FREE Cyber Security courses for 15 and 16 years old

[Surferfish]

If you click on the OP's link you'll see that its only the 3 Warwick based courses that are girls only. Courses at all the other venues are mixed. Not quite sure why that is?

[Guest55]

stroudydad - what on earth does that mean? I know plenty of females from a mixed school that have gone into STEM. It just needs good role models and good career information. These 'special' female only events are insulting to women as it implies they need to be bribed into it.

[Surferfish]

I wonder if anyone is offering similar free courses to get boys into the humanities, or into primary teaching. Gender stereotyping cuts both ways and it seems the push to get everyone doing STEM has rather overtaken any other items on that particular agenda.

I agree. Whenever a career, subject or even a sport is male dominated there always seems to be some incentive to get more females into it.

But it never seems to be the case the other way round. There are an equal number of academic subjects which are highly female dominated - MFL, humanities, psychology etc - but there never seem to be any incentives to try and get more boys involved in these.

[DC17C]

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/cyberfirst-courses" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


There may still be places for girls elsewhere....Cardiff, Newcastle and Egham Surrey.

[RedVelvet]

Generally the male-dominated careers are traditionally higher paid though. The reason that we still have a gender pay gap is not because men and women doing the same job are paid differently, but beacause the higher paid, often more technical jobs are still male dominated. I suspect that in most secondary schools there is still a higher proportion of boys taking physics and girls taking biology, likewise for DT and food science. I absolutely think boys should be encouraged into the humanities , however women in science and technology careers still face gender bias and anything to encourage girls and women into STEM subjects should, in my opinion, be encouraged.

[RedVelvet]

stroudydad - what on earth does that mean? I know plenty of females from a mixed school that have gone into STEM. It just needs good role models and good career information. These 'special' female only events are insulting to women as it implies they need to be bribed into it.

Or maybe these courses provide good career information and good role models?

[Surferfish]

Generally the male-dominated careers are traditionally higher paid though. The reason that we still have a gender pay gap is not because men and women doing the same job are paid differently, but beacause the higher paid, often more technical jobs are still male dominated. I suspect that in most secondary schools there is still a higher proportion of boys taking physics and girls taking biology, likewise for DT and food science. I absolutely think boys should be encouraged into the humanities , however women in science and technology careers still face gender bias and anything to encourage girls and women into STEM subjects should, in my opinion, be encouraged.

Do you not think though that both girls and boys should be encouraged to study the subjects that they are actually interested in and have a flair for rather than be encouraged to go down paths that they may be less interested in just to equalize any gender imbalances or to get jobs which pay more money?

Is it not possible that more boys choose to study computer science and engineering simply because more boys than girls are interested in these rather than being "gender barriers" that girls find it difficult to overcome?

[RedVelvet]

Of course I think that girls and boys should be encouraged to study subjects that they are interested in, but I do think it's important to raise the profiles of careers where there is a gender inbalance, whichever way it falls.

[Guest55]

Or maybe these courses provide good career information and good role models?

Do they? Are they run by women?

[RedVelvet]

I don't know about these courses but a few weeks ago my daughter attended a course run by a multinational engineering company, just for girls. It was initiated and run by a women who had recently joined the company after graduation.