Girl geeks: Shed the stereotype

The Inquirer, one of my favourite tech stops these days, is running a story that highlights the apparent fact that girls are being "put off" from tech careers because of the geeky image associated with them. This is disheartening, and it's sad that anyone is put off a career for superficial reasons.

The worst perpetrators of stereotyping have long been those who prolong the cliché by acknowledging its existence. A far more productive way to defy a negative tradition is to fight back by becoming a contradiction to the image.

Interestingly, the BBC has reported that women spend more time than men on the Internet. For shopping, that is.

The tech industry and the technology community is growing faster than cress. With the Internet so deeply interwoven into business, media, culture and art, for example, feminine insights are refreshing and welcomed by everybody. It's true that being a systems administrator in the dark confines of a business park's IT rooms isn't as salubrious as, say, painting, but if the career appeals, it should be aimed for. The world is a different place these days and networking (excuse the pun) with millions of like-minded individuals is quite literally a click away.

More people than ever are building the digital age and living the technologist's dream. There's never been a better time to leap on-board. The more people who can help quash the negative stereotypes that a career in technology used to conjure up, the better.