Girls not Going into CS 1095
An anonymous reader writes "The Times has an article about what you already know: few girls go on to be IT women. For example, the 2001 AP exam in computer science drew 19,000 boys and just 2,400 girls. Information technology, despite its relative youth, has been far slower to approach gender equality than law or medicine, fields which decades ago overtly excluded women. The problem is not lack of smarts: Girls statistically outperform boys overall in grade school and make up 57% of college graduates, margins that are growing to the point that some colleges are toying with affirmative action for men."
I can assure you (Score:5, Funny)
I can assure you the guys are even fewer in this case...
Re:I can assure you (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of my girlfriends just would rather not be thought of as geeks even with the positive meaning it now has. It would be incredibly hard to put into words what I've observed since starting my transition, but it is incredibly interesting. I wouldn't have ever actually believed it if I hand't lived it.
A lot of what I'm having to do is start over. Currently where I live, the computer job market has completely fallen apart. I just hope my future in computers isn't dictated so much by my gender.
And for the sarcastic person who remarked on how "hard" it was to tell the difference between a transsexual and a born woman on site, take it from me, it's not always as easy as you would think. I've never been clocked.
Re:I can assure you (Score:5, Insightful)
They had this same stupid idea about welding after the movie "Flashdance" and unsurprisingly few women want to lift heavy things all day or turn wrenches in auto shops.
Re:I can assure you (Score:3, Funny)
you call this a career? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:you call this a career? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that has something to do with it.
Has anyone else thought (Score:2, Redundant)
Girls in CS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Girls in CS (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Girls in CS (Score:3, Funny)
From the article:
I'm on this course and I (plus a couple of hundred other guys) know exactly who's she's talking about!
Re:Girls in CS (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that doesn't just apply to girls. I'm in the third year of a CS degree (though taking some time off to work) and I'd say that a good 80% of the class has no idea why they're there. And had no idea of what CS was about when they signed up for it, but were probably expecting something like the bird courses from high school, or possibly an easy route to a three-figure salary.
Lets face it, most of these people shouldn't be in CS. CS entry rates should be a lot lower than they are, at least if we want the job market to get better and the field to advance. And most of the women who do get through tend to be the ones who like coding, software design, etc. and are good at it.
Fair assessment (Score:5, Interesting)
At my Uni. (at that time anyways) the business school offered a degree in Information Systems Management that would have been far more appropriate for most of the CS students.
More schools should offer MIS undergrad degrees (if they don't already, I really have no idea) and they should be promoted as credible alternatives to CS degrees for students that want to pursue careers in IT rather than 'pure' CS.
(I may be coming off sounding elitist here and I really don't mean to.. I think IT is a perfectly valid career path and universities should be adequately preparing students for that. Simply put, the knowledge and skills needed to design and manage a database system (or whatever) are a lot different than the skills and knowledge needed to write the database software itself)
Re:Fair assessment (Score:3, Interesting)
An excellent point, and probably one I should've considered. A lot of the co-op jobs (basically an internship, for those who don't know) offered at my university weren't programming jobs. Most were tech support or IT (management) jobs, which the CS department offered no training for.
Of course, this is completely apart from the issue of whether or not CS should be doing this at all. The idea of universities being for "job trainign" is a bad one, and the idea that CS is "programming job training" is even worse. That's part of most CS programs, but most don't do a very good job of it. IMHO, CS needs to be separated out from Software Engineering, too.
Re:Girls in CS (Score:5, Interesting)
I am an odd case - I switched into CS, and I am a woman. My original major was in the management department; when I decided I wanted to learn more about computers, I could have easily switched to an MIS degree. But I want to be taken seriously. So I became a CS major. It's been a long, hard year since I switched, but I don't regret it. I'm doing research on creating an adaptive website using a genetic algorithm [ithilien.mine.nu], and I'm only one class short of graduating on time. I plan to go on to grad school in CS - I want to get a M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction.
I switched after the dot-coms tanked, and I knew it. The important thing for me is not whether I get a job in IT (not likely right now anyway), but what I've learned about how computers work. I can open up my PC and muck around with it now, if I wanted to. I can hold an intelligent conversation about the pros and cons of a language. I know how to customize a Linux kernel.
People always told me college was about becoming an educated person, not about getting a job. I didn't understand them until I became a CS major. For the first time in my life, I'm studying something simply because I enjoy it (although I might not agree while doing some of my assignments). I think my study of computer science has made me a more well-rounded person.
Re:Girls in CS (Score:4, Interesting)
And as for the statement that
Girls do not like doing anything that involves concentrating on one single thing for long periods,
all I can say is oh my gawd such total BS. No one really belives that right? I did my undergrad in India in an all-women school and we used to compare ourselves with guys from other schools in our university and you know what we always came on top.
only three figures? (Score:5, Funny)
I remember reading on slashdot that CS folks were working for peanuts, but I didn't realize things were that bad.
Image of the IT industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Image of the IT industry (Score:3, Insightful)
That's bollocks.
Wander by your friendly neighborhood math department some time and take a look at the male/female ratio there. At least at the schools that I've been to, the math departments seem to sport something like a 60%:40% male:female ratio.
Re:Image of the IT industry (Score:5, Interesting)
But there always exceptions, which is why arguing by anecdote is dangerous. For example, my mother was a math major and was chosen in WW-II to be quick-trained as an engineer (they took the top 100 female mathematicians in the country for this), and then worked as an electrical engineer. After the war and her children were into high school, she took a traditional female role as a teacher - math, of course. My daughter taught herself calculus (and received full credit for it, btw) when she was in junior high school. One of the earliest and most well known programmers and inventor (or early promoter - I don't remember which) was Grace Hopper. I work with a female software engineer who also has a bachelors and masters in electrical engineering, have worked with many women programmers over the years.
But... on average, women and men choose different fields partly because of different *average* inherited aptitudes for them.
Re:Image of the IT industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging from the observed (in)competency of hundreds of college graduates, I'd say that anything requiring in-depth knowledge doesn't appeal to most boys, either.
Re:Image of the IT industry (Score:3, Insightful)
Girls do not like doing anything that involves concentrating on one single thing for long periods. They like to switch from one thought to another, and keep many balls up in the air at one time.
This has not been my experience in the industry (20 years) or as a physics teacher (8 yrs). It appears ot me that women are better than men at staying on task and completing it especially if it's tedious. They are also good at juggling many things. Men are better at focusing completely on something they find interesting to the exclusion of everything else.
I believe the reason this appears is that in general women feel duty and responsibility much more strongly than men and most especially when they are young. I don't know anything about "girls" in the workplace.
Give a group of men and women 6 things to do at once, and the women will try to do them all and the men will pick the most interesting (or profitable) and stick with that one. The result is that the guys finish "something" first and that's what is noticed while the women plug away in the background finshing the rest.
These are generalities. I have seen those favored women non-completers who drifted from project to project, getting the "idea" credit, and then moving on to something new before the project got to the grunt work and doomed reality phase. And they also appeared to have the combination of ample breasts and excessive friendliness. I know guys who are exactly the same way, but their attributes are good golf scores, good-ol-boy networking, and tireless agression towards those not in the group.
Furthermore, I'd like to state that it's mostly a matter of perception. That while generalities are often based upon common observation, small differences get exaggerated into labels. The differences in ability to focus and multitask among the group of all women goes from women who can easily do both to women who can do neither. The point is the the variation among the members of the group "women" is much greater than the difference between women-as-a-group and men-as-a-group.
What about perception? Those people who think women are useless will only notice the 1/100 who is the drifting fluff and never see the 99 who are grinding away in the background. Those who think all men are are agressive baboons and good-ol-boys (good-ol-baboons?) will only notice those guys to the exclusion of the others.
When people get to be the boss, they assign people to tasks according to their perception and thus increase the appearance of the generalization to others.
By-the-way, this idea:
observation->
generalization->
selective perception->
strengthened belief in generalization->
enforce generalization onto others
is a general problem in science, politics, race relations, religious conflicts, and family disputes.
Re:Yes, they are different (Score:3, Interesting)
Mother's don't. Actually, mothers have to multitask to w+n+c, where "w" is their job, "n" is the ammount of housework that they do, and "c" is the number of their children under the age of 30.
While the "in-depth" crack was a load of bullocks, it is true that women multitask far better than men--and that men "focus" equally better than women.
Of course, the REAL reason why CS doesn't appeal to women is that it's a boy's club. The tools, methidology, culture, and framework are all designed by rather cloistered geeks for their own use in putting out a rather arcane end product.
Plus, it's a psedudo-mechanical thing, and there aren't that many women auto mechanics, either.
Re:Image of the IT industry (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife does not seem to have deep hack mode. Her brain always multitasks."
This is something else that comes into it: it's starting to become apparent that high-functioning autism (Asperger's Syndrome) can make people very good coders, for exactly the reason you describe. (Tried to find the Wired article from last year or so about this, but no dice.)
Autism is three to four [talentdevelop.com] times as likely to hit males as females.
So there may be something to the idea that men genetically concentrate better. But, if that's the case, there's also something to the notion that women are naturally better with social subtleties and communication.
And this is a bad thing how? (Score:3, Funny)
Girls are okay. Programming is more fun. Guys are more fun. Geek guys are the most fun.
Re:Too much math! (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you can't handle the straight forward logic required to get through a few high level math classes, what makes you think that mastering a complex algorithm is going to be easy?
Math courses are rarely more complicated than figuring out a quicksort or Djiktras spanning tree algorithms. Futher, math is actually easier since you need only convince a human that you know what you are doing, whereas a computer requires that every little nitpicky detail be exactly right.
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
True, but you might want to investigate why this is so. Perhaps there is something inhibiting them to make a free choice.
Dave
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
Flash forward. Another HS. They stuck me in "typing classes" and "word processing".
And what do I do today? I'm an IT person.
I'll NEVER take another IT class in highschool (because I'm too old) or in college without first speaking to the teachers in-depth and deciding if a.) taking the class will teach me anything b.) the teacher will be willing to teach me anything and c.) if the class is equal to or above my current level of knowledge.
I've found that it's beneficial to introduce myself with a full list of my creds, experiences, and a categorical list of what I do and do not know. I seem to get a MUCH better education/reaction from tech guys that way than if I tried to be a modest lil' girl. The problem with most women is that they're either so timid, or they lie about what they know to come across better. Fools.
-Sara
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the year 2003. Get with the program. But if you want a little bit of history, I'll give you some. In the 1800's a bunch of *white* Irish people came over here (the US) and were handed all the crap jobs. Where are the Irish now? Then a bunch of *white* Italians came over here and were given crap jobs. Where are they now? Ditto for the Greeks, Scandanavians and Russians.
Asian males unlike White Males earned their spot by coming here and working hard, White Males like say George Bush who inherit wealth and social power never have to work hard.
My paternal grandfather, a white male, earned his spot by working his butt off driving a truck long hours. My maternal grandfather, another white male, earned his spot by raising hogs and cattle while living in an adobe hut. Nothing was handed to them on a silver plate. George Bush, along with Al Gore, is arepresentative of a social *class*, not of a race or gender.
Bill Gstes started Microsoft WITHOUT a degree.
Bill Gates got to be CEO of Microsoft because he created that company from the ground up. From nothing. Microsoft didn't hand him the CEO position, he *created* it.
An Asian would have had to have a PHD from MIT do start a company and get as much capital.
All an asian needs to do to start a company is to start a company. I see thousands of asian businesses with no PHD's in sight. As for capital, how much do you think was given Bill Gates to start Microsoft? None! He didn't get any until Microsoft had already proven itself as a viable company.
I suspect you have a very unclear view of how the real world works. Unless you're an Al Gore with a millionaire politician father, everyone has to work their butts off to be successful.
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that you really do need that PhD (though an MBA doesn't hurt) in order to start a company. I'm saying that we need to call MS off as an example. Its like using the rockefellers as an example of entrepeneurship.
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no race or group of any kind that has a monopoly on oppression. If you want to see people living bad lives, you can go to small towns all across the country and see white people living in squalor and abject poverty. You can see towns with 30% unemployment rates that are full of white people. You can't tell me for a second that the white guy who can't feed his family because his arms got ripped off by farm machinery is somehow better off than a rich person of any race. You have absolutely no right to talk about how "privileged" a group of people is until you have lived in their shoes. Treating people badly because they have some sort of imaginary advantage over you is nothing but bigotry.
BTW, I know plenty of Asians who are doing just fine in IT, getting paid very well and getting promotions. Many of them only have a BS and some of them non-CS degrees. I have difficulty seeing what is making their lives so goddamn difficult.
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is the CEO? Is it an Asian? Or a White Male?
Only 96 percent of CEOs are White Males in Silicon Valley.
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:3, Informative)
By definition, if the admissions processes are not colorblind and sexblind, they are racist and/or sexist. That sort of factor should never affect admissions in any way. The only way to reach certain ratios that Affirmative Action tries to achieve is to artificially inflate the admission standards for some groups and artificially deflate the admission standards for another group.
Women represent 56% of all college students in the USA. The University of Georgia decided to use Affirmative Action to try to even out their 63/37 female//male ratio, and got the percentage of males up to 43% that way. A female student sued and won because the school's policy was unfairly descriminating against her on the basis of sex, in violation of the 14th amendment. The case against black/white affirmative action is just as valid. Schools should never even ask for the race, gender, or religion of the applicant on any application. Applying any such information to the admissions process would be a heinous crime, in my opinion.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. This is politically incorrect, but it is no less true. There are NO barriers to women entering IT or Engineering. Indeed, when I was at UCL (incidentally, the first University in Britain to admit women) there were even special scholarships open only to women studying in the Faculty of Engineering. There were a few females in my class, but only 10-15%.
And you know, females outnumbered males in English and Speech Therapy and a bunch of other subjects too. Why was there no outcry from the "national organization of men" about that?! And while I'm here, why is there a minister for women in the government, and not one for men?
Men and women are different. It is a fact that men's brains are optimized for spacial awareness, and women's for language processing. We should be celebrating differences, not trying to force everyone into the same mold!
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed.
I wonder when the "equality by statistics" thing gets jettisoned. The gender ratio shouldn't be used as a test to prove inequality, I suspect it is simply because it is easier to explain in 15 second TV interview sound bites, so in short, it is political manipulation.
I am content, as long as there are no real systematic or organizational barriers. Simple ratios do not prove a barrier. I would like to see a slightly more complex ratio, such as how many of each sex apply, and how many get accepted. Even then, that would not be real proof of a barrier, I suspect that that would be ignored by the lobbies _because_ it the results are inconvenient to their aims. It must be checked to see if the standards were or were not met by particular applicants.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
i had a number of people ask me why i, as a girl, was a computer science major in college, and i think it had a lot to do with the fact that was i playing games on an apple IIc in kindergarden and had science-minded parents telling me i could do it if i wanted to.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
But do you think that over time, parents have been more encouraging to their female children, or less? Because if they've gotten more encouraging, then the statistics don't back up your theory, since increasingly less women have gone into Computer Science.
Anecdotally, I think I ended up in Computer Science due to a natural aptitude and interest for it. As a child, I grew up with little exposure to technology, and liked to read comic books a lot. I first really discovered that Apple IIc in Third Grade, and I was hooked; I was hunched over that computer with two of the other guys who were equally fascinated.
No girls expressed any interest, even though we all used the computers in the lab as well once or twice. I asked my parents to get me a computer, and I spent tons of time on my Commodore 64, learning what BASIC I could from magazines; it grew from there. My fascination for computers was completely disporportionate to both my background and my exposure to them.
Note that I'm not saying that nurturing doesn't make a difference; it probably wouldn't have in my case anyhow, but maybe it did in yours. But nurturing alone does not begin to explain my experiences, so I think there are other primary factors at work here.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
She does play with her Barbies with her brothers - a bad guy action figure kidnapps barbie, then the good-guy action figures rescue barbie. My daughter uses a giant teddy bear as one of the good guys, and barbie escapes on her own power frequently.
Girls and boys are different, and its not just the upbringing. Even when given the opportunity to do things generally "boyish" or "girlish" there is a real tendancy to pick the traditional stuff. They just enjoy the traditional stuff more. If fact I would say there is much more pressure on boys to do "boy" stuff han there is pressure on girls to do "girl" stuff.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard that before, even from one of the most nurture-over-nature people I know (once she observed her nieces/nephews).
But I still don't buy it. Yes, you are the parent. Yes, your actions affect your child's development most of all, but your child does not live in a vacuum. Do your kids watch TV? Do they have friends? Then they interact with an outside world that teaches them things, especially subtle things, that you may not be teaching them - but they learn it all the same.
That's why I see pointing the finger at biological differences as giving up. It's "oh well, there can't be any other explanation for it, so it's biology." And once you say it's biology, you don't have you explain or justify yourself any more, because honestly nobody really understands it anyway.
Sorry about the rant. That being said..
If fact I would say there is much more pressure on boys to do "boy" stuff han there is pressure on girls to do "girl" stuff
I definitely agree with you on that. Maybe not "much" more, but yes, more. And that's a sad thing, really. As Oscar Wilde said in The Importance of Being Earnest:
"Every woman becomes like her mother. That's her tragedy. No man does - that's his."
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what makes the difference? Well, both schools are located on an urban campus and cater largely to working adults. Very, very few students at either school, in any major, are 18-year-olds who are attending with money from The Bank of Mommy and Daddy. These are people who have been out of high school for a while, have an idea how the real world works, and are a lot less vulnerable to social pressures that say, "Girls aren't good at ___" or whatever. (NB: the sex ratio on campus overall is also a lot closer to parity than the generally female-dominated college campus population -- which also, I think, has a lot to do with slightly older people of both sexes having some experience with the real world.)
In high school, you learn that girls aren't good at math and science, and boys don't really need to go to college, and a lot of other bullshit. As an adult, you learn very quickly how things really work -- and that what really matters is doing something you want to do and have the talent to do, not whatever your friends think is cool.
Re:Correct but its societies flaw (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, the women who work with me in software engineering are making just as much money as me, a male. Why is that I wonder? Is it because the Old Boy Network hasn't gotten around to issuing marching orders to our CEO? Or is it because we are doing the exact SAME job.
The fault isn't in the salaries. The fault is that women have been directed by society into the lower paying jobs. There is discrimination out there, but it isn't coming from the payroll department, it's coming from mommies and daddies who tell their little girls to grow up to be nurses and tell their little boys to grow up to be doctors.
Maybe It Says Something (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Look around. If you were a women, would you want in? Remove the obsession with computing, and what's left? Long hours, stress, insecurity, etc.
3. Perhaps this says something about how non-geeks perceive the happy world of IT -- as a boys club.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe you may be slightly off on that there. I have never heard of a school accepting a person based solely on gender or race. What normally happens is that there are several areas considered in admission: standardized test score, GPA, gender, race, geographic location, and so on. Then you, say, get 3 points for a 33 on the ACT, 4 points for a 4.0, and 1 point for being a female. The idea is to give a slight benefit of the doubt to the female/male/white guy who happened to get a 28 on the ACT.
Further, almost all schools have a bare minimum requirement for tests/GPA (it's frequently a composite score sort of thing, 3.5 & 1200 on SAT, 3.0 & 1400 SAT). And state schools, at least in all of the state I know of, are rigidly bound to these. Schools are allowed a specific number of exceptions for admittance every semester, so that they can use to admit someone, say, like myself who had no high school GPA to speak of.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Now, back on topic, if the girls don't want to be in IT,
> what's the problem? Again, don't push them in to
> something they don't want to do. And it's not a case of
> men not letting them in. I think, if anything, that us
> geeks are typically more accepting of differences (OK, OS
> holy wars excepted!) than the rest of society on the
> whole.
Take me for an example. I'm one of the women that made it into IT (been in IT since 1986). For as long as I can remember, as a child, my brother always got the cool toys (trains, video games, etc.). When I wanted to play with them, or gasp, actually wanted some of my own (baby brothers don't share well), my mother would always lecture me on how these were toys for boys, and not appropriate for girls. What was appropriate for girls? Things like a toy sewing machine with the needle removed (for safety).
When I got older, my IQ and constant A's in science and math did get the rules on appropriate toys bent a bit (being a bit of a prodigy was more important at that point than my being a girl - parental bragging rights and all). I started to get more interesting toys: a chemistry set, electronics kit, "computer" thingie programmed with wires, etc. It still never entered my mind to be a programmer. No guidance councillor ever brought it up.
I majored in chemistry in college, and got into an undergraduate research stipend program. Ironically, that was my real introduction to computers, as the professor I wound up working for used computers to analyze x-ray crystallography results and come up with the structure of whatever molecule he was studying. This professor informally taught me my first programming language, Fortran. I eventually decided I liked the computers better than the chemistry, switched majors, and graduated a BSCS.
From my story, I should think the reason we don't have more girl CS graduates is obvious. It's not that they don't want to be in IT, it is that it never occurs to them that they could be in IT. If it weren't for the professor I did chemistry research with, I would still be a chemist, not a programmer. Heck, if I wasn't so good in school, my parents would have tried to pigeonhole me into some even more traditional role for a girl.
The blame here falls squarely on society itself. Society, in the form of parents and guidance councilors, is still trying to tell girls what they can and can't be. I've been in this industry for 16 years, and it hasn't really changed. In fact, the last time I even had a job where I worked with other female programmers was in 1991, eleven years ago!
The only positive sign I have seen is in the twin shows "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" which are careful to show female characters using computers to do research, programming computers and robots, and even feature a female computer science teacher. And, of course, the Mothra series of movies that has brought us strong female characters for 41 years (including one of Mothra's fairies that flew around on a robot dragon she built).
This is not an issue that can be entirely resolved in college. The only way to fix this problem (and it is a problem) is to make changes in people's attitudes throughout society itself, and definitely in junior high and high school. The media, teachers, guidance councillors, and parents are all part of the problem, and need to be part of the solution. Only then will girls be free to dream of being programmers, and only then will the question "if they want to" apply.
"Heart can reach where hand cannot. Climb over any wall..."
Mothra (via Moll) "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Girls not into CS (Score:2, Funny)
The dating dilemma for CS majors (Score:5, Funny)
"I mean, you've got your veritable pick of the litter. You can choose from all kinds of guys who have no idea how to please you!"
"She said pretty much, yeah!"
57% is misleading (Score:2, Insightful)
The smart women usually end up in med school or law school, but society (not necessarily even the 'evil' white males but women's groups too) seems to push girls more towards law and medicine rather than engineering.
Re:57% is misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
On another note, elementary teaching is a whole 'nuther kinda hard from engineering. I can build a circuit board but God help me if I'm trusted w/ teaching grade school children. What it lacks in technical knowledge requirements (my mother who teaches gradeschool was unable to help me with my sophomore HS math homework), it makes up for in phychological requirements, (having to deal w/ 30 something separate phyche's of pre-pubescent and pubescent children).
Re:57% is misleading -- how? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's the whole point. Society's stereotypes are self-replicating.
Regardless of what major they choose, women outperform men among applicants and graduates, and in high school.
Liberal arts degrees and untapped talent are no proof of weaker intellect, which your comment implies about women. Liberal arts were simply much quicker to welcome them in the days of "finishing schools" -- so they could entertain -- while they were until very recently actively discouraged from studying math. Recent experience has shown that women can conquer these "hard" subjects, and it is partly thanks to this improvement that women recently and for the first time, surpassed men in college degrees. As the article quotes one instructor, the number of high school girls skyrocketed once the disparity was addressed.
One strong factor rarely experienced by men is being isolated in a male-dominated environment. Who wants to be the trailblazer? The only parallel example for men that comes to mind is nursing, which still draws few men despite its increasing prestige. By way of analogy, there are numerous examples of people crossing the color barrier to take jobs for which it had been assumed they were not qualified. Among minorites the gender gap increases: For blacks, a community with strong gender issues, the ratio of women to men obtaining degrees is 2:1.
Margaret Atwood has commented [cbc4kids.cbc.ca] that when she was graduated from high school in the 50's, the guidance book told her she had 5 options: homemaker, nurse, secretary, teacher, or stewardess. Can you imagine being presented such a barren palette? By deciding to be a writer she broke the rules, and it wasn't easy or endorsed. But as she puts it, she realized she didn't want to be a writer, she was a writer.
Math became the last vestige of male-dominated fields, aside from the military, and then the math-related fields of computer science and engineering. Experience suggests that women will penetrate these fields as well, given support and not discouragement. I'm not sure that's happened yet.
Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
--K
Re:Yeah... (Score:2)
Well DUH (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell. I can't even tell my parents what I do for a living. I have to dumb it down so much that it means absolutely nothing. "I work with computers" doesn't cut it because everyone does nowadays. "Computer Security" means nothing to them, beucase, what, the computer is going to get up and leave?
Then there's weeks wehere I have to do The Work Of 10 People. I call those "Every Week". In my current job I actually get THANKED for that, which is an IMPROVEMENT over every previous job I've had. But do I get paid extra? Nope. Do I get a better computer to do the work on? Nope. Do I get a comfortable CHAIR? Nope. (please don't OSHA me. It's not that uncomfortable). Do I get a door I can close so people will stop bugging me when I have to build 10 webservers from scratch in 1 hour? Nope.
If I had any kind of brains I'd get the hell out of this field so fast the Dilbert strips would fly off the cubicle walls.
I'm suggesting girls have WAY too much common sense to get into this in the first place.
(That said, the girls I do know who are in IT are absolutely great at it).
Re:Well DUH (Score:3, Funny)
Looks like things haven't changed much, have they?
The problem (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not to say that they can't be good at it, though. It seems that women will study harder and get better grades, but its gonna be guys hanging out after class discussing the stuff in the pub because they have a genuine interest. Just my two cents.
umm.. Duh? (Score:3, Informative)
Now tell me.. how many women do you know actually LIKE "playing with" machines? This is the same male-dominated issue to affects the construction industry, the auto-machanic business, and many others.
The female gender doesn't generally WANT much to do with mechanical things (I'm not questioning their ability, just stating a trend in their apparent desire).
More than that, computers usually don't allow them to demonstrate their great personal/social skills (which are more often then not, 1000 times better than men's).
Re:umm.. Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in my experience, the large drop-out rate in CS is partly based on the expection of people. They think, they are going to play with computers, but they aren't. They are going to play with ideas and information.
In other languages (French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish) CS is dubbed as "information science".
Consequence of political correctness (Score:2, Insightful)
But most people are taught to pretend they don't know this (even though it's so damn obvious) because when we were all in grade school, our teachers taught us that "everyone is equal".
Sure... and that's why the NBA is full of Black people.
Mathematics, Human Involvement (Score:5, Insightful)
As pointed out by some already, statistics tend to show that men do better in mathematics.
In addition, I've also seen some state one reason for this gender disparity is that fields such as law and medicine have much more human involvement. Computer science, however, is frequently detached, sometimes to the point of seeming human hostile. And, you'll pardon the stereotypical thinking, but it seems that women tend to gravitate towards jobs which involve significant human involvement. An emphasis on human factors engineering and interface design might make computer science programs more attractive to those looking for a more human-centered job, male or female.
could it be .... (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate... I know very few girls in the CS program at my skool [indstate.edu]. But those few girls that enroll are treated as well, if not better, than the guys in the program (we're all happy to have women around... duh!).
Re:could it be .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Programming is an antisocial activity (Score:3, Insightful)
This can also be applied to programming itself. If you are going to call Computer Science a SCIENCE, it is important to recognize that what we are really learning about is the theories and discovery of how to do things. As far as the implementation goes, the programming, that is the trivial part.
Failure to achieve gender neutrality? (Score:2)
This mangling of the language seems to be resulting in a mangling of ideals too. If women want to be in CS, fine, if the make a different choice that should be fine too.
Girls to Guys Ratio (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Girls to Guys Ratio (Score:5, Funny)
Golly, what they're MISSING... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point I'm trying to make is, there are very few women in the garbage collection or plumbing industries either. But almost noone considers this a terrible sign of gender inequity propagating itself through the ages.
Computer science is ostensibly a highly-skilled profession which can lead you on to great pay and excellent opportunities, but I think we're approaching (may have already hit) a reckoning in the field: we're being viewed more and more as an essential service, not a "core competency." That is, just like electricians or others who are also technically expert but whose use is minimized to keep expenses down. And who get very little respect within the organization except for the 15 minutes after they fix a problem.
Anyway, I'm not trying to make this a huge polemic against the treatment of information workers, but the point is, maybe it's becoming a field women don't WANT to be a part of, and for good reason. Maybe the college girl who pursues sales or marketing or preps for an MBA isn't afraid of the tech jargon and male braggadocio in CS; maybe she just thinks it's a boring field leading to crappy jobs. And that's maybe not a horribly innaccurate way to think anymore.
Re:Golly, what they're MISSING... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, as long as CS/IT wages are above average there is no glut out there, much as you like to play the victim. This is simple economics.
Granted, times are not as good as they were a few years back when a DeVry dropout could make over $60-70K in a dot com, but the market for CS is still above average.
Get a degree in arts to see what a glut in the market really is (do you want fries with that?)....
why would anyone go into CS now? (Score:5, Interesting)
go scan the classifieds in any major city. it ain't 1997 anymore. (this is where you say "no one hires from the papers anymore") okay, go look at dice, craigslist or some major corporation's website. looking pretty sparse.
my brother was working for one of the large corporations that helped push the h1b program through congress several years ago. they had a website full of programming jobs...hundreds. yet the company was laying off people? they were getting hundreds of resumes every month, and hiring no one. a scam to show an artificial shortage...big business and congress looked each other in the eye and winked.
adios, CS careers.
Why is this NEWs? (Score:3, Redundant)
IT != CS (Score:5, Insightful)
So, are girls not interested in CS, IT, or both?
Hard to be a woman in CS... (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem, IMO, is that there seems to be a couple of guys in any given CS class who seriously cannot handle women, and who one way or the other make life hell for the women in the class. Some are just plain creeps, some are always trying to upstage them, some seem convinced that women in CS get through just because they're given preferential treatment. My sis used to get comments like "Geez, you're smart for a girl" at least once a semester -- that's a pretty shitty thing to say; if you think it's a compliment, it's not.
Then there are the usual stalker types who get their jollies sending out creepy emails and eyeballing girls in the class -- my friend decided to work rather than go to grad school at Madison because this happened *twice* (on the level of restrining order), fer chrissake.
Granted this is just anecdotal and two people does not a study make. But say what you want about societal pressures on girls not to be scientific or a predisposition against math, what I've seen drive them away is a hostile environment that doesn't seem to exist in most other fields.
What can we do to fix it? I just don't know. When they bothered my sister, the solution was obvious but definately not constructive. My friend used the law to help her (restraining orders and all), but that didn't seem to help in the overall scheme of things either -- who needs that sort of pressure while taking 400-level CS courses?
Anyhow, that's the problem as I see it. I don't have a good solution, but it's something we *must* work on.
because they think its boring (Score:3, Interesting)
Hopeless (Score:5, Funny)
Before you get ecstatic that you have a 10% chance to get laid, out of those 2400 girls 1000 are lesbians and 1000 are dating businessmen and lawyers. So it's more like 1%. Now go have a beer!
Geek Superiority, and an Uninviting Atmosphere (Score:3, Interesting)
I would say that the environment is not one to be condusive to a female. Let alone the hormone factor.
A very appropriate comic [stanford.edu].
I think that much like females outperforming males in elementary school they also do so in engineering programs. I knew a few Engineers at school that could kick any guys but in what they did.
Affimative action on the horizon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Statements like that make me cringe... Generally such statements are soon followed by "investigations into discrimination" and "affirmative action policies".
Of course, everybody on the planet ought to know by now that if girls don't feel like doing something (such as going into IT, with long hours, no overtime, etc) then all the policies ever written ain't gonna make them change their minds. And that's perfectly fine with me.
What really irritates me are the idiots that set rules like, "you must employ equal ratios of men, women, white, black, yellow, straight, gay, able-bodied, disabled, etc", because rules like that can lead to companies being forced to lower job requirements to be able to attract the correct ratios.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that there aren't any "men, women, white, black, yellow, straight, gay, able-bodied, disabled, etc" smart enough to hold down good IT jobs, I'm saying that just because not enough minorities are employed may mean that the rules are fucked up... It doesn't necessarily mean that employers are deliberately discouraging minorities, or anything sinister like that.
Of course, there are almost certainly some employers that do discriminate, but there are cases where that's absolutely necessary. For example, a person confined to an electric wheelchair probably didn't ought to be a liontamer... Similarly, a blind person might have a lot of difficulty working with microscopes in a lab...
My experience... (Score:5, Informative)
The class was limited to 75 students. The first lecture, three females showed up. By the next day, one had dropped, so we had 2 females and 73 males in the class.
I became good friends with one of the two females. The female-male ratio in the class and in the CS departments together were a frequent topic of conversation. I got to know her as a very intelligent person, and someone who worked very hard (two requirements to stay in the class).
In a situation like that, the other students, the TAs, and the prof are all going to look at the females differently. They are obviously not the norm in the class, and it is all too easy to expect then that they will act differently. They could do well (which my friend did - the two of us often got the highest scores on the exams) and people chalk that up to "She is female in an all-male field. Just surviving is hard enough, so only the really tough ones survive. It is not surprising that she is doing so well." If they do poorly you can chalk that up to "Well, it is rough for a female to survive in an all-male field. That does not excuse the poor grade, but the situation does have to be realized."
My firned, of course, just wanted to be judged against the males in the class without a second thought about her sex. When you are the obvious exception, though, things you do normally are looked at with that difference in mind.
I learned a lot about how rough it is to survive those sorts of ratios. I think it would be difficult for any female to walk into a program with a ratio like that.
[Also, I am simply flabbergasted by other posts to this story that show an ignorance of the pressure that would face females going into a male-dominated field like CS. "Maybe they just do not want to" and "Girls do not do well at math" are just about as absurd a thing as I have read on Slashdot, and I have been here a *long* time. They demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of the full issues surrounding the topic.
Also realize that I am a Libertarian and I am opposed to Affirmitive Action type solutions. Instead, I think that colleges could do a better job of providing better support systems for females that do enter fields like CS.]
Eastern Europe is different (Score:4, Informative)
Having studied CS on one of Russian universities, female:male ration was almost equal. Perhaps (or most likely) that has to do with the society itself. Women have always been allowed and enoucraged to persue higher education, they have always worked "male" professions (i.e. painters, bus drivers, engineers) and hence is the high admission rate to technical faculties.
However, having also worked for a number of Russian (Moscow) companies, I have rarely seen women occupying positions in their fields of study. Most women either get married and leave their diplomas collect dust, or take on a completely different job.
It can also be said that a lot of people who take, for instnace, political science (I ended up doing just that), sociology and other disciplines, choose to persue a different career from what they have studied. My fellow "politicians" all but a few took MBAs and other business-related courses and ended up working for private sector doing radically different work from what they first intended.
So if you're in school to merely obtain a degree, you would choose something easy and at least fun (frankly speaking, CS is hardly any fun for women).
Although, a person in charge of CS department in Carleton University (Canada, Ottawa) is a woman, a PhD in CS, and a rather attractive one
so... (Score:3, Funny)
- Convert institutions of learning into institutions of conformity and political correctness.
- Socially engineer maleness as a disease, which must be punished and medicated.
- Institute affirmative action for men.
Ok, stop the machine, I want to get off.Well of COURSE not! (Score:4, Funny)
Erhm... that's probably why they're NOT in CS. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine the majority of the CS crowd were fairly high performers in school, but I honestly don't see too many of them being validictorians and such. They tend to put doing exciting activies above their studies NOT related to computer science. We're typically not a well rounded bunch when it comes to academics. Personally my home libary is greatly biased because of this. I've got books one:
The ratio to tech books to other is 5:1, if not more lopsided too. Face is, CS people tend to only ever concentrate at one thing at a given time. Women just aren't wired this way, which is why hanging out with "CS creeps" doesn't appeal to many of them.
Just my two cents anyway. My last job had 3 women in a company of about 16. One was a programmmer, the other to were hired as programmers but moved into management positions because they got so sick of programming. My current job has erhm... 2 women out of 25 in technical positions. It's just a different type of person that likes to do this stuff, and women don't find it appealing. Fine by me.
whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)
i started my love for computers and math on my very own when i was less than 10 years old. the largest influences on that were my engineer father who helped me with math when i was young and the purchase of our first computer.
i knew it was what i wanted to do. i never questioned it. my relationship was with the computers and not with other people. especially since i was self-taught. i never felt that i was not 'allowed'. i never felt any different from any guy out there. computers were what i wanted to do and being around other women was not a big deal. oh, and the 'reputation' or whatever of being associated with computer geeks? so what. like i said, my relationship was with the computers.
maybe it's because in grade school, instead of people telling me "no, you can't hack it because you're a girl," i got "no, you can't hack it because you're too young." (i had already skipped a grade and was taking courses a year ahead of my classmates.) all my administration fights in highschool were because i maxed out my math&cs&science courses junior year. not because i am female.
frankly, it wasn't until reflection years later that i realized that i was the only girl in those courses. it wasn't until significantly after the fact that i realized (after being told) that i was the "only hot cs major in our class".
after college, i managed the internal network and had three direct reports. all guys. i worked closely with the network ops team. guess what? all guys. it was never an issue.
i don't notice. i don't care. my sex has never held me back. i knew what i was good at and i was going to do it. if someone is going to be an idiot and assume that i don't know anything because i'm female, well, too bad for them. as an aside, honestly, i've only been a victim of true sex-discrimination less than five times over the course of my life. ("no, listen *miss*, i need to speak to a *TECHNICIAN*") i just feel that when we stop thinking of ourselves as 'different' or deserving of more attention because we're female, we'll get the 'acceptance' that we're looking for. and as i've never felt any different from the guys i was taking these classes with or working with, i've always felt accepted.
who knows? maybe it really is just a lack-of-interest thing that keeps women out of IT/CS, but i see that more starting from a very young age and not necessarily majorly influenced by highschool/college teachers. though, this is only my personal experience. i don't see a lot of the discrimination that i hear other women complain about...
Breeding Geek Girls... (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife and I are working on it; we have at least two of three daughters who are very much into computers and learning to program. The oldest is only 13, though, so no requests for dates -- Daddy and Mommy can be very protective ;)
What do we present to our young women as role models? Britney Spears! Barbie! Sex in the City! Even TV sci-fi fails; women are either kick-ass warriors or love slaves. Even when a woman *is* an engineer (as in Firefly), she comes off as a bit odd and disconnected from her peers.
Learning programming is critical to success in any scientific or engineering field. Office monkeys can get by knowing basic applications -- but to be involved in the leading edge of technology, understanding computers is essential.
Arrrrgh (Score:4, Interesting)
And don't make assumptions on what women do or do not want. I am perfectly willing to stay up all night coding surviving only on caffeine. I buy clothing based on whether or not I can carry my Leatherman in a pocket. I have attended many a Warcraft III LAN party with my boyfriend and his roommates. I build my own computers, run Linux, and for God's sake, I read Slashdot. ('Nuff said..) And I'm not unique -- I got to Olin College of Engineering, which has a 50-50 male to female ratio, and there are plenty of chicks there just like me.
Just keep in mind that it's very much a matter of exposure. For example, one girl in my class had never had any programming experience and only went into engineering on a whim, but loved our first CS class so much she soon after taught herself Perl in order to keep the college Quote Board organized. Another girl who had been considering journalism instead of engineering went crazy with her first introduction to CAD modelling and power tools. It's just that so many of the girls there had never seen any of this before, didn't realize it was out there, and only by some fortunate chance ended up finding it in college.
But please don't assume that women aren't interested. Think of it instead is that a lot of them just don't know what they're missing.
Why? For starters, look over this thread... (Score:4, Insightful)
Could it be connected to the fact that anytime the gender disparity issue gets raised, the reaction on the part of men is to reply with old sexist jokes and pathetic rationalizations ("women just aren't wired for computers")?
Then, if some amazingly brave woman actually has the courage to relate her experiences with sexism in CS departments (I noticed one -- thank you neuroticia), the thanks she gets is accusations of paranoia (becuase obviously some blowhard
Even a man relating the experiences of a woman he knew in CS being stalked gets met with claims that women are just being too oversensitive.
There isn't one simple explanation for why women aren't going into computers, but it might have something to do with men's total lack of restraint in making blatantly sexist and obnoxious comments whenever the subject is raised.
Just Shows Girls ARE Smarter (Score:5, Insightful)
With the gross swings in fortunes in the IT job market, overtly hostile actions of the US government towards the profession (ie H1-B and the Fair Labor Standards Act exemption for hourly paid programmers) and poor treatment by employers in general, why would any intelligent individual want to make a career of IT?
The declining enrollments plus the rejection of the field by anyone with any ability to interact with others on a person to person basis (i.e. NOT INTJ Myers-Brigg) spell continuing turmoil for this as a profession.
I have already told my children that there is no future in technology careers in the US... they are looking at humanities, not sciences as the road to a happy future.
Real Problems With Project Management (Score:4, Informative)
$G
Who see's X's not in profession Y's as np?? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for anyone, if you'd like the flexability to go into any carrer, you need to be able to both handle sci/math issues and empathic/literatry fields. If many women don't strive to get the math/sci backgroud, then they won't have as much flexability. I see many men who do the exact opposite in shorting themselves in the empathy/literary vein. They couldn't write a understandable document to save their life, and they can't empathize what their co-workers are feeling.
I personally will try to get all my children to excel in BOTH areas. But if they don't I'll point out what flexability that they are loosing and be done with it.
Very few *american* women (Score:3)
This doesn't help me much, though, because most of them don't speak English that well
In other news (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
And also... (Score:3, Funny)
And I can assure you.. the number of CS guys going into girls is far less!
Hardware Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that this in no way justifies discrimination against women. This discrimination is still clearly a reality, and must ultimately be eradicated root and branch. It is wrong to prejudge individuals by the group they belong to, not, as extreme "nurturists" would hold, because there are no differences among groups, but because respect for ones fellow humans requires that we treat them as equals. I.e., equality of opportunity is a matter of ethics, and ethical principles shouldn't be held hostage to questions of animal biology.
For those who wish to wring their hands about this gender discrepancy, must every field be split, 50/50 (well, 51/49)? Is the only possible "just" society one where soldiers, professional athletes, nurses, artists, even rapists, thieves and murderers, are exactly as likely to be male as female? What if the average woman doesn't care very much about computers, or artillery, or how to hotwire cars, not because of Barbie, or because their math teacher didn't call on them in seventh grade, but because she simply finds other things more interesting? If such women exist, discrimination "on behalf" of women in many male-dominated fields would ultimately make women less happy. It would, by definition, divert women who would otherwise be happier doing something else into male-dominated careers, to satisfy some sort of mathematical imperative of justice.
That is why I'm very leary of those who would rush to affirmative action-ize CS. You might not side with me on the "nature" side of this question; but regardless, I think the nature/nurture debate in this case is too far from resolution to be sure whether such programs are a net benefit or harm to womankind.
Re:girls who play cs (Score:4, Funny)
Or are they just a lot of ten year old boys you are hearing over Voice Comm?
I never felt so old as when they added voice communication to counter-strike and I realized half the people who were kicking my ass hadn't hit puberty yet.
Re:It's all about mathmatics (Score:2)
Maybe word just hasn't gotten out yet about how easy it is to be an MCSE?
A guy has more upper body strength that women, but women have more
It all depends on what you're looking for. Guys have more interesting things lower down.
Re:It's all about mathmatics (Score:5, Interesting)
However, research has shown that if you take a black kid and put him in a rich white kid's family and put the white kid in the black kid's family, their performances will switch along with the family. In the argument of nature vs. nurture, our modern day concept of intelligence seems to favor nurture.
The same with this thing. Perhaps it is the enviornment that girls are introduced to computers, or the fact that it's kind of presented as a guy thing to do, that attributes to the fact that they're just not interested in it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Did communism a good job in promoting women?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not see everything just in black and white. Yes, in the former socialist countries (there are no Communist Countries, read your Marx again... lol...) women had it easier to get integrated into society by getting jobs and thus earning admiration etc. Because the traditional obstacles for women, i.e. the typical "women tasks", were non-existent or at least easier to handle.
Think of watching children. In the socialist countries, every mother had a right to a place in the daycare centre for her child. It was up to her to use it or not (so much for the question whether women were forced to work by abandoning their children). So, up to middle management we (yes, I'm from former GDR [germanculture.com.ua]) had quite an equal society.
However, look a little bit up, e.g. at the political scene. How many women do you see there (or have you seen in the past)? Not too many, unfortunately. Because when it came to intrigues (today nicely called "networking"), women were left outside the door. Old boys clubs still ruled. So, no women in the Central Committees of the ruling parties. Rarely women in the top management.
So please, let's se the world as it is - in colours and not just b/w.
Re:Its the damn calculus (Score:3, Interesting)
Software engineering, on the other hand, is not. Perhaps there wasn't a separate major for it, where you went. Still, math is helpful to teach you logic and new ways of thinking. Discrete mathematics and formal logic might have been more helpful, but calculus is generally introduced before those topics, for whatever reason.
Lea
Re:My experience (Score:3, Interesting)
1. there may be some good reason they're avoiding you. maybe you smell. I don't know you, so I don't know.
2. coding is not CS. it's a useful tool, but I've found math to be much more useful. I know somewhere around 7 languages pretty well, but I don't use them, generally, becasue I do math. Yet I'm in CS! Oh my! Something must be wrong here! And it's not very unusual to be able to superficially pick up similar languages from observation, hate to burst your bubble.
3. women are differnt from each other, as are geek women. The guys I've dated had no complaints. I also think you're doing the other people around here a disservice in assuming they're recruiting becasue they want dates. Striving for equal rights and encouragement is often an altruistic pursuit. Don't ascribe one person's motives to everyone. Ans as for your comment about music people, that's rather common. In fact, at Berkeley, most of the Wind Ensemble is made up of engineers.
4. some teachers suck. it happens. If you want to swap horror stories, I'll do so, but I'd like to point out that I know some that are a lot worse that have happened to women of my acquantance. I've found it varies a lot by school district.
5. don't flaunt your scores if you're trying to prove that other people are dumb. Really. I got higher scores than you did, quite signifigantly higher in many cases, and I know that that says just about zilch about my intellegence -- the SAT's are justly deprecated. The AP's tend to be better, but vary widely between subjects. (and while I'm on the subject, the GRE's are pretty silly as well)
Just becasue the women that you know don't point out that they're smart, doesn't mean they aren't. Perhaps you haven't met smart ones -- since there's a smaller pool, it's a bit restrictive. I would simply be very, very careful about assuming women are not as intellegent or as educated as you belive yourself to be. I personally know quite a few very intellegent women in CS. I have been doing rather well for myself as well, thus far.
As for your statement that "for the first time, they're surrounded by a lot of guys who are good, know it, and can best them everytime," it's been my experience that a lot of guys have this issue. I certainly met a lot who expressed these sorts of anxieties, and when you go to grad school, at least at CMU, they point out to you that it's normal.
Feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss this further.
Lea
Re:we don't want chicks in computer science ;) (Score:3, Funny)
Uh.. i'm not a female