Sadly, some of the Barbie mentality continues. Wired News delivered to your inbox or hand-held device. The Making of a Girl Techie Listen to a discussion of this story. The study suggests that educators must change the way that they teach to attract girls to technology at an early age. Instead of focusing on what's wrong with girls who dislike computing, researchers used their responses to examine what might be wrong with computer culture.
Statistics clearly indicate that women are under-represented in technology.
For example, girls represent 17 percent of Computer Science AP test takers. With the rise of technology-related jobs in the new economy, experts fear girls who lack computing skills might be left behind. The girls in the study had misconceptions of the types of careers that computer fluency would lead to, clinging to stereotypes of antisocial code-crunching programmers. It doesn't have to do with the computer. It has to do with the cultural image of the computer.