Last night, I was eating dinner with my sons when my youngest said,"Raise your hand if you're a silly boy!"
To be funny, I raised my hand with a great-big grin. My seven-year-old immediately looked at me and said
"You're not a boy, you're just a girl that does boy things."
Perplexed, I asked,
"Like what?"
He got a questioning look on his face and said timidly,
"You play with computers and those are boy toys."
I was speechless. There were no words for what I was feeling. How could it possibly be that *my* son, a boy that sees me on the computer for 90% of my waking hours could dare to call a computer a boy toy? I certainly wasn't promoting that idea. When questioned, he told me that computers had Lego games and Hot Wheel games and lots of other boy things on them and implied that I was somehow using them for things other than what they were intended to be used for.
It occurred to me that his impressions were based on *his* experiences and not mine. He's not on Facebook with me. He's not browsing for new purses, selling things on Etsy or looking up hairstyles. He's playing racing games, dinosaur learning games and other things that I've tailored to his individual tastes. Is there maybe a way to fabricate an environment for little girls that make computers feel like a "girl toy?"
Help us come up with a solution. Join Wednesday's digital flashmob with Picture Me in Computing! Tag all of your social media interactions for the day of 11-10-10 with #picmecomp and help bring the idea of Women in Computer Science straight to young girls! For more information on how to participate, visit:
http://picturemeincomputing.org/index.php?q=participate
