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From Luisa Zenker
The laptop lies unscrewed on the table. Eleven-year-old Isabella looks at the green and silver circuit board in the middle. "This is the computer's town hall and this is the short-term memory," she points to the black working memory.
She picks up a screw and tries to put the two parts together. Isabella is actually on vacation, but she still wanted to come to school today. Because this week, the primary school pupils are learning how to disassemble and program a laptop. "I'm actually rubbish at computers, but this is fun."
A program just for girls
It is the first program of its kind in Saxony's elementary school. And it is only aimed at girls. "Why are there still so few women studying computer science?" asked Finja Adam from Dresden. The 20-year-old is currently studying media informatics at the Dresden University of Cooperative Education.
Her class consists of 27 pupils. And five female students. There is only one lecturer in her subject. "And that's for design." The rest of the teachers are all male. Computer science is still a man's job throughout Germany. In 2022, 26,000 of 138,000 computer science students were female, according to data from the Center for Higher Education Development. That's just 19 percent.
© Jürgen Lösel
Computer science students are predominantly male
Finja Adam wants to change this and get more women interested in programming. That's why she and her training company "Sandstorm" have developed a two-day course for the Melli Beese elementary school in Dresden. Ten schoolgirls are now sitting in front of her and looking intently at their computers.
"I've never used a laptop before," says seven-year-old Lilli, clicking on the "Calliope" program with her mouse. This is software that teaches children programming in a fun way. Lilli has to make a circuit board light up. After half an hour of listening and copying, the circuit board actually flashes red: first a smiling and then a sad smiley alternately appear on the circuit board. "I thought it was cool, but it was also complicated," says Lilli, who now needs a break and is playing hide and seek with her friends.
© Jürgen Lösel
Men program software for men
"The boys usually already have a lot of experience with computers. In seventh grade, they play games with their friends. You have to give the girls an extra nudge," says Karoline Bünker, explaining why she is trying out lessons for girls only at elementary school. The 41-year-old is responsible for sustainable business development at the Dresden-based software company Sandstorm. The 35-strong team is committed to hiring more women. While not a single woman worked at the company in 2018, the figure is now 30 percent. "We hire according to talent, not experience," says Karoline Bünker, who knows that boys tend to know more about programming after school and are therefore more likely to choose to study computer science. But this has consequences for everyday life. "White men program software for white men," explains Karoline Bünker.
She cites the example of speech recognition software that initially reacted badly to female voices. A Unesco report also concludes that products such as Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa help to promote gender bias, as they were initially designed for women's voices only.
But the consequences are even more far-reaching, says Karoline Bünker, who is committed to diversity in companies. For older people, a yellow font on a gray background on the Internet is more difficult to read - a software team must therefore be diverse in terms of age, gender and migration background.
Computer science was a woman's job for a long time
It is therefore important to Bünker that the girls get to know a well-known pioneer of computer science: Ada Lovelace. She wrote the world's first complex computer program. For a long time, computer science was actually a woman's job. Until the end of the Second World War, "computer" did not mean a machine, but a female computer operator. However, cheap labor was usually denied promotion, which is why computer science developed into a male domain. The girls at Melli Beese Primary School are therefore given a sticker of the computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace to remind them of the historical female domain in computer science.
The fact that computer science is already being promoted in elementary school is unusual. Companies usually start recruiting in the ninth grade. "Career aspirations are decided so early on," says Katharina Rublev. She coordinates the program ProGTA from the State Association of Saxon Youth Education Centers. It organizes programming courses for children at around 30 schools in Saxony. The project is always on the lookout for interested teachers and schools who want to get children interested in technology.
It is clear from their eyes that the primary school girls have had a unique experience this morning. Perhaps they will be able to fool the boys after the vacations. And let's see who wants a laptop for Christmas so they can screw it open or learn a programming language. Because they heard this sentence particularly often that day: "You're great programmers."
