How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

[yuiyoshida]

Brit Morin shows off her T-shirt that reads, "You are the CSS to my HTML" after addressing the Geek Girl Dinner group at Techshop on Wednesday. Autodesk and Instructables hosted Girl Geek Dinner at Techshop in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, August 14, 2013, where women interested in tech and networking were given a tour of the facility and heard from Brit Morin, the founder of Brit & Co. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

As a mathematically inclined 17-year-old, patterns are something Abby Wheat appreciates. Patterns, after all, are the magic of math, the underlying system of logic for both the physical and theoretical.

Recently, though, Wheat began to notice a pattern she didn't like.

To start, there were the pitches from college engineering programs in curly purple typeface accented by flowery images. She started to notice that many websites for budding female engineers are pink. Then there was the flyer for an after-school program hanging in a hallway of her high school. Printed on purple polka-dot paper, it read, "Are you a tech girl? Are you a web diva?"

The soon-to-be high school senior aspires to become an engineer of some sort. She has absolutely no interest, however, in a career as a "web diva."

"It seems so degrading," Wheat said. "If you're a girl interested in building websites, you're a 'web diva.' If you're a boy, you're a web developer."

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/How-not-to-attract-women-to-coding-Make-tech-pink-5602104.php

[Warpy]

1. Whenever I see anything pink or flowery, I assume it's substandard

and give it a wide miss. That's because of a long life wherein anything marketed specifically to women, from cars to financial planning, have been substandard ripoffs.

You want to lose my business, fellas, make it pink.

[yuiyoshida]

6. I wouldn't wear pink if it was the last clothing on earth

and all that was left on the shelves were pink things. Fig leafs would be better.

[Warpy]

7. We shall overdye!

Trust me, I've bought a lot of pink things in thrift shops over the years.

A tamale pot and a packet of Rit dye salvaged them.

[CrispyQ]

9. Like the 'toy' computers that came out a few years ago.

The grey ones for boys had 21 functions & the pink ones for girls had 15 functions.

[Warpy]

10. Exactly. I figured out the pink thing before I got to school

Fortunately, my parents were neither dumb nor all that conventional and they figured it out by the time I turned nine.

[MadrasT]

2. Love this.

The best way to lose my interest is to make something pink or otherwise "feminized".

If you think the way to make things female-friendly is to pinkify them, you are not even in the right ballpark and I can safely ignore you.

[Ilsa]

3. Women of all professions should let the marketers

Know that this is a big Fail.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. "You code like a girl" isn't a complement?

Who knew?

(Chill, that was sarcasm, not mansplaining.)

[jeff47]

5. Wait, you mean technically-inclined women are people too???!

Who knew!!!

[littlemissmartypants]

8. OhNoYouDiN!

Lol.