I have a 4 year old daughter who I'm trying to get interested in programming. The first step is to teach her reading/writing and math.
Every time we start with basic counting, after just 2 minutes, she's constantly telling me "daddy, I don't want to count anymore". I'm not giving up yet. But, we have to accept the fact that certain genders don't like math and don't like programming.
Sometimes, I see the same thing playing out at older ages. We once hired a female intern and our PM was like "ok everyone, now do your best to make programming seem as fun as possible so we can get this person to go into CS". I'm thinking, at that age, I would have killed for an internship, you wouldn't have had to convince me to "think it was fun", I already knew it was.
There's so much focus on gender equality in programming but where is the gender equality talk in other industries like: cosmetics, football, ballet dancing, etc
I have a very specific memory of the first moment I encountered a "math" book, in kindergarten. It was literally just a book of the numbers from one to ten, with pictures illustrating what those meant, etc. I wouldn't have been able to verbalize it, but the feeling was "I am going to f___ing love this.".
And indeed I did, and took to math and CS like a duck to water.
No idea whether that's common, nor whether it might be more common for males, but it's hard to see how someone with that intuitive drive wasn't going to do quite well in the subject.
I have to wonder if there's some missing detail, because I can't imagine a 4-year-old sitting down and doing counting exercises for two minutes without being distracted, boy or girl.
In fact, if it was a boy, many people would have chalked it up to "Well of course boys like to move around and be active. Who likes to sit down and count things, anyway?"
This "fact" seems to be derived from your observation that your daughter doesn't have an appreciation for counting. From that observation, you've concluded that "she mustn't like it because she's a girl". Please tell me you know how lazy this reasoning is. I'm a woman, and I never liked counting or arithmetic. Now I study electronic engineering.
the point is not a sweeping generalization about all women. the point is: statistically, a higher percentage of men like computer science/programming than women.
My experience as a parent and as a person who has learned about parenting is that these types of interests are often innate: i've seen this over and over again. For example, our daughter loved shiny things (before age 2) before any kind of social conditioning could take place.
Every time we start with basic counting, after just 2 minutes, she's constantly telling me "daddy, I don't want to count anymore". I'm not giving up yet. But, we have to accept the fact that certain genders don't like math and don't like programming.
Sometimes, I see the same thing playing out at older ages. We once hired a female intern and our PM was like "ok everyone, now do your best to make programming seem as fun as possible so we can get this person to go into CS". I'm thinking, at that age, I would have killed for an internship, you wouldn't have had to convince me to "think it was fun", I already knew it was.
There's so much focus on gender equality in programming but where is the gender equality talk in other industries like: cosmetics, football, ballet dancing, etc