10 Reasons Why America Needs 10,000 More Girls in Computer Science: Need to change girls’ minds about girls

Nice article from Ruthe Farmer on why we need more girls in CS. The point quoted below is particularly interesting to me, and relates to a recent Blog@CACM post: student perceptions matter. It’s not just the males who need to realize that females are good at math. Girls sometimes take themselves out of the competition.

The idea that girls can’t do math or succeed in science is a silly myth that needs to be put to rest. Girls made up 63 percent of the 2013 Intel ISEF finalists in biochemistry, accounted for 46 percent of all Advanced Placement AP Calculus test-takers in 2013 (See http://ncwit.org/bythenumbers), and contributed 47 percent of the winning projects in the Google Science Fair. But it’s not only boys who need to get the message about girls’ abilities: According to the Atlantic, female test-takers around the world reported feeling “helpless” while doing a math problem, although they scored within striking distance of their male counterparts. In other words, there is an abundance of girls who are good at math and science, but a lack of girls who know it.

via The Shriver Report – 10 Reasons Why America Needs 10,000 More Girls in Computer Science.