Chris O'Brien, one of my fave business columnists at the San Jose Mercury News, wrote a piece earlier this month about the gender gap between the way teens view careers in tech. I was surprised (as was Chris) that the gap is (still) as big as it is. In a world increasingly geared toward how much we can access on our smartphones, developing, promoting and using technology—in all of its forms—is going to be key to our world’s future success. We need to do everything we can to help girls think about computer science and technology with adjectives such as “cool” and “fun” rather than “boring” and “geeky”.
Short of a female version of David Pogue capturing our hearts, how can we help close this gap? Spread a positive industry voice when speaking to daughters, sisters and nieces; volunteer at any of the many organizations out there; and of course, buy pink tech gadgets! Here’s a sampling of cameras, cell phones and laptops to get you started.
A quick shout out to Jon Snyder of Wired.com. That’s his photo above; I pulled from a Gadget Lab posting by Priya Ganapati about an upcoming kids netbook from Disney.
Lisa,
It is unfortunate that the gap is still as large as it is. I know that Girls in Tech (http://girlsintech.net/) is another organization tackling this challenge.
Posted by: Brian Remmel | June 25, 2009 at 04:33 PM