Opinion: The value of talking to girls about technology
To boost the number of women in technology, first we need to treat girls interested in tech as normal, and stop forcing them to make a false choice between girliness and geekdom.
Girls playing Pokemon Go in central Madrid.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP
"Mama, can we play that?" my 5-year-old daughter asked, pointing to an image of Pokemon Go on the internet.
"I don鈥檛 think so, honey. I am not a huge fan of how much privacy you have to give up," I said.
"What's privacy, mama?"听
That's not an easy question to answer. I'm a computer scientist, not a philosopher. So, instead of explaining privacy principles, I started with the basics of the tech 鈥� the elements of information gathering and data tracking. And then how technology can sometimes take away someone's privacy.听
"Oh no, is听my friend going to be OK without her privacy," she asked, before听starting to play with her princess dolls again.
This may not be a normal conversation in most households, but it's the kind of talk that's common in mine. And, hopefully, talking to girls about technology 鈥� regardless of their age 鈥� will become the norm, part of everyday conversation everywhere.
All too often, we brush-off girls' interests in tech at moments in their lives when curiosity about the subject is starting to take shape. Even when many of us in the computer industry encounter women in the field, we听treat them as aberrations. But it's that kind of cultural response that contributes to the significant lack of women in science, math, and technology fields.听To听reverse that trend,听we need to start early听when听it comes to talking to girls about tech.
When I was growing up, my interest in technology and science never seemed abnormal. My mom is a NASA engineer. One of my grandmothers听had a successful career as an engineer, too, and the other one was a neurologist. My grandfather lauded the importance of math. My family seemed to expect that I would become an engineer or mathematician.
I'm often asked听how I chose my field and how I managed to remain in technology. In large part, I point to the fact that the choices I made early in life didn't seem unusual 鈥� it didn't听feel like I was breaking any taboos. I also never thought that听being 鈥済irly鈥� was somehow听incompatible with, or even related to, being "geeky."听听
In some ways, I attribute that outlook to my early upbringing in the Soviet Union before my family听immigrated to the US when I was 12. There just didn't seem to be any connection to gender and interest in science, math, or engineering.听You could be a geek and a girl 鈥� and no one seemed to care.听(This isn't an endorsement of any policies of the USSR.)
But听in the US, there seems to be this false choice that our girls are pressured to make early in their lives 鈥� they either have to opt for the path toward geekdom or head down the pink-laden aisles of Barbies and glittery fashion accessories.听
Even the efforts to boost the number of women in cybersecurity are often听framed in terms of "girls don鈥檛 like hacking and coding, so let鈥檚 include them in nontechnical aspects."听While cybersecurity is an interdisciplinary endeavor and requires contributions from all perspectives, somehow making the case that men should do the programming and women should focus on the interface or the social science in the field seems limiting for both genders.听
Currently, women make up less than 20 percent of the cybersecurity workforce. That number is even lower in many university computer science programs. When I was a computer science undergraduate at Cornell University, it was about 10 percent and in the past two decades听that ratio has barely improved.听
To improve those numbers 鈥� and get more women in the tech workforce and cybersecurity in particular 鈥� it's time to make it normal to talk to girls about technology.听Girl geeks shouldn't be treated as aberrations. And, frankly, they shouldn't be forced to choose听between two things aren't even related. 听听
As my 5-year-old likes to say, "Mama knows fashion and math, dada knows physics, and I know fashion, math, and physics.鈥�
Nadya T. Bliss is the director of the Global Security Initiative at Arizona State University. Center for Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics is a unit of GSI. Follow her on Twitter .
听