New push to get girls into computer sciences

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Diana Navarro loves to code, and she's not afraid to admit it. But the 18-year-old Rutgers University computer science major knows she's an anomaly: Writing software to run computer programs in 2014 is — more than ever — a man's world.

"We live in a culture where we're dissuaded to do things that are technical," Navarro said. "Younger girls see men, not women, doing all the techie stuff, programming and computer science."

Less than one percent of high school girls think of computer science as part of their future, even though it's one of the fastest-growing fields in the U.S. today with a projected 4.2 million jobs by 2020, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This week Google, with a driverless car and Web-surfing eyeglasses under its belt, has given The Associated Press an early look at how it's trying to change the gender disparity in its own workforce, and in the pipeline of potential workers, by launching a campaign Thursday called "Made with Code."

The initiative begins with an introductory video of girls— silly, serious and brave — meeting President Obama, painting over graffiti and goofing around. The narrator says: "You are a girl who understands bits exist to be assembled. When you learn to code, you can assemble anything that you see missing. And in so doing, you will fix something, or change something, or invent something, or run something, and maybe that's how you will play your bit in this world."