I know I know – there are issues with the gender construction of the language in Wired and with the specifically male bent of the blog title. However, to the author’s credit, I tend to find the content quite gender inclusive (and I believe his ‘geeklets’ are girls and boys). Sometimes the address is male-dominated, but generally geekmoms and dads are welcome:).

The only way in which the content is gendered male is based on stereotype rather than actual experience. Science, video games and geeky stuff are typically gendered male, and you will see a definite bias in the pictures of people doing or participating in activities, like conventions or ‘making’ competitions, that appear in blog entries. But I think the blog is a useful source of links to sites and stuff you daughter would enjoy. And the blog itself you might enjoy..

I grew up a sort of geeky girl and I wish my parents would have taken an active interest in exposing me to this kind of stuff. But there you go.

I just wanted to speak up as a female engineer (background: undergrad and masters in computer science, previously worked at Google, Microsoft and Apple). To my knowledge, I have faced exactly one incident of direct discrimination, and I have never been told “girls don’t do that.” The sexism I see is really just little comments – people being surprised that I’m an engineer (despite knowing that I work for Google). I have a few more stories here if you care to read them: http://www.seattlepixel.com/2005/10/women-in-computer-science.html.

So, I guess what I’m saying is to not worry too much about the sexism your daughter will face. Sure, I see sexism every day, but it doesn’t stop me or even affect me that much. Major direct sexism is rare, and the little things are sort of funny. The stuff that goes on behind the scenes, well, who knows.

My advice is to approach the all-boys websites as “funny” / “silly”, thereby teaching her to see it the same way. In fact, if she can see the humor in it, it might even serve as a motivating factor. If she’s the only girl on these websites (and later on in her science classes), how cool / special / awesome does that make her?

- Gayle

PS: Almost 50% of math majors in the US are female. She’ll have lots of female company in math. Science, though, is still dragging…

Our school system participates in the math and science olympiads, and she’s already doing both. Based on how she did in the science one, and the science fair projects she’s done, she’s also going to be in the Young Inventors program next year. (She didn’t do as well in the math as the science, but that’s because she’s too much like me. She knew how to solve every single problem – but she made little arithmetic mistakes, and got the wrong answer. The hard parts, she’s great at; the easy parts, not so much – they’re too boring.)

http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/

There are games and other things on the website, too.