Another strike against the tendency to see cultural predilections of the moment as direct reflections of underlying genetically-determined features of human nature. For years, everything related to computers has been a predominantly male domain. But the New York Times reports on a dramatic shift: these days, young girls are much more likely to be creating original Web content than young boys.
Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).
Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.
The explanation offered for boys’ dominance in the video-posting category was that this was the best way to brag about one’s skateboarding prowess, although evidence for that hypothesis seems to be largely anecdotal.
Note that this phenomenon should not be taken as evidence that women are genetically predisposed to make Web pages (or to blog) — although, as you might expect, there is no shortage of just-so explanations bandied about. But it’s great that the internet has lowered the considerable barrier to young girls becoming interested in computers, and we can hope that some of them get inspired to continue onto technical careers.
Can we inspire them to continue to technical careers after we teach them how to use their native language properly? Because I’m used to seeing teen and preteen girls on the ‘Net–fanfiction.net is filled with them–and maybe one in twenty can produce prose with correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation and without txtspk.
But it’s great that the internet has lowered the considerable barrier to young girls becoming interested in computers, and we can hope that some of them get inspired to continue onto technical careers.
Probably won’t happen. The fact that women watch television in about equal numbers as men doesn’t mean that they choose engineering careers where they design new televisions. And, as the stereotype goes, they spend far more time on the telephone, but once again, telephones are mostly designed by men.
There’s a simple, generic way to break it down: men like interacting with things, women like interacting with people. So they choose careers that fit their interests.
This has been the case in online fandom for the past decade.
And that fanfic does start getting better and better as girls get older and want to reach a wider audience with content.
Probably won’t happen. The fact that women watch television in about equal numbers as men doesn’t mean that they choose engineering careers where they design new televisions.
But they’re producing more television programs than ever before, and running more television studios.
But to get back to the article, they’re not building computers (right at this moment), but they can code like the wind. And if they’re the ones using computers more and more to produce content by design and code, it makes more sense to have women marketing and designing computers for other women. The industry will follow to match consumer needs.
As allyson pointed pout, watching t.v. doesn’t require much brainpower. This requires logic. Now, if 8 year old girls (and boys) can write code then one has to wonder why we wait teaching children real math and physics until they are at university. The official reason is that abstract reasoning is too hard for children, but how on earth could 8 year olds kids then be writing programs?
So, as I’ve pointed out some time ago here, the real reason why we don’t teach math to children in primary and high school is because Society has made the decision that for most people it is not useful. This has to change asap.
I don’t know that this trend is really breaking stereotypes. It’s far too easy to interpret this as, “Obviously, girls like social interaction more than boys! They’re clearly genetically predisposed to write about their romantic lives on glittery pink and violet online diaries!” I mean, did you read the New York Times article? An example: “Girls are trained to make stories about themselves.” Frankly, this trend falls right in line with gender stereotypes.
Creating a facebook account != coding.
“And if they’re the ones using computers more and more to produce content by design and code, it makes more sense to have women marketing and designing computers for other women.”
Or maybe they will find that if girls interact in the same way with the technology as boys that they need to be marketed to largely in the same way as the boys are being marketed to already, instead of creating a separate but equal parallel market (ala, girls have started coding! Let’s ship a pink version of gcc!).
Could’ve told you this awhile ago, or else the stereotype of the angsty female teenage LiveJournaler would never have come to be.
On a related note, who saw the xkcd comic on Monday? Linky: http://xkcd.com/385/
I completely agree with the notion that we need to teach mathematics (in particular) at an accelerated rate earlier than is currently done.
Children are remarkably malleable and will figure it out quickly given the proper teachers and schedule. Instead a typical homework assignment will barely have them toying with arithmetic and rudimentary algebra. Most of the time this exercise is pointless as sufficient time ‘tinkering’ isn’t alloted.
I reject the notion that a child cannot learn what a teenager can. In fact, i’d probably argue that its easier in the former case. Its completely ironic that the situation is reversed for language. The hardest part (grammar) comes first and is typically forgotten after middleschool.
No – this is not a case of girls conquering computers. I think that males are, on average, more geeky than girls and tend to tinker with computers for the sake of tinkering. Most of the women I know would call that playing or wasting ones time.
What has happened is that web publishing and blogging has matured and requires no special expertise in computers and publishing anymore. Sure, you have to be proficient in using the web but most younger people are, regardless of sex. So with better tools, we’ll be seeing more and more of non-technical blogs as the barriers are removed.
I Agree with Bjorn, blogging and facebook don’t require any special logical skills. More interesting would be a comparison with old fashioned diary-keeping, I think the real surprise is the great amount of boys who blog. When you see this as a training for writing and expressing oneself. I think the humanities are more likely to profit.
Hans
But you’re talking about typing into a template, like this form I’m using to post. I’m talking girls who design, from scratch, their own blogs and sites by hand. That’s what they’re talking about when they discuss the ire caused by hotlinking to other people’s designs.
Instead of the paper ‘zines I used to design and trade when I was a kid, they’ve moved to an electronic format. They know when people hotlink to their designs because they’re checking the stats on their servers. That’s not facebook. And they teach themselves by looking at other people’s code.
Making a webpage using FrontPage is not the same as writing HTML. Programming involves algorithms and control statements, neither of which is found in HTML.
But you’re assuming that I’m talking about FrontPage. I’m not.
There is a traditional strategy, when women begin to enter a domain previously dominated by men, to re-draw the boundaries so that what the women are doing remains excluded. It doesn’t really matter, what matters is what is actually happening.
I learned HTML from other young women who were using C++ and Perl at the time. Many moons ago. Lots of these women went on to work professionally in IT, design, and programming. And it started with just wanting to put together a fansite.
“There is a traditional strategy, when women begin to enter a domain previously dominated by men, to re-draw the boundaries so that what the women are doing remains excluded.”
That seems true in many cases. Whatever the motive (or lack of a conscious one), women’s/girl’s contributions or accomplishments are often de-valued by some means. It’s subtle and it sneaks up on us– but it happens.
I haven’t a clue what this article is supposed to signify, other than girls are putting lots of personal content on the internet, and doing some coding while they’re at it. Predicting, or even hoping for, any kind of larger trend towards anything based on this fluff piece is a puzzling thing to do. And I agree with above commentators that where gender stereotypes come into the actual content of the article, the message seems to reinforce them more than anything. One boy and a number of girls are actually quoted making what I suppose could construed as sexist remarks about either theirs or the other gender:
“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys … ” Her voice trailed off to laughter…
“I think girls like to help with other people’s problems or questions, kind of, like, motherly, to everybody.”
Asked whether the findings of the Pew study seemed accurate to him, he said: “That’s what I see happening. The girls are much more into putting something up and getting responses.”
I mean, good grief, there’s enough in this article alone alone to feed armchair theorists’ just-so stories about biological predilections for years to come. Somehow we come away with “Girls are getting into computers! Woohoo!”??
“But to get back to the article, they’re not building computers (right at this moment), but they can code like the wind.”
And your evidence for this is what? The fact that the NY Times is dumb enough to consider the ability to write CSS “coding” doesn’t make it so, any more than the ability to touch up a car has any bearing on the design of car engines.
Now if we were seeing a large number of women getting involved in the OSS movement, THAT would actually have some relevance to Sean’s general point. Right now, I’m afraid martin has it exactly right.
“Children are remarkably malleable and will figure it out quickly given the proper teachers and schedule.”
And your evidence for this claim is what?
We know that children trivially soak up language — plenty of studies have shown it, as has every day experience.
I’ve seen neither studies nor everyday experience that shows that most children spontaneously and easily understand abstraction and advanced mathematics.
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I would very much welcome a growing trend of women into science and stuff, but I just don’t see it happening on the basis of this study.
I’m sure everybody’s experience is genuine and there are changes ( especially the ratio girls/boys in univeristy in the western world). However on the basis of this study as it is reported, I only see a shift from diary’s to blogging , a shift from private to public and a greater participation of boys in writing about their thoughts.
“In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.”
“Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality.”
stereotype = an image or idea of a particular type of person or thing that has become fixed through being widely held. (Concise Oxford English Dictionary)
of course stereotypes can be wrong, but widely held opinions are mostly not wrong.
whether they are right or wrong is up to good investigational research.
There was a study mentioned on NGC channel’s “My brillaint brain”, in which babies were taught to play certain intelectually challenging games. The study showed that when they had grown up they did on average much better in school.
This was the NGC program that featured Susan Polgar who, together with her two other sisters, was taught to play chess when she was two or three years old.
A functional MRI scan has reveiled that, unlike most other chess players, she uses the brain part that normal people use for recognizing faces for recognizing patterns on the chess board. This enables her to see the right moves she has to do without thinking a lot as most of the processing is done by lower level brain systems.
But since that part of the brain is no longer accessible for rewiring when you are grown up, most chessplayers have to think hard before they can make their move.
Of course, we can’t just take a textbook on quantum groups and make it part of the Kindergarten curriculum. But we can design computer games that involves abstract reasoning in a playful way. Even chimps can learn to talk this way, so why can’t we teach small children some math?
And another thing is the fact that almost no math is taught to 12 to 18 year olds. There is no good excuse for that at all.
i just don’t think it’s a very good article, and I’m not sure the message is really all that positive. Actually, the author seems to be trying to be coy about it, and I would have taken them severely to task had I been given any editorial power. I mean, what’s the point? “Grrrrls compute!” or “Even geeking out, girls are just girls”? To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, “Ah don’ think it means hwhatchoo think it means…”