If women don’t participate in technology, we risk losing many of the economic, political and social gains we have made over decades.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: edition.cnn.com
I’ve written many times about encouraging girls to be women in STEM, and this is an excellent article to support it. The author mentions something that I’ve written about before, which is that the UK and other nations are already implementing STEM programs for school-age curriculums, so why isn’t there more in the US? Compelling article. Do you agree? Comment below. –TechCommGeekMom
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Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog.
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TechCommGeekMom 
I hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard for me to imagine a “Sputnik moment” happening in our country today. The Cold War-fueled emotion of “Holy crap, we’re getting beaten by the Russians” inspired us then. But today we’ve fallen behind so many countries in things like overall education and health care, and most people just shrug their shoulders.
Anyway, it’s not the adults who need to get the message about women in STEM, so much as the girls like Susan Wojcicki’s daughter. There are some good grass-roots programs out there. Everyone in the technology industry should lend their voices to encouraging and supporting those programs as much as possible.
Perhaps “Sputnik moment” is a little bit much, but she made a good point. I will say, however, that it’s definitely the responsibility of adults to help girls–or ALL kids–know about and get those opportunities to learn. Mine were limited growing up, and it was only as an adult in my 30s that finally stumbled into the IT world. (And thank goodness I did!) We need to work more diligently to make these programs known and distribute them more evenly in our American society, especially in schools. Kids don’t know what’s out there; adults do (or have a better idea than the kids). And, I know even now, I have to be rather clever and assertive to let people know that I speak IT as a woman to be taken seriously. It’s still a boys-club in many places.