Google's Helping Young Girls, But How Can We Get Women in College To Code?

This was a non-issue that has suddenly morphed into a critical problem that requires a solution. If the majority of women aren't interested in tech stuff, then why try to "solve" it?

It's like asking, how can we get women interested in fixing cars? The answer is, why bother? Those who are interested, will tinker with cars and take courses and learn how. Those who aren't, won't.

The author of this Forbes article is very young and obviously idealistic; that's fine, but her proposals won't make a hill of beans difference. Touchy-feely community building might draw in a few shy types, but the vast majority are culturally inclined to different interests.

I was just at an Android development conference which, again, was 90% men. They had a luncheon for "women entrepreneurs" which naturally took place in a much smaller room than the main dining hall.

It's all well and good to try to encourage girls into science and technology, and I'm all for that; I wish my office wasn't 90% male. But you can't legislate these kinds of things, or force people to be interested in something they're not. Probably the best thing is to provide superb science and technology instruction in the early years of K-12, and never discourage anyone from pursuing their interests, then let the chips fall where they may.

This past year the (now) rising junior class had the highest number of females that we have ever had in the Physics major. We had all of the things mentioned in the article: significant collaboration outside of class, a community of students outside of class who were all friends, and what I thought could have been a "critical" mass of females for them to feel not alone. However the hope for the record number of female physics students deflated with a pffft as I learned that 7/10 of the girls in this class were dropping the major. The majority reason cited: it was too difficult. Perhaps it was, the physics program at my school is known for being rigorous and difficult, however I feel that it is not the right thing to do to fault my department for its difficulty, it is part of our good reputation. In this way, I think it is more important to inspire a passion for physics before coming to college, so comparatively less females drop when the going gets tough.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add a parallel track for the less competitive students, "easier" classes that don't go into the same depth with the material. I sort of cringe at that option, but some departments I know have done that, and it has raised female participation. It does raise the question of how far one can get while in such a track. Physics is unique in that there is a relatively defined mountain you need to climb in order to be recognized as "educated in physics" (I'm thinking the Griffith's books, Taylor's Classical Mechanics, and the other big ones) and you really need to put in some blood and sweat to get through them. I'd worry that you could not get through any of them to any significant level if you insisted on ease of learning. Definitely not far enough to go to physics grad school, but perhaps far enough to get a finance job somewhere...

Relating this to coding. Perhaps there is too much emphasis on rigor than there needs to be in current curriculum. Not everyone is going to become a computer scientist or chief software architect. Perhaps it would be better to have more project based courses that are open ended in a way for people to just make what they want instead of "rise to a challenge" which admittedly some people just don't have the motivation to do. Just my thoughts.