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."
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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).
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:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I say just let nature take its course. If this results in more women graduating, fine. If it results in more men in college, fine. Just don't push people in to an institution because "society" wants race/gender equality in everything, even though there are obvious instances where we are not equal.
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.
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.
IT != CS (Score:5, Insightful)
So, are girls not interested in CS, IT, or both?
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).
Been there, seen it, but no girls want it... (Score:2, Insightful)
It strikes me that it's precisely what we enjoy so much about messing about with technology that drives girls away from the whole scene.
Never mind the fact that a guy over 30 with a tech job is a total (marriage-minded) babe magnet, a fifteen year old student is where the attitudes are formed.
People who have no idea about computing and who are dragged into our department for some cross-concept work (e.g. SMS marketing initiatives) are more than a little surprised by the decent cars, good haircuts and sharp cufflinks we're building a rep for...(just joking - but the point is valid - there are deliberately no visible geeks in the team - but we are there...)
.A fifteen year old sees the "spods, geeks and wierdos with alternate lifestyles" that dominate the only computers in the school. Forget about seeing the career, most people pick their degree for a mix of reasons - social life being at least in the top ten. Take a look at civil engineering degrees as an corroborating example.
Until the initial salaries rise far enough that women/girls want it even though the image is bad (e.g. lawyers), then there'll be no change in the situation. Then you'll see an avalanche.
Individuals' interests in subjects (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps girls don't go in to Comp. Sci. because they have no interest in it?
I'm in electrical engineering and the same "problem" is here. Meanwhile my school has nursing, fashion design, and early childhood education degrees; the majority (85% or more) of individuals in those programs are girls/women: yet there is no preceived "shortage" of male nurses. Why is that? I'll leave the answer as an excercise to the reader.
The same thing occurs in the specialization of surgery in medical school: there is a "shortage" of female surgens. Perhaps the real answer is that women aren't interested in surgery as much as (say) pediatrics. Want to know a secret? There are more female pediatricians then there are male pediatricians: there's an imbalance! Quick! Enforce quotas!
If there are x spots available in a program, let the people who are interested in that program, and qualify, get those x spots.
Anything else is stupidity.
One last defense of my gender on /. (Score:1, Insightful)
There is a bigger problem, though. Go ahead and look at my previous comments. Nearly every one of them has one or five AC replies to the effect of "suck my dick" or "I want to fuck you in the ass". Throughout history, female authors have been denied recognition for their work, because it was commonly assumed that women were incapable of creating what they created. And throughout history, women have been spat upon, threatened, battered, and gangraped by the same men you'll find here on slashdot. For all I know, you yourself are one of those same ACs.
Ask yourself what you gain by contributing to this climate of fear and hate. Ask yourself that question when you scurry off for your nightly porn fix. Ask yourself that question when you insult and harass people on slashdot.
Yes, I AM female. Dammit.
-- Anne Marie
My experiences (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Well, being Gay this is good news. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, fellow gay stud nerds. Being gay this is good news. Now if we could just get geeks to work out more..
Also, IT != Programming; CS != Reality (Score:2, Insightful)
You're absolutely right that IT and CS are largely unrelated.
In 22 years of post-college IT and software development work, I've only ever had to use higher math once (the "winding number" problem, for HTML image-map random polygons), and a one-day web search found me everything I couldn't remember. But IT as practiced in the last 10 years isn't even that close to CS - I know large numbers of MIS folks who can't program at all. And their work doesn't suffer from that! Much of "IT" these days is software installation and trouble-shooting. The same thing happened in the late 1980s in the mainframe world, so it shouldn't be any surprise.
On the flip side, Comp Sci is an academic discipline, like physics, philosophy and mathematics. The primary goal of undergraduate CS departments at the university level (ignoring community colleges etc.) is the production of graduate students, who will eventually become researchers in the field. Their goal is not generally to create COBOL or VB programmers for business applications. In many universities, that's a function of the business schools.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Insightful)
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...
CS == Science; Programming == Art (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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: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.
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: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?)....
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:Image of the IT industry (Score:2, 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.
The fact is, the nature of the subject, and anything else requiring in-depth knowledge, will not appeal to most girls, just like armed robbery doesn't appeal to most girls.
Contary to the teaching of the Women's Liberation Movement, women are not men with oranges up their jumpers - they are actually different.
Reality is not politially correct
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:2, Insightful)
-Sara
Re:affirmative action (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes but white males already get a free pass, so why shouldnt their competition get the same?
I see your point, but why should you have to work twice as hard and be twice as educated to get the same job and same salary as a white male?
And then even if you get this salary, white males who you work with will not respect you as an equal.
Its not about a handout, but what other way is there to make things equal? Its not like you'd get a fair salary without affirmative action, in fact most places wouldnt even hire you assuming because you are a woman that you somehow just are less qualified.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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...
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, 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: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.
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.
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.
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.
CS not necessarily IT (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's NO Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't have children, do you? (Score:1, Insightful)
Men and women are different!
Women can have babies, men can't.
Men are bigger, faster, and stronger. Period. If you don't like it, get over it and move to a real planet. I can bench about 430 pounds, which makes me what? A pretty strong guy, but nothing special. That's world-record territory for a woman. Professional sports is about an absolute meritocracy as you will ever see. There are no women in the NFL, or major league baseball, the NBA, or the top leagues in any sport in Europe. Did you ever notice how the yardage is never shown for LPGA events?
So men are better at some things than women.
Vive la difference!
Re:Image of the IT industry (Score:1, Insightful)
What I find just as intriguing is what it's not a factor of. For example, the disparity exists regardless of skill. I've encountered far fewer I'm-not-worthy walk-on-water ultimate-credibility women programmers than men, and I've encountered far fewer dead-weight don't-upload-now just-keep-the-team-in-pizza women programmers than men as well. No matter how I look at it, I can't finger a cause. Neither can anyone else, men or women, theorist or practical. Lots of people have interesting theories, but nothing is jumping out on this one - and we've been scratching our heads about it for years.
My thoughts are to not dwell on the cause, that perhaps the reasons behind it are far more ingrained than anything that affirmative action is going to be able to address. All you male/female couples living together for years and settled into comfortable patterns - who does most of the cooking? And who pulls the dishwasher out and crawls behind it when it starts leaking? Similar disparate ratios appear. What affirmative action program can affect basic ingrained patterns? It's just not gonna happen, folks. We will NEVER have a 50/50 ratio of men and women programmers, period.
And that's okay! It's not important to try to "correct" that. It ain't broke. What IS important, however, is to work to minimize the artificial barriers in the form of expectations and prejudices that are produced by these disparities. That needs to be the focus of any kind of affirmative action programs. Education and enlightenment should be a priority. There certainly do exist women who, when the dishwasher starts leaking, immediately grab a flathead screwdriver and rummage around in the 3rd drawer down for a hose clamp, and for the sake of the industry and the economy, it's important to give them room to fix the dishwasher.
Re:Girls in CS (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Just a thought... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Geek oneupmanship (Score:2, Insightful)
I really feel for the girls who have posted in this thread and seriously love (and are good at!) what they do. I think I would have followed an IT path myself if I hadn't been bloody-mindedly convinced that I could make a career out of drawing (and I have). But even though art is viewed as a "feminine" field, I'd say illustration is not - I am the only girl in my section at work. In the history of my company I've been the only female artist to stay for a significant period, and the second female artist ever.
In every part of my life, I'm clashing with guys who are convinced that they must be more intelligent than me by default, because I am female. Whether they are or not is not something I care about, but that attitude itself stinks. Any comment along the lines of "you're good, for a girl" is not a compliment, it's a hideous insult. It's easier to sit in the corner and let them think I'm a stupid Mac user than it is to try and convince them that I am not deficient just because I have ovaries. Believe me, I try, but sometimes it's just not worth the effort.
By the way, if any of you have the presence of mind to admit that girls can do what you can do, and not place barriers on a girl because you think she's good-looking, you may actually get lucky. Girls who are dedicated to what they do tend to appreciate the same quality in their geek boys.
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:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Is there anyone you do like? (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me tell you something, I happen to be a white male from a very UNDER-priviledged background, and let me inform you that there is NOTHING worse than being a poor, unpopular, outcast, white-male. I sometimes feel like I am the most hated person on the face of the planet. The elitist rich white males (who by the way are a minority) hate me because I'm not good enough for them. The minorities hate me because they think I'm part of the elitist whites. Fem-nazi's hate me because they think that I alone created the gender gap in our society.
I have done NOTHING but be born to a poor white mother yet I am extremely disadvanted compared to my peers. I was given almost NO financial aid when I applied to the University of Arizona. IF you know the make-up of Tucson Arizona where I live, there is a HUGE hispanic population here. This means that there are both RICH and poor hispanics here, just like there are rich and poor whites anywhere else. A much better of hispanic friend of mine recieved a full scholarship and tons of no interest loan opportunities just for being hispanic, and he only needs to keep a GPA of 2.7 (laughable at best) to maintain these benefits.
I on the other hand worked my ass off all through highschool to earn a 4.0 in HS which barely earned me the tuition waiver (still have to pay board and books which are 80% of the cost of college) and get this, I have to keep a 3.35 GPA or I lose my funding! Oh, and I recieved no loan opportunities to boot because I was considered a "financial risk."
IF you think affirmative action is doing ANYTHING but screwing me out of a fair chance at competing, you are DEAD WRONG.
I'm sorry if you were discriminated against, but the system in place gives me a much harsher beating I assure you. I'm tired of paying the price of some dead white guys who once upon a time were big assholes. This is 2003, and I haven't done anything wrong. Why make me live through the prejudice that you claim to hate?
Please, stop being bitter at the minority of rich whites who are just as arrogant and elitist as the rich minorities out there. (ie, sultans of Saudia Arabia who have way more money than bill gates and sit idlely by while their nation and those around them starve to death.) SO don't give me this BS about white male's being priviledged.
-Michael Anderson
Computer Engineering Sophomore, University of Arizona.