Safyia

I am a female engineer and I studied CS in Europe. I never had issues socializing. My classmates were fortunately very inclusive, maybe because the men-women friendships have a different dynamic in Europe, or I was just lucky. Either way, my class was still 95% male. I would say we have to look at even younger girls to see the issue.

I have a brother who is really into computer games. When we were children, my parents got him games and didn't mind when he was sitting behind the computer for hours. I also liked games and I was trying to write stories, draw, install programs to get(ehm, pirate) music too. We had one computer and when my brother was using it I had to wait for him to finish playing. When I was using it, I was sent to play outside or read. Computers were always a boy thing, so I was never really seriously considering studying CS until we did a career test in high school where they encouraged me to go to a STEM field and do something like math or computer science. I gave it a try and loved it.

I think we have to start early and stop dividing professions into for men or women. Let men be nurses and women firefighters. Look at your childrens personalities and let them grow in whatever they enjoy, girly or not.

It would be great to have a website where the writers of the paper, or well, anyone who understood it well, would write an article about it in a more accessible way with some examples included etc. I am a big fan of blogs explaining such things.

That is great! I hate the car culture in the US. It is crazy that if you want to go out for an ice cream, or just buy something really quick, you have to drive in the horrible traffic most US cities have and find parking, which is sparse and expensive or spend money on an uber/lyft. It is just not worth it, since you might as well pay for two hour delivery on a ton of things. I wish there were more pedestrian zones, more walkable malls and less cars/traffic.