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websites for girls and young women

Websites for girls and young women. How to help girls get into technology.

Real women engineers and other role models for girls.

Changing Girls' Attitudes About Computers

"Don't worry your pretty little head over it."

Special Edition

Computer Wonder Women

National Women's History Month

What you can do to help GRRLS get into technology!
Here are all kinds of resources, mentoring programs, projects, and links for helping girls using science, math, technology, to cross that digital divide.

Best Online Resources For Women and Minorities in Science and Technology

Educating Girls in the New Computer Age (2000)

HERSTORIES Classroom Project

Books about Science suggestions for Little Sisters:

My daughters and I publish reviews of books we enjoyed.  For each review, we include suggested reading level. Here's a list of all the books we've reviewed that have strong female protagonists.
Many of the books we like best have interesting, strong, female protagonists.  I have a form for searching by topic through our reviews: -- Emily

Girl Power in Silicon Valley
I had the opportunity in late January to see the future of entrepreneurship. And the great thing is, it wasn't two guys in a garage. It was a bunch of girls at Google. Girls' Middle School in Mountain View, Calif., held its annual Entrepreneurial Night at Google on the evening of Jan. 28. Ten groups of seventh-grade girls, who had formed their own companies, pitched to real venture capitalists from the likes of Kleiner Perkins and TA Associates.

AIMED AT GIRLS:
Justine Cassell: Disempowering Girls as Users of Technology. Girls’ use of technology threatens the established social order.  That’s the real reason behind the fear of girls using social networking sites. Throughout US history, each time women have become the most frequent users of a popular and brand new communication technology, narratives emerge in the mass media and eventually in the popular psyche about the dangers awaiting women who use technology alone. Here are all kinds of resources, mentoring programs, projects, and links for helping girls using science, math, technology, to cross that digital divide.

GAMERS

"Girls are Not Allowed"
Girls are often turned off of computers for a host of social, psychological, attitudinal, and environmental reasons. They are socialized to view technology and technically literate people as belonging to a particular culture_the hacker culture. Sherry Turkle, author of The Second Self, states, "There are few women hackers. This is a male world." Women may also see the world of technology as precise and unforgiving, often lacking in creativity and having little connection to people. Lorri Neilsen, director of teacher development at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has discovered that girls often feel that if something goes wrong while they are using high-tech equipment, it is their fault, whereas boys are more likely to blame the machine. Her research also shows that girls and women are less confident than boys and men about their computer abilities. Melissa Koch

OMG Girlz Don't Exist on teh Intarweb!!!???@?!!
I am a girl on the internet. Yes, I said it. A girl on the internet. There really are quite a few of us. I can type. I can play games with the best of you. And you, my friend, are about to get owned by a girl. [Girls as gamers article]

Many Girl Games are free to try.

Connecting School & Work

 

" I am a woman, musician, novelist, and I absolutely agree with your assessment that girls today are being fed a whole lot of "look at me" shlock and are acting it out.  It does seem many girls strive to look like they're ready to go down on the whole football in the locker room just for a pat on the back from the guys.
I have spent 5 years learning to sing and writing songs. I am the only woman I know who can proficiently edit in FIVE music and audio programs, I write my own lyrics, am a happy tech geek, have never sampled a song in my life, and strive everyday to write something original. I have written 2 novels.
I drive a crappy car and spend my money on new microphones, soundcards and computer equipment.
I support myself by freelancing as a video FX editor, I work for many major record labels ----
THIS IS THE SCARY PART:  the work I am most often asked to do is called "beauty work."  Meaning, I retouch the faces and bodies of very famous celebrities, mostly in music videos. While editing out eye wrinkles and zits, I hear the roomful of guys I work with ragging on Fergie, "What, is she like 40 now?" Or chubby Mariah for having a belly roll.  I'm not condoning Fergie or Mariah or what they wear or drink or do on stage ---- however, it's hard to hear it. Women are still judged on their looks. Male musicians are starting to get that criticism too, and boy, they love the beauty retouching too!
My novel is actually themed around hoping young women WILL stop focusing only on their looks, and stop listening to media who encourage it, and get an education to better themselves, creatively or for whatever their chosen pursuit in life will be. The world is still giving women a lot of mixed messages.  They have to learn to listen to themselves, not media. I was a dumb 20 year old who cared too much what a few boys thought of my looks, but there was hope for me, so maybe there's hope for Paris Hilton. (By the way, I was voted best looking in my high school class and as much attention as I have gotten in life for my looks, I am absolutely hardcore determined to be an educated, learned songwriter.)
I suppose I just wanted to caution against you making stereotypes. Sadly, I see them too, all day long in LA. I pretty much stopped watching television because advertising and MTV depress me these days.
I hope to (sic) be the poster child for a woman who CHOSE to educate herself and develop a craft.  Yeah, I'm a f'ing saint. No, I guess I just don't really know any other way I'd be proud of myself unless I did all the work myself. ~ anon

2008 Wisconsin to Test Inclusive Science and Technology Project
Wisconsin will be one of the first states in a national project to attract more girls, students of color, and students with disabilities to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), reports the Daily Kenoshan. Directors of the National STEM Equity Pipeline Project say that many American girls are reluctant to seek STEM careers because of stereotypes that boys are more suited to those fields, and that disparities in STEM participation echo general achievement gaps among students of color and economically disadvantaged students, compared with performance by their peers. Elizabeth Burmaster, Wisconsin's state superintendent of public instruction, says "many strategies for encouraging reluctant students in STEMtechniques like mentoring or having students work in pairsin fact serve to better engage all students, leading to increased achievement across the board." The national project has been developed by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation, with a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Activities

 

 

Source - Activities for Middle School (Grades 6–8 / Ages 11–13)

Activities for High School (Grades 9–12 / Ages 14–17)

PEOPLE

 

Mr. Wizard - Don Herbert - the one and only "Mr. Wizard" of Mr. Wizard Studios

Girlstart is a non-profit organization created to empower girls to excel in math, science, and technology. Founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, Girlstart has quickly established itself as a best-case practices leader in empowering, educating, and motivating girls to enjoy and become more proficient in math, science and technology. Girlstart offers a variety of educational formats designed for middle school girls through after-school programs, Saturday camps, and summer camps. All Girlstart programs share a common theme of hands-on exploration of science, math, and technology in a fun and girl-friendly environment. These programs are held at the Girlstart Tech Center and in Austin-area schools.

Women of the Web 2.0
for all who are using the tools of the internet whether it be in a classroom setting, leading seminars, authoring books, maintaining blogs or wikis, or just enjoying the tools of the internet in an educational and exciting way.

"Engineer Girl," a Web site developed by the National Academy of Engineering in collaboration with an advisory board of girls from across the United States and Canada, highlights opportunities in engineering -- especially for women and girls. Students can read profiles of real women engineers, ask them questions, get help with homework, and even take a trivia quiz.

Opening Opportunities for Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)

Mentoring Programs National Program- Girl Power
Parental Resources for Connectivity Other Educational and Mentoring Resources

Mentorgirls.org
We put the spotlight on programs currently seeking mentors and volunteers - including the San Francisco Bay Area & Silicon Valley, California, as well as many online initiatives in regional USA and abroad. Our resources primarily center on supporting K-12 girls on up through career and personal development for young women.

Action Without Borders
350 Fifth Ave., Ste
6614 New York, NY 10118
Phone: (212) 843-3973 Fax: (212) 564-3377
Links people with organizations nationally and internationally. Search by organization name or mission keyword to find local organizations, volunteer opportunities, programs and services, and more!

America's Promise -- The Alliance For Youth New!!
909 North Washington St.
Ste 400 Alexandria, VA 22314-1556
Connects those that can, like corporations, with those that do, like volunteers and grass roots efforts, to assist our nations 15 million at-risk youth to have better access to five fundamental resources: mentors, safe places, healthy start, marketable skills, and returning service to the community.

Girls Get IT
Create a network in Florida that offers girls and young women exciting opportunities to connect and explore the worlds of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math that lead to rewarding careers and better their lives.

Dare To Dream Foundation
Contact: Grace Shafir <GShafir@aol.com>
3790 Kings Way
Boca Raton, FL 33434
(561) 883-9918

National Coalition of Girls' Schools NCGS
228 Main Street Concord,
MA 01742
(978) 287-4485 Fax: (978) 287-6014
Sponsors the Math & Science for Girls, Girls & the Physical Sciences, and Girls & Technology symposia. Check out their series of publications for girls, their parents, and educators!

Girls Using Real Life Science
National Institutes of Health Office of Science Education - Cool Links

GirlTECH
A program for teachers to raise the awareness of girls underuse of computers. GirlTECH has online lesson plans. GirlTECH, the highly acclaimed computational science summer workshops for teachers hosted by Rice University'sCenter for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC), makes available a large and diverse collection of online lesson plans generated by participants over several years. Lesson and project plans suitable for early elementary through high school levels can be found that span the physical, mathematical, biological and natural sciences, often emphasizing scientific observation and computer/Internet usage. Includes search engine.
The teachers in this workshop : Are provided with Rice University Internet accounts and software for Internet access.
Receive intensive computer technology training from master teachers, especially in the use of the Internet. Explore diversity issues in the computational sciences through presentations and group discussions.
Utilize online resources as a research, teaching, and collaboration tool. Create their own home pages, design and publish Web-based math and science lessons, and create home pages for their schools.
Gain an awareness of the latest research in the computational sciences and hear from business and industry leaders' expectations of students for the 21st century; Explore representation issues and teacher practices that impact girls' interest in computers. Become members of an ongoing teachers' technology electronic support group that communicates throughout the year. Establish a student technology project on their campuses to ensure a transfer of knowledge from teacher to students. Make a one-year commitment to advanced training and to an integration of technology into their teaching practices.

Girl Scouts of America - The Girl Difference
Short-Circuiting the Myth of the Technophobic Girl
By Judy Schoenberg (New York, N.Y.: Girl Scouts of the USA, 2001). 36 pp. (Executive Summary, 6 pp.)
The Girl Difference: Short-Circuiting the Myth of the Technophobic Girl summarizes current research on how girls interact with computer technology and how they perceive themselves in the overall technology culture. It explores the issue of girls and technology as well as the way girls have acquired specific strengths, interests and experiences as computer users and as potential creators and shapers of technology. This report discusses differences in girls' technology usage patterns, considering many factors.

Math Sites

WOMEN OF NASA

 

Asronaut Susan Helms
Check out Asronaut Susan Helms

 

NSA/CSS Kids' Page
The Puzzle Solvers at Cryptic Manor was developed to share the fun and excitement of solving challenging problems--and hopefully get you thinking about careers in math, computer science, and technology.
Dear Parents, Teachers, and Mentors,
We established the NSA kid's homepage, Puzzle Solvers at Cryptic Manor, in compliance with the President's April 18, 1997 Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, Subject: Expanding Access to Internet-based Educational Resources for Children, Teachers, and Parents. The site also supports the recent report by the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development established by Congress in 1998 (Public Law 105-255).

The Women of NASA
This resource was developed to encourage more young women to pursue careers in math, science, and technology. Throughout history, women have made valuable contributions to these fields. Although these disciplines are still dominated by men, and these women are seen as exceptions, there is a growing appreciation of cultural and gender diversity in the workplace. The Women of NASA interactive project showcases outstanding women who are enjoying successful careers and demonstrates how these women balance personal and professional responsibilities. The main components of the project are the interactive events which include weekly Live Questchats and Forums, and offer participants the opportunity to dialogue with the featured mentor. You will also find the profiles and archived chats a rich source of information on the NASA women and their work.

Women of NASA
April Jackson, email mentor
Women of NASA chat calendar page
In the Information Age, information technology (IT) has become an integral part of our everyday lives. We use it at the grocery store to scan products, in the workplace to communicate via email, and at home to set the thermostat. Yet as we enter the new millennium, IT workers are traditionally male and women continue to be underrepresented. This poses several problems including a shortage of IT workers in the U.S., the benefits of higher pay and demand being conferred to males only, and inherent biases of technology developed by only one portion of the population. Young women are choosing, either consciously or subconsciously, to not engage in courses and activities that will provide them with the necessary background to pursue an IT career. Environmental factors such as family, peers, schools, media, toys and role models play a significant role in this decision.
Research shows that boys and girls begin with a level playing field in information technology interests by showing equal enthusiasm and competence in computer-related activities and school classes. Yet in the upper-elementary years, a shift takes place as girls gradually lose interest in these activities. This trend seems to accelerate as girls transition into high school, college, and careers. The goal of this online discussion is to investigate and provide a set of research issues on the under-representation of women in the information technology (IT) workplace that generate from the childhood to pre-college years. Each week's discussions will lead to a set of research areas for that specific topic.
Young girls' understandings of what it means to be female begin to be formed at a very early age and are shaped by the culture in which that child grows up based on previously defined female characteristics. For instance, toys developed for girls often involve dolls, teacups, and the like while toys developed for boys involve trucks, hammers, and small electronic devices. While some progress has been made in this area, toys marketed to boys and girls are still distinctly different. Other socialization factors to be discussed include sex stereotyping of boys and girls, lower expectations for girls and females in general, stereotypes of women in IT fields as being unfeminine, and extracurricular activities that girls engage in such as sports, clubs, and other recreational past-times.
Ways to consider to make computer use "cool" for girls so that peer pressure can be used in a favorable manner to encourage girls to engage in information technology activities.
It is generally accepted that the media (television, magazines, films, etc.) portray women in a very stereotypical manner and some progress is being made in this area. Discussions will deliberate ways to encourage the media to portray women more favorably and ways to alert children to media biases. For instance, the Girls Inc. website , has a feature that allows girls to provide input and rate movies based on their portrayal of females.

Environmental Factors? Academic Environment for Students
A 1982 report coined the term "chilly climate" to describe a variety of subtle classroom interactions which, taken together, make the educational experiences of female students less supportive, less instructive, and less satisfactory than those of male students [1]. That report resulted in an increase in research on gender-related differences in classroom experiences as well as the creation of programs and strategies to warm the climate at a number of universities and colleges.
Are there climate problems specific to IT-related disciplines? Female enrollments in Computer Science and Engineering are much lower than in many of the other sciences; Computer Science is alone in having a significant drop in the participation of women during the last decade. To what extent is this the result of discipline-specific climate issues? A multi-institutional survey [2], for example, found female students in Engineering were less confident of their abilities than male students. This disparity did not exist across all sciences. Are there additional hurdles in IT-related classrooms and labs? Do women in IT graduate programs face the same obstacles? Do they participate in research projects and receive mentoring in numbers comparable to those for men? What further research is needed to identify problems?
A closely related problem is the representation of women on faculties. According to the 1997-1998 Taulbee Survey
[3], women in Computer Science and Computer Engineering departments held just 16% of assistant, 12% of associate, and 9% of full faculty positions. This is troubling. As teachers, advisors, and role models, senior women are needed to convince the next generation of female students of the viability of IT careers and to provide the next generation of male students with fair and balanced views of women as colleagues. A recent Study on Women Faculty in Science at MIT found "subtle differences" in the treatment of women including lower salaries, less office space, and fewer opportunities for campus leadership [4]. The goal of discussion in this thread is to assess the current situation for faculty: To what extent are gender-related environment issues in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Engineering departments contributing to the underrepresentation of women on those faculties?

[1] The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women. Roberta M. Hall, and Bernice Resnick Sandler, Association of American Colleges, 1982.

[2] WEPAN Pilot Climate Survey: Exploring the Environment for Undergraduate Engineering Students. Suzanne G. Brainard, Susan Staffin Metz, and Gerald M. Gillmore, WEPAN

[3] 1997-1998 Taulbee Survey, Computing Research Association

[4] Study on the Women Faculty in Science at MIT.
http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/Fnlwomen.htm



Links

Brave Girls and Strong Women Bookstore
Associated with the Amazon.com Bookstore. It features books showing "girls who are courageous, intelligent, and not afraid to stand up for what they believe in?", as well as books about raising and educating strong, healthy, and happy girls aimed at parents and teachers. There is also a nice set of links to girl-related resources at this location.

CyberTeens
Contests, games, chats, etc. for both girls and boys and offers a space to showcase creative teens at their best.

Femina
Has a subsection devoted to links just for girls.

Girl Tech
A variety of opportunities to interact on the internet. Information for parents, a place for you to chat with girls who share your interests, information on girls and women in sports and technology, and lots more is available here for the computer literate girl.

Go-Girl
Commercial content relevant to teen girls' social and academic lifestyles. The site features 5 departments sure to interest young women everywhere: Go Fashion, Go Beauty, Go Play, Go Study, Go Fitness, and special monthly features such as Go Serious.

GurlWorld

Girls Incorporated
Includes The Girls' Bill of Rights, discussions of how girls are portrayed in the movies and on television, and tips for parents and adults with concerns about adolescent girls.

Go, girl! Magazine -- sports and fitness for women
Dedicated to getting women of all ages and fitness levels involved in sports." This site also offers links to information about women engaged in all kinds of athletic activities including the WNBA and the Olympics.
See our Ring Leader Michael Jackson for more about this topic.

New Moon
The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams
Online version of the popular magazine out of Duluth, Minnesota. It contains the articles and other features that appear in the print version. This site also contains a nice collection of links to other girl- and parent-friendly sites on the web.

International Gender Equity Resources on Line

NCWIT National Center for Women & Information Technology
"The mission of the National Center for Women & Information Technology is to ensure that women are fully represented in theinfluential world of information technology and computing."

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