Mom and Dad hoped you’d be an actress—and your brother a lawyer. Grandma and grandpa bought you Barbie and Easy Bake—your brother got K’Nex and a science kit. Your math teachers were all men. Da Vinci, Franklin and Edison, all men. You had Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to admire—but no Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg.
Yet whatever mix of gender assumptions, stereotypes and images you encountered, I suspect if you’re reading this post, you still came to love tech—or you know someone who’s developing that passion. If we want young women to enter the tech world, here’s my perspective: prepare them for the challenge by instilling the tools for success, not the angst of discrimination.
My daughter is 14 months old, and I would love for her to follow in my footsteps and become the CEO of a tech company like SysAid—if that’s her passion. In reality, most parents don’t intuitively imagine their little girls becoming tech CEOs. If our girls love computers, we can nurture that interest, but we still can’t control the gender stereotypes embedded in culture. We cannot change the global image of a developer, IT administrator or data scientist overnight.
So how do we inspire more women to go into math, sciences, engineering and tech? In my opinion, we mentor the women who have already found those passions, and we create more Marissa Mayers and Sheryl Sandbergs for rising women to follow.
From: www.forbes.com
