The Huffington Post – Suren Ramasubbu
“Even though 57 % of the American professional workforce has comprised women in 2013, in a ratio that in-fact skews the optimum 1:1 evolutionary ratio in favor of the ladies, women accounted for only 26 percent of the workforce in the area of technology and computers. Is there an explanation for this logic-defying ratio?…Dr. Rob Garcia, an educator and Mayor of the City of Long Beach, collates the reasons for fewer girls in computer science into the following key facts: lack of female role models (despite the world’s very first programmer being a woman) and mentors; engrained societal gender stereotypes reinforced by friends, family and community; lack of confidence due to internal feelings of inadequacy (Impostor Syndrome), and differential teaching practices in the classroom. This situation is slowly changing with increasing awareness of the importance of encouraging girls to take up computer science both within families and in the social setup…Such awareness and initiatives are already showing benefits.”(more)