounds great! I hope you can make it happen, and do stuff like go together to hackerspaces and interesting talks! Good luck.

Someone donated enough for them to hit their goal (on the main project page):

https://www.piggybackr.com/girls_computing/chicago-girls-in-...

I'm sure they can put additional funds to good use, I'd encourage others to donate, too.

Yes, we can definitely use further funds for setting up the technical side of the organization (domain name, hosting, etc.).

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