Great idea!
Other possible gender sensitive promotions:
www.WasteManagement.com
Every girl you sign up to be a Garbage Carrier gets you a new garbage can! If you sign up 4 girls, you get a Solyndra solar panel as well!
www.Jihad.org
Every girl bomber you sign up gets you a new hajib!
Ridiculous and stupid. Just like all other liberal ideas.
Hmmmm. Since gender is now "fluid" according to the latest modern thinking, then anybody can qualify, right?
Google must have heard that women get paid less than men. Either that, or Google males can’t get dates.
The aim is to lessen dependence on men, devalue marriage, thereby causing more women to vote in a manner that reflects a view of gummint as de-facto husband.
Thereby growing the state at the cost of general happiness and fulfillment.
We need to start sueing these bastards.
As a female who started computer programming on mainframes in 1980, I find this scheme obnoxious. When I first started programming then there were FAR more women in the field, apparently, than there are today. 90% of programmers in the UK are male. And the percentage of females in the US has been steadily declining from when I was in the business. Although my classmates who were learning to program that same year I was were slightly more male than female, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t overwhelmingly so. Back in those days we learned PL/I as our first language, than Assembler, COBOL, RPG II and Basic — plus a few other things like JCL After a little less than a year working at a small local shop who sold micro computers (the IBM PC had come out when I was working there) and then Kaypro for about a year and a half, in 1984 I was hired to work on a Cad/Cam project for Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. Our team consisted of 1 male project lead who had 1st trained as an EE and went over to programming and worked his way up. The technical lead for the core of the project was a female grad. whose degree, I believe had been math and computational science, or whatever Syracuse called it. She was the ripe old age of 28 — and she brought a number of us either up to speed on the PL/I were were using on the project or gave us a quick refresher. WE all had to learn IBM’s DB2 database, which the company sent us all on a crash course to learn. Our lead female designed the structure of the main core of the software used on the floor to assemble the missiles that the technicians putting them together used. She had one young male who was her assistant coder for the core program. I designed the software and interface used to take in bar codes from the technician’ badges to either interface with labor collection or swipe a barcoded input from the major parts the individual at the time was working on so they went to the next work instruction to be done from the last time the part was worked on for final assembly. I also assisted with ancillary bits of functionality that were needed on the mainframe using SPF screens. 1 male handled being the DBA for the project, along with doing database design and handling said documentation for same 1 male 1 female worked on streaming necessary information on to business systems for for work on other projects, and we had a female on loan from Convair who used a graphical digitizing software to change the paper drawings into graphics displayed on computer screen, and another female to do ancillary programs that were needed as modules for the main Work instruction display manager, and we all worked on various bits of software necessary as either modules off the main program or other odds and ends as needed. And we had So, that project had 1 male project manager, and 3 males on software, 4 females on software - and the tech lead was female. So male to female was a 50/50 team effort. And our project wasn’t particularly unusual. WE had about 150 in Data system’s cad/cad back then. I also worked for SAIC later and it wasn’t much different there. Females who went into programming THEN were NATURALLY interested. [Oh, I must say we also had one male mechanical engineer from Convair division and one industrial engineer from Convair, who was also a female who had her degree from Perdue.
I talked to a boss of mine who was about 10 years older than me and he said that when he was learning and first working with computers back in the late 60s and early 70s the places he worked at also had a similar ratio but at minimum 40% female tending towards closer to 50%.
What happened, that turned off the females born later? I suspect what happened in part was that the GAMES designed early on were largely for young boys on the little PCs like VICs, commodore 64 — were almost always shoot-em-up games...and most girls just don’t like those games as well, as say things that were in the minority like the adventure games like Indiana Jones or Monkey Island — you could Think your way around problems rather than shoot your way out of which requires faster reflexes than a lot of girls have. So as time went on, young girls associated computers with geeky little boys and were turned off by them, except to use them for other things like writing — and of course, SOME of the games were fun — but not many that understood the psychology of what apps girls would enjoy playing. Oddly enough today, the most common gamer of on line games is....TA-DA women over 55. [I’m a proud member of that set myself.] But now there are lots of things out there like Farmville. Look we can re-arrange a farm, grow stuff, decorate, visit FV friends, do resource management. Those sorts of games weren’t around nearly as much in the 80s and through the 90s. WWW certainly perked female interest as now many blog etc. So who knows? Maybe more females will naturally turn on to it and can see more personal uses.
Let’s not forget Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer — the language ADA was named after her - -and of course the mother of COBAL, Admiral Grace Hopper, USN. Who, if memory serves was around in WWII and served long after most retired. And also Hedy LaMarr, a 40s movie star who is an interesting case, who did work which, if memory serves is an important part of computer technology today used in computer communications today. Her wiki entry is fascinating.
I think EVERY kid should be encouraged to try programming out, because it makes them think in a logical sequence. But don’t over push it on kids who are simply not interested. CERTAINLY *no Cash rewards* like this. What about the boy who is keen but poor? HE could well use the money wasted on the girl who just did it for the money and couldn’t care less. IT’s unfair to the boys and encourages the girls for all the wrong reasons.
Sue for discrimination.