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