Slashdot Mirror
Women CS Majors Declining
/ writes, "According to a Wired interview with Dr. Anita Borg (her real name) of the Center for Women and Technology, the number of women majoring in CS has dropped considerably of late, as those in the field likely already know. She gives her thoughts on the causes and entertains some solutions."
Not to be completely off topic, but where I work at (large software company) there are more women than men in managment positions, and more men than women in the technical positions.
I may be wrong of course, because I haven't done a statistical enumeration of this or anything.
Aaron
That really seems to be the way it's always been though. In high school, my AP computer science class had exactly 0 women in it. When I got to college, there was once again, 0 women in my first year of CS classes. In my classes now, there's 2, maybe 3 in a class of 25-30 people.
I don't know how representative that is of the world at large, but it's something that I've always seemed to run into.
This isn't necessarily a problem with the CS field itself, it could be that opportunities in other fields are starting to become more inviting to women. When looked at compared to some fields, like Business, CS hasn't exactly been extremely hostile to females in the past. Maybe less hostile environments in other areas are emerging, and that is causing a levelling-off of female CS majors?
This is a bigger problem, for the schools anyhow, than only one group reducing. If , however, the attendance of women is becoming smaller at a different proportion than Men or other groups, then there is a problem.
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Why do these studies always measure the number of women going into computer science? Why don't they also look at related fields such as electrical and computer engineering?
Also there are more women in English majors than men why don't they consider this a bad thing and start recruiting men to do more of the things that are traditionally female dominated?
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
I need a borg, too. ;)
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Off topic question; do people leave the subject lines to be filled last, after they finish writing their post?
Anyway, several thoughts do occur on this topic:
By the time you focus/target 'women', it may already be too late. They will have been left behind and ignored for too many years, I suspect. In which case any change you effect now, won't be visible for at least a handful of years.
What can be done? The problem is so complex, I don't know that it can be characterized. We're trying to change the social structure in very many places if we want more women in technology and the sciences; we either grow girls more like men(which I suspect men don't want, otherwise selective pressure would have already done this), we change the social model in which women can contribute(a top down approach? Grassroots? I dunno), or we change the way girls see and interact with technology and science. The problem with the third option is that there is no visible path, just a visible endpoint. More women in the field.
How do we deal with the fact that girls get different treatment? Can family support overcome that? How about the way we raise our girls? Can we modify it so that they remain uniquely female but still fit into the current structure of society, at least until social changes force society to adapt? Or do we create an role for the females that they currently do not occupy, but can fit in very easily with very little change, again until society adapts to allow more opportunities for girls?
Am I being to shortsighted here? Or perhaps my view is to narrow? Are there other options and paths we can look at and pursue?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
-
It's horrible to see what macho shit geeks posted.
Psychologist know that the biggest difference between Men and Women IS THE *** BRAIN ***.
Women can see more details, remember them, don't overlook things.
Men can think abstract, ie. have a better orientation sense.
When driving, a WOMEN should DRIVE,
while the MAN reads the map.
Women see streetsigns - men don't.
Men know they must turn left somewhere - women don't.
Women remember that Jack had a red tie on the last party, whilst her buddy doesn't even remember that Jack was there.
Just check these few examples and you'll see why it's harder for women to code,
and harder for men to see their own typing errors.
GOSH !! george./
That fewer women go into CS than men is not a problem to be dealt with, just a fact to be recognized.
Individual human beings should not be manipulated to shift demographic trends; it is immoral to do so. Incentives and media campaigns are as wrong as quotas.
So long as individual women are given the respect due their actual talent, without consideration of gender, there is nothing wrong with the fact that fewer of them choose to pursue education or work in any particular field.
As well complain that too few men are training for jobs as kindergarten teachers.
There are natural trends in any distinct human group. Fighting these trends is as unjust and damaging to individual persons as pigeonholing exceptional individuals into stereotypical roles.
At my college, Illinois Tech, there's a bunch. My TAs were female, my core has an ok number (maybe 10%, though), and in every CS class I've taken I always see a few. Not that its 50-50 or anything, but they are there. Actually, a requirement for any major is to take a CS class. Most take the standard first year basics, but in some departments they take fortran (ie chem) or basic (architecture), though not from the CS department.
On a core project I'm doing, there are two females in the 6 member group. Ok, to be quite honest they've been a pain to work with because they just don't care, but they'll have to as they are CS majors. But, the other guys haven't lifted a finger either (I've started programming as designing), though they're quite happy to think and ponder over the project with me. The two TAs though were sharp and extremely useful. I was actually thinking the mixture would go up, but maybe there's just to many guys jumping in. After all, CS is starting to look like a libral arts major...
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
If you're a major Computer geek like myself, you probably found those CS classes pretty darn boring. I'd like to think anybody who is really a serious computer geek to choose a major which is challenging and new.
So, maybe you'd find a lot of highly technical women taking other courses. Just because you're not a CS major doesn't mean you're going to be a programmer/sys admin.
Isn't the problem getting women (and men for that matter) to choose computer science while they are in high school. I think that the problem is that there isn't enough computer science in high school - so the only people who are going to be interested are the nerdy boys (hi guys!). If cs was studied more at high school it would legitimise it for the girls.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
So low numbers of tehnical women = male institution insensitivity? No, I doubt it. I think the girls briefly look at each major open to them, they see me and my friends in class and say "geez what a bunch of dorks. I don't want to work with those losers," and they move on to the next table. Low self esteem goes hand-in-hand with difficult majors, and girls these days are above that.
I am a CMU student, and the School of Computer Science has made an effort to admit more female CS students (beginning last year). The result is a lot of unqualified female CS students. My roommate's girlfriend is one.
Many of them know nothing about computers--there is a new intro course that teaches the most basic of basics (things that no other respectable CS school would find necessary to teach). It's only open to CS students, and the class is filled almost entirely with female students.
Just my observation--I have no problem with female students in CS or otherwise. I do have a problem with underqualified students. It might turn out that the decision was a correct one. The women might be better than the men when they graduate, and simply have to overcome the lack of CS interest in high school.
I suppose it remains to be seen.
--
Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Or looking for attention?
But you do have a decent point in your post. Where are the women going to, instead? I have an idea that, in such a hot employment market, women actually may just be opting out of work(is this a possibility, or totally wack?) and college entirely and going into marriage!
It's known that as the economy gets good or bad that students either tend to go to school or go to work. At least, it's a common meme, if not a fact. I would wonder if women followed a similar pattern.
And about recruiting men into those majors, the society we live in would laugh at the guys who go into those fields(not manly or macho or whatever). Just like women are made fun of as being stupid or not capable, when trying to enter some male dominated professions.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The women I know all think I use the computer too much. They also have absolutely no interest in knowing any more than they have to in order use them. Sure that's practical and all, but that's no way to become a skillful hacker.
You might as well be asking why there aren't more female mechanics or inventors. Most women don't seem to have that weird, driven curiosity that we here all understand far too well.
At some point women are going to have to take responsibility for their lack of curiosity. Especially if we have to take responsibility for fear of commitment! =)
EOF
This troll would have been a lot more amusing if it had had a punchline.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
IMHO you're both exaggerating and overgeneralizing, but I'm not a sociologist. At any rate, if everything you say is absolutely accurate, why then I'd say that it's no wonder so much software is so damn buggy. Tour description of women sounds like somebody who'd really kick ass at debugging, but programming is a predominantly male profession (or schtick, or racket, or whatever you want to call it
Just a thought. I don't take it very seriously, but you asked us all to check your examples, and I did.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back.
I don't know what to say....does this sound really ridiculous to anyone else?
The other piece is the image of people who go into this field. The image is "geeks, gadgets, and greed." It's people who you don't want to be like.
I don't see how this is a gender-specific problem. Guys don't really like being social outcasts either.
I'm all for anyone pursuing the fields and dreams they wish without any barriers, but I have a feeling there is some genetic disposition that makes males and females sway towards certain fields. Most Nursing, Psycology, Elementary Education, and Physician Assistant students at my University are women. Most CS and Engineering students are men. I think it has more to do with natural intrests and abilities and less to do with environmental factors (although that may play a small part).
- Why do we need more girls for computing ? Is there a plan to kill all male Earthlings here ? WE HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS: We need more heavy weight female boxers. We need more gays on the catwalk. We need more men who get their dress-color scheme right. We need more girls who start smoking. _ Take a reality check before you post here ! george./
Women are minority in computer-related jobs here in Brazil, too. They're simply dont'feel atracted to coding and other geek jobs.
But the trend is changing. People are hiring more women. Why? Internet.
Lots of girls are finding jobs as webmasters (ok, webmistress) and designers at companies. But they're far away from the average geek girl like Nitrozac.
Maybe I can make some money out of it. What about a "PHP for Chicks" seminary?
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
Could the reason for the low numbers of women in tech fields have to do with the differences in the way the sexes think?
Women tend to look at things subjectively. They empathize and get hands on. Men tend to judge thinks objectively. They step back and try to get the big picture. Most tech fields reward objective analysis and design, but don't really like subjectivity. In engineering things are fundamentally judged on metrics not mushy feelings. In CS programs need to flow analytically and logically, again objectively.
I could be completely wrong of course. The real reason could be something like negative social pressure on adolescent girls, too.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
How about the theory that people tend to go with those skills that give them the most personal payoff?
The original geeks were those of us who lacked the smooth social graces that led to stellar careers in finance and insurance sales. The ability to think in binary wasn't highly prized.
At the same time, the ability to communicate and motivate isn't a lot of help in technical fields (leaving out 'managment') - unless you become an expert in getting grants.
Possibly all that's needed is a little pre-orientation for potential CS students, explaining that the computer doesn't care if you have a pleasant manner and a winning smile.
You can't negotiate with a computer. You can't motivate it. You can't get it to join your team. All you can do is write code the way the system wants it - and that's the only way it will work.
Oh well, I wasn't using those karma points anyway.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
I'm not saying women have no place in the CS world, or in any way saying they should avoid it, and I definately encourage anyone, regardless of sex, to persue what interests them.
on that note..
our society seems to be blind to the fact that, men & women are DIFFERENT. Statistically, we *DO* think differently. The generalization about women being more for details, men being more for abstract thinking is true as a STATISTIC, not a rule.
Am I saying women can't handle CS? No.. I'm saying that statistically, it doesn't interest them.
Do I think women shoudl be paid less than men for doing the same job? No. Do I think a CS position should be filled or not based on sex? Absolutely not....
but our society doesn't have to keep obsessing over why EVERY DAMN OCCUPATION isn't 50% male, 50% female. it will *NEVER* be that way.
More and more women are becoming successful in various businesses as executives, lawyers, etc. and depending upon which source you quote (extreme liberal, moderate, or far right), they are getting equal pay. If women aren't signing up for CS classes, why do people like Borg insist that we must "care" and force people to do things that maybe they decided they're not interested. If a woman is interested in computers or engineering, there is nothing hindering her in the U.S. from joining. The absolute smartest engineer I ever met was one of the few women in my engineering class in college. She had the aptitude and the interest to take engineering, many other women I meet just aren't interested, or don't think in the way that CS or engineering people do. There is nothing wrong with that! This nonsense that something is wrong with "the system" is specious babble used by everyone from Jesse Jackson defending violent thugs to criminals blaming society on death row and it is getting very tiring. If women want to study CS, they will. Furthermore, if she can generalize boys by saying "boys are wilder than girls", therefore they get more time on the computer, why is it that the statement "Maybe girls just aren't interested" valid? In general, perhaps boys are wilder and girls just aren't interested in computers.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
unless you happen to be a female or are of the homosexual persuasion, then having more women in CS is a good thing.
I go to a University for CS, and frankly there are hardly any women in the courses, and fewer as you get later in the years. I have to think this causes pressure for them along with the problems of the courses themselves.
:P
Also with the culture of it all, how many girls do you know that spend their high school life hanging out on irc playing with eggdrop bots and the latest cvs trees of anything, if you know of some I'm pretty shocked but they're probably real good lookers
Oh well just my thoughts and my firstish post!
Here at Carnegie Mellon, the number of female CS majors has actually been increasing in recent years. As mentioned in a related Slashdot article from last August, this year's freshman class is about 37% women, up from 8% in 1995. However, Carnegie Mellon's increasing numbers may be due to more aggressive recruiting.
Your title just seemed to invite people to attack you =)
How can an individual with only individual experiences determine that what they see is common or uncommon?
Of course it's a pretty common meme/concept that women are discouraged subtly, implicitly, and explicitly from technical fields. I can't say that it is the truth, just a prevailing idea. So I can't discredit your opinion, and I will admit I am being influenced by this meme.
Disclaimers aside, then, I will claim a very practical and pragmatic argument. If women weren't being discouraged in some way, shouldn't they be entering these fields on parity with men? It can be said another way; that we are encouraging men to enter these fields, and not women.
It doesn't mean that it is explicit or by design, that men are encouraged. Maybe there's too much baggage with the word, encouraged. Perhaps if we just said that the system favors males. What can we do then, to increase the focus on women?
Which has nothing at all to do with your point on your friend. There are guys like her too, at HP. It didn't stop them from going into a technical field. So a better question for your friend then is why does going into a technical field interfere with her desire to communiate with her friends?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
In my Business Communications class a few weeks ago, we discussed in-depth some of the different strategies advertisement agencies use to target men and women, and how they stem from fundamental differences in the ways men and women think - starting from in the womb when testosterone severs half of the brains' connections in the male fetus.
Men are more task-oriented; they function better in repetitive, boring tasks such as stalking game, practicing musical instruments, and perfecting their jump shots. They prefer simple, direct ideas over complex issues. Hence the popularity of the Budweiser Frogs and the Swedish Bikini Team.
Women like complex, thought-provoking issues and projects. They tend to be extroverts in larger numbers than males and respond to emotional appeals better than men. Women flip the channel when the Budweiser Frogs or the Swedish Bikini Team appears.
Now, thinking back to those long, late-night hours spent slaving over the latest pointless Data Structures project, compiling, debugging, recompiling, and redebugging over and over, it suddenly isn't such a mystery why more women don't want to be CS majors.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Being both a Computer Scince and Psychology major, I hear professors from both majors complaining about the lack of sexual diversity in these majors; psychology being female dominated, and obviously computer science being male dominated.
I'm wondering, where are the roll models for woman in computer science? Ada Lovelace or Alan Cox?
Universities teaching useless stuff, rather than practical skills?
Maybe the problem isn't colleges teaching useless theoretical stuff, but that community colleges aren't pulling their weight. THAT is the place for practical skills.
I've finally reached my fourth year of a CS programme at a university. Do you know what? I took a distributed systems course. Boring as all hell. I learned about TCP/IP, ethernet, ATM, rpc, and, finally, all sorts of mostly internet protocols. (and some time sync algorithms, blah, blah, blah) While I already knew more than half the course, the other half I could have read in a couple of days in a book. That sort of stuff is for community college. It's for people who somehow have difficulty learning it on their own. (I was disappointed they didn't get into CORBA or even DCOM indepth -- it's a book I haven't gotten around to reading yet.)
The other two courses I've been taking consist of formal languages (from finite automata to turing machines), and now principles of programming languages (so far lambda calculus and now type systems and ML). THIS is the stuff for university. This is stuff I'll never learn in the real "practical" world. University is here to teach me a broader perspective on technology and computing. It's here to open my mind to radically alternative ways of looking at the same thing -- even if it doesn't turn out to be the latest fad in computing.
My conclusion? I think that, perhaps, those who go to university expecting to learn practical real skills belong in a community college. (mind you, many of those in my area could be a much more higher quality than they are) I think MIT has the right idea teaching Scheme in first year. It shocks people into realizing that there's a lot more to computing than they thought.
Mark
Well I must say that this is very relevent in my life now cause my girlfriend is switching her major from C.S to what? I have no clue. the resson? and I quote "I hate the damn math" owell we can only hope that more Girls will start to love programing like the rest of us guys do. later, Lowtech
"011110010101111101110101 0110000101111001001100101 01100100011101010110110101100010 "
For example, my fiance and I are working on a mail client. Who's doing 90% of the coding? I am. Why? I can program better than him. Gender has nothing to do with that. He's just into different aspects of computers.
As far as the enviroment of computer science being hostile to women. I've personally experienced out right hostility (like some of the posts), but also I've met a lot of people who don't care what race or gender you are, just that you can do the job.
Also women aren't going into computer science because they see a table of geeks and run the other way. The only person I've ever met that chose a major based on if his or her friends were in that one, was a man. Does that mean now that men just briefly think about their majors and don't give it any thought?
Comments like "women don't know anything about computers" or "women are genetically incapable of working in techinal fields" just show to me that some people out there just don't get it. Women weren't originally allowed to go to college because our brains were too "small." Yet Albert Einstein had one of the smallest, compact brains ever recorded.
One of the apparently rare women in computers.
Old story
Josh
That there are not enough people in technical fields. Women, which make up 50% of the population, are therefore an untapped resource. As are minorities, who also don't get into the technical fields(as compared to Caucasian or Asian)
I ask why it is immoral to manipulate people to shift demographic trends? If a person has an infinite number of options open to them; even if it is a finite number of options, for the example, why is it wrong to try to get them to chose a particular option?
And what does this have to do with 'trend'? It's just a job, a career, work, and nothing to do with life, or personality, or behavior!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Fact is, I have used very little of a computer science education, since nobody really told me that computer _science_ is really a preparation for further academic work in the field--experimentation, research, invention--rather than business use of computer skills. MIS wasn't technical enough, didn't give enough programming experience. CS was way over my head in terms of the required mathematics classes and the general political structure.
I would have been better off with some tech school programs, along with some specific training courses in commercial UNIX systems, routing/switching, and other useful things. So are about 75% of the people who go into a Computer Science program--it just isn't an optimal way to enter the workforce as an administrator or programmer.
Now, I appreciate the academic angle I learned through completing my degree, once I realized my half-error. I _did_ learn many useful skills, but most have had to be twisted and modified in order to really apply.
Perhaps this is one reason attendance is dropping, among women or any other group? We're so bent on college educations, because the employers are as well. Employers ask for things like Bachelor's degree (Master's preferred) in CS plus 15 years of experience in Windows 2000 and 30 years of experience in PC hardware. This game really needs to stop somewhere, it's an endless triangle--businesses, educators, students--but any one party that stops playing the game stands the risk of being unemployable while everyone else continues to play.
HHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA... er.. sorry..
hAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH... yup and Anita Girlfriend but you dont see me giving wired interviews,,,
I could probably name 10 women supermodels without even THINKING about it, and I'm sure women could too (ruling out the sex appeal argument), so why is it that I cannot name eve ONE male supermodel? I think this is an important issue that needs to be addressed immediately, I think men should be able to be supermodels, too, and I don't think they're being encouraged enough at a young age. If more boys were taught by their parents that they could be beautiful too, maybe we'd see a bit more equality in the supermodelling field.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
I suppose the true reason there are more men and women is some fields is that the ratio of men to women in the general population is close to 50/50. Since some fields have more women than men, other fields must have more men and women for it to average out. What the center for women and technology (I hate hypocritical organizations like this who preach about equlaity but have sexist name like center for women and the implied and not men) needs to do is convince women that computer science is better than information science, or actively discourage women from entering fields like education or psychology where they are a majority. Or they could try to get more men to enter fields that have more women in them.
I have to admit your jokes are funny and I couldn't help but laugh. It's wrong as hell but I laughed.
If you ever say this in real life, though, it's gonna be even more hilarious when some chick punches you into next week and you wind up coming back to this week to retrieve your teeth.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Borg: I think that's a fairly spurious argument because the whole question of why we are not interested in [math and the sciences] is a really significant one. We're clearly doing something wrong.
But then she goes on to say that the agressive boys pushed the girls off the computer during childhood, and that is why they are not interested. So the boys are more agressive and the girls just accept it. Since they are different, couldn't they also have a difference of interests. I'm not coming down on women or anything, but I do believe there are some differences that are more than the way we are raised. I believe we should give everyone all the opportunity they can have, but I don't believe we need to push anyone in to a certain area.
I work as the lead Unix sysad for 9th Air Force, one of the neater aspects of my job is to train brand new people that have joined the military. Some of these people have never even used a computer before their technical school. Right now I am working with a young girl who had never used any type of computers before joining the Air Force. She, in the last month now knows basic Unix, basic Korn shell, regular expressions (Full), as well as a good deal of Perl.
I think more women would use and learn about computers if the people who taught them didn't do so in a condescending competitive way. (I do admit though, I am a very tough teacher, however I am fair).
Unfortunately, computers with men is taken in the same way as men tend to gloat about their 400hp engines in their cars, or their 3200db car stereo. Women (that I have worked with) don't seem to be into the ultra-competitive side, but are instantly intrigued by the logic of it...
-Dextius Alphaeus
-- Java is not a Jedi trait... "do, or do not, there is no try" --
The problem is not that women are not being *accepted* into computer science or that they are not smart enough. The fact is computer science and other technical majors are very difficult. Without having a good study group or a mentor, women may feel overwhelmed in a technical major and decide to switch to non-technical major. I would know, because I have left EE and CS. Although I would have liked to receive a technical degree, I didn't want to suffer through classes that I did not really have my heart into.
In my experience I really don't see any barriers that girls face while growing up making them not interested in computers. While I was growing up it was usually the girls who played The Oregon Trail on the Apple II and the boys played with G.I. Joe action figures. When I was in grade school if you played with the girls on the computer you were considered gay or weak so you it was best not to play on the computer with them or else. I never really got into computers until I was 10 years old when I got a computer at home. I talk to a lot of girls from varying ages and most of them like using the computer as a tool, but just aren't interested in going into the IT field. In fact a lot of the younger (13 to 18) girls I talk to just like chatting online and really don't like using the computer for much else. You try encouraging them and try to get them interested and they just don't care all they like to do is chat with their other friends. I really don't think it's a matter of that girls don't get enough computer time while in school. I really don't believe the example that Mrs. Borg gave about boys pushing girls away from the computer and parents/teachers allowing it is just plain bad teaching/parenting. It's along the same lines as another kid taking away a toy from another child would you allow that? So why would you allow this? Any way I just think it's a matter that girls just don't like being in the IT field as much as guys do. I really don't see the problem in it. I wish there would be more girls that like the IT field then I could find someone that has more stuff in common with me, but time and time again I find plenty of women who just aren't interested even if you try getting them interested. So really, if women aren't intrested then what's the problem? Why try forcing someone into something they don't want to go into?
When I was in college, and again latter in uni there were *very few* women in any of the three majors (CS, CIS, MIS) in the department so if the numbers are going down then there must be none at all left now. Fortunately that isn't the case... I was talking to someone on campus at uni last week and he mentioned there were about thirty women in the program now; that kinda matches what little I remember of the incoming class of frosh the summer after my "last" year ;} there were a LOT of young ladies in those tour groups and early summer classes.
I have to agree with a lot of what Dr. Borg is saying here, and it's really pathetic that this is the case. I can't think of a single women in my graduating class that wasn't in the top handfull of students, ditto the class before me. I generally found that the women in my classes and the ones I work with now are the better engineers, certainly on several occasions I can look at a project group that had maybe four people and say that the women on the group did more than their 25% of the share. It was always interesting to watch the group when it was say four guys and see how things got done, then watch those same four guys on the next project when one of the ladies in the area got added to their group... there was a very subtle change in the group dynamics and a very severe change in the quality of the work. Now I know in a couple cases it was because the guys were ashamed that a "girl" did better work than they did... but then I had also worked with that young lady before, they didn't have a chance - she out-classed them.
I wish there was a more natural balance of men:women in hard core computer science - and not because they're a welcome sight after staring at code for hours on end or sitting in design meetings that just won't stop - it's because their very presence in the group alters the balance and their different perspective and methodology is always beneficial.
I must complain about the above quote. The whole article is written by someone very very good at 'newspeak' - always evading questions and giving answers with absolutely no real content.
The above comment, however, obviously shows a dislike for the very *nature* of being male. The author is saying we should stop boys from being agressive, instead of saying that a medium amount of agression, properly harnessed, is a good thing that we should be encouraging in girls. It's the difference between positive and negative reinforcement... are the boys doing anything wrong by trying to monopolize the computer? No. That's what boys do. Should we be protecting girls from boys (especially from the computer geeks?)? Probably not.
To accept the above quote would be to degrade the women who are 'wilder and more agressive', and I'm not willing to do that.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Is it possible that fewer women are interested in *geek* endeavors because women tend to be more social and relationship oriented, which does not harmonize well with the long hours of solitary concentration typically required to be *geek*?
How much is nurture vs. nature? Ah... the age old controversy.
Political correctness will never allow a real answer.
Since I'm an Asian(Chinese) and where I went to school(Caltech) we weren't a minority(in technical and scientific fields)
If you were to count us in, perhaps, the cinema majors of other schools, we would count as a minority. And perhaps even if you were to do a general population count in the US. But not in engineering/science fields =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Perhaps if we offer females more scholarships for science we can help reverse this trend. I sure hope so...
In 22 years I saw 98% of female programmers quitting, because they just couldn't do it. They TRIED HARDER THAN EVERY OTHER MAN, but they still couldn't do it.
You may have seen that, though people usually see what they want to. In any case, it's not relevant. I wasn't claiming to have "proven" that women can code (though I've known a few women programmers, and they succeeded at about the same rate as men). That wasn't my point at all. My point was that you were telling us all about how women's minds work, and what you were describing is somebody who'd be good at debugging. Well, then, either women are good at debugging (which is only one part of programming, by the way), or else your description is not as accurate as you think. Hey, it might even be both.
In any case, I didn't have an "argument". I just looked at what you'd posted, drew a conclusion that seemed obvious to me (obvious enough that it really jumped out), and threw it out for discussion. Focussing too narrowly can make it very damn hard to find bugs. In my experience, the bug is not often where I think it is, and I'm very often led to it by noticing some small thing that I missed the first few times I stepped through. On the other hand, there's more to programming than finding bugs. Hell, there's more to human beings than a few oversimplified orthodoxies. I'm not claiming to have any answers, nor am I trying to start a flame war. If I created that impression, I apologize.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
It's a sad thing that the most famous computer woman computer scientist in the news these days is there because she's posing for playboy. Well there are undoubtedly many others, but she of course jumps to mind. Mugsy
These articles are coming out, it seems, every few weeks. And every few weeks, there is new fuel for the "women just don't make good geeks" fire.
There will always be exceptions to every generalization anyone cares to make about people, but I think Dr. Borg is really trying to get to societal dogma. Our society has built itself in a certain way, and as a people we have just finally reached a plateau on which all people can be judged by merit and deed rather than physical characteristics.
Unfortunately, in the arena where that very idea should be most deeply ingrained, since face-to-face contact is for suits, the other shoe has yet to drop. There is less social stigma now for a man to become an elementary school teacher than there is for a woman to go into a high-tech field. This matter has only really come to the mainstream media in the last few years; it's not like our educational system has taken the long hard look at itself and said 'yeah, our teachers don't give equal face time and attention to boys and girls'. The system is still trying to figure out what it all means...
Someone made the comment that most elementary school teachers are women. THERIN LIES A HUGE STUMBLING BLOCK. Women who are old enough to be teachers now and for the past decade are still from a generation where women were caregivers first, members of the workforce second. They are passing their ideals onto the children they teach; it's easy enough to do - boys should be rewarded for being agressive so they can be breadwinners, girls should be rewarded for being thoughtful and respectful.
So, at least in the US, almost everyone here now is a product of that dogma. There are a few, like Dr. Borg, who have been freed from societal contraints and set free to go on their own. Most others are still clinging to the idea that women are meant to do certain tasks, and encouraging them to be mathematicians or computer programmers would be counter to the 'nature' of being born female.
Before we get any improvement, that sentiment has to move more toward "PEOPLE are meant to become members of society, in fields they have an individual APPTITUDE for, REGARDLESS of their GENDER, race, or age (etc), and should be given ample opportunity to explore fields without suffering societal punishments."
We have a way to go. We probably have about 20 years to flush out the old biddies in the educational system, at least.
--mandi
no tax on my 2 cents
The reason why there are so few women in technology is because girls aren't encouraged to do many technical things from a young age on. Although this is a stereotype, it is still very true. There needs to be more encouragement from an early age on, or else they will never (or rarely) get into technological jobs later on in life. There was an excellent article on freshmeat about this very thing a while back.
Um, if she's interested in chemistry, she's already taken the bait and is entering a scientific(if not technical) field...
So she's actually not that great a counterexample, except in the specific field of computers, for example.
The general meme is that women are discouraged from science and technology; your friend, if she wants to go into chemistry, is not one of these women...
And it's difficult to base our perception of potential on a set of the population that has already determined, through past actions, their future potential. Can you say, boldly, that a large percentage of women 5 years from now won't be talented in that way, because of your personal experience with the people you knew who made their decisions 5 years ago?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'm so tired of dereferencing my own pointer.
Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back.
Citing the differences between the sexes is not a very good way to promote equality. Most women have life figured out, I wish these pundits would. Pushing women into high powered careers is a mistake.
Thomas Jefferson casually observed that savages put their women to the plow. How true! "Women's Lib" has enslaved a whole generation. Sure, it's nice in an abstract sense that a woman can now persue anything she might please, but it has not worked that way. The increased supply of labor has simply decreased it's worth, and now it's difficult for people to support themselves with a single income. Choice has become force, and we are all worse off for it.
Let's look at some of the costs of shipping the wife off to work. Childbirth among decent people has been put off and greatly reduced. Children recieve less attention, neighbors do not know each other, people eat junk food, and no one has time for anything including church. Weekends and nights are reserved for chores that ordinarilly would be done durring the day. Hell, single people have a hard time just meeting! They might have the time, but nothing is going on...not even church. This list can go on and on, the world is a complicated place and changes often bring about unentended consequenses.
The only winner has been the tax base, Married People are taxed higher than single pleople! How cool it was to be renting a 2 bedroom apartment, driving a 30 year old car but taxed at 28%, like a Kendedy or something. But, I digress with more personal gripes.
OK, flame me up for the exceptions. Sure, my sister makes two to three thimes what her husband makes. Does he want to be Mr. Mom? No! Is my sister happy slaving away in the persuit of other peoples proffit? I'm not sure. But it comes down to that difference that Borg was good enough to point out. Civilized people recognize such differences and specialization. Ignoring such things is folly.
Most women figure out that the best thing for them to do is get married and raise kids. Who wants to grow old childless? Raising children is not exactly a low energy solution, and it's the most important thing society does. The responsiblilities of parenting conflict in a major way with "real" carrers. It's nice that women who fail to marry and concieve or adopt have the ability to support themselves in the career of their choice. Who's supprised that most women's first choice of career affects their choice of fallbacks? Why study rocket science, medicine, law or some other all consuming proffesion when something much fluffier will pay the bills? Who is supprised to learn that women who do not have to work for others might not? Oh, well people will learn.
In every industry where one person was capable of supporting the needs of two, throughout all history, the women have dropped out and the men have been expected to win the bread. It's mathematically undefeatable. No-one knows why. It's just a law of nature we have to get used to.
The idea that there would be fewer job opportunities if women tackled the same roles as men is debatable. In fact there would be twice as many consumer expendatures than there are now since most women currently depend on men as a primary breadwinner.
to your first point: my mother is an elementary school teacher. I volunteered at her site all through jr/sr highschool and into college doing computer type work, and was in the classroom every now and again - I always saw this. It wasn't just on the computers. One day after I was in her room for a while I asked her about one particular incident, and asked "well, when you make the groups that go to computer time, why don't you put all girls or all boys in a group, except maybe the girls like Jane (made up) that don't seem to have any problem defending themselves and will actually push back to get their share?" Her response was basically "don't suggest that while on school grounds... you'll get us sued."
a friend of mine in uni was an elementary ed major and summed it up best over supper in the caf one night after his first phase of student teaching: "yeah, little girls can be pr***y bi****s every now and again, but little boys tend to be ba*****s day in and day out."
your second point: you're right on the money... I had to go back and re-read that line a few times to make sure I understood what she was saying, then passed it off as bs and moved on.
Once again it needs pointed out that this statistic is COMPLETELY BOGUS. The number of MALES receiving bachelor degrees in computer science is decreasing as well.
Why? because men are mentally inferior? Because we need to "show that we care" like the lady begs in the article? No. It's because computer science is the most complicated profession in the history of mankind (you name a more complicated invention than a piece of software that manipulates billions of microscopic switches billions of times per second). Colleges are closing down their departments of computer science (Marshall University closed theirs a couple years ago because no one was graduating). Entry classes into computer science is schrinking, the number getting past year 1 is shrinking even faster.
For one reason. It takes passion. You can be a doctor without passion.. maybe not a good one, but if you screw up a stich by a tenth of an inch, the patient doesn't die, no one even notices. You miss a semicolon or a comma, your software just does not work. It takes an obsessive passion to get into computers and not many people have that.
Another reason is the huge technology job boom where there are too many jobs for too many people (and this will not reverse for a long time because of the passion issue). Why get a degree when you can get hired without one, get every type of job benefit you can imagine, etc? I'm getting a degree because I just might go on to become a professor so I can work in theory stuff, but i don't see the point of anyone else doing it.
Esperandi
-
I NEVER said anything about "debugging".
Re-read what I've written.
Someone else started this crazy argument.
DEBUGGING is BTW something WOMEN can do BETTER,
because they see the details I, as a man, overlook.
I completely agree with you on your debugging-story, but that's offtopic.
I never used that word.
later, george./
Except for one stunningly gorgeous girl in my Operating Systems class, I know of very few women in CS or any other tech major. Of course there are a few lurking about here and there, but by and large they're kind of...strange. Most of the girls here tend to hang out either at the gym or the art building, as far as I can tell. Personally I'll never understand why girls seem disinterested when I start talking about Quake, PHP, C++, 3D modeling, etc. This is all complex and fascinating stuff. What else could possibly be as comparitively interesting?
-W.W.
"Well it should be obvious to even the most dim-witted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology...
In which case, perhaps it can be stated that there's a cultural imperative preventing thewe girls from doing the full leap from M&S to CS?
I mean, if they are talented enough and interested enough in M&S, it's not skill or ability that keeps them out of CS!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
>Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back.
I remember reading something about that. I believe some teacher was watching her third grade students and saw this.
This would be a good reason why there aren't many girls in the 3rd grade who are using computers. That's about it.
Because the computer field is constantly changing and mentally intensive, you have to LIKE computers just to stay competent. Reading about current issues, trying new tech, bugging someone who knows more than you do. If you love computers you'll do even better.
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I'm not disagreeing with all of the last post... just a minor correction. The parts of Einstein's brain that deal with spatial and mathematical thinking were nearly 20% larger than average.
It's true that the overall size of his brain was smaller than average. However I'm not so impressed by some of his other brain functions. Not being able to tie his own shoes, or not noticing where he is until he's already taken 4 steps into a lake don't speak well for the rest of his brain(which was much smaller than normal).
I'm a gnu world man.
Our school has a Women in Mathematics Committee that deals with this sort of thing. Their stats show that females make up about 20 percent of the math faculty, and that percentage has declined in recent years.
Someone from CMU posted that they have a special intro course for non-computer people. We have one of those too. It's a joke. You learn FileMaker, Word, Excel, and Turing (ever programmed in that?). And yes, the class has a lot of females in it. (An aside: not everyone in there is a CS major; they're all math majors though.)
On the issue of minorities, that's really a non-issue at UW. I'd say the class is an even mixture of white and asian students, with a good number of Indian (from India, not Native American) students as well.
A bunch of friends and I were mulling over the latest recruitment brochure sometime last year. (It's much prettier than the one I got.) We noticed the photographs featured a disproportionately high number of white females, especially in programs where they aren't well represented, like CS. So what's up with that? False advertising? (By contrast, a friend of mine who worked on the brochures at Western said they were told to find as many minorities as possible.)
A percentage of WHAT? She doesn't say. She didn't say as a percentage of the total computer science body graduating with bachelors, notice. She could be talking about a smaller percentage of women students going to college in ANY subject are graduating from computer science programs. She could be talking about a decrease in the percentage of women graduating in computer science in relation to the number of women entering into computer science programs... she could be talking about a decrease in the percentage of women graduating from computer science programs in terms of the percentage of the entire student body going into computer science... statistics are very tricky and unless the giver gives enough information so you *KNOW* what they're talking about and in relation to what, ignore them. There's a reason they didn't' spell it out.
Esperandi
"Equality, not Androgyny" is the best equal-rights slogan I have come across. Men and women should be equal, but it doesn't mean they should be exactly the same.
I agree that if girls show interest in engineering pursuits at an early age they should be encouraged. This is important, and really hasn't been successful in the past. Females should _not_ be "moulded" into aggressive engineer types, in the same way the _no one_ should.
-Jasa
-Jasa -- Linux - The SOURCE will be with you, ALWAYS
I recently finished a CS degree, and my class was definitely male dominated. I had many discussions with some of my classmates about sexism, and I was shocked to find that most of them thought sexism didn't exist any more. While most of the people I was friends with didn't discriminate on the basis of my gender, it did still happen. I also had to listen to a lot of well-meant but offensive jokes, such as references to my grades being due to sexual favors provided to professors.
I think that things are changing for the better, but both men and women have a lot of work to do. Maybe there's a certain amount of truth to there being a real difference between men and women, but I don't think it's as great as what the enrollment statistics show. It would probably help a lot if women felt more comfortable in the industry. To my mind, one of the first things that needs to happen is that men have to think sometimes before making sexual remarks, and women need to start telling men when they're crossed the line.
I don't think affirmative action programs are the way to go. They may have helped women get their foot in the door, but they're really just reverse discrimination. They had their time, but it's past now. Using them will just cause a backlash.
I NEVER said anything about "debugging".
Re-read what I've written.
I don't have to re-read it; I believe you. You were speaking only about programming in general. Debugging is, however, part of programming, and it's an important skill. I'd give a lot to be better at it.
I completely agree with you on your debugging-story, but that's offtopic. I never used that word.
I don't personally see debugging as being very far off-topic in a discussion of programming.
All I said was that you said something along the lines of "think about it", and I did, and that's what came out. I'm not seeing an argument here at all.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Hmmm... plain old text stripped out the all the '<' and '>' characters after the >>
What is the accepted way of indicating that a block of text has been quoted from the comment that I am responding to? The way it is done in email (ie with levels of '>' before each line) doesn't work in this context since the line can be resized.
All I have is my own personal experience, which may not be representative;
Caltech. 1:3 ratio of women to men, in science in technology.
1:30 ratio of women to men, in CS
1:10 ration of women to men, in EE
So there is some selective pressure at Caltech at least, and at Caltech people are trying to do something about it.
I interpreted this interview's comments in this light. I don't know what it is like for the rest of the Universities; do you have statistics? I know in my workplace, it's a 1:13 ratio of women to men, and this is HP in the bay area.
And I don't understand why making the environment easier won't work in computer science. CS doesn't particularly seem like a flopping fish, to me.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back.
Oooo, I can just feel the understanding oozing out of every orifice of the interview. You can find half the solution by looking in the mirror.
Regardless of whether or not you think women and men are different because of nature or nurture, shallow generalizations do not help. I guess its too much to ask for humanity to learn from mistakes?
REALITY
My experience was different from that. When I took AP comp sci my sophomore year in high school, the gender ratio of the class was almost 50/50. Junior year, I took classes in assembly language and graphics. These classes were for people who had completed AP. Unlike AP, they had a lot more males than females. Later, I was involved in our Computer Science Team (which was involved in competitions like the USACO) and found it to be almost entirely male. Finally, I was part of the "Z-Team" who was in charge of administering the school network; that group was entirely male. It seemed pretty clear that the higher up you went, the less females there were. There were plenty of girls and guys who wanted to learn some simple programming, none of the girls ended up pursuing it very far while some of the guys did.I assume then that very few of these girls went on to major in CS at college (which I'm doing). There are definitely less females in the computer science classes here percentage-wise than in AP in high school.
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land
I'd rather be lucky than good.
If they are, I'm beginning to suspect that the fact that these people even exist, even in the small proportion that they (hopefully) represent in the general population, may well have something to do with the very problem we're discussing. As Dr. Borg points out, outright sexism is on the decline. But it's clearly not gone. And the fact that we still are seeing outright sexism tends to support the thesis that there's still a considerable amount of subtle and latent sexism in the society still.
I guess the main problem I had with the Dr. Borg interview is the complaint about being inadequately funded. The "Give us more money!" card always raises suspicions in my mind when it's played. Also, the article's awfully short on suggestions as to what we, the individual CS geeks of the world, can do about it -- those of us who really would like to see more women in the field (and NOT just so we can get a date!)
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Fine. Men and women are different. Fine, statistically it didn't interest them.
:P
Why does this make any difference over the fact that I, and other people, want more women in the field?
Just on a purely selfish goal, a building with women in it smell better than if there are only men. Maybe it's that perfume smells better than cologne. Or that there are pheremones involved. Or that my preference is towards women.
Another goal, then, would to have more women around. I just enjoy the company more, no matter how nice a guy is. Again, it could be any of the above reasons(smell better, pheremones, or hormones).
There aren't enough technical workers. Women are an untapped field. Solution, perhaps? It could concievable double the number of technical workers!
So there
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
{Shameless_Parody}
Proposals may be submitted for the forthcoming IEEE 7893 "Female/Society Society/Female Interaction Protocol (SF/IP) 5.0" standard. While this model, like the entire IEEE 23234 "Homo Sapiens" class hgas gone through many revisions, it is rightly felt that a new societal protocal is needed to ensure fairness and equality.
Issues to be addressed are: Backwards compatibility with conservative backwaters (no offense, I hope! ;-), non-cooperation with high level protocals like GC/IP (Glass Ceiling) and low level ones such as CB/IP (Classroom Bias). An important issue is network interactions with TS (Testosterone Superfluos) encoded packets.
Current suggestions are to use a flexible "Reproggramable Node" concept (Note: the idea of programmable nodes is actually under development), based around FS/IP (Family Support/Interaction Protocol).
Questions include the scope of this progect, and its stance in relation to FibreOptic technologies, cloning and spontaneous extinction of the human race.
{/Shameless_Parody}
________________________________
He who fights and runs away,
"Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back. " Give me a fucking break! When Anita was sucking my dick she was pretty aggressive and even wanted to do some BDSM. I told the bitch her Perl code looked like shit and she needed to leave my house. Peace out!
I agree with you. My high school supposedly had two CS classes - a regular programming class (in Pascal! ouch!), and an "AP" class, which was really just the regular programming class, only you got special permission to do "projects" like work on the school's web page . . .
The goal here is not "equal representation" - just as no one expects 50/50 representation in Elementary Education, no one expects in CS or EE. But the goal is "equal opportunity". I would have loved to have someone who could have taught me a whole lot more than I knew about computers - as it was, everything I learned was from old DR DOS manuals and free computer magazines. I look at all the computer people I admire, who really know a lot (like my husband), and many times the reason they know so much is that they had computers around, they had mentors to explain things to them, or they had the ability to just fool around.
When I was younger, the computer was "dad's territory". I wasn't able to take it apart, or write funky programs that could possibly mess up the computer. I didn't feel like there was an area where I could experiment.
Another result of the fact that much computer knowledge (especially in the earlier years) is learned from friends, is that young girls usually have mostly female friends. Because their friends don't have computer interests, they may turn to other things. This isn't necessarily bad; but it is a factor leading to these statistics.
I believe that parents and teachers have the most responsibility to see that children have equal opportunities to get involved in computer fields. While this may not alter the current ratio dramatically, at least those females who do want to get involved will feel comfortable doing so.
-- Qirien, Academy of Defenestration
-- Qirien, Academy of Defenestration
"Who do you want to defenestrate today?"
i wanted to go to CMU BAD when i was looking for a place to go. I'd transfer tomorrow if they invited me, i hope to go there for graduate work if I decide to do that... the thing about CMU is that they get 5000+ applications for the college of computer science every semester and they have under 300 spots available... that's what i was told when i wanted to go there... didn't even try because its expensive as all hell and also because my high school grades were pretty nasty so scholarships were a bust, they didn't offer any merit-based scholarships. Well, I'm going to an expensive private college now thanks to a merit-bsed scholarship. I took a computer science-oriented test which dealt with writing pseudocode, formulating algorithms, etc, and aced it. Every college should have such a thing. Having 1 computer class in high school that I got to sit out because i wrote a program to calculate and save glaze formulas for the pottery class and the pottery teacher taught the computer programming class doesn't make my grades in high school reflect the fact that I'm balls-to-the-walls in love with computers and programming!
;)
Esperandi
forgive the rant at the end, it still bugs me
As is generally accepted, women are raised as social beings, men are raised as solo, physical object related beings.
Girls are given dolls, ponies, social toys. Boys are given cars, guns, shovels, non-interactive toys.
You then have a profession, that requires many, many hours of solitary work dealing with a mechanical object.
Not only that, but I think everyone would agree that it tends to attract the least social of the unsocial gender.
It has nothing to do with ability or dedication, but they don't want to do something boring.
Someone do a survey. I would guess that it is simply that it is not as attractive to them as other positions. CS needs to be presented to women as more than a lot of money. It has to be enjoyable.
- I like pudding.
Prior experience in computer science is not and has never been an entrance requiement at CMU SCS. It may seem that way because it has gotten increasingly competitive over the years and the incomming freshmen know more every year (and think they know even more than that - incuding the ability to jude the qualifications of their peers - without the benifit of any of the information in thier applications ;) But the intention has always been that a smart, creative person should be able to do well in the program - even if they weren't hacking 8086 in the womb. How do I know this? Because I've discussed this very topic with the undergraduate dean!
But ask yourself, honestly, if this percieved injustice doesn't affect your treatment of female classmates. As a woman who was admitted to CMU SCS on *excellent* qualifications, I had no time for those boys in my class who had snotty shitty attitudes for no good reason. However, some of the egos one encounters can be a blow to the self-esteem, and it can take some time and support to realize that it's all just hot air.
Sorry if this is a bit harsh, I'm in a hurry, no time to "nice it up"
- bridgette
ooh... w3m uses vi as it's comment editor.
spiffy.
Now I know this might be judged offtopic, but why do people feel the need to categorize and then attempt to speak for any classified group? That is, one that is not representative of any organization.
After all these are the same people that bitch and moan when their group is feeling mistreated or discriminated against. Now how are we going to treat people equally if we are constantly focused on their different needs based on class? It just doesn't add up.
It's interesting to know that there is a distinct lack of women engineers, but it doesn't mean that we have to work harder to "make" more women engineers. If we are doing our job right as civil respecting people less women are engineers because they DON'T WANT to be engineers. They should be doing what they want to do.
I am a male engineering student and single parent. Up until this semester I have been unable to use my states aid program for student parents. Often women from 2 income homes in my courses were having there childcare and tuition paid by the state. While I qualified for no benefits. Yet my classes remain 90% male. There are programs in place to address this "problem" and often they go to far. Often they cross the boundry into reverse discrimination. Women are a minority of the engineering majors because the majority of women are not interested in engineering
Who are you trying to discredit with this nonsense, and why?
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Being a 3rd year cs major at binghamton University, I personally would love more females in class :) ...It's hard to get a date!...seriously it is a problem that needs to be addressed. I think the "geek" image is not appealing to most women. We could use the differnt perspectives that women would bring. Just look at history Ada Lovelace,Grace hopper,..ect
I don't think she's talking about high school. She says:
>Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when
>there is computer time available, they will push
>the girls off.
I don't remember having "computer time" in high school (was that after nap time?). I think she is referring to when kids are in elementary school and have time to play on the computer.
I remember in the third grade, we had an Apple ][, and the boys would all crowd around during free time to play games. Any third grade class with a computer for the kids to play on won't have it "collect dust". They're popular playthings. And the boys usually get to them first. It seems to me that the argument that boys who have grown up playing on computers as kids will be more likely to see them as their friends and pursue them in high school, and then college, does "hold water", although I doubt it's really the main factor controlling what people end up studying.
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land
I'd rather be lucky than good.
I find it very reasonable for organizations to want the demographic of men-to-women engineers to be a bit more balanced. But Dr. Anita Borg does not bring any insight into this discussion. Her arguments are just as subjective as the argument that women aren't interested in engineering disciplines.
. programs for women are "too small and under-funded". I have yet to hear of any engineering program for boys. As far as I know IEEE, USENIX, SAGE, and other such groups are open to both sexes.
. "a great little book called Does Jane Compute?" shows how girls won't fight back against the wild and aggressive boys for computer time. Does this sound absurd to anybody else besides me?
Although this it is an interesting issue to comtemplate, Dr. Borg, despite being the pres. of the Institute for Women and Technology, doesn't seem to have a handle on this problem. nor does she give us any clues to its causes or solutions.
I hope I'm not breaking some unwritten rule by actually providing data, but here goes...
Based on the information in Tables 3.2 and 3.3 in NSF Report Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (1998) covering the years 1967-1995, the percentage of bachelor's degrees in "mathematical/computer sciences" going to women peaked at 39.5% in 1985. In nine of the next ten years, the percentage of such degrees going to women decreased slightly, with 35.1% going to women in 1995.
Anybody have any data for outside of the U.S.?
In many research labs and beyond, the accepted model for deciding whether someone has a good idea is their ability to do battle and defend it. The way you play with an idea is to attack, attack, attack. And if the person is left standing at the end if it, then their idea must have been good. Now I think that's simply a bad filter.
Using one's willingness and ability to do intellectual battle to decide whether you're smart, or whether your idea is good is completely analogous. It works really well for people who like to fight and it tells you absolutely nothing about anybody else.
I'm not arguing any biological determinism, but women are socialized not to engage in battle. Now we all learn how. What it means is that anybody who didn't rise to learning how to fight, even if she didn't like it, even if it didn't feel natural may well just [opt out]. We're losing the brilliance and creativity of people who like to interact in a different way. We're missing a bunch of men, too.
I almost agreed with this article, until I came to this bit. Basically, what I read from this is that she doesn't like the idea of peer review. She doesn't like the idea that an idea is thrown out if it can't stand up to testing. Never mind that this is is the basis of all modern science (and most other academic pursuits), and with good reason. Basically, she's throwing out the whole idea that ideas should be accepted on merit. Even worse is that she has no suggestions for how to replace such a system. You can't very well get rid of one system until you have something to replace it, but she still advocates throwing out the basis of human knowledge anyway.
Of course, this may be because of this whole "battle" thing she's talking about. It's a load of crap, but it fits very with the "all men like to do is fight" stereotype. Either way, she misses the point of peer review entirely.
She also dismisses the argument about the number of women CS majors declining because women aren't as interested. The fact is, that one's obvious. The numbers speak for themselves; if more women were interested in CS, more would be applying. The point is that if we're going to do something about that, we need to find out why women aren't interested. That is the problem; the decline in women CS majors is merely a symptom thereof. If you want to fix a problem, first you have to figure out why the problem exists. So why does it exist? I don't claim to know. That's the problem; say all you want but no one really knows for sure. Otherwise we'd be well on our way to actually fixing the problem (no, I don't think we'd have it fixed yet; these sorts of things take at least a generation to really have an effect).
But I do know that we're not going to solve any problems by throwing away the peer review system. That would be outright suicidal for civilization as we know it. It's possible that I'm misinterpreting what she was saying, but it doesn't look that way.
The following is the full text of a letter I wrote to the Wired interviewer.
Dear Lakshmi Chaudhry -
Your recent interview with Dr. Borg is fascinating on a philosophical and sociological level; she makes several useful points about how the sexes are socialized and educated differently. The broad idea she tried to get across, that women deserve equal opportunities with technology, is right on the money. However, the interview is also quite misleading.
The first problem is with the age of Dr. Borg's data. A quick search of the Department of Education web page shows that the most recent data on the sexes' fields of study date back to 1995-96 - hearkening back to a time when only a fifth the number of people who use the Internet today were online. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the percentages (both male and female) of students entering computer science have increased in the intervening years, given the opportunities for exciting and lucrative employment in that field.
Second, it is important to look at the data as a whole. Only 324 women received bachelor degrees in computer science in 1971; in 1995, over 6,900 women did. Put another way, women received 14 percent of all comp-sci bachelor degrees in 1971, and 28 percent in 1995. The number of women granted masters in computer science went from 164 in 1971 to 2,699 in 1995. The number of women granted doctorates in computer science went from 3 (!!!) in 1971 to 161 in 1995.
So, on the whole, the number and the percentage of women getting degrees in computer science has increased dramatically.
Dr. Borg claims that the number of women going into engineering has "leveled off in the last five years." Dr. Borg probably has little or no data from the last five years, since there is such a dearth of available evidence. But let's consider the data that are available, which go through 1995-96. What can she possibly mean?
* Has the number of women getting undergrad degrees in engineering decreased? Nope - the number and the percentage have both held pretty steady since the late 70s. About 2 percent of all women who get bachelors get them in engineering, and about 13 percent of all men who get bachelors get them in engineering.
* What about compared to men? Have men been outpacing women in getting these degrees? No. In the 50s and 60s, men received very nearly 100 percent of all engineering bachelors. By 1980, women earned 10 percent of them, and by 1996, women earned 16 percent.
* Has the number of women getting bachelors in computer science decreased? Yes - in fact, this is the only "leveling off" anywhere in the data. However, this is because the number of women AND men getting bachelors spiked in the early 80s and decreased through the mid-90s. As far as the data indicate, fewer women AND men are getting bachelors in computer science, but despite the dip, the percentage of women scholars getting comp-sci degrees is holding steady. A related statistic, the percentage of the comp-sci degrees that go to women, has barely moved, except to parallel the spike in the mid-80s.
To summarize my two main points: (1) the data Dr. Borg and others cite to prove that the technology gender gap is widening are severely out of date; and (2) even so, the data do not actually show what they purportedly show.
Dr. Borg's fearful and pessimistic attitude ("I'm quite frightened. ... [T]he rollercoaster will go down eventually.") is not warranted, and not justified by facts. Yes, there is a technology gender gap, but it is closing.
Now, I greatly admire many things you have written, including your recent piece on the Harris polling firm, which did a good job of explaining a technical matter. However, the sentence used to summarize your article on Wired's homepage ("the number of women in computer science is actually decreasing") doesn't even correspond to Dr. Borg's claim, which is that the *percentage* of women in these fields is decreasing. Also, you seem to miss that point (percentages vs. numbers) in your follow-up question, asking about "these declining numbers" - when in fact, the numbers are not declining.
(Incidentally, you asked about math and *sciences*. In other fields of scientific endeavor, the gender gap has disappeared. For example, in biological sciences over half of all degrees have gone to women in recent years.)
This is very important, and deserves clarification, not just because your interview is in danger of crossing the line between journalism and activism, but because these distorted and outdated facts can inappropriately influence policymakers. Politicians and regulators are apt to act on incomplete evidence, and if they are fooled into believing the technology gender gap is widening, they may make inappropriate decisions.
Thanks for your time.
Yours,
Adam Keiper
Washington, D.C.
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
**************
Post-script: My letter was published on Wired's Rants and Raves page. I also received a gracious reply from the interviewer, who acknowledged that "Maybe I should keep a closer eye on the dek (front-door teaser) next time." -ATK
I've met a few female sysadmins in my life, and most of them are big, fat and repulsive. One of them had a moustach. One of them even looked large enough to be a sumo wrestler. God, I'm glad I didn't have to work with her. I would've thrown up if I had to.
Now, most women in computers don't start out like that, but thats how they end up.
Women belong in careers where they can look hot and feminine, such as marketing, sales, public relations, television anchoring, modeling, airline stewardess, striptease, teaching, day care, nursing, etc. Many of these fields are female dominated and pay extrememly well. No one has problems with that!
Most women are happy that they are not working with computer geeks as a computer geek!
Most guys will agree with me! When you go into a nudie bar, the LAST THING you want to see is someone who looks like a female computer worker!! The last kind of person you want to marry is a female computer worker!!
Can family support overcome that? HA! Not in a million years. Recent article I read in Family PC
talked all about how many parents restrict their kids computer time to purely homework related use.
I really want to know how much those kids are learning regurgitating Encarta.
I was fucking 8 when I got my computer. I learned the English language on it (Born in Romania). I'm able to participate in everything from f-cpu.tux.org to dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu (run by openlaw.org) at the age of 23 with only an Associates degree. I never took high level computer science and engineering classes yet I'm able to keep up with all but the VHDL/PCB layout in a mailing list for a group that's going to build a microprocessor. I'm not a law student yet I can follow every argument made on the dvd-discuss list which is the research list for the NY court case. All because I was exposed to technology. How fucking Myopic can people get? Horatio Algier can kiss my ass.
Family PC assholes touted it as an article on raising geniuses, actually it's as useless as that story about kids making cartoons about guns and violence -- how about having them discuss it instead for Christ's sake. How cute? They're learning human beings, not dumb pets.
What an absolute disappointment.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
a) women are avoiding CS like the plague.
b) the posts came in fast and furious in that "how to meet women" discussion a few months back.
Personally, I think that a lot of the difference comes in the different hobbies/sports/interests that people have as kids.
Someone posted earlier saying that girls aren't told to go play with their dolls anymore, but it scares me when I look at the toy stores to see stuff like a Barbie kitchen, or a play kitchen, or even computer software that pretends to be a kitchen.. bizarre! And all this stuff comes in pink. There's a "blue" workbench.
Now, Ms. Borg commented that when people make decisions in the workforce, all that makes up that person helps to make that decision. Imagine having years of "pink" persuading to help you choose your major?!
I've chosen not to attend university any further. Working in the IT industry, I've come across a lot of women who have flicked their hair, and batted their eyelashes. But the amount of serious women techs is low. Discouraging.
Ms Borg didn't really ake any suggestions on how to encourage women, but I really think that it needs to be a group of people in a school (promary, secondary level) who pro-actively encourage girls as well as boys to use and gain an interest in computers. If enough girls are encouraged, the group numbers will equalise, and girls will feel more comfortable.
That's one suggestion. Any more?
Chrisom.
--
Michelle
----
Be true, regret not, and let your star shine forth!
Women just don't have what it takes to be really excellent in the CS field, especially when it comes to programming and other more technical fields. Ms. Borg says something about it not being a matter of biological determination, but I think this is just not true. Women, as a whole, would be very reluctant to spend an entire night hacking away at some project just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. It just doesn't interest them. That's not to say they don't have the ability. Just no interest. The men that are attracted to computers are completely different in this aspect. To a true programmer, a sleepness night would be a very small price to pay for even the smallest amount of programming creation. And, of course, there are exceptions to everything - some men like to go out in public wearing dresses, so.. :)
- vir sine vestibus
> Who are you trying to discredit with this nonsense, and why?
He's trying to make me laugh, and succeeding so well I'm actually in physical pain. Far be it from me to speak for an anonymous other but I do believe he's poking fun at our friends the Randites. But he gives himself away as weak and merely a poseur where he asserts:
> > Wealth creation is the only human activity that can be morally
> > justified. Anybody who wastes his time on anything else is a
> > moral cripple, and is certain to be criminally inclined. Such
> > people should be locked up pre-emptively before they
> > give in to their criminal impulses.
Because if he really meant it with his whole heart he'd insist that those anarchist scum must be not just "locked up" but exterminated.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
The connections made inside the brain. Einstein's brain size was irrelevant, he did not have complete seperation of the hemispheres and did have an exceptionally large portion of his pre-frontal lobe, the part thought to control mathematical reasoning.
:) So many stupid stereotypes.
I know that's not what you meant when you said that
It's sad that schools like CMU or any other school takes people not based on merit but rather by a statistic. When CMU takes more women just because they're women they've pushed out men who want to go to CMU and had higher scores on SATs/GPAs or whatever and more deserved to get in.
I'm a straight white male, I face this kind of opposition all the time. Drives me nuts.
When the women around here stop teasing me cause I'm a geek (the men don't do this, at least nowhere near as many) I'll recognise women are ready to equalize the computer job market. But if they do, it should be because they want to, as far as I can tell from the people I've met, women do not want to.
you get treated like a second class citizen by everyone you meet "Hi, I program computers..." (silence)
:-)
you're lucky if you keep a job more than two years at a time.
you never know when the company is going to hire a total jerk that does nothing but give everyone grief, yet you can't fire them cuz of the lawsuit issues, plus the client is paying for them anyway, so a decent-to-good work environment turns into a hellhole.
you never know when the investors will fold, or the client decides to drop your company for a place that does VB and H1-B visas. none of the crap works, but at least it's cheap and the learning curve short.
hi level people leave, and get replaced by idiots, rendering the entire tech department as useless at teats on a nun.
i can't beleive any college entrant is currently considering a career in this industry...the entire software scene has been in decline for the last 3-5 years.
engineering pay has been holding steady at $50k - $80k for a so-so job for the past several years, but real estate costs have skyrocketed in all the tech areas. oh, yeah, a 2 bdrm condo for $540K, what a deal. maybe if a scrimp and save, i can just cover the payments while i'm job hunting in two years.
it's a losing game. if i were going into the sciences now, the last field i'd pick would be comp sci. all the way up the chain, nothing but a-holes.
see? it's rubbing off on me, too. don't get me wrong, i love programming. i'd gladly write firmware, open gl, SAP, (whatever) nonstop for 10-12 hours...then go out with my programming pals. at least that's the way it used to be.
but now it's nothing but meetings, the clueless people writing broken requirements, that need their hands held, and give you nothing but grief in return, and the rude/arrogant personality deprived above and below.
when i got into this stuff, there were jokes, fun, monty python, cruising around, working odd hours, having a blast, being intellectual. now it's all money (and how to save it by reducing our benefits), documentation, hostility and desperation.
fuznuck, i think i need a new job
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Can someone go in and mark my posts "flamebait"?
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
What about yourselves? Do you encourage your sisters and daughters to develop an interest in technology? Or do you plan to talk to them, but then notice that they are playing with dolls, instead of trucks, get disgusted and think they are a lost cause? Why do you alow society to make these educational decisions for you? Wouldn't you be an even happier person if your child shared your interests? Your only sibling sister was hacking away with you? You know, it's no big deal to get your son or brother interested in computers -- society sort of expects it anyway. Think how much more proud you would feel if it was your daughter, sister?
Of course, society would say "Oh, it must be so hard for her in math", people would try and persuade her to take up literature instead. Why? Because, these people would feel threatened by her. On the subconsious level, even women would feel like she's braver, stronger, smarter than them.
Did you, yourself, have to go through many psychological and social trials and tribulations before achieving your competence in computers? Did people point and laugh at you, call you names? Did people of the opposite sex consiously avoid you, showed no interest in you, because they knew that hanging out with you would mean ostracising themselves from their own social circle?
No. People expected you to be good at math. They constantly encouraged you to pursue your chosen career. They thought that a career in computers would let you make enough money to be an ideal breadwinner.
Was it hard for you to learn C++? Did it take you hours to figure out which port the mouse cable gets attached to? Or to find out that it's easier to change all the instances of your loop variable's name from 'i' to 'intI' using "find and replace" of your text editor?
No. It wasn't. Even if it was, you enjoyed every minute of it. So why do you think it would be hard er for another human being?
When you were in college did you avoid discussing politics or technology with women? Did you talk to them at all other than when trying to come on to them? Was the reason you chose CS the fact that you, on a subconsious level, wanted to establish your masculinity by choosing a traditionally male occupation? Were you afraid that other guys would think you are a sissy for studying art?
If there were any women in your CS class did you admire them for their intellect and courage, or did you look for every opportunity to ridicule the ocasional mistake they made in their code? If you think you were being competitive when you were doing that, do you believe they had an equal footing with you? Equal amount of support?
Do you realize now that women need your support?
www
I'm a female computer science major I'm one of like maybe three at the entire school. I don't think it's because women aren't interensted in CS, I personally believe that most of them out there can't handle it (sorry females). I know a lot of them who tried and then dropped out because of the math or because they didn't understand something else, or because programming was too hard. I personally have been interested since I was in high school. I was the only female in all of my programming classes there, and it didn't bother me one bit. It still doesn't bother me now. Most of the females I see are MIS majors, which according to me in my personal opinion is a really sissy major. My goodness even calculus isn't involved in that class. That and all of them drive me nuts in class asking stupid questions. Personally I would rather it be just like the way it is, a entire 5 in the department, because it works just fine to me, and I don't see a problem with it.
what if our assumtion that men and women are exactly the same is incorrect? what if it has nothing to do with encouragement or discouragement but instead with the basic "instincts" if you will of the gender in general?
What if women are simply more inclined to work in fields with more meaningful human interaction (the "helping professions") and less interested in abstract, somewhat impersonal professions such as CS and IT?
I know it's not popular to point out that there may be a fundamental difference between the genders, but it's true. There's more separating us than simply genatalial differences.
Just my two cents worth...
wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men Cato
"The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth."
Hermann Hesse
I think the previous post may have missed the point. Men do not have more to offer the industry than women or vice-versa. The important part is that if there are men and women in something close to equal numbers, there will be a broader range of ideas and experiences at the table than if a group is made up of all men or all women.
The idea is not that one sex is better than the other but that the two together are better than either one alone.
fordede
>:]
I go to a moderately-sized high school (~1100 students) and we have 4 periods of CS, with 3 different classes offered. I know that may not seem like a whole lot, but it's a good starting base, and better than most schools I've heard of. We have 2 periods of Pascal and 2 periods of APCS (C++). I'm in the second year course, with one other guy and and 2 girls. One of those girls couldn't find the power switch last year, but she gave it a good effort, and she leads our project teams now. I usually come in during my study hall to work, so I never have homework, and I sit next to a girl who no one would have ever imagined capable of programming, from surface appearance. She spends half the time gossiping with people in nearby seats, and once actually painted her nails when she was supposed to be programming. But she has stuck to the work. She struggled through Pascal last year, and actually realized she liked it by the end of the year. Now she's doing great in AP CS. She's a perfect example of opportunities overturning stereotypes. If you want to look for the problems, you can blame psychology or society, or whatever you want, but the solution is in high school.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
female CS majors on the decline? female CS majors? there is such a thing? where???? only a handful here at RIT
but thats the life, i guess. ive gotten used to seeing the same classroom full of guys for 3 years.
It would be nice if the attitude of this society would shift toward a realistic one, namely, women and men are different. It is clearly documented that estrogen and testosterone as well as other hormones in characteristic blood levels differing between those of the sexes have major differences in their actions on the development of neurons and their connections as well as their growth and maintenance.
It is probably quite true that society plays a large role in the development of a person, but the genetics still play a huge role. I don't care how much someone alters the environment of an apple seed; it is never going to become an orange tree.
I am not pretending to know why these differences in the joys/prowess/interest in computing may exist more in a majority of men (picture overlapping gaussian curves), but I do say that they do exist and very well may represent a difference of hardware. Obviously, there a some women who do well in high school math contests against men, but they are definitely in the minority.
Borg says that women are oppressed by their male counterparts throughout their respective years of growing up. She forgets that a beauty of computing (gaming, writing code, etc.) is that it can be done without competition in the privacy of one's own home. Just because John told Lisa she can't program worth a darn (a rare scenario, I suspect) she can always go home and work on a computer herself. (If this is where one wants to argue that parents don't buy computers for girls as often as they do for boys, I will not continue; there will always be another argument for whatever answer I return.)
Finally, in response to the statement, "The other piece is the image of people who go into this field. The image is 'geeks, gadgets, and greed.' It's people who you don't want to be like," I would like to say that this should make either sex shun from the field of computing. What male in his right mind would adopt a lifestyle of near celibacy if it were not for the strong interest of and realization of beauty behind computing. Quite a number of replies to this article show that people who have gained the most from computers over the years were just people with an interest in it and had a computer. Nothing was said about attemting to gain an image of any sort.
but nobodys complaining. You wonder where all the women go, that create the gender disparity at tech schools..some of them goto liberal arts schools..(which usually have between 1-4% more women then men)..and they goto art schools. ESPECIALLY for night school. Last year when I was taking night classes, (both in traditional fine arts, and some computer stuff) the percentages were about 60% female for fine arts and 75%-80% for computer courses (animation, desktop publishing..etc..) (I'm not sure what these figures go to show). And yes, when we do computer stuff in our classes, the people to step up to the computers are almost invariably men..who don't ask for help no matter what goes wrong
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
I have TA'd 4 undergraduate CS courses at CMU now.
Your assertion that the new female students are incapable is just plain wrong. Some are, perhaps, but I've seen just as many men (percentage wise) do poorly as women.
I will agree that CMU has issues with sometimes admitting underqualified students (as would any university), but the correlation with gender is just not there. (Instead, it resides in the perceptor's mind!)
- Tom 7
I'll be the first to tell you that women ARE plenty capable. I know this from first hand experience, as my mom is a Phd. in EE (top in her class) with several highly successfull startup companies and patents. She is honestly the all-round smartest person I've ever known...not "genius"...but I think most "genius" isn't really genius at all. (On somewhat of a side note, she put herself through all of this literally alone as a women, far worse than most of today's women have to contend with. e.g. Professors telling her in the beginning of the semester that they didn't believe her (women) capable of doing the work...only later to eat crow and then some)
I'm not going to tell you that there aren't some unfair social expectations out there--there are. However, it is equally naive to say that men and women are wired the same. I think there are also certain maternal obligation and desires that can't be ignored--men don't really face it. This is not to say that women should be home and barefoot (or any similar bullshit), but rather that many professional women start out in demanding fields, discover later in life, after graduating from grad school, law school, or what have you, that they want to raise children. This frequently requires a change of priorities...atleast for awhile...which means their ULTIMATE career paths are going to be altered.
I do believe there are fundamental genetic (nature, not nuture) differences between men and women. While I can't pinpoint them all...as that tends to be a rather risky proposition. I've seen plenty enough evidence of it, to say that the differences between men and women in the sciences is more than just social and upbringing. When is the last time you've seen a women lock themselves up in a room, and obsess about something to the exclusion of all else (e.g., body odor, hair, social life, etc) until they solve it, or come up empty handed? We see plenty of male geeks/techies do this in large numbers. Yet, I'm hardpressed, despite my experience, to think of a single women like this in anything (not just computers...)
Though just a single observation (not necessarily true across the board, although I intuit it to be so), the differences between my mother and father typify the differences between the two highly skilled respective element of the sexes. My father, too, was an engineer. Though not as degree'd, he was, by all accounts, the best in his field. As an engineer, he was better than even my mom...atleast in several important areas. One major difference I noticed about my father was that he was very much of the nerd or geek that I mentioned before (who will focus on something with such determination, that the rest of the world is just irrelevant). He loved his technology for the sake of technology. I can't say this about my mom. She loved technology for the sake of delivering a product...of helping people...or some greater end, other than her immediate edification. While my mom also has the ability to see any problem through, it just aint the same. There isn't that one track mind....the kind of mind which I've seen amongst many of the top scientists of today and the past.
I'm also equally sure that there are certain qualities that women have that in a long-term career can prove to be equally valuable in certain fields. I also believe women are fundamentally more social creatures than men...which may explain my mom's success in some ways. Very few people have the ability to manage and understand all types of people (particularly geeks and nerds) and also fully comprehend (as opposed to superficially) the underlying technical problem(s).
More observations...look at girls and boys sports between at a very young age. Across many different cultures, the boys and girls start to differentiate themselves significantly, in terms of aggresion, and the like.... In any case, I can only scratch the surface here, but the mere fact that I lack official stats and figures does not mean that men and women are exactly the same mentally.
[Y]ou name a more complicated invention than a piece of software that manipulates billions of microscopic switches billions of times per second.
Er, how about the little thingy with the billions of microscopic switches on it? That's a pretty complicated doohickey.
enmity.
spoken like a true EE major.
tsia.
enmity.
ugh, i can't believe i just wrote that.
I followed a link to the Cornell Society for Women Engineers from our CS homepage and also found a 404. It just happened to be an out-of-date link, though -- I ran a site search and it turned up a bunch of the CSWE's (active) pages. So it's not that bad (unless, of course, you don't go to Cornell. then you should tell your web guys (girls!) to get back to work.)
enmity.
I noticed a lot of replies dealing directly with CMU. Now I did apply there, and I was accepted (but NOT into comp sci), but I'm not going there right now. I see that everyone on Slashdot from CMU had to put in their two cents on the matter.
Frankly, I don't give a damn what goes on at CMU. I think half of these posts are arrogant and sickening, and the others are just self-serving (when it comes to school). I've found very little productive conversation on the matter at all in these replies. It wouldn't be so bad if one or two people did it, but I think about 20 did. CMU students are NOT representative of the entire CS population in this country. For example, you probably have a LOT more women than we do, which makes a HUGE difference. My social life is that much worse because there's no real females in my classes at all.
The real reason why there's no female comp sci students is that Comp Sci is a ridiculous major to have. It's like engineering, only less social. I personally have to stick with it just because I can still graduate in 4 years if I do. When I graduate, I'm not doing anything in computers or anything CLOSE to what I've learned in school. That's my problem and mine alone, but I think girls and guys alike are often repelled by the general CS cirriculum, just because they teach you how to be the best CS professor and leave no options to "take the easy road". Basically they kick your ass with ridiculously difficult and badly taught classes and then wonder why enrollment is down. Sheesh.
The difference is that men tend not to whine about such issues as much as women do. We know that if men wanted to be elementary school teachers then they would just go and do it and not whine that our parents didn't get us started in that direction early enough in life...
I would hardly describe Anita Borg as a "man hating feminist". nor would I describe her as wanting to bend the world to her will.
I am not denying in the least people's right to choose their profession, but I see nothing wrong to removing barriers that have nothing to do with ability that are placed in the way of certain students. these do exist, mistake me not. of course, letting in a "disadvantaged" student with lower qualifications is never the way to go...
Lea
This all sounds hauntingly familar. when I was in college some 15 - 19 years ago it was almost exactly the same. In the freshmen level classes about 33 % were women, by the time I was in sr software engineering we had one female out of 30 students. I have now worked for 5 or 6 employers, at only one were there a substantial minority of women developers. at Cendant IT we had about 4 women developers out of 18 thats still very low. At Cendant they were actually trying to hire women so usually they had to hire MIS majors that were women. Now I'm at a startup that specializes in web development, e-commerce and anything java, on a floor with 50 developers, 3 are women. Now a majority of the management/customer account rep types are women. This is long and winding, but the trend I see is that by and large, for what ever reason, women do'nt seem to be interested in computer science. But think about this how many women do see working as auto mechanics? ** Rember when you are things of giant heads there IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE BIG-GIANT-HEAD
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
"What do you think of this doll Johnny?
-"Dolls are for girls!"
"No. Dolls are for everyone, Johnny"
-"I don't want to play will the doll!"
"Pick up the doll, Jonny"
-"No"
"PICK UP THAT DOLL!!"
-"NO!"
"Johnny, it is for the good of mankind that we
emasculate you. We are placing our expectaions about how the world should be, squarely on your shoulders! How dare you dissapoint us! Too bad kids have to have things like this injected into their lives. Let them be kids for chrissakes. Theirs scientific proof to the differences between men and women, so in a way, what you're doing to your son is unnatural. You've succumbed to the neurosis of some popular belief and using your son as a guinea pig. Don't be ashamed that you have balls.
Along with the rise of the web and the popularization of the internet comes the broadening of careers that the majority of people consider within the scope of 'information technology' - its not all programmers and MIS anymore. In light of the sweeping changes that have occurred in only the past few years, are women instead seeking majors and emphases that are useful in IT but not part of the 'computer science' curricula of universities?
I personally know of quite a few female acquaintances whose interest in computers have shifted in such a manner, from the 'traditional' CS areas into other fields related to computing, especially graphic design and communications/media - where they fully intend to have a future in IT, and a career in computers... just not as coders or engineers, but as designers and content providers instead.
As an example of a change in what women percieve as more attractive options to CS, it certainly seems that there is a *very high* proportion of females in the area of 'webdesigning', especially in coming up with the most avant-garde and creative sites.
Basically, is it just a percieved problem that fewer females are becoming CS majors, or are they gravitating to other positions in the computing world instead?
I wonder if this decline is in any way related to American feminism.
I'm serious. As a child/teenager I was deeply into science. Went to summer schools, won high scool maths competitions. Yet was told by teachers, peers, comedy shows, news, books, etc (aka "society") that real women didn't do maths and science. It was unladylike, women weren't logical etc. It was cute not to be able to balance your checkbook.
So basically I thought "fuck you" and got my physics degree (1st class homours in nuclear physics; minors in pure & applied maths, with logic and stats in there too.) And also got involved in some minor ways with the feminist movement which was at the time busy with equal pay, equal rights, anti-discrimination etc.
Excellent stuff. All humans are worthy of equal dignity. And I got to be a brave and noble pioneer. (Yes I know Ada beat me to it by a long way, but nobody told you about that back then. That sort of rediscovery was part of what the feminist movement was doing back then.)
It took about 10 years before the feminist movement seemed to be taken over by ratbags talking about how "patriarchal" logic and maths and reason were, and that women were somehow morally superior beings who didn't need that dull linear masculine style of thought.
I cannot express how utterly pissed off that makes me. And how depressing for girls now to be called unfeminine and unwomanly by so-called feminists.
It's just like prohibition - after women got the vote, the suffragists drifted off elsewhere leaving only the crackpots behind. That time it turned into the temperance movement. This time it seems to be censorship. Fuck fuck fuck.
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
I know we bend the rules of statistics pretty heavily at my work :P we have 3 female programmers and 3 male programmers Including myself.. I think a *LOT* of it has to do with attitudes towards technology and computers. My Girlfriend had *never* even used a computer other than like once for a school project in HS. She was in her first year of college and I introduced them to her and she loves it.. She can geek out just as good as me or you or the next guy/err.. GAL. I think its just a problem of getting more women comfortable with computers and the social computers are for geeks stigma.. And I think many many more women would be into computers then.. Heh.. In theory ( JUST in theory now ) Women should make better programmers than men.. in practice I dont see this very often and I still cant figure it out. But womens brains should be able to cope with programming better since they use more of there brain at once and dont clearly focus. so they should be able to keep in mind several things and there programming should be all around more effecient.. But that never happens and most of the billiant programmers I know are guys.. (Im not saying there are not women programmers who are good as my GF can almost put me to shame in C ( which is sad :P )) but.. This is *NOT* i repeat *NOT* a problem that colleges need to try and fix by minority admissions ( IE women being a minority ) if they do.. not much is being accomplished this late in the game it is a K-12 thing and establishing your interests so you have a damn clue before you go to college.
well, if those are all that are qualified and interested, you're right in your opinion. however, I have observed barriers to entry that have nothing to do with skill in many technical majors. there's nothing to lose and so much to gain by taking these down.
yes, I see semi-qualified female EECS/CS majors at berkeley. I see a LOT more unqualified guys. the girls stick out, whether good or bad, and there's a lot of attention paid to their performance because (get this) people have different expectations for them. personally I think that's a load of crap.
Lea
So, just using myself as an example, how did I (female! wow! And look- she's learning C++ - and likes it!) get interested in this stuff? I do believe in supportive family and schools. Everyone encouraged me to do as much as I could with math. People don't make fun of me for liking math, or technology, or computers. I guess I'm lucky that way:-) And when I began to see the possibilities in computers, I wasn't discouraged by anyone...I don't think they really understood why I was interested, but they didn't think it was ridiculous. Guys don't put me down. Hmmm.
Anyway, the point of this post: I can't think of a specific way in which I was really discouraged or encouraged to get involved with computers. I did it myself. I was supported by my family and friends to do whatever I wanted, even if they didn't understand it, but no one said things like "wouldn't you like me to show you how this works?". Does this mean more girls would be in cs if they really wanted to? Well, I was also raised in an environment of contempt for prevailing attitudes of society, like the idea that girls aren't good at math. Perhaps I'm just less affected by other people's opinions (sometimes I think this would be a trait worth developing in children).
I am willing to believe that there are less women than men with the right mindset for cs, period. But this doesn't mean that all those with an interest, and not just people like me who apparently aren't affected by societal attitudes, will actually get involved in any way with computers, until they get support from other people.
Lily
i'm a freshman in cs at uiuc which is 3'rd or 4'th best program in the nation. there are girls. but not many. and the ones there are, are quite atrocious, in more ways than one. but boys are better at this cs stuff, or that's the way it seems to me and every other male cs kid i know. thank god for the college liberal arts and sciences.
Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back.
okay, this sounds a little far out to me. i'd certainly agree that boys tend to be more aggressive, but i've never ever seen that translate into "boys pushing girls off computers." access to the machines has, at least in my experience, always been equal. in fact, probably more equal than in the classroom: when students are interacting as a class, its pretty clear that male aggressiveness will have some impact on the confidence/performance/etc of the supposed less aggressive female students. but when the students are in front of screens, theyre primarily interacting with the machines, not each other. girls arent (at least directly) faced will their aggressive male counterparts. that seems to me a relatively liberating situation.
..of course, if girls tend to be more socially oriented, it would make sense that few are interested in hours of lonely hacking..
anyway, i didnt think Borg said anything interesting or new on this issue. probably the best thing ive read on it was this article on freshmeat. SethEntry level jobs are less stressful than college. More profitable. Leave one with lots of free time (compared to someone taking 18 credit hours, anyways). And don't involve keeping crazy hours. Lots of people just don't wanna bother, because they don't need to. So... if you really want more people majoring in CS or CpE rather than going to work early, you have to make it more appealing.
As in, damn near FREE.
How about VA using some of it's newfound wealth to set up a scholarship program? IBM gives loads of money to higher education. So does DELL, and even Microsoft. For VA, setting up 10 $2,500/yr scholarships is pennies in a very big bucket. It looks great to the press, and even better to the recipients. You can pick people on whatever criteria you chose; grades, free software experience, advocacy, or most-shameless-grub-for-money (me! me!).
The simple fact is, a non-graduate can be rich by 25 if they're any good and end up getting stock options before their company IPO's. Your best and brightest KNOW this, and it draws a great number of them away from universities, because they COST money, and only reward you with stress, debt, and lost sleep. If you want more people to graduate, make school the better option; one of the easiest ways to do that is to make it cheap. A VA Linux Systems Scholarship Program would certainly help.
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Just lurking, thanks!
lol. Ok, if they're all screwing and having a blast while I continue to do the programming and design, well.. more power to em. :) So far I've been tryng to learn CGI (Perl & C++ varients), and UNIX shell scripting, though there'll be some extra bits here and there that have no clue how to do, yet. Gotta sketch out the whole design as OOP, see where everything links together, do as much as I can and hope to get the rest done when possible. hmm.. if they wanna do the web page where the user inputs the data...
The guys I know will help out, hopefully a significant amount. At least I expect it. Dunno about the gals.. which kinda sucks. (no pun intended)
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
What I think is obvious is that this thing is happening. Long time ago, computer science was pretty much comparable to every other major in the sense of a person being able to be proficient in the field without sacrificing his/her free time on the subject.
In the 80's computers became a common thing and everybody was able to get one. Naturally, what happened was that the girls, who are more innate in social skills, didn't have all that time to spend on computers and went on to have a life. The universities' CS departments of course didn't even notice taking the difficulty up gradually over the years, to the point where almost none of the actual programming classes are possible to pass without contributing an excessive amount of your free time. Especially when we compare to any other major.
And when I think of this from my personal point of view, I notice that I didn't spend a third of the time doing any math class, that I have spent on the CS stuff.
Try taking physics at Dalhousie. Sheesh. 10 hour quantum mechanics assignments, labs which basically require you to come in outside the normal time to be able to finish...
:)
On the plus side being a physicist landed me a summer job with JDS Uniphase
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I too once thought that getting formalized schooling was the only ticket to making money. But then I realized that a mere education would do nearly as well. I'm 21, have no degree own a house, and make >$30/hour plus benefits. I like school, but it would be nothing short of insanity, economically speaking, to go now. Why not just wait until my stock portfolio is large enough that I can go, living off of my dividends? I'm sure I'll come out ahead of those who delay their earnings by a few years, while racking up loans!
I think that people who go to college, especially for CS, should do so out of a love for the subject, not for economic reasons.
I'm a gnu world man.
I'd very much like to find out to what extent it's true that boys 'push girls off the computers', and to what extent it's true that 'girls just aren't interested in computers'.
Can we hear from some school teachers on this please?
Do you have to control the boys so the girls can have a go? Do you have to encourage the girls to do so? If so, what happens when the girls get their go--do they want to come back for more, or...?
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
For those of you that thinks coding is hard and that's why the girls are scared, this is not the right sitution.
In CS, we learn more about the concept and theory of computation. Only 3-4 courses where you have to code, but the focus is still on the concepts. To me, it seems that women thinks different than men. I notice that during recent group studies, when it comes to definations, girls are the best, but when it comes to the application of the computation theory, girls just stopped there. And this is not from only one girl but from about 10 female I have meet in my University career.
In the first year, I can see the classroom with about 40% girls but now, in third year, only about 25% are left.
BTW, there are exceptions in every rule, I have also seen some girls that do REALLY well in CS.
I couldn't make it through the article without thinking about that image of Bill Gates with all the Borg apparati strapped to him. As a second year CS student at SUNY Binghamton, I can attest that it would seem that there are a lot fewer female students in the upper level CS classes. There are a few though, and most of them are smarter than me... although I'm not sure that would take too much...
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
The "problem" is that many women simply don't find computer programming to be interesting. Is that bad? Of course not! At the very least it means that those who do will be sought after by colleges.
There are some damn fine female programmers out there (just as there are some really bad ones on both sides of the gender fence), but that doesn't mean that half of the programmers need to be women. If, on average, more men are inclined to be programmers, why not accept the ratios and go on with your life?
>Wealth creation is the only human activity that >can be morally justified.
I think that life boils down to having fun. After all, would you rather be doing something that you consider fun, and live (for example) in an ideal communist society (obviously this can't happen, since ideal communism always breaks), or would you rather have to do a crappy job that makes lots of money, but you hate it. I know I'd take the fun life.
In this day and age, wealth can usually keep you happy, though.
Reading the rest of your post, I've come to the conclusion that you are either trolling for fun, or are incredible bigotted and ignorant, and quite probably very stupid. If you are trolling for _fun_, then note that you've just donated some evidence in support of my argument that humans do things to try to have more fun overall. (sometimes we do things we don't like, but we do them because they give results which we do like.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Did you, yourself, have to go through many psychological and social trials and tribulations before achieving your competence in computers? Did
people point and laugh at you, call you names? Did people of the opposite sex consiously avoid you, showed no interest in you, because they knew
that hanging out with you would mean ostracising themselves from their own social circle?
Actually, yes. When I was in high school, I was constantly ignored by the opposite sex and ridiculed for my pursuits of CS. The things that I found interesting (Intel Assembly, C, etc.) drew blank stares from a lot of people if I ever tried to talk about them. People got up and moved away from me at lunch because they didn't want to hear me go off on some CS tangent - and still people say "Don't talk about school. You're not in class right now." I am a male.
This is the only portion of your post that I disagree with. My experiences make me acutely aware of the need to provide support. Women (and men) need support and the freedom to choose their own futures. It's all about generating passion for learning. Without that passion, there is no desire to work towards something like a CS degree. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Romantic (e.g., Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffman) and I believe people should aspire to expand their horizons and enjoy themselves, searching for that "höheres Dasein" (higher state of being for those who don't speak German). One should find something in which one can totally immerse oneself. I am studying CS because I love solving CS problems. I also study linguistics because I love learning about languages and reading their literature, esp. folklore. Had I not received support from my parents, teachers, and good friends, I would not be where I am today. I believe that finding a career that is mentally rewarding is far better than settling for one that is financially rewarding.
Maybe my philosophy can be expressed as a paraphrasing of a proverb: Catch someone a fish, and you will feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish, and you will feed them for a lifetime. Teach someone to love to fish, and they will never starve for fulfillment.
- Y
"There is no culture in computer science, only cults." - M. Felleisen
There're few things sicker than trying to get people to go into a field in which they genuinely have no interest in, just to satisfy economic pressures or whatever. My government back home does that - they're trying to get more women into engineering because there's a need for engineers.
You don't know what you're asking for. A warning for you, these things come in packages: a society which does what you're suggesting is a very dictatorial, authoritarian society with limited respect for individual dreams and desires - it is in such a society which I lived for most of my life, and it is not good.
Why should anyone get up in arms because a self-selected group (computer science students) doesn't match the demographic makeup of the general population?
Each engineering student is an INDIVIDUAL, and I don't see any benefit at all in trying to steer people toward something they may not be interested in, just because there aren't enough (women | left-handed | Green eyed) hackers.
There aren't as many women riding Harley's as men, and there aren't as many women working on shrimp boats either, and there also aren't nearly as many women working on framing houses or rough-in plumbing. WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to my urgent project of trying to achieve parity between men and women in the hobby of model sailboating.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not having gone to CMU, I can't speak on the competitiveness of entry into it, but I can speak on my own experiences with Texas A&M, and the Computer Engineering program(a degree which is often overlooked in almost every discussion of "techie" degrees.) Also, I would like to say something on what I think is the biggest reason that girls/women/non-males(^_^) don't go into CS/CE programs.
:)
A&M has a two stage program for Computer E., EE, and I believe for CS, where you take your first 60 hours of courses during the first stage. During that time, you take all of your basics(R^3) and hopefully you've been taking the lower numbered courses for your major cs120, cs210, math up through Cal [2,3](I forget the designators), histories, etc. When you hit 60 hours(or thereabout), you have to have proven(via gpa) to the university that you can hack it, so to speak. It's at this point where the business school picks up an awful lot of new students who never crack another book again because of not being able to make it into the upper level classes. It was at this point that the very few girls who were in my lower level cs courses tended to bail and go for something more "feminine" and acceptable than a real CS or CE degree, like MIS, business admin, what-have-you(my personal opinion of the business school at A&M is pretty low, it's really, in my experience, for dweebies that couldn't make it in any other degree plan, and not just CS/EE/CE).
I have no personal theories about the inability of women to handle the tough majors(I have two female friends who both double-majored in Math and Bio-chem, one of whom was also taking Russian at the same time). They go against what is "normal" and "accepted" for women in American society. They're out-spoken among males and females alike, and will call you on any bullshit you try and put over on them(I know guys that fit the female stereotype of quiet and non-confrontational as well). One of my room-mates is an art-student(I know, how cliche can I get), but she's nearly the same way. Both of her parents are programmers(just as an interesting reference for the fact she _definitely_ had exposure), and she's been brought up, much like the first two, to really believe that she can be as good at anything as she wants to be. This brings me back to the previous paragraph.
The girls that I've talked with who are "techie" majors are usually of the same type as the girls in the second paragraph. They had the personal drive to enter the society of engineers and techies and learn. The ones who moved to the business school or something else, I always knew would never make it as engineers(I use the term _very_ generically here, a CS degree is _not_ the same as working your ass off to become a professionally recognized Engineer, and no, I'm not bitter about it
So, what's my point to saying that I knew they'd never cut it? I know a lot of guys that I knew would never make it, and most of them didn't either. My room-mate, despite being capable of dealing with a computer as an appliance/tool, and having no fear of the computer, the software, or the people that know what to do with it, has no desire to learn how to do anything with a command-line, or anything else. I know guys that are that way too. She knows she could learn it if she was interested in it though. The ones(guys and girls) that I knew would never make it(and not just by reason of being complete feebs, which many were), were the ones who couldn't be bothered to really learn how to do something new. You know the type. The people that don't want to learn how to do anything so they can claim ignorance and not have to think(ow ow, I just had a thought!).
The thing I see as the biggest problem is that girls especially, from birth, seem to be told that thinking is bad for them(just spend 3 hours watching daytime television, if that's not a big sign that says: "you're all morons, so we'll lie to you and tell you what is good", I just don't know what is; and yes, a certain demographic of mostly women are a target audience for that time slot). This is _slowly_, _painfully_ going away, but I am STILL amazed how stupid(not dumb, which I equate with inability) people can be. I see this with guys too, but it's less accepted for guys to be stupid than for girls it seems(anyone remember a time when it was just expected that guys would know how to change a tire, and girls wouldn't? Remember a time when guys would stop their car to get out and help?)
So, how to fix it? Don't tolerate it. Pretty simple eh? Parents make all the difference in a society. I'm in Germany right now(ex-eastern at that), and the number of women engineers that I work with(all of them extremely sharp and capable) is much higher than I work with in the US. The most important thing, I think, is to realize that they are still feminine, and they are still sharp as a razor. They weren't told that being a girl was bad, or that being a smart girl was bad, or any of this other kind of insinuated bullshit. They were supported in what they wanted to do BY THEIR PARENTS.
Engineering fields have a character to them, just like kinesiology, art, music(just TRY talking to a die-hard music-major sometime to get a cool perspective on how little you know about anything musical), poultry science(*gack* I shit you not), forestry, political science, etc. Engineers have been _engineers_ a VERY long time let's not forget. Not as long as artists have been flaky, or politicians have been weasly, but a very long time(DaVinci is an argued origin of the discipline, but I think it goes back further). Yes, these disciplines were born under a time where women couldn't vote, couldn't own land, etc. and that's important to remember, but let's not get too gung-ho about making equalities out of differences at the expense of destroying all tradition. Women and men are different, duh. These(CS/CE/EE) are "masculine" fields, *shrug*, if you say so. I say they're aggressive fields, which happen to suit males, on average, very well. Women can be aggressive/confident too, so if they have what it takes to make it across the bar, they need to be encouraged to do what the guys had to do to get there as well. I sure as hell know that it wasn't easy to get my degree. But if I had, goddess(sic) forbid, wanted to be like the fruity interior decorator guy on tv telling me how cute the curtains are with the little bows, I'm pretty damn sure I could do it at least as well as he does. That's the attitude it takes to succeed in anything. If you treat someone like they can't do anything long enough, they'll believe it. Most engineers are the kind of person that hates being told they can't do something. If that's not in the heart of someone, then they shouldn't be an engineer. Maybe Zoology(how many o's do ya put in that?) is for you, or Forestry, or architecture(not an easy discipline either).
As a pseudo-related side rant: Denying femininity to be accepted as an engineer is just stupid. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm tired of the bull-dike, gotta be better than everyone else, female engineer syndrome. Even other girls don't like them. Being confident, being right, and being able to argue your case is one thing(and yes, this is an important part of being in the industry. Suck it up. Technology is not for the weak of mind, nor of heart. I'm not about to go work in the hair-stylist(blatant stereotype) industry and insist that it change to fit me.), being as bullheaded and blind as the most pigheaded football coach is entirely different.
Mad Monk!
First:
- argument by assertion. It is a problem because I say so. It must be due tro discrimination because I say so.
Second:
- blatant derogatory generalisations about boys (they are "aggressive" and scare the girls away from the computers). I find this offensive and sexist.
Third
- still doesn't accept that there are biologically mediated differences between men's and women's brains (which do affect different people in different degrees, so yes some girls are good at maths). We have been hearing this nonsense since the 60s. It isn't true, sister. Open your eyes. And your mind.
Would you - could you - fly in a plane built using a "feminist physics" or a feminist engineering?
... yes, there really is a connection between this topic and the distributed DoS attacks that made the news last week.
As David Dittrich pointed out in his interview answers, attacks such as these are possible primarily because so many machines on the Internet are poorly secured. And that is mainly because there just aren't enough skilled sysadmins out there with the ability to do it right.
Part of the problem, to be sure, are the suits who don't put enough attention and resources into hiring and training good sysadmins. But part of the problem is that there just aren't enough qualified people to start with. And there's the connection, because as Dr. Borg (what a name!) pointed out in the article, if women had been getting involved in technology as much as men have over the past decade or so, today's labor shortage certainly wouldn't be so bad (and might not have existed at all).
Frankly, I think that a lot of the guys (I repeat: guys) in the thread so far who have been downplaying this problem are asinine in principle. The present inequality in a branch of the economy that's become so important should concern everyone; and it's easy for you to ignore it if you're in the majority.
But even if you look at it on purely pragmatic grounds, the dearth of women in technology is still a problem crying out for a solution, because the workforce shortage is a problem, and we're leaving about 50% of the population essentially out of the picture. The labor shortage may be getting us a lot of job security and good pay, but we're also getting exceedingly long work weeks, and worst of all, too many critical tasks are being assigned to too few people. The result is that computer security, among other things, falls by the wayside.
We have to have more skilled people in technology, and that won't happen without more gender equality.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
My major, Chemical Engineering, has about 40% chicks, as opposed to the Computer Engineering department here at USC, that has about 10% chicks. Hypothesis: the ladies are more attracted to guys with real-jobs instead of lifeless drones who screw their hard drives all day. By natural instinct, women choose paths in life statistically more probable for finding a sufficient provider for their family...not to mention a guy more likely to give them an orgasm in the sack. heh heh.
Eh, i'm just playing...the real reason that chicks choose chemE over compE is because chemE is a much easier major. Hypothesis: chicks are either a) inferior b) lazy or c) crafty.
scope my Super-Sick Webpage
My major, Chemical Engineering, has about 40% chicks, as opposed to the Computer Engineering department here at USC, that has about 10% chicks. Hypothesis: the ladies are more attracted to guys with real-jobs instead of lifeless drones who screw their hard drives all day. By natural instinct, women choose paths in life statistically more probable for finding a sufficient provider for their family...not to mention a guy more likely to give them an orgasm in the sack. heh heh.
Eh, i'm just playing...the real reason that chicks choose chemE over compE is because chemE is a much easier major. Hypothesis: chicks are either a) inferior b) lazy or c) crafty. check my Super-Sick Webpage
My daughter was telling me of a computer lesson about cookies that she'd just been taught at school. As far as she was concerned what she'd been told was 'rubbish', but now she understood that bit in The Matrix, so it wasn't all wasted.
threadeds blog
Why do we need CS grads anyway ? IT (the stuff we actually get paid real money to do) is quite a different field from the somewhat theoretical nature of academic CS. Personally I'm a laser physicist by training, and my most highly regarded coworkers are a mix of other numerate disciplines, but far from being CS biased. If I was 17-18 these days, I hope someone would advise me to go and study almost anything other than pure CS.
Lately I have mainly been working in a web design house. The place is full of young women; all moving into this lively, exciting and commercially hot field. Some are more techy, some less so, but none need a specific CS degree to do what they do.
PS - If your name was "Borg", would you want to go anywhere near a CS geekpit ? How many Trek jokes do you think she still hasn't heard, and how many do the saddo fratboys keep thinking are new ?
I think in trying to understand why this situation is the way it is people are overlooking some fundamentals. Things have always been this way with our species and what we're seeing in CS is really a symptom of something else: the nature of the human genders. History, our current civilization, and introspection reveal to me that the genders have certain preferences because of their spiritual, mental, and physical composition. Men tend to dwell on the logical plane (as hard as that is to beleive sometimes), while women tend to dwell on the emotional plane. Thus men will naturally gravitate towards scientific, industrial and technical matters while women will be drawn towards social and artistic matters. Neither is better than the other; both are necessary halves of a whole and contain part of the other (the yin/yang symbol comes to mind). Those women who've been drawn to scientific and other normally male dominated interests have been and sometimes still are discouraged. This is unfortunate; I think female input into the normally "male" fields would make them more life affirming. This suppression of female expression is, I think, based in part on the observed difference between the genders and negatively reinforces it. Women should be encouraged (but not pushed) to pursue these fields. However, in the end, even if we lived in a balanced society where people were encouraged and free to pursue what their hearts desire, I think the current male dominated fields would still be so, though the disparity might not be as great.
So, why are women not interested? You know, the more I work in this industry, the less I become interested. Anyone else find that? The hours are often long, the work is often tedious, the bosses are often exploitative idiots. The job chews up your personal life until you are often too tired to even think of going out on a Friday night for a good time. Maybe that's why women are "not interested"?
Science and especially computers feed off your brain. I've gone home some evenings feeling like my brainwaves have stopped waving. I don't think that it's entirely fair to blame the lack of women in the job on some sort of sexism - I think the job itself needs to be looked at.
In an article posted yesterday, there was a lot of discussion about how many hours one worked at their job. I read some people working 60+ hours a week. This will be a huge generalisation (bracing for flames) but I don't know too many women who would be willing to work that type of schedule. I have not yet met a woman who COULDN'T say NO. Plus we can bring up the whole "women won't work long hours because they want to be mothers" argument. It is sad to say, but those 60+ weeks are needed to advance sometimes. Most women, let alone normal people, do not want to work the hellacious schedule or deal with the inordinatwe amount of stress associacted with this kind of work. I remember back in school, I knew a few female CS majors. By sophomore year, they bailed out to technical writing or something else, claiming the pressure was too much. I am not saying women can't do a good job. I am not saying women can't be programmers or IT people. What I am trying to say is if you look at what is required of the job, i.e. large amounts of stress, impossible deadlines, 60+ hour work weeks, this is not the most appealing profession for a young woman to consider. P.S. When I have kids (married and trying), it doesn't matter if they are boy or girl, they will have access to a computer. I have three female cousins (4,6,8 years old respectively) and they have access to computers. Two of them really like it. The other could care less.
Fast, cheap, correct. You get to pick two.
Its great to see women/men interested in computers!! But, when we get a flood of lost puppies entering CS/CE programs because they heard "You can make a lot of money doin that!!" , Im am GLAD to see the decrease in women entering these programs. The same goes for men in my opinon. I pray for the 2001 Fernolegist shortage myself.
Its always amusing to see the boys sitting at the round table discussing why or why not women do or do not do a particular thing. Can you say clueless? I knew you could.
Other than the high pay and job availability at the present time I can't figure out why any of you think the computer field is enticing for anyone -- be they male or female. I am both female and a sys admin and if it were not for the pay and the job availability I'd leave this field in a New York minute.
Unexpected problems pop up at the worst times. If there are problems the entire non-computer population of your particular company thinks its your own personal fault. If things go well you am rarely thanked -- even if you just worked an 80 hour week to ensure that things go smoothly. You are on call 24-7. You are expected keep up with current technology and to know every thing about every operating system ever written.... I could go on for hours.
To top it all off we all seem to belong to this realm of arrogant geekdom -- its not really a friendly, fuzzy and warm inviting atmostphere. And you wonder why women aren't attracted to it?
A better question would be, why are men SO attracted to it? If you could get anyone to answer truthfully I'd be willing to bet you could find its the money, the job availability, and power issues.
cute.
very cute.
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For example: female firefighters should have the exact same fitness requirements as men -- raging fires are not gender sensitive. However, in an intellectual setting, teachers have to fight the gender bias that results in women with "less CS interest". It's a chicken and egg problem -- if we don't discourage critical thinking in females when they're young, they may end up choosing CS when they're older.
Gender bias research says that: teachers call on boys more often, let boys interrupt girls, encourage boys to solve problems, etc. More is here. An article about women and computers is here, and a dissenting view is here- -------
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attempt to be honest. I mean, gasp, the horror of it all. As I said before, I know full well that women have the ability to focus. My mom is extremely extremely successful, much of this success is derived from her ability to focus and see things through. However, it IS a fundamentally different kind of focus. She is not by any means a nerd. She is able to at one moment, solve significant problems that her engineers at her company can't solve, while simultaneously dealing with other problems (e.g., tiffs between engineering and sales, personal problems, financial, etc.)
In short, my mom is, in my opinion, at the top of her game as an engineer and entrepreneur. She is what many women aren't, because of a great deal of SOCIAL (read: nuture) problems. I fully recognize that UNNECESSARY social problems play a large role in keeping women out of certain fields (though many women PLAY THEMSELVES into that roll, to the constant annoyance of successful women such as my mother). None of this is to say, however, that men and women are created exactly equal, except for physical attributes.
While it is true that the priorities of men also change after having a child, there is a world of difference. Men, for whatever reason, don't assume the same roles in bringing up a child as a women does. Very few men feel compelled to quit their jobs, or substancially reduce their hours for a couple year--that is a fact. You might argue much of it is social (although I think there are some chemical differences there), but that does not mean it does not play a key role on career paths. I know of a number of law firms, for instance, that have trouble retaining women--they just can't put in the kind of hours that is demanded of them, and do, what they could regard, as a proper parenting job. In talking to some of these female lawyers, I discovered that they were quite happy at the firm, they just wanted something else. Many were soon snatched up by corporations to act as corporate counsil, a job that requires fewer insane hours. I, too, know a few of these corporations, they consider themselves all too lucky to be able to hire a person that is much more qualified than any male in a similar role.
Did I say I have "proof"? Did I say that I expect everyone to swallow it whole? No. Nor can you claim that your social influences are proof either. I think that both social and chemical differences play a role, social more than chemical (atleast in non-nerdy fields, e.g., law, medicine (although many med schools have more women enrolled than men), business, etc.
Am I saying that women shouldn't enroll in programs such as engineering? No, not by a long shot. If they are happy with it, more power too them. In fact, that's exactly what my sisters are studying in college, and I support them entirely. The fact of the matter is that my mother outperformed nearly every man in her field, if my mother can do it, my sisters can do it. I think a better balance of men and women in engineering could even improve the field in general (although the means to achieve this I question sometimes) But that does not mean that I ever expect my sisters to behave the same way that thousands of young men have, through different cultures, through the decades. I don't confuse the ability to get things done, with the ability to lose sight of everything but ONE thing--in my experience, that is very much of a male attribute. Put simply, women are capable of doing the same job in engineering; it is the underlying motivations and approach that I question.
I think the real reason why women don't get into comp sci is that they aren't usually given lego to play with as girls. Think about it.
I'm a male non-traditional student (for you Brits, that's "mature student") at U Wisconsin-Superior, a small, public, mid-western university. I see many reasons that there are not as many women in CS.
1) Women are still valued more highly for their looks than their brains by men and other women. Brainy women (still, in 2000)do not get the positve feedback that pretty women get. Of course, there are pretty, brainy women, but they seem to get more attention for their looks.
2) Men seem to have more patience with programming exercises than many of the women students. In my school, we are often given projects which have no real outcome other than sorting a list of random integers in order to learn the various algorithms; many of the women students I've talked with believe this to be a waste of their time. Contrast this with a Creative Writing class where you are assigned to write a sonnet; at the end of the day, you have an actual poem that may mean something in addition to having learned a poetic form.
3) Some of the instructors and many of the students here don't believe wwoman want to learn anything "hard".
The only thing that this constant "where are the women"-type discussions on slashdot is doing is trivializing the women who ARE here. Sometimes I get so annoyed when everytime a story that asks "where are all the female geeks?" gets dozens of women essentially responding 'I'm here! I'm here!'.. only to be ignored.. and then ignored again the next week when a similar conversation comes about.. and again.. and again.. I've almost given up on posting my opinion on stories like this because I'm always ignored.
On an entirely different note.. I honestly don't think we need to push women into computer science who don't want to be there. Many men LIKE spending all their time geeking in front of a computer, but unlike myself, most women DON'T.. and if forced into a career that they really don't want to do means they will be just unhappy in the future. (or will end up quitting their job to raise their snot nosed rugrats) I believe if you poll a group of computer science majors, many of the men will get into computer science because they like computer, or they're really geeks at heart, whereas most women will get into it to make money or for some other trivial reason.. but obviously NOT because they like computers. (Take the girl in front of me in Linear Algebra.. she spends all her time dressing slutty and acting stupid.. why the heck is she in Computer Science?)
Another incredibly annoying result of trying to push more women into computer science is that the general opinion of male geeks about female computer science students goes right down the tube. More and more women are seen as "just not geeky enough", which really pisses at least this geeky person off. I've read several statements so far saying that women in CS don't know computers.. or have to take "beginners" courses, or need constant help from the teacher.. and I have to agree.. it's true. Call me selfish, or whatnot, but if I wanted to take classes with 95% women I'd major in business or marketing. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to major in computer science.. and I like it that way.
On one hand I agree that it's as stupid to tell a female she should go into a field as it is to say she shouldn't. However, I think you're missing the point.
There are girls interested in going into computer stuff, but get discouraged along the way by several factors: sexist teachers, being picked on by boys in the classes (especially in teenage years when this can be excruciating), and an overall societal myth that girls aren't good at math and science.
While a lot of charges of sexism are overrated, I have to tell you that I experienced the abovementioned crap firsthand. I was the only girl in the high school's computer science class when it started. I quickly fell to the bottom of the heap when every time I had a question, the teacher would roll his eyes and make me feel like an idiot for asking about something that it seemed the guys already knew. I was soon too embarassed to ask for help, and started failing projects, for which I was mocked mightily by the guys. And I was raised my whole life to believe girls just aren't good at math and science, which didn't help my confidence.
Now I wish I was a programmer, but I don't have the time or money or energy to go take all the necessary courses. So I'm a tech reporter instead, and I try to be as much of a geek as I can.
This is a favorite topic on Slashdot. Women in Comp Sci, female-related games, and percentage of female presence online - they're all related. It stems from the fundamental social issue that women have always been socialized AWAY from technology (for some reason). It has gotten steadily better, but it is still a big problem. Quotas and lower standards aren't the panacea...women aren't entering because they don't WANT to or aren't interested. They aren't interested because for 18 years they have been implanted with the idea that math, science and technology is not "for them". When we stop socializing females away from science/technology and towards other fields we will start seeing them entering science and technology more qualified and in higher numbers. It doesn't help us one bit to admit a whole bunch of female that are unqualified and uninterested in Comp Sci. They have to /want/ to, and instilling that want, or more accurately, simply refraining from inhibiting it, is a societal issue.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Why can't supposedly vary educated people understand the fact that men a women are different not just physically and biologically but also mentally. For the million or however many years it's been that modern man has been around it has typically been that men are the creators, explorers and women are the nurtures. Look at any social animal in nature and you'll see the same thing the male protects the female nurtures the young it's not just human nature it's nature. I don't mean to sound like a sexiest but that is the way it is and probably the way it will stay. This trying to change things to make something more appealing or easier for one group is stupid. I think they have forgotten what equality means. It's not having the same number of all sexes/race/religion working in the same place it's about giving every one a level playing field to work on. If women aren't interested in technology then that's their decision. It seems like there just making a issue out of this because the technology industry is a place where there is a large potential for personal gain. I don't ever remember seeing a female garbage collector how come there not shouting for more of them
I've never noticed it before but my thinking cap does sort of resemble a hockey helmet
Whoa, the TV is always right. I encourage you to teach the young dude. I'm very worried about the crtitical thinking skills that young people are getting--or not. In an era when media is consolidated and journalistic stands have declined, you need to be able to determine how much BS yer getting fed regardless of the medium. I do haveta ask about the kids age: if he's a pre teen kid, chances are he doesn't got the bullshit upgrade that most teens seem to get when they hit 13. In anycase, you definitely need to foster a bit of healthy cynicism. Sorry for the OT rant.
Let me start off as saying that I am a male. Let me also say that I have been "playing" with computers since I was 10, and maybe longer that that if you count the programming of a couple of toys that I had when I was 7 (a Big Trak and a Brain Buggy).
Anyhow, why am I in this field (specifically programming, not sysadmin)?
Because I grok the machine.
Because when I get "into" it, I am really INTO it. My mind becomes one with the machine - I feel like I am half of it, and it is half of me. Times rolls by, food doesn't matter, and bodily functions are minor annoyances. Hacking at the machine from dusk to dawn, and after - I don't feel tired, I feel ALIVE.
This isn't all, though. When I am not near a computer, I tend to think: "Where is there a computer?", and then marvel at the fact that there is generally a computer somewhere near me. Maybe one that doesn't do much (like a watch or the computer in a microwave oven), but one nonetheless. The machine is ubiquitous, everywhere around us, most of the time taken for granted. I think about those who came before me, and those who will come after - and rejoice at being a part of the process.
Money? I didn't get that when I was a kid coding on my machines - it is more important today, but not a main reason I code.
Job Availability? Once again, it wasn't what drove me as a kid...
Power? Maybe a little - knowing I know how to do something most people find arcane. But it isn't something I pursue (otherwise I would be in management, and not coding).
It isn't these things - what drives me is the synergy of me and the machine, the synthesis of a different state of mind, an almost spiritual union.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
On the topic of differences between men & women, is it just my experience that women produce better UI (graphical or not) than men?
In the systems I've worked on UI's *designed* by women have been better received by users than UI designed by men. This is especially apparent when some forms have been done by women and some by men, on the same project. The female designed ones seem easy to use.
Just me - or have others experienced this?
Sounds like your father has some "power" issues with women. Doesn't want your mother to have a computer business? Doesn't want you to do "smart" things? This seems sad...
I am sorry about your experience with going for a CS major. But don't let this stop you from learning about computers or anything else in life! Contrary to popular belief, you do NOT need to be going after a CS major to learn about computers (whether that be simple stuff to more complex theoretical stuff). I am not saying it isn't a good thing to pursue, but if you can't get into a class or track to learn the interest (for any reason), don't let that stop you from learning about it on your own. Pick up and crack some books open, grab a machine, and go for it. If you really like it, you will know. If you don't, this will become apparent as well.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I wasn't consideirng unqualified women. My bad.
But then there are also the unqualified men that we have to work with, too.
But I am of the opinion that not all women are unqualified, and that any effort to bring more women into the field won't and shouldn't bring in unqualified workers. The issue is how to attract women into the right fields and disciplines, and work their way through(no more, no less than a male) etc.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Why is it sexist?
Of course the only trait isn't gender. Are we assuming, or not, that women are just as qualified as men to be engineers, scientists, and technical workers?
If we are assuming this, then there is no conflict. They will rise and fall according to their ability, just like men. The only sexist thing is the belief that I value women higher than I value men. That's a selfish thing, though, in that I'm a man. That value, however, has nothing to do with skill or ability, and I would not judge the skill of a man or woman based on my preference for males or females. Thats an independent category, and one in which the women would be selected against, no different than men.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Ahead of myself? Perhaps.
But I don't see why there is any biological influence at all in working with computers. Or physics. Or English. Or arts.
Maybe girls don't get different treatment. Is this what you imply? That girls get the same treatement as guys?
Lets assume there is no gender bias in our culture. Is that too extreme? That girls and boys don't get treated differently, and that the only difference is biological. In which case, why should there be any difference then in job skills? Since when has computers been a part of our biological makeup? Or cooking? All these skills are learned and taught and passed on through tutelage, not genetics.
I never made the assumption that men are women are biologically identical. Why is that necessary for women to go into technical fields? A difference in treatment is certainly a viable reason for a difference in behavior; it is certainly not the only reason, but I don't think I see why behavior is connected to being skilled in computing!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Contrary to popular belief, you do NOT need to be going after a CS major to learn about computers
Very true. I started off as a CS major, and ended up with a degree in Communication Science and Disorders (speech therapy, deaf education) instead. I continued learning about computers on my own, and I don't think that a degree in CS would have put me much more ahead of where I am right now.
"I don't know abou you, but if I did not have my CS degree I would feel like a 2nd rate techie."
:-)
Aww. Inferiority issues?
"I am a Junior and a CS major, and have had the option to switch majors to CIS (which would be worlds easier IMHO) but I would not feel "up" for the job....any tech job that is."
If you have to have that peice of paper saying that "I'm a techie and I'm okay!" then you've definatly got issues.
Maybe it's just me, but I've learned so little in class that's applicable to real world situations. Aside from pointers in programming, maybe, and I don't get those entirely.
"You go ahead and get your english major. I will be seeing you at McDonalds..."
Very cute. One, it's an English degree, not an "english major", and there is no reason for the ellipse thing you put there.
The inability to communicate effectively will be many geeks' downfall.
Dan
The programming staff is 3 women and 6 men, but nearly all of the project managers and html designers are women...most of whom have had some formal training in CS even if it did not end in a degree.
So lets not forget that there are lots of technical jobs that are not programming and that we should look at the percentages of women in the industy as a whole before we can make any real conclusions.
(Yes, my evidence is only anticdotal and I would like to see real numbers if anyone has them)
In the US, universities are becoming extensions of high school. However, not everyone needs a 4-year liberal education in order to discover and specialize their niche. In fact, I'll bet most people _don't_ want/need a 4-year degree.
Vocational schools are often disdained in the US. However, I believe that many people who have a strong non-research interest would be best served by vocational schools. Learn what you need, and quickly go to work on your career.
This unfortunate situation has persisted for many years. Hopefully the new economy, which is encouraging technically-oriented students to bail out of universities, will encourage the acceptance of job-specific vocational schools.
Insane people like me can stick it out in the universities for the rest of our lives, to be owned by the rich people who bailed. That's why only insane people consider a life of research.
-Paul Komarek
W.R.T. women in the CS/IT field, I'm all for it. Working with women makes for a much more interesting environment.
;)
My concern with studies like this one is that the 'wrong' people will get fired-up, and over-zealously try to correct the situation the WRONG way. Quotas come to mind.
The RIGHT way is to make the field appealing to women, and provide them with means to develop technical competency. An unfortunate fact is that the sciences are not as accessible to girls as they are to boys, during the early years of education.
After the sour experience of grade-school, most girls avoid science in HS, and tend to avoid it in college, or they get brave and go into those sciences labeled as 'soft' (psych, socio).
Hard science is fun, and it needs to be advocated better. Not only for the benefit of young girls but all children. The U.S. in particular is shooting itself in the foot by making science and math HARD to learn and HARD to like.
There's a big issue hidden in here I think. I'm a CS grad student, and easily a third of my classmates are oriental, and another quarter is eastern European (Russian and thereabout). Maybe a quarter of the students are female. Now, I have no problem with race, but I find this disproportionate number of foreigners (I'm Polish BTW). There is much prejudice in the working world directed against non-male non-whites, yet few of them seek higher degrees.
These white males are the ones who scream loudest about work-visa restrictions and foreigners taking away 'American' jobs. As if these guys wanted to pick lettuce for 12 hours a day, or hack code for $10/hr...
Bothers me to think about it, so I don't.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Yeah, he's a pre-teener. So I have a bit of hope for him in the future. Overall, he's a good kid, and learns pretty fast. I try to instill the cynicism in him, and show him why you have to question everything and everyone - to make sure you get the right information. I am hoping this sinks in.
I gave him one of my older machines, and I am working on a better machine for him. I am trying to get him net access (his mother is old fashioned, and thinks the net is going to be the end of us all. I have convinced her to let the kid have it, but she only wants it if it is free - well, we can do that now, after a fashion - my big problem is running a phone line to the box, due to the way the house was built, but I am working on that as well).
I have tried to get him interested in programming, but he can't seem to get his mind around the concept of loops yet. Every once in a while, he asks me about it - so I think the interest may be there, I just have to coax it out right...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I think one of the problems that our society has is the thinking that in order for one to know anything, one has to go to college or university to get that piece of paper.
We are even beginning to see it in business, with all of the various certification programs out there now.
I do think that a person should show what they know to a prospective employer, but they should do it in a more "objective" manner - anyone with money and time can get a piece of paper (I have an associates degree, which isn't much - so when I go on an interview, I take a portfolio of past coding work with me, to show what I know).
All this isn't to say you don't learn anything from a college education - it's just to say many things you can pick up on your own, and just because you don't have a degree, if you can demonstrate your skills to an employer via other means, you shouldn't be snubbed (certain things, though, are impossible to pick up on your own, or shouldn't even be tried - like becoming a surgeon, for example, or a large-scale project engineer type, where lives hang in the balance).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Anita Borg has tried to influence the world by writing her article, just as I am. She also has some taint of man hate to argue that there are not enough women in technical fields and that the world is somehow unfair because of it. There must be some kind of male created barrier here! Little girls get shoved off the computer, that explains everything, she says. Right. Both her argument and goal are wrong.
Women should not be encouraged to enter demanding proffesions in equal numbers as men. Women have a much more important job, raising children, and most are beter suited to it than most men. Those women capable of other high achievments are just the women who should be reproduced. Raising kids and work are incompatible persuits. Hell, pregnancy and demanding jobs don't even mix well. But you could read about that in my other post if you follow the link in the first article.
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Women are better on debugging if they are good in programming at all.
If I gave a part of code to someone else, he saw what I overlooked.
If I just tell someone about the code, I find the error just because I have to translate the [abstract] code into [human] language.
Most folks know this funny effect.
Debugging is a bit like Editing, as a lecture to find typos.
Since female earthlings see much more details than their male counterparts, they are just better in it.
Of course you are right, Venomous Louse, debugging is a subset of programming.
When I use the word ARGUEMENT, I mean "part of a discussion", not something negative or agressive.
In case that word has a different primary meaning, please someone tell me.
I'm not a US citizen, so that might cause misunderstandings I'd like to avoid.
Thanks, george./
One relevant statistic is that the percentage of girls qualifying for and accepting positions at the special NYC high schools (those with a focus on science) is declining, and has been for years. The high point was decades ago now, and the current ratio is about 37% girls (although the ratio of girls in the general school population is the usual 50% or slightly more). When asked why they won't attend these schools, girls often cite the isolation they expect to face.
Not coincidentally, statistics were most promising when the "women's liberation" movement was powerful, and began to plunge again in the late 70's. (These days, most girls or women preface any statement asserting their equality with "I'm not a feminist, but...")
But it seems I'd have to be doing some kind of "official" school research to pull this off, and since I'm not actively seeking a degree in education (and refuse to pay for any more formal education, anyway!), it ain't gonna happen. Unless some woman out there sees this and tries it? (-8
Btw, it is also still true that teachers (men and women both) call more often on boys for answers, spend more time looking at boys and speaking with them, and generally still ignore girls. (This research was reported in Science News a year or so ago.) No wonder some think girls' gangs are actually a sign of progress!
You ought to get a moderated up for that post. That was cool!
People may ask how much M$ is paying me to say this. Let me tell you: nothing.
I get options instead.
WOW! Did you actually get to watch it compile? I've always wanted to see what C looks like. I hear that's what they program in Narnia. I can't believe how lucky you are!
Seriously, I took 3 years of computers courses here in Canada, complete with a video game I designed in grade 13 last semester. The catch: We started on QBasic, then worked our way up to VB. We never touched any other languages, not Java. Anyone who has used VB knows one thing: It The Freak language, the mutant that should not exist. Well, better then nothing.
I think you're referring to technology. Technology zips along, but this affects all scientific fields. Is a 20 year-old computer manual still relevant today? Probably not. Is one of Knuth's 20 year-old (30 years old?) volumes of The Art of Computer Programming irrelevant? Nope.
The manual is representative of technology, TAOCP of computer science. Little of what an undergrad cs major will study (not use) has changed in the last 20 years.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Since you love to generalize, why must liberals, such as yourself, put words in everyone's mouth, and generally overstate your case. That way no one can have any meaningfull discussion about anything.
I never ONCE said that women are incapable of doing engineering. Nor did I say they're just capable of attaining "decent" skills, or that consequently, they're only cut out for middle management. My mom is no middle manager. She holds multiple key patents, started up multiple multi-million dollar companies, made some excellent products, created hundreds of skilled jobs, and made a hell of a lot of money in the process. She is no light weight by any stetch of the imagination. I don't think you understand, if I could have anyone's capabilities and intelligence, it would be hers. You either don't understand this, or YOU are trying to double talk.
All I did was point to a few observations, that, I believe, are more than just social. I never said that any of these differences amount of incapability of performing the job. In fact, it would be ludicrous to believe that, given what I've told you about my mother.
You might not think my experience is sufficient, but that does not mean that I must ignore it. There is something called intuition, that any business person or scientist must rely on. You can't do a great deal in this world, if all your actions must first be based on concrete proof. You seem to realize this on some level, as you're proceeding on many similar unproven claims (e.g., social over genetic)
I'd like to just point out, that CMU CS does not use affirmative action in the classical sense; there are no quotas, there are no specific "adjustments made". The admissions office is told SPECIFICALLY not to accept anybody into CS they wouldn't find qualified otherwise. What we *have* been doing, is letting high school teachers know that Carnegie Mellon exists, that it has a decent engineering and CS programs (re CS is engineering: not the approach they take here...) and then only when it comes to the little things that push an applicant over the edge do females have a slight advantage. So that means that the SAT scores have to pass the threshold, the GPAs have to pass the threshold, the essay, etc.
And speaking as someone who's seen the different classes interact, the particular freshman class (37%) has much better social bonding than any class as a whole.
kbs
yours,
kbs
For a case in point, take a quick look at this Slashdot discussion -- just the subject lines, even. Is it at all surprising that women aren't attracted to technology when this is what they have to expect from the discourse? Stupid, sexist jokes; uninformed opinions about biological determinism; arguments for why women aren't good at computing. Why on earth would a women find such a field interesting when it's so hostile?
Maybe instead of arguing all these external reasons for why women are this and that, we ought to take a look in the mirror at the kind of environment we're creating.
Whoops. Well, at this point the best you can do is call me a "liberal", then dismiss my rebuttals to your specific words. One thing I'm definitely liberal about is quoting and responding specifically. You'll also note I haven't called you a bigot, reactionary boot-licker, or tried to typecast your ideas. I played with your words some, and that's unfair, but I got tired of your repeated assertion that "Me saying women aren't good at many aspects of engineering != Me saying women shouldn't GO into engineering". If anythings getting shoved in your mouth, it's your foot.
"Nor did I say they're just capable of attaining "decent" skills, or that consequently, they're only cut out for middle management."
You've said in a variety of ways women aren't as capable in many areas. Yet you claim this doesn't mean your defining what women are cut out for? Your posistion doesn't leave you middle ground to todder around in. Either women are less capable, as you claimed in a variety of ways, in which case there should be no worry over the lack of them in cs related fields. Virtually every argument you've made about the difference between the sexes has pointed out reasons why women are simply less capable in certain techinical areas. This would make sense, considering the point of this original story was explaining why there are few women in techincal fields.
"I don't think you understand, if I could have anyone's capabilities and intelligence, it would be hers. You either don't understand this, or YOU are trying to double talk."
You seem to be backpedaling in order to avoid looking like a sexist. You typecast your mother (and then generalize immensely off her) but then praise her intelligence. Same with your sisters. Same with "Well women aren't good and this and this, but I'm NOT saying they shouldn't do it!". The problem is not that you're saying exclude women outright. It's saying they're simply not suited in the first place because they're not "biologically" suited.
"I never said that any of these differences amount of incapability of performing the job"
No? ------------
"rather that many professional women start out in demanding fields, discover later in life, after graduating from grad school, law school, or what have you, that they want to raise children. This frequently requires a change of priorities...atleast for awhile...which means their ULTIMATE career paths are going to be altered."
Read: Only women are the affected parent having children. Only women want children. After that, many trash their careers. Therefore that's why you don't see them in similar careers as men, because they just don't have the time or drive to do it, they want to be mom.
"When is the last time you've seen a women lock themselves up in a room, and obsess about something to the exclusion of all else (e.g., body odor, hair, social life, etc) until they solve it, or come up empty handed?"
Read: Women can't focus over single tasks. They do not have the drive/interest/whatever to do this. Many tasks in the CS field require this kind of drive. Women don't have it, women aren't there.
"the differences between my mother and father typify the differences between the two highly skilled respective element of the sexes." "As an engineer, he was better than even my mom"
Read: My mom and dad are typical of women and men in technical fields. My father was a better engineer. Therefore, men are typically better engineers. This is why women have a hard time entering industry.
"One major difference I noticed about my father was that he was very much of the nerd or geek that I mentioned before (who will focus on something with such determination, that the rest of the world is just irrelevant). He loved his technology for the sake of technology. I can't say this about my mom."
Read: Women can't be geeks. Geeks have determination. Women do not. They really don't like technology for the sake of technology, it doesn't interest them.
"She loved technology for the sake of delivering a product...of helping people...or some greater end, other than her immediate edification. While my mom also has the ability to see any problem through, it just aint the same. There isn't that one track mind....the kind of mind which I've seen amongst many of the top scientists of today and the past. "
Read: My mom is a woman, and a mother, therefore she thinks of other's interests besides her own. She, like most women, doesn't have a one track mind. Like most women, this unfortunately means she's incapable of being a top scientist (or engineer like Dad). If not incapable, then definitely improbable and part of this is just the female genome. She may be good at other things I mentioned vaguely, but they don't lie in many techincal areas.
"In short, my mom is, in my opinion, at the top of her game as an engineer and entrepreneur"
Read: Mom is good at being a techincal manager. She is not as good as an engineer, like Dad.
". Very few men feel compelled to quit their jobs, or substancially reduce their hours for a couple year--that is a fact."
Read: Women want babies. When they have them they want to quit or substantially reduce their workload, unlike men. Thus they do not have time to devot themselves to careers (like engineering) as this requires more time than their children allow them.
"But that does not mean that I ever expect my sisters to behave the same way that thousands of young men have, through different cultures, through the decades. I don't confuse the ability to get things done, with the ability to lose sight of everything but ONE thing--in my experience, that is very much of a male attribute"
Read: I expect my sisters to do well, like mom, but not as "real" engineers, like dad. As women they lack the ability to lose themselves over one thing.
"Put simply, women are capable of doing the same job in engineering"
Read: Well, maybe capable, not obviously by all these other statements as capably as men. This may be partially social, but its certainly also partially biology.
----------------------
"You might not think my experience is sufficient, but that does not mean that I must ignore it."
Of course we all rely on our own experience to define our opinions and make judgements. However you seem to be quite myopic in considering other peoples experiences or ideas on the subject. The way you've experienced things, and the conclusions you've drawn, is the way it is, for no other reason than your "intuition". Your reality != everyones reality. Keeping this idea in mind, it really helps you open your mind.
"You can't do a great deal in this world, if all your actions must first be based on concrete proof. You seem to realize this on some level, as you're proceeding on many similar unproven claims (e.g., social over genetic)"
I fail to see what point you're trying to make. Many people base their entire lives around beliefs that are purely faith and little, if any, concrete evidence(such as say, Religion or the existence of God). Does this make them wrong? Who's to say, but it's certainly not scientific, as you have repeatedly alluded to.
"You seem to realize this on some level, as you're proceeding on many similar unproven claims (e.g., social over genetic)"
There is a wealth of evidence regarding societal influence on groups of people, and what people believed about them, and how that effected them. For America, see the last 150 years of Blacks, Women, and Native Americans in the US for a start. If you really want to argue that there's no "proof" society affected these groups in profoundly major ways, you're stretching beyond reason, and I'd guess you're smart enough to know that.
It's also quite obvious that whatever biological differences may play in peoples personality, it's absolutely dwarfed by the environment they've been brought up in. See the above groups I mentioned again. We can also safely say that virtually everyone is genetically different, and any random two people (male, female, whatever race or otherwise) are signficantly different genetically. How do genetic differences, race, gender, or otherwise play out as far as shaping personality: No one has any idea. I find it funny that you repeatedly dodged my mention of racial genetic differences -- pointing to that as defining a person is widely taboo these days. Yet defining a person behavior as "female" is still prevailent.
In the rare case of identical twins seperated at birth, it turns out if they're in wildly different enviroments, they turn out to be awfully different people (in beliefs, interests, disposistion, etc). I'd love to talk more about this, as I spent 4 years working in a genetics lab and spent plenty of time reading journals crossing over to the behavior/psychological aspects of the area, but I'm out of time.
Anyway, it's been an interesting conversation. Regards!
My initial statement(s), boiled down, was this: Although, I agree that 99% of the problems that women face are social, there are some genetic differences. To automatically blame all disproportions of men to women in any field on social causes is a bit naive. One such attribute I've noticed is the lack of female geeks. When I say geeks, I don't just mean a social outcast or a person who can "focus". I mean a person who is so utterly involved in his work that he loses sight of all else, to a fault. The kind of personality, that from 3rd grade on, they would lock themselves up in a room and lose themselves to some project, just "because".
Then you go and jump on my back, and say that this then must mean that I must think that women are lesser engineers than men. I simply never said anything to that effect--you put those words in my mouth. Then you start with your "read" games, which directly contradict many statements I've made to the contrary. For example, I said something to the effect that my mom is at the top of her game as an engineer. What part of that don't you understand? It is certainly not compatible with your "read": That women can't peform "...as capably as men". No, my mom outperformed men in virtually everything she's ever done, including engineering. The only exception to this is my father, who was unparalleled in his field. So if I had to quantify it, my dad would be #1, while my mom would be #2 in that particular field (while my mom would be #1 in many others combined), and thats out of however many thousands in the field. Traslation: Any EE school would be insane not to put her at the top of the list.
The lack of the ability to be the kind of nerd I was referring, is not equivelent to not being able to perform every bit as well as that nerd. PERIOD.
Rather than waste a great deal more time and energy on your petty "reads" and argue the obvious, I've come to the conclusion that you're just a meddlesome 3rd party. You are here to argue (rather then attempt understand, or reach a conclusion) above all else. I'd bet dollars to pesos that you're not a women, that you're white, and that you're middle class college aged (including grad school) kid...all this tends to breed a certain kind of liberalism that i've seen all too often (there's something to get your panties in an uproar)
Good bye
I think that's been made blatantly obvious.
"b) outright said that women are not capable engineers"
Well, this is the thickest part of your blind spot. You've made many statements as to what women are worse at, and why they are "not as able" to do certain things. Many of these things are related to CS/Engineering jobs. Yet you somehow feel that there's NO correlation or implication between them. You're posistion is seriously confused. You stuck your head over the ledge, but you refuse to say that means you're looking down.
"I said women are not nerds."
Which of course is ridiculous. Your "personal experience" must be one of the most enclosed bubbles on the planet.
"But I never once said that all good engineers are nerds."
Once again, you run into your strange dichotomy. Women aren't nerds. Nerdy qualities are required for many, many aspects of the CS/Engineering world. Yet once again there's no correlation! Amazing.
"One would have to question your bias even more when considering that I repeatedly stated that my mom is one of the best in her field (as an engineer)."
You heavily qualified what your mother's type of engineering was. Non-nerdy, not nuts and bolts, but some sort of more abstracted womanly sort of thing. You went on to praise that repeatedly, but the problem is in your strange, funny distinction in the first place. The fact you once again don't consider this a contradiction is just funny. Maybe what you really meant to say is "women are good as SOME types of engineers".
"You do not have a direct interest in this "
Eh? We're having a two-way conversation here. I suppose you prefer to talk without listening or having to defend your points, but hey, that's not the way these boards work. You of course are not forced to debate (or reply to) anything. In fact I'd recommend against it in your case - you're better at eroding your own case than making it.
"My experience is that most women, baring a few femi-nazis, are much cooler about my statements."
Hah - and I've had two egging me on to continue this conversation as they get such a kick out of your confused commentary. Let me give you a little tip: Women can be sexist too! Everyone carries bias - the individuals of the group included. I once heard a black man say that because data shows Asians generally do better on IQ/SAT/GRE scores than whites, and whites better than blacks, we can probably extrapolate that this flat out means something about the general intelligence of the groups, period. Amazing really. I've also heard more than one woman say the womans place is at home, taking care of her husband and children. Hell, there are many cultures around the world where its socially acceptible to physically harm your wife for doing something "wrong", and many women in the cultures support the idea. Too extreme you say? That's what I say about you.
"Likewise, many of them will even readily admit that women are not cut out for most military rolls (and others yet think, as such, should not even have some rolls which they could technically perform)...it goes beyond just the physical as well."
Hahah - oh my. The more you talk, the more grave digging you do. Certainly you're not sexist now? Or pehaps you are, but you're acceptibly sexist (because you have women who agree with your viewpoint, and thus it must be correct/okay)? Women can't handle military roles. Is this the same "male only focus thing"? Or perhaps because women lack aggressive tendencies? Perhaps women just lack the balls to kill (HAR HAR HAR). What stereotype will we identify and rest assured from your personal experience it's biological? Apparently your amount of bigotry/stereotyping is not sexist. How much further would we need to go before you considered it bigoted/sexist?
I think my cousin, a 2nd lieutenant graduated from the Air Force Academy would probably take exception to your assertion. She's probably some sort of lesbian femi-nazi (I LOVE people who use catchphrases from that wacky, hard nosed, truth-teller, Rush Limbaugh!), and uh let's see, been involved with academics, and therefore bred to liberal thinking. You know those folks in the military are all a bunch of leftist radicals.
"You, from the very beginning, boxed me in, and called me, in so many words, a sexist, a moron, you name it"
I slipped off the bandwagon towards the end as I just couldn't resist given your weak attempts at attacking me. However if you'll read my first posts, you'll notice I never attack YOU, I attack your statements or ideas. Calling your point stupid is a fundamentally different thing from calling YOU stupid. This is called mature debating, I'm sorry you couldn't make the distinction and handle it.
"I am currently in business school full time and working part time, amongst other things; I am not some little frat boy despite your assertions to the contrary."
Notice that you started the name-calling and typecasting. Once it became obvious you're incapable of staying away from it, I couldn't help but have a little fun myself. You're right though, you do sound sorta like a frat-boy, don't you?
"You likely have no experience with either, and as such have little to no respect for either, as you seem to believe the highest calling must can't be to actually CREATE anything, such as a company"
Wow. You certainly know a WHOLE lot about me, who I am, the way I think, and what's made me think that way about EVERYTHING by extrapolating from the 3-4 posts I've made in our fairly directed discussion. Problem is, you really don't have a clue beyond the very little I've told you, and your comments about my respect for creating a company/product or whatever is just hilarious. You seem to have a problem with taking one or two points (whether they've got any basis or not in the first place) and making a billion assumptions about everything else. Seems you took the same route to explaining me as you did to explaining women. I think we've got a trend here, no?
"With you, I evidently hit the nail right on the the head. The fact that you are a grad student, and likely leaning towards academia speaks volumes. That is...as long as you wish to play the name calling game."
Actually no, you didn't hit the nail on the head. I'm not a grad student, I'm not leaning toward academia. I've never said that, you just flat made it all up. I could go into great detail about my personal history, but as I already mentioned, it's not relevant to anything said here. I can just see it -- "Oh you mean you went to school X?! That place is a socialist femi-nazi breeding ground! Err wait, Bob Roberts university... hold on...". You seem really tied up in trying to dimiss my "background" rather than attacking my points.
Anyway, this has been fun, and you've provided some entertainment for me and a few friends who keep track of what I post here on occasion. I originally thought we may both become more mutally informed, but the entertainment will do. And the value of the entertainment has worn thin, and I am done!
Regards