When was the first time you consciously got confronted with technology? I don’t talk about your time at high school. I mean: when was the first time you had to fix something? Was there any moment in your childhood when a spark of curiosity was ignited inside you, and you tried to find out how the mechanism or electronics inside your toys worked in your childhood?
And now I want you to think about the time when you decided in which area of life you want to start your career, the subject of your studies, your apprenticeship. Why did you make your decision or better: based on which facts, based on which experience and on which “consultants”?
Digging into my childhood I remember spending hours in my grandfather’s workshop during school holidays or weekends.
I learned how hard metal is as a child, loaded thousands of parts into machine tools and even if I go to a shopfloor today, when I smell the coolant from the machines it feels like home in a strange way. After all I came up with the idea to start a career in engineering quite early. I remember my father pushing me as well into this direction. Also, I remember I had many “technology-related” toys in my possession.
After secondary school I went to a technical high school (German school systems has some specialties to offer) and although I was tempted to break up in between, I decided to go to university afterwards in order to get a degree in mechanical engineering. Engineers are hardly available these days, maybe not as sparse as programmers. Same applies to any skilled workers in production, engineering or technical services.
Last week I read that VDMA is calling on politicians to allow more skilled immigration in order to fix the problem.
Let’s break the stereotypical behavior
I believe we need a change! A lot has to do with education. If children at elementary schools still must learn how to crochet instead of programming, we still have a lot of room for improvement in our school system. When I take my junior to school, I see girls with pink school bags with unicorn designs on them, dressed in pink pants riding around the schoolyard on pink scooters.
I truly believe, we need to show beauty of technology to our kids at a very early stage. I am not talking about giving them a tablet to play with and for sure not everyone has a grandfather with a workshop, either. I talk about motivating them to make first steps in coding, to support them if they want to open their toys in order to examine them from inside out. We really need to stop to push little girls into a stereotypical girlish role, keeping technology away from them and only giving them dolls to play with.
How can you help?
But how can anyone of us start showing technology to our kids – and in this case especially girls – immediately? After all it sounds like a complicated idea! At least if you are based in Germany, there is a wonderful opportunity coming up in less than 100 days: Girls’ Day. If you are based in other countries, I encourage you to check if similar events are available near your home as well.
The idea of Girls Day is that local companies but also research institutes open especially for girls so that they have the chance to get to know tech- or science-related career opportunities. I know, the current situation with Corona is unfortunately tough and it is not clear, if during this year’s Girls Day’ visits in person will be possible. But there are also online offerings.
So, if you have your own company or if you have the possibility to propose to the management of the company you work for, I encourage you to offer a “one-day internship”. You can post it to the official Girls’ Day website, but best practice is to also get directly in touch with local schools and discussing your offering or maybe even presenting it shortly to the kids if possible.
If your girl is a 5th-grader or higher, you can directly support her by encouraging her to try out something new and maybe browse through the offering on the website together with her.
I remember during my time at university that it was strange when you entered the auditorium. There were literally sitting hundreds of young men, but only one or two women and I am very sure they were having a hard time in that environment. Let’s work together breaking up those stereotypes.
On my blog I am publishing some easy coding challenges from time to time like the Christmas Challenge – maybe a great starter to learn developing in a playful was some coding skills together with your kids?
I am very curious to hear how you got into tech – or why not. Also, it would be great if you reported from your girl’s experience, she had during Girls’ Day!