This is a very simple and partial perception. When I started teaching HTML and webdesign, there were a lot of women and girls getting into that. That’s 10 years ago. When for the first time I did a guest lecture at an ICT-academy, some 3 years ago, the majority of students were boys, but at least there were some girls too. Next week I’l do a social software workshop at ICA in Arnhem and for the second time in a row all the students are boys. Not one single girl. Last week at the Mediamatic RFID-workshop all the participants were men/boys. Melanie Rieback was the only female & she was a speaker (and btw, by far the most hardcore technologist of all). Where are the girls? The problem is not that there aren’t any good role models… or no good female teachers, or developers around (in my immediate environment I can think of Joan Heemskerk of Jodi, Sher Doruff, Kristina Andersen, or fokky). (And Flickr was developed by Christina Fake). The thing is also that these workshops are not ‘about technology’ at all — and if they are about technology it’s really lo-tech. These workshops are much much more about social use — and I think it’s a very bad idea to let the whole field of developing and thinking up of new tools, to the boys only…

Ah well. Please tell me I’m wrong.