Every time I go to a children’s clothing store, the layout is the same. Girls’ clothes on one side, boys on the other. On the girls’ side, you’ll find pink and purple dresses with pictures of kittens, butterflies, and flowers. The boys’ collection features mostly dark blue and brown clothing with images of footballs, dogs, and trains.
Why? Because boys like to play sports and drive trains, and girls like to look at flowers — or so you’d think.
Each time, I shake my head in disgust. Why, I wonder, are we so intent to assign outdated gender roles to toddlers? And it’s the same thing with toys. Boys get to play with dinosaurs and planes, and girls get purses with lipstick and a cell phone (yes, even 18-month-olds need accessories, apparently).
It’s enough to make a parent want to shield her children — especially her daughter — forever from toy stores, catalogs, and commercials. But we all know that simply isn’t realistic (or even possible) in today’s world.
Fortunately, it turns out not everyone has such archaic views. Recently there’s been quite a bit of buzz about GoldieBlox, a toy company that aims to “get girls building” (the commercial alone won me over). On its website, the company references the extremely low percentage of women in fields like science, technology, engineering, and math, and is very clear about its goal to “change the equation.”
GoldieBlox, in my opinion, is a breath of fresh air in an industry that clings on to stereotypes for dear life. It gives hope to parents who want their daughters exposed to more than just princesses and tea parties. And that, I believe, is critical, because the tendency to steer girls toward certain paths doesn’t end with childhood; in fact, it’s only the beginning. Even if girls aren’t necessary being discouraged to pursue careers in science and technology, they aren’t being encouraged to, either. And that kind of thinking is doing a disservice, both to bright young women, and to industries that could use more sharp minds. We’re all familiar with the shortage of health IT talent — if there is an untapped (or lightly tapped) resource out there, we need to leverage it.
That’s precisely the thinking behind Girls Who Code, a program that uses 8-week boot camps to teach middle and high school girls programming skills, Web design, robotics, and mobile app development. Like GoldieBlox, it’s a step in the right direction. But it certainly makes you wonder why it has taken us so long to start breaking down stereotypes and opening doors for girls who want to design apps — not clothes.
All of this got me thinking about our own sector and the opportunities available for women, and so I did a little digging and found that as of 2010 (the most recent data available), 21 percent of CIOs were women, according to CIO.com. It’s not a bad number, particularly compared with the manufacturing industry, where just 6 percent of CIOs are women.
But it’s not a great number either. It begs the question: is the healthcare IT industry creating enough opportunity for women to seek leadership roles, or do barriers still exist? Are individual organizations doing enough to provide mentoring for young women? It’s a topic we at healthsystemCIO.com plan to delve further into.
We want to know your thoughts on whether it’s possible to change the equation.
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