aln

Good luck with your endeavors!

I thought I would share something kind of relevant: http://paulgraham.com/reminder.html

There is a male equivalent to girl scouts- boy scouts/eagle scouts. There isn't a male equivalent to these events, and middle-school aged kids and above could definitely figure this out.

Teaching something to kids at a young age certainly does not make the whole industry gender neutral, but it allows girls and boys to learn something together, lessening the bias that they will learn when older and logically able to understand the gender inequality in any specific industry (and hopefully by the time they are actually that old, the ratio will have lessened). And yes, other industries might be facing the same issues, but the numbers are certainly not as depressing as the ones in CS and CS related fields.

There are good and bad qualities to the CS events catered towards women. I think they are good for women of certain age groups (maybe 18 and older?) who might have been discouraged from or misinformed about the field. For young girls, these events are probably unnecessary and reinforce the stereotypes.

The events and boot camps made specifically for women to learn to code/learn about various opportunities are great, but I would hate for young girls to attend these events and learn about the gender inequality in case they weren't even aware of it.

"What if we just taught our kids about what computers can do, and worked toward a healthy appreciation for how vital computer science is to society and to a successful career, and then left them to decide on their own careers?"

I completely agree. My proposed solution (that would probably work): teach basic cs in middle schools so it becomes as normal as chemistry, biology, physics, math, social studies, and english- that way, kids wouldn't denote the subject as a particularly male or female oriented path and would simply see it as a stepping stone to another possible career. But we would need more knowledgeable teachers...and more teachers in general.

From your comments, its not hard to see that you are religious, so it is understandable that you would see "god" as the underlying force in everything.

I think you are confusing agnosticism with atheism: agnostics basically question the existence of "god" or deities because of a lack of evidence. It would be hard to argue that we don't know who invented various religions as the stories of various prophets getting messages or missions from "god" are widely known, as well as the groups of people who practiced early versions of what we call each religion today. And the point you make saying "we were told about it" is evidence enough to question the validity of religion and god- we are relying on words and stories passed on and reformulated throughout history.

This article is taking one facet of science- the microscopic world- and showing how more discoveries lead to skepticism when people in the past thought of religion as the answer to everything. It is essentially pointing to the fact that as more scientific discoveries are made, more religious theories are put to question. You are right, there is A LOT we STILL don't know about, but every time more discoveries are made, we find that more past assumptions (religious principles in this case) are proven false.