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."
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).
Gender equality is a myth (Score:2, Informative)
That's all feminsm should be about: letting women do what they want.
There's not any social benenfit in trying to artificially generate gender equity where pychological economies of scale will result in huge gender disparities. As long as there aren't restrictive sociocultural barriers preventing women from doing what they want, there nothing wrong with have gender disparities.
This doesn't mean girls aren't smart, but rather that they think computer science is for dorks. lol.
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:could it be .... (Score:3, Informative)
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.]
Re:So what? (Score:2, Informative)
You're right, though. Maybe it wasn't that I was a girl. Maybe it was that he didn't like the color of my jeans (blue) or the fact that I was taller than he was.
C'mon. I don't cry wolf. I would have MUCH prefered that we had a conflict of personality. But when someone refuses to shake my hand and the hand of another female student, yet shakes the hands of any guy who offers, it's really fscking hard NOT to assume that it's because I lack a schlong.
-Sara
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
Re:Eastern Europe is different (Score:2, Informative)
I usually don't reply to trolls, but there's lots of spare time on my hands, so why not.
CIS states did in fact have one (if not the best) of the best education before the collapse of SU. Just to give you an example, calculus that I've studied in 10th grade is taught in second/third year of Engineering. And I am not even mentioning literature and other humanities, since a high school graduate in Russia knows way more about history, world literature and overall "
you can say that this education was imposed, and you're right. but
as per the university, I can give bet my limb that hardly 1% of my graduating class from a political science department would be able to pass entrance exams to, for instance, a Moscow-based university. That's unfortunate to notice, but US/Canadian education is far behind that of Dragon countries and CIS states (Russia and Ukraine in particular)
Just to give you an example, you have to write 5 exams (Russian language, literature, history, and two subject relevant to your choice of study; can be foreign language and economics, or chemistry and physics, etc.)
Russian language exam. We're not talking about fill in blanks or some simple stuff they give you here. You are asked to write an essay posed in form of a question that can be based on ANY of hundred authors you were taught in high school. That means that not only do you have to perfectly know the text, but also possess perfect writing skills. The latter go through harsh assessment. For instance, two punctuation errors take away half of the point (judged on a 5-point scale), while a spelling error knocks off a full point. When an overall passing grade is 4.5 (to most universities), there are 9-15 people for each place (each faculty accepts no more than 20 people), and the fact that you cannot apply to more than one university, it makes it next to impossible to get in. If you do get in, you can bet you will get the best education ever.
Sad that you had a bad experience with those "Eastern European" fellows. I run a software company (with my aborted CS degree, Political Science BA, and a Project Management MA) here in Canada, and I can tell you that if it were not for local laws forcing you to hire locals, every one of my employees would be either from India or Russia. I would give Chinese folks a chance as well
Not to say that North American universities don't produce bright minds, they do in fact. But we're talking "averages", and they are favorable overseas.
A bit off-topic, but nevertheless something to think about.
Cheers.
Re:Yes, they are different (Score:2, Informative)
Exactly. For a girl to do as well in CS as the boys do, she has to think like a boy (at least currently). I'm a girl who finds computers fascinating... but I don't want to have to take them all apart or muck with them every time they break. I don't want to have to learn all the details of a tool before I can use it. I'm interested in HCI, and getting computers to work better for people - which includes the tools used by programmers, not just the end products.
Real Problems With Project Management (Score:4, Informative)
$G
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.
Girls can do CS (Score:2, Informative)
Are they blaming it on the field? (Score:2, Informative)
I would love to see more women in IT. In over 20 years of working in IT, I have never seen anything done to keep women out. For whatever reason reason, women just don't *want* to work in IT.