I’m currently taking an organization communications class and today was the day we finally got around to talking about gender in the workforce. We explored the HUGE gender gap with regards to women in tech and possible reasons as to why that gap exist. One of the theories proposed was that young girls simply didn’t have a chance to explore and play around much with computers as the boys did. Computers were seen as a manly thing to tinker with, that interest in computing for boys was stronger than with girls. Society at the time assumed that girls and women did not want, or deserve to work with computers. Going to school during the big tech boom was an eye opener to the gender inequality in STEM programs. I went to a school where mostly boys knew how to navigate a computer, and most girls had no idea what was going on, but I knew. But yet, somehow I did not feeI like I was as smart as the boys when it came to programing. I spent a lot of time in class wondering if perhaps I am not good enough to work on programming. I felt as if I was two steps behind the boys. For years I avoided doing what I loved and now that I’m older, and at this university, I want to prove to myself, as well as the engineering colleges that women can do this type of work.
I want to do what I can to prevent other little girls from doubting themselves when it comes to STEM programs. I want girls to know that they are smart enough to work on computers, or in any branch of tech that they wish to. Just because there are more boys tinkering with computers, doesn’t mean they can’t tinker too!