Rarely do I feel compelled to blog immediately from something I read online, but I just read a fascinating article by Jolie O’Dell entitled: Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet. In addition to that article,@simonjadis linked me another interesting article entitled Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Telling People How They Should Feel About It. Really thought-provoking pieces about the challenges the industry faces in diversifying.  The most interesting part of these articles for me lies in the ideas about childhood and how our dearth of women in tech might stem in part from how girls and boys are treated early on, even starting out with the types of toys available to them.

You will immediately notice the drastic segregation — the gendered version of the Jim Crow-era South. There are entire aisles of pink, and other aisles devoted to dark blues and greens. Imagine that you are only “allowed” in the pink and purple areas of the store, and examine the toys you find there.

The vast majority of playthings for little girls encourage them to think about nurturing others and caring for themselves — including, to a large extent, their appearances. These aren’t inherently negative lessons to learn, except for the fact that these lessons exclude others that deal with problem-solving, strategy, physics… you know, the kinds of things you learn from playing with Lego, K’nex, Stratego and other male gender-coded games and toys.