‘Stand up and support each other’
Healey joins coding girls for International Women's Day
The first female governor of Massachusetts spent her first International Women’s Day learning a bit about binary code with young girls at the Curley K-8 School on Wednesday afternoon.
“This is the best part of my week,” said Gov. Maura Healey. “This is Women’s History Month. Today is International Women’s Day, and we wanted to make a point of spending time with young girls.”
The governor and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, along with a handful of local officials, piled into a brightly decorated classroom at the school with a group of 3rd through 5th grade girls participating in a Strong Women Strong Girls mentorship program Wednesday afternoon to mark the holiday and encourage some female empowerment.
The politicians got to join in on a session learning about the Women Who Code founder — a nonprofit helping girls advance in still male-dominated technology fields — and visualizing binary code with beads.
Meanwhile, the girls got to chat with state leaders about everything from their interest in Roblox and the origins of volleyball (a sport invented in Massachusetts, Driscoll pointed out) to the history of women’s voting rights and the female leaders’ historic elections.
“We’ve never seen two women be the top two positions in any state, in fact, in the country,” Healey told the girls. “This is the first time it’s ever happened. We want you to know you can be a governor; you could be lieutenant governor; you could be a city councilor; you can be anything you want to be. Just because somebody is in that job who doesn’t look like you doesn’t mean it’s not for you.”
The politicians gave the girls lots of advice on standing up for each other, bravery and being true to themselves and requested any of the kids’ policy advice or concerns in return.
“The hope and the enthusiasm of these young girls is part of why we do our work,” Healey said.