[Noisebridge-discuss] Girls Hack

[Brink Of Complexity]

Arguably, we didn't have "these" (specific) experiences for *anyone*
growing up, because the US Hackerspaces movement is only 5 years old.

Technical opportunities for girls and young women were definitely around in
the early 80's in the US, and I personally got scads and scads of them (in
my parents blue collar neighborhood in South Texas, at that. The area is
definitely not known for anything tech, and my parents had a single low
income to share).

Elementary schools had Logo and Basic programming on early Apple and IBM
machines. Girl Scouts could earn a computers badge (and I did). The same
group of people had control over including or excluding girls from building
crystal radio kits and earning HAM licenses, participating in model rocket
or RC car/plane clubs, or competing in science fairs, then as now: their
parents.

It really isn't fair to adult women in STEM fields to run around basically
inferring that their existence must be some kind of fluke, by virtue of
claiming the opportunities for STEM women to come into existence supposedly
didn't exist.  This thinking feeds stereotyping, othering, and worst of
all, it misinforms young women themselves about their historically
available opportunities and role models.

Blame your personally lived environment and experiences, your parents, your
upbringing, or whatever else might have excluded you, but non-existence of
technical opportunities for girls wasn't a thing in the American 70's,
80's, or 90's so maybe you mean you didn't have them "where (outside the
US)" or "with whom" you were growing up, but blanketing your misfortune
under some mythical time dependency really just alienates young women's
best possible technical role models from them, and obfuscates the *actual*
challenges that girls are likely to face.

On Oct 29, 2013 1:05 PM, "Elizabeth Hubbard" <annie.nutt at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> That sounds fun.  I'm going to learn more hacker stuff, too.  We didn't
have these sorts of opportunities for women when I was growing up.  When
should I have the whistles ordered by and how many?
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