[elliekelly]

Yes, it is concerning. Fortunately the research actually says the exact opposite.[1] It is a strongly held stereotype (in the US at least) and natural ability or natural interest is often pointed to on HN as the reason for the lack of women in STEM. I personally don’t believe it has anything to do with nature and is entirely attributable to nurture.

However, I wrote “whether by nature or nurture” because my ultimate goal was to let OP know that teaching logic might be a good avenue to spark the interest of high school girls who were like me - interested in CS even though they might have been discouraged from participating and feel like they don’t have the “natural” ability because they’ve been pushed toward language skills for most of their academic career. My message would have been brushed aside (at best, I likely would have been, and perhaps will be, berated) had I written “as a woman although I was interested in numbers I was encouraged to focus on words”. And so, like women often do[2], I held back my true thoughts on the matter because I hoped that doing so would be for the greater good if it meant OP would be the CS teacher I wish I had as a high school girl.

[1] https://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/sunday/girls-scho...