Google, NASA work together on Disney show to inspire girls into sciences, Washington Post
“There are certain television tropes about computer scientists that just drive programmers nuts. They include the portrayal of coders as sun-starved and soft-bellied nerds who spend long hours alone in front of their computers. And almost always, those TV characters are male. So when Disney Junior approached Google and NASA last year for a new series about a space adventure-seeking boy, his smart sister who codes and mother who drives the family spaceship, everyone involved in the project was determined to bury those stereotypes. They agreed that done right, the show could help get girls interested in the sciences at an early age. After all, the data on gender and careers showed that the media can play a huge factor in girls’ decisions to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math, according to a 2014 report by Google.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member 🖖🏻

15 replies on “Disney/Google/NASA Collaborate To Inspire Girls”

  1. Does the coder who works late at night drive programmers nuts?

    Is this feminism or just an attempt to recruit cheap labour (women)?

      1. the pictures of scantily clad women in the “around the web” advertising on this page may be part of the problem as well.
        It’s very out of place considering the other advertisements are for space conferences and education, and other (adchoices) advertising that I see are based on my personal web activity – Sesame Place and a Broadway show at the moment.

        1. By typing the word “girl” I invited Google Adsense to show ads that have something to do with girls. Please let me know (screen grab) if we ever show ads with scantily clad women and we will nuke that advertiser.

          1. Keith, I assume majormajor42 is referring to ads like this that pepper the Disqus ad section (and, yeah, I just reinforced it by reposting it.) I’m sure most of us have seen these kinds of ads all over the place, but it would be progress to have at least a site like this not have them. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much control you have over Disqus ads and it may the price to pay for us being able to comment. I haven’t seen issues with the other ads on the right column.

          2. And those very same ads appear on the websites of major newspapers and news outlets who use Disqus. The only way to totally avoid them is for us to not use Disqus and go to some clunky commenting system that costs money.

          3. Understood. I’d do the same thing you are doing in using Disqus. Disqus should change, but that’s a different path to resolution than changing anything here.

          4. Not just Discus, but – albeit to a much lesser extent – GoogleAdServices pops in a few (cycling in a shared space with others, so you may not always see it). Actually, it looks a more “artsy” than exploitative, but there’s an ad touting the “Next Step in Evolution”, showing a nude-posing female “android”. Sorry, for some reason I can’t seem to paste the image.

            Edit: Well, I take back my above “artsy” comment. There are follow-on ads of the same “Next Evolution”, and these are getting creepy now. (still can’t paste ’em here)

          5. Ah so that’s a requirement to have when using Disqus? Do you get money fom those or just Disqus does? You can’t disable those and use some other ad setup there? Don’t have to answer but I got curious.

            Oh yeah, anyway the topic of this post sounds like a wonderful idea.

          6. We get NO MONEY from Disqus, They are free – but they place advertisements. We try and control ad placement but there’s only so many hours in the day to watch what they post.

          7. Interesting, thanks. I’ll have to do more investigating. It seems to make little sense for a small, low-traffic site to use Disqus then (not talking about NASAWatch obviously).

            This might be old now, but I did see this with instructions for disabling, and a few commentors saying new methods after Disqus changed it up. But there may not be a way anymore.
            https://modassicmarketing.c…

            Here’s another one a bit more recent (1yr)
            http://www.speedofcreativit…

            Maybe you’ve tried this already…

  2. After Mother’s day, it is time to support girls, women, and mothers in every area for the better world.

  4. “To Inspire Girls”
    […]
    “a new series about a space adventure-seeking boy”

    Uhhh…

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