Would boys make better IT employees than girls?

May 31, 2009 · by Kacie Conroy

In my GET IT presentations, I ask each group if they think boys would be better than girls in an IT job. Until last week I never had a single girl say yes. Between the two GET IT presentations I completed in the last week I suddenly had 3 girls think boys would be better. When asked why they said “yes”, they commonly stated the following responses:

Boys play video games a lot.
Boys are always on the computer.
Boys are just better at that kind of thing.

I was surprised that the first comment made the girls think that is what makes a good IT employee. To me, it shows that we still have work to do in terms of educating young girls about IT careers. I know plenty of people who love and excel at video games but wouldn’t be instant IT experts. Happily, after the program was complete nearly 85% said they were interested in an IT career. That’s progress in the right direction but we still need to keep at it to continue to break the stereotype. If you have daughters, nieces, or know middle school aged girls, ask them the same question and see what they say. I think this may be getting at the core reason why the numbers of women in IT are so low.

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