‘You should never say coding is just for boys’

Young girls are excelling at coding and robotics sessions across libraries in Auckland, despite it traditionally being seen as a male-dominated hobby.

SMINKS Labs, a coding and robotics company for children, has run up to 30 free workshops in Auckland libraries over the past six months.

The company’s creative lead, Richard Ng, said around 25 per cent of participants at the workshops they’ve run have been female, a number he would like to see increase.

“They’re way more focused than the boys and often their times are a lot quicker than the boys in building and coding the robots,” he said.

At the most recent programme, held at Pakuranga Library last Sunday, children were provided with a robotics set, called mBots, a list of instructions, and encouraged to try to build it themselves.

Participants Charlotte Muldrew, 10, and Kristine Guerroro, 9, paired up and assembled a robot, remote controlled it, and then coded specific movements and flashing lights.

Both of them thoroughly enjoyed the process.

“It’s fun and you get to play around and see what you can make,” said Charlotte.

Kristine said she felt offended by the idea that coding and robotics wasn’t always considered as something for girls.

“It should be open for everybody, not just only for boys,” she said.

Charlotte agreed and said she had already coded two computer games for her school.

“You should never say coding is just for boys because girls can do it as well,” she said.

Charlotte Muldrew, 10, in the process of piecing together her robot. Photo: Jessie Chiang

The library had reserved 12 spaces for children, but numbers were closer to 40 on the day.

Founder and director of SMINKS Labs, Peter Liew, who has two daughters himself, strongly encourages the presence of girls in the field and said they can bring different qualities than that of their male counterparts.

“Girls have a different view of the world,” he said. “They are generally more compassionate and they think about other people more than themselves.”

Alice Gatland, co-founder of Girl Code, a programme which teaches women the basics of coding, said despite popularity amongst younger girls, they tended to opt out of the field in high school.

“When you are aimed at primary schools, you do get a 50/50 split,” she said. “It’s more when they get into the high school stage . . . that’s where you really start to see the girls dropping off.”

Auckland University computer science senior lecturer, Dr Michael Dinneen, said the number of girls in the course has remained constant at 25 per cent over the last 10 years.