Meet the Irish teen girls who love coding
PHYSICS, chemistry, technology, honours maths — if you heard they were the favourite subjects of a robotics and CoderDojo fan named Kevin, you would consider it normal.
But if that fan was Kate and not Kevin, you’d probably sit up fast. Earlier this year, teenager Kate O’Donovan worked for several months on a robotics project in her local CoderDojo in Clonakilty (free weekly clubs where basic programming is taught through peer learning in a sociable environment).
“I created an LED light box, which sequences through different light displays,” the 16-year-old says. She plans to programme the box to react to music.
“ I think robotics is my thing; it’s so much fun. When you make something yourself and you see it working, the buzz in unreal.”
Jane Murphy was 11 when she joined CoderDojo two years ago. “My best friend was doing it and she told me it was great fun. I learned how to code and I’ve made several web pages and we do projects — at the moment, I’m learning Java, so that I can make games.
“It’s very enjoyable. I like maths, but you don’t have to be good at maths to do coding — it’s like learning a language. I taught HTML to other people in Coder Dojo. There is great sense of achievement.”
Girls make up only 20%-30% of the Clonakilty club’s membership, says Margaret Kennedy, one of its founders. “We have 50 children booked in for next Friday night in Clonakilty — 10 of those are girls.”
Although girls start around the same age as boys (at seven or eight), once they enter second-level education, they drop away, Ms Kennedy says.
“We notice that teenage girls don’t seem to be as comfortable around technology as boys — maybe they have a perception that technology is too boy-ish or too engineering-orientated”.
It’s a big problem — according to a recent report by technology consultants, Accenture, traditional stereotypes of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM subjects) as “prohibitively challenging” still exist, affecting girls’ study choices.
The report also warned of a persistent opinion — among parents, teachers and young women alike — that these subjects and careers are more suitable for men than for women.
The statistics reflect this: in the 2014 Leaving Certificate, 4,000 students sat higher-level engineering — 200 of these were female; 1,000 students took higher-level technology — 200 were female; 5,300 sat higher-level physics — 1,500 were girls. In 2013, only 25% of Leaving Certificate physics students were girls. According to figures from the Higher Education Authority, women made up just 15% of undergraduate engineering students and 18% of computer science students. “There seems to be a perception that the environment of technology is male-dominated, because that is the way it’s supposed to be,” says Ms Kennedy. “They don’t seem to realise that they can challenge that — I see a lot of girls who are very creative and very good at art, but they don’t seem to see that they can bring these skills into technology.
“I hear TY (transition-year) girls telling me they’re taking ECDL, which means they’ve missed the boat, because things have gone so far beyond that. We’ve brought 3D modelling to our Coder Dojo in Clon’ and it’s great — it’s all about design and creating things. We have to get more girls involved in more coding and in science generally, but how you do that is the million-dollar question”, she says.
There are just nine girls in Kate O’Donovan’s fifth-year physics class, and when students were selecting their Leaving Certificate subjects, she says “loads of girls said they didn’t think they’d be smart enough to do physics. Girls seem to have a block about science, technology, engineering and maths ( the STEM subjects).”
But if girls are happy to join tech- and science-rich programmes, like Coder Dojo, at age seven, when does this ‘block’ hit?
Carlow Coder Dojo founder and school principal, Simon Lewis, says the block develops when girls enter second-level.
Lewis started the Coder Dojo group in 2012. Girls make up 50% of his under-12 group, but just 10% of the over-12 group.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm amongst girls for STEM, up until the age of about 11 or 12 — up to then, there’s no difference between them and the boys.
“Around that age a divide happens, particularly with STEM subjects. For whatever reason, they’re not as turned on by technology and coding as they would have been when they started out.
“Something seems to happen in the summer holidays between sixth class and first year — I don’t know what it is,” he said, speculating that it may be a combination of social conditioning and peer pressure.
Social expectations play a key role, says Catherine Cronin, lecturer and academic coordinator of online IT programmes, NUI Galway, and a champion of Coder Dojo — Cronin helped found the Kinvara, Co Galway Coder Dojo.
“Any girl you know who studies engineering or maths would have experienced meeting with some level of surprise, at some stage, when they tell someone what they do,” she says.
“This comes from the belief that these subjects are male-orientated and that it’s exceptional for girls to go into these areas.”
It’s all about perception, she says, adding that the girls seem to start to turn away at the age of 12 or 13.
Cronin says the problem is rooted in gender-role socialisation, which starts at birth.
Society passes on strong messages about what is appropriate for girls and boys “as regards dress, behaviour and activities,” she says — it goes on all through life, and when children reach the age of 12 or 13, and enter second-level, they start to identify with what it ‘means’ to grow up.
Unfortunately, says Cronin, “engineering, computers and IT have become identified as a more masculine domain.”
Hence, boys can “slide” into choices that will lead them into STEM subjects. However, for girls there must be exceptional factors to counteract gender-role expectations and propel the girl into IT or engineering, “for example a parent who is in that field already, or the availability of a very strong role model.
“Coder Dojo is brilliant, because the whole nature of diversity is at the core of CoderDojo,” she says.
Perception plays a big role, says Australian entrepreneur and co-founder of the Irish CoderDojo movement, Bill Liao.
“It’s driven by perception, possibly even by parental perception — we’ve heard parents counselling daughters against going into engineering.”
The Accenture survey reported that a lack of female role models in the STEM sector was a major influence, and everyone seems to agree that this is the key — but, says Liao, it may need to be more specific than that.
The secret, in CoderDojo at least, is peer role-modelling.
At one stage, Liao’s Coder Dojo group — it’s based in the Cork Airport Business Park — had “about two girls and 100 boys.”
Then, says Liao, they tried something new.
“We got some of the existing female members to become mentors and run the newbie tables, so that when a new girl came in the first introduction was being led by a girl.
Now, he says, the gender split is 50/50.
“I call it peer role-modelling. I think girls are interested in more practical outcomes, so when girls lead the intro they tend to build a website and girls like that. They also like to work collaboratively.
“We now have quite a few girls aged 13, 14, and 15,” he says, and dojos that have between 30% and 50% female membership are the ones which are project- focused and where girls are mentoring early in the process.
“I’ve watched girls become incredibly talented with computers. I’ve seen them grow in self-confidence, build friends and create incredible stuff.
“I think participating in CoderDojo would encourage them to consider engineering and look at maths and physics beyond code.”
O’Donovan, too, says more female mentors, and a stronger emphasis on science at primary level, are crucial in keeping girls interested.
She’s now mentoring at the Clonakilty Coder Dojo and says she was taught how to solder by a woman. Girls’ automatic perception that science and engineering are not something they’d do as a matter of course is a major problem, she says.
“We need to break the stereotypes.”
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