Girl Scouts Giving out Game Design Badges
Last week the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles introduced a game design merit badge for scouts to promote women in the field of game design and programming.
“Our ultimate goal is to create a STEM-aligned video game badge for the Girl Scouts of the United States of America,” Amy Allison, vice president of WIGI, told GirlGamer.com. “Creating this badge will get young girls excited in technology and science and let them know that they, too, can have a career in the video game industry.”
“If the girl scouts had a game design badge when I was a kid, I would have joined!” said me, on he street, to no one.
But why should we care about this cookie dealing militia getting game design badges (Especially when there’s no cookies involved)? Well, females are incredibly underrepresented in game design- the majority of programers and engineers are still men. Why is that? Well, we could go into a whole thing about the genderification of careers, but no one will read that. Long story short: Somewhere along the line in the education process, women are pushed out of the math of sciences. Such programs, like this, that focus on early education in math and sciences for young girls will help to alleviate this problem. If we can get girls excited at a young age about math and science, then they’re much more likely to be excited later on in their educational career for these fields
So Bravo girl scouts. Thanks for doing something, unlike those good for nothing boy scouts. “Oh, that’s a swell knot you tied. Can I eat it? Then I don’t give a damn”
The Sociology of Videogames 