Boosting CS Enrollment With Separate Pitches for Boys and Girls

An article I read on Slashdot a little while back points out that Georgia Tech is sending targeted letters to parents of high school students who score well on the PSAT to encourage those students to take Advanced Placement Computer Science.  These letters, as well as other materials are available on Georgia Tech's Institute for Computer Education website.

Great, right?  Kids often need extra encouragement to get the confidence to try something new.  These letters send a strong positive message.  But, there's a twist... they send out two very different letters - one for parents of girls and one for parents of boys.

I love that they're doing this outreach, but I'm always skeptical when people use gender-based stereotypes to attempt to improve the gender balance in STEM.  These efforts can end up fueling the problem they are attempting to extinguish.  Below I step through all of the differences and offer suggestions to improve the letters.

So let's take a look at the two letters and see what they've done.  I used Microsoft Word to compare the two letters.  There are some common paragraphs between the letters, which are not pictured below.  But there are significant differences in the first paragraph, an extra girl-only paragraph, and a different signature block.  Let's take a look.

And the 'daughter' version of the letter adds this paragraph:

Finally, the girl version is signed by the teacher, the boy version is signed by the Director of Computing Outreach at Georgia Tech.

So in summary, for boys, it is:
1. High paying job
2. Create mobile applications, video games, cool special effects, or new devices

For girls, it is:
1. Help people
2. Solve problems
3. High paying job where she can work part time and work from home
4. Be creative and work as part of a team
5. Breakthroughs in medicine
6. Requirement for biology in college

For both, it is:
1. Rewarding career
2. Computers are crucial to our way of life
3. Computer science counts as a science for graduation from Georgia High Schools


So what do I think?  That's a good question.  First, on average, boys and girls have different motivations, and I have no reason to doubt that these lists reflect serious consideration of what makes the most difference to each group.  Second, this is aimed at the parents, rather than the kids.  It may indeed be the case that parents are more likely to encourage their children to try AP CS if the parents are satisfied that the choice is gender-appropriate.  The pros of sending two sets of letters may outweigh the cons, but I think there are some improvements that can be made.

Issue #1: Some boys are interested in helping people; some girls are interested in developing video games.  One problem with sending two sets of letters is that lots of kids defy gender stereotypes. I knew boys who wanted to be creative and work in teams. As a girl, I certainly was more interested in taking CS for the reasons on the "boy" list.  While I'm sure the lists reflect the average girl and average boy, there's no one-size-fits-all reason.
My recommendation: Include the full list of reasons to study CS for both genders.  It might make sense to juggle the order to get the most impact, but it should be possible to do this without dropping benefits.

Issue #2: Messaging about working part time or working from home reinforces the idea that women shouldn't be committed to their careers.  There's nothing inherently wrong with choosing to work from home or work part time (whether or not you have kids) but this language to me seems to reinforce the idea that a woman's place is in the home.  I don't think most high school girls are thinking about becoming mothers.  Some may never become mothers, some who do may never take significant time off from work, and the average age at first birth for women with college degrees in the US is 30 ... almost a decade after she enters the workforce.  This means that your daughter reading this letter is probably as close to her own birth as the birth of her hypothetical child.
My recommendation: Pair this idea with the ability to freelance or start your own business and it becomes a much more positive message.

Issue #3: AP Computer Science is math, not social work. Computing can be an engine for social change.  CS students at my alma mater go to developing communities to help bring improvements through IT through a program called Technology Consulting in the Global Community.  Developers can help create assistive technologies for individuals with disabilities.  Code for America helps match coders with social projects. We need more people with a social compass and technical skills to help improve society - but if the the number one reason a person wants to take CS is to help people, it's going to be a long road.
My recommendation: This shouldn't be the number one selling point, but it's valid to point out that CS is compatible with a desire to help people.  I would move this farther down the list and phrase it as "you can also help people in these ways."

Issue #4: What's up with the different signature blocks?  If Georgia Tech studied the issue and found that (parents of) girls are more responsive to teachers and (parents of) boys are more responsive to distant authority figures, then fine.  But this seems pretty odd to me.
My recommendation: It depends - if this is a carefully studied choice then keep it.  If it's not, then I'd try to find a way to remove this disparity.  Either have the letters jointly signed or have all of the letters signed by the university and encourage teachers to send a follow-up letter.

Bottom line: I'm a huge fan of sending letters of encouragement - sometimes kids to need a kind of personal invitation to give them the confidence to try STEM.  Given that boys and girls (and parents of boys and girls) respond differently to different motivations, I understand the purpose of the separate letters, but the letters could be made more similar and have a more positive impact.