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Warner Bros and Google using Wonder Woman to get girls into coding

L

LordOfLore

Banned
Link.

Google's Made With Code initiative has powerful new partners this year in the form of Hollywood studio Warner Bros and DC Comics icon Wonder Woman.

Made With Code is a venture the internet giant formed to help young girls see coding as a potential career path, with the overall goal of encouraging more to enter tech industries such as video games.

For the latest Made With Code project, the content has been themed around Warner Bros' current superhero flick Wonder Woman. Participants will be challenged to code their way through three scenes based on the film, using introductory coding language and concepts to guide the Amazon warrior around obstacles and towards her goal.

The collaboration will initially benefit 100 teen girls from Los Angeles, who will be invited to complete the coding project at a Google event - as well as enjoy an advance screening of Wonder Woman and play the latest update for mobile hit DC Legends. No doubt the project will be later made available to all via the Made With Code website.

"We hope Wonder Woman's message of empowerment inspires teen girls, and women, to build confidents in pursuing careers in computer science, engineering, gaming - or whatever their dreams may be," Google Play's Mathilde Cohen Solal wrote in a statement.

Google Play described Wonder Woman's struggle and relevance as a role model as "more relevant today than ever, especially in the technology space" - citing news that girls are less likely than boys are encouraged to pursue computer science in their studies, and that only 22% of the world's games developers are female.
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Lock if old.
 
M

MisterShine

Member
The current one is with Hidden Figures!

Made with code uses the 'connector block' style of coding introduction similar to the projects MIT like Scratch. It is great for even high schoolers to get started with, I did a summer camp last year with it.

(I got my administration to let me take a bunch of students to a showing at a local Science Museum. Great movie!)

Metalingus5150 said:
Isn't google facing allegations of not paying women equally?
Click to expand...

Google employs tens of thousands of people, certain aspects of the culture might not be apparent or present depending on which 'branch' you're working with.
 
S

Slayven

Member
LegendX48 said:
Cool but a little odd. Nothing says coding/programming like an Amazonian warrior? Still, cool stuff.
Click to expand...

One of her deadliest foes

9lcKepn.png


You don't beat her with just a lasso and sword
 
D

Deepwater

Member
I wish the tech industry would get out of this "we would hire them but pipeline issues!"

From USA Today: At Google, women and minorities still lag


Eighty-one percent of technical roles are held by men, with 57% held by whites, 37% by Asians, 3% by Hispanics and 1% by blacks. A tiny fraction of leadership roles are held by Hispanics (2%) and blacks (1%), with whites holding 70% of those roles and Asians 25% of them.

Women and underrepresented minorities are more prevalent in non-technical roles. Women hold 47% of these roles, whites 63%, Asians 23%, Hispanics 5% and blacks 4%.
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K

kirblar

Member
Deepwater said:
I wish the tech industry would get out of this "we would hire them but pipeline issues!"

From USA Today: At Google, women and minorities still lag
Click to expand...
For technical positions that require specialized knowledge, they can't hire what's not there. When companies like google look at their stats internally, they're not comparing themselves against what the general population looks like, they're comparing themselves against what the field looks like.

If you have a 70/30 M/F ratio w/ graduates and the labor force, trying to achieve 50/50 parity is not going to be a good idea, nor even really an achievable one.

This is why they're pushing programs like the one in the OP, to try and expand the breadth of the labor force.
 
A

asagami_

Banned
As a matter of fact, my favorite professor from college was really skilled in programming and computer science, so I like this kind of initiative. There is a mexican Google branch here, so I wonder (no pun intented) if this initiative will reach here, too. If not, the groups here which works in empower women in this industry could do something similar.
 
D

Deepwater

Member
Kthulhu said:
Isn't that what the whole point of this is?
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For top tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook that have the resources to do targeted recruiting at underrepresented groups, their lack of parity reflects more of their organizational culture in regards to recruitment and hiring practices rather than industry pipeline issues.

kirblar said:
For technical positions that require specialized knowledge, they can't hire what's not there. When companies like google look at their stats internally, they're not comparing themselves against what the general population looks like, they're comparing themselves against what the field looks like.

If you have a 70/30 M/F ratio w/ graduates and the labor force, trying to achieve 50/50 parity is not going to be a good idea, nor even really an achievable one.

This is why they're pushing programs like the one in the OP, to try and expand the breadth of the labor force.
Click to expand...

80% of technical roles going to men isn't a pipeline issue, it's a recruiting issue. Especially for a top company like Google. A startup, with limited recruiting resources, with 50 employees with 15 women is different from a behemoth like Google who very clearly has the resources to do things like run code workshops for underrepresented groups. It's not an issue of "there aren't enough skilled women", they're out there, Google ain't recruiting (enough of) them. Whatever they're doing, it's clearly not enough.

And I say this with experience working with organizations that serve as recruiting pipelines for underrepresented groups. I'm not saying Google has to suddenly kick out all the white males just to hire diverse candidates, but if only 1 out of 5 of your technical hires are women, and you're GOOGLE, you need to do better.
 
Z

Zaraki_Kenpachi

Member
Deepwater said:
For top tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook that have the resources to do targeted recruiting at underrepresented groups, their lack of parity reflects more of their organizational culture in regards to recruitment and hiring practices rather than industry pipeline issues.
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So this is a bad thing? I should be angry and upset that they are doing this bad thing of getting women more into programming? Or are you just trolling rather than responding to anything to do with the OP and the thread topic?


This is good to see, hopefully a lot of things become more inclusive in attracting genders.
 
D

Deepwater

Member
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
So this is a bad thing? I should be angry and upset that they are doing this bad thing of getting women more into programming? Or are you just trolling rather than responding to anything to do with the OP and the thread topic?


This is good to see, hopefully a lot of things become more inclusive in attracting genders.
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I'm not saying it's intrinsically a bad thing, I'm saying it's a bait and switch for big companies like Google who's efforts don't reflect in their own organization.

"Hey look at us trying to get more women into coding!"
but also
"Oh we're not hiring more of them right now because its all a pipeline issue"
 
Z

Zaraki_Kenpachi

Member
Deepwater said:
I'm not saying it's intrinsically a bad thing, I'm saying it's a bait and switch for big companies like Google who's efforts don't reflect in their own organization.

"Hey look at us trying to get more women into coding!"
but also
"Oh we're not hiring more of them right now because its all a pipeline issue"
Click to expand...

So it has nothing to do with the topic, you just wanted to shit on google. At least you admitted it.
 
Z

Zaraki_Kenpachi

Member
Trokil said:
The problem is, according to all research done on this, none of this has any long term effects. The whole Nordic gender equality paradox is based on this, the more equal a society gets, the more likely people will chose occupations, which they prefer, either by biological predetermination or by interest.

http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/a0017364
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Maybe, but we're a far ways away from being equal enough to claim that this is solely due to biological preferences of men vs. women.
 
T

Trokil

Banned
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
Maybe, but we're a far ways away from being equal enough to claim that this is solely due to biological preferences of men vs. women.
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Well in the most equal countries they are and still engineering is dominated by men and teaching and care by women. Statistics show, the less equal to more women go into engineering because it is a good way to move up in society.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Deepwater said:
80% of technical roles going to men isn't a pipeline issue, it's a recruiting issue. Especially for a top company like Google. A startup, with limited recruiting resources, with 50 employees with 15 women is different from a behemoth like Google who very clearly has the resources to do things like run code workshops for underrepresented groups. It's not an issue of "there aren't enough skilled women", they're out there, Google ain't recruiting (enough of) them. Whatever they're doing, it's clearly not enough.

And I say this with experience working with organizations that serve as recruiting pipelines for underrepresented groups. I'm not saying Google has to suddenly kick out all the white males just to hire diverse candidates, but if only 1 out of 5 of your technical hires are women, and you're GOOGLE, you need to do better.
Click to expand...
If they're 80% of the labor force, it's a pipeline issue:
https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/study-computer-science-gender-gap-widens-despite-increase-in-jobs
The gender gap in computing jobs has gotten worse in the last 30 years, even as computer science job opportunities expand rapidly, according to new research from Accenture and Girls Who Code.

In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent, according to the study. The computing industry's rate of U.S. job creation is three times the national average, but if trends continue, the study estimates that women will hold only 20 percent of computing jobs by 2025.
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If men are 80% of the labor force and we assume that skill level is distributed evenly among genders, you can't mandate gender parity in hiring without severely restricting the number of new hire or dramatically lowering your standards. Neither of which is going to be an acceptable option for a top-tier massive company like Google.
 
D

Deepwater

Member
kirblar said:
If they're 80% of the labor force, it's a pipeline issue:
https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/study-computer-science-gender-gap-widens-despite-increase-in-jobs


If men are 80% of the labor force and we assume that skill level is distributed evenly among genders, you can't mandate gender parity in hiring without severely restricting the number of new hire or dramatically lowering your standards. Neither of which is going to be an acceptable option for a top-tier massive company like Google.
Click to expand...

Yes, because to hire more women, Google would have to lower their standards. Because they've already bled the well dry and recruited all the top skilled women already! /s

What an incredibly prejudiced statement.
 
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