Let's help the girls

Let's help the girls is an issue in geekdom where there is far greater support for young girls entering geekdom than there is for adult women.

There are various possible reasons for this:

• fathers and adult male relatives of young girls may empathise and identify with young girls and their interests and goals in a way they do not do with adult women
• because of the power relationships between adults and children, adults feel more comfortable giving simplistic, optimistic, advice to them than they do to other adults
• young girls are less likely to make difficult critiques of communities that want them or programs designed to help them, and if they do make them there's less perceived need to take them seriously

An example of this is the extraordinary response to calls for reassurance of young geek girls thinking of leaving geekdom, relative to the support for adult geek women. Another is the preponderance of programs for girls promoting STEM skills and careers relative to those aimed at women, together with a large amount of funding for such programs.

See also

• Pipeline

Further reading

• I take it we aren’t cute enough for you?
• Take on the harder problem, Google