The Real Reason Girls Don't Like to Code

Phew - Christmas/New Year ... gone!

I was going to write this post at the end of the last year when there was a bit of a thread going among some of my Digital Technologies contemporaries on Twitter. However, life got the better of me and I ended up focusing on end of year stuff (school, family, elderly parents, resthomes - aaaaarggghh). Now I'm working in reverse and looking at the Christmas tree that is still begging to be removed but deciding instead that if I don't write this now I never will.

The Real Reason Girls Don't Like to Code is the same as the real reason why girls "don't like to ride dirt bikes" or "don't like to crochet" or "don't like to eat spinach" or ... need I go on? (Please don't think I mean that all girls don't like to ride dirt bikes - I happen to have a motocross-riding girl living in my house!) My considered opinion is not ground breaking news is it? As I mentioned in my previous post - it's just not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I surveyed my Year 10 girls at the end of last year and found the results pretty interesting - enough so that I thought I'd share them here (which I will do shortly). And after it all I decided is that the best we can do here at school is ensure two things:

1. That we give them enough exposure to the possibilities (that we can be absolutely certain that we haven't somehow passed over someone for whom coding would have been the perfect match)
2. That, in giving them exposure to the possibilities, we do our utmost to generate interest and try to make it relevant.

In surveying the girls I kept it pretty simple, asking them if they enjoyed the programming section of the course and, if not, why not.

Here is the graph of responses (where 1 is didn't enjoy the course and 5 is loved it)

You can see that the majority of the girls didn't particularly enjoy programming. Of those who didn't enjoy it, the most often cited reason was that it was "too hard" or "too boring" (both of which are food for thought in regard to how the content was delivered and what they were doing).

The most telling thing was the response to the following question:

Having seen the ICT Connect presentations and participated in this module, how likely are you to investigate further the idea of working in the IT (Information Technology) industry?

Here is a dump of the answers from those who said they were unlikely to investigate the idea of working in IT any further:

Because I already know what I want to do for a career.

I am not interested in the ICT industry and would prefer other things

Because i find the whole digital technology world very boring and it can be difficult at times

Because it's not what i am into and if i were to be in the IT industry i would want to be doing something that doesn't involve computers and was more like managing stuff.

i don't want to sit in font of a computer all day and its not very fun. and you have to be smart and have the patiene to deal with computers. And it confuses me a lot and its boring and hard

Because I love being innovative, creative and being part of something that could expand and positively impact the whole world. Most of my life I've wanted to be a graphic designer. However I feel these people didn't make me WANT to do IT. Their lives didn't seem overly exciting, but then I suppose none of them were graphic designers. The first speakers showed some figures of then pay we could potentially expect. I have adult friends in the IT industry who have been their for a long time and don't make half that. FALSE - unless you invent facebook or trademe then I guess that is a different story. I don't feel like NZ is the place for that. Maybe if you lived in America.

Because I'm not really into computing and that's not something I would like to do when l'm older as i find it boring.

It is quite boring and a long process

Because im more interested in other things over ICT

because i just feel like its very stressful and boring i also found it really hard and confusing

So there you have it ... in a nutshell - why girls don't like to code. But before you go getting all depressed (like I did), here are the comments from some of the girls who enjoyed the programming part of the module (note one or two kind of got confused about where programming started and finished!):

I enjoyed it because it was something new that I hadn't done before and I found quite cool how I created a website. Although sometimes I didn't know what I was doing.

It was an extremely interesting topic as you could have fun and really personalize the things you do during the module. The topic included things that i found useful and I found that I learnt a lot of new knowledge.

I thought it was cool finding out how websites and animation is made, and it was really satisfying every time I put something new on a website or made an animation.

I loved the challenge that the programming section of the module gave me and I have a really big interest in IT and computing. I learnt many new things that I found useful.

Lastly, I should say that we mostly did programming with Scratch (with a bit of CodeAvengers, CodeCombat and Lightbot thrown in here and there for reasons I won't go into here) and that they really enjoyed using the interface and only flagged once they had to think about how they were going to get it to produce the goods! Also, despite all the negativity, here's the funny bit ... have a look at this:

And also - just out of interest's sake, because we tried a few different approaches, here's the response:

So, despite not enjoying programming, they think it should be included in the Year 11 course (which it hasn't been up until now but which I think HAS to happen this year). Also, despite not enjoying programming they would like to know how to write an app for their phone (the relevance thing!).

Which brings me to the end of this rant. I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say - I just thought some of you might find it a little bit interesting. It's also good to note that this last module was the most "difficult" class out of three modules and I think there was a bit more interested generated among the students in the first two modules. Happy New Year [sigh]