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Girls not Going into CS
An anonymous reader writes "The Times has an article about what you already know: few girls go on to be IT women. For example, the 2001 AP exam in computer science drew 19,000 boys and just 2,400 girls. Information technology, despite its relative youth, has been far slower to approach gender equality than law or medicine, fields which decades ago overtly excluded women. The problem is not lack of smarts: Girls statistically outperform boys overall in grade school and make up 57% of college graduates, margins that are growing to the point that some colleges are toying with affirmative action for men."
I know girls who play counter-strike... the numbers are growing! cs is where its at.. and it could lead to cs.
Shoutz to the GCS boyz! -sq
I can assure you the guys are even fewer in this case...
bius sig file. This is a moebius sig file. This is a moe
all chicks do in computer science is get fat and ugly sitting infront of the computer all day, just like us... ;)
:)
we want HOT, sporty chicks
No chicks and your job will be outsourced to India. Any wonder that all the tv shows are about lawyers and not geeks?
that the article in question is about girls not going into CounterStrike and not Computer Science ? Damn those titles can be confusing at times :x
Worth a look is this article written by a girl doing CS at the university of kent.
And why is this a bad thing?
Girls are okay. Programming is more fun. Guys are more fun. Geek guys are the most fun.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If the girls are smart enough to get in, but just don't choose to, why do we want to persuade them? All descrimination is bad, positive descrimination is included.
is that most women simply aren't intersted in IT. It's pretty obvious to me. How many of you found it beneficial to expound on the virtues of open source software or the beauty of TCP/IP structure during a date? Probably not many.
That's not to say that they can't be good at it, though. It seems that women will study harder and get better grades, but its gonna be guys hanging out after class discussing the stuff in the pub because they have a genuine interest. Just my two cents.
It's all going according to
There are big differences between men and women. File free to file that one under the "No S#@t" Category.
I know, I know... that's the first thing I thought of when I saw CS, but it actually stands for Computer Science. Anyway, as for the actual issue, I don't think it's a gender bias issue that girls aren't as into IT as guys. It's not that they're not smart enough, it's just that on average most girls aren't as interested in comps as guys are. I suppose we like our toys. =)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Affirmative Action is wrong. It's like battling A with A, only you pretend that you battle A with AA.
I was recently watching Taildaters, an MTV show where two people go on a date and several onlookers provide a commentary. Well, at the end of one date a girl summed it up with "Don't use so many bigs words -- girls don't like them." I think that the problem with computers (which, itself, is mutlisyllabic) is that we have to many big words.
Cars, excavating equipment, COMPUTERS. all examples of machines. Sure the computer is candy coated, but it's still a machine.
Now tell me.. how many women do you know actually LIKE "playing with" machines? This is the same male-dominated issue to affects the construction industry, the auto-machanic business, and many others.
The female gender doesn't generally WANT much to do with mechanical things (I'm not questioning their ability, just stating a trend in their apparent desire).
More than that, computers usually don't allow them to demonstrate their great personal/social skills (which are more often then not, 1000 times better than men's).
Girls in general just aren't as strong in analytical thinking as guys are. Simple as that.
But most people are taught to pretend they don't know this (even though it's so damn obvious) because when we were all in grade school, our teachers taught us that "everyone is equal".
Sure... and that's why the NBA is full of Black people.
eTrade SUCKS
I work at an IT company in Kansas City, and it seems like they are bringing in a lot of women. Probably 40:60 women to men.
;)
btw, I hope everyone's joking when they are mentioning Counter-Strike.
As pointed out by some already, statistics tend to show that men do better in mathematics.
In addition, I've also seen some state one reason for this gender disparity is that fields such as law and medicine have much more human involvement. Computer science, however, is frequently detached, sometimes to the point of seeming human hostile. And, you'll pardon the stereotypical thinking, but it seems that women tend to gravitate towards jobs which involve significant human involvement. An emphasis on human factors engineering and interface design might make computer science programs more attractive to those looking for a more human-centered job, male or female.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Alternatively one could use a browser that provides zoom capabilities.
BTW - Does Opera provide a way to change the default zoom level?
... that there might also be fewer girls interested in CS?. Just because fewer girls apply for CS degrees does not automatically mean that there is some sort of bias against women in CS programs. One possible reason for this could be that despite recent progress, CS/MIS/IT work is still seen as relatively geeky. And in my honest experience, females (especially younger ones) seem more influenced by social pressures 'n wut-not than guys are. It could be that this geeky image that still surrounds our job field is also hampering the influx of women into the field. Just a hypothesis... but it feels true.
At any rate... I know very few girls in the CS program at my skool. But those few girls that enroll are treated as well, if not better, than the guys in the program (we're all happy to have women around... duh!).
/dev/random
Humm, so having all of the opportunity in the world and choose not to join a field is somehow bad, or at any rate, is cast as not good?
This mangling of the language seems to be resulting in a mangling of ideals too. If women want to be in CS, fine, if the make a different choice that should be fine too.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
At this point, why would anyone go into CS? Why invest 4 years of tuition, just to compete with foreign-subsidized H1Bs? You're the next contestant on America's favorite gameshow "Who wants to work for peanuts?" The current state of the IT industry makes it an equally poor option for either male or female students.
Especially in CS where most of the students are sexually frustrated geeks. Put a hot or even average chick in that kind of setting and your asking for trouble. There is even the typical alpha male competition of geeks trying to out geek each other with their extended knowledge of anime and obscure unix commands.
The pyschologies of men and women are different, and its not just because of cultural pressure.
That's all feminsm should be about: letting women do what they want.
There's not any social benenfit in trying to artificially generate gender equity where pychological economies of scale will result in huge gender disparities. As long as there aren't restrictive sociocultural barriers preventing women from doing what they want, there nothing wrong with have gender disparities.
This doesn't mean girls aren't smart, but rather that they think computer science is for dorks. lol.
I go to a relatively small tech school and I would kill for a 44% male population as opposed to the ~70%.
I hold a patent on sigs...
Hm. It's a damn shame; girls not going into computer science are missing out on endless opportunities. The opportunity to enter an already glutted job market. The opportunity to have your skills derided or just plain ignored by your superiors at work. The opportunity to join legions of online communities of their underpaid, lonely, insecure male counterparts.
The point I'm trying to make is, there are very few women in the garbage collection or plumbing industries either. But almost noone considers this a terrible sign of gender inequity propagating itself through the ages.
Computer science is ostensibly a highly-skilled profession which can lead you on to great pay and excellent opportunities, but I think we're approaching (may have already hit) a reckoning in the field: we're being viewed more and more as an essential service, not a "core competency." That is, just like electricians or others who are also technically expert but whose use is minimized to keep expenses down. And who get very little respect within the organization except for the 15 minutes after they fix a problem.
Anyway, I'm not trying to make this a huge polemic against the treatment of information workers, but the point is, maybe it's becoming a field women don't WANT to be a part of, and for good reason. Maybe the college girl who pursues sales or marketing or preps for an MBA isn't afraid of the tech jargon and male braggadocio in CS; maybe she just thinks it's a boring field leading to crappy jobs. And that's maybe not a horribly innaccurate way to think anymore.
I am a guy, and I just started College with the plan of being a CS major. As soon as I noticed the Calculus I and Calculus II requirements, I quickly switched my major to Network Computing, with a Computer Science minor. I am not that bad at math, but I definitely don't want to take Calculus.
rm -rf sig
They simply don't like the machines we've created. Have they ever been greatful for the washing
machines, vacum cleaners, stoves, refrigators and such? No!! Instead they are taking over the world.
Take cover boys!
/StarBar
Terrorism deemed "bad" by President
That's it, I'm going back to school... Glin, 37 Years Old and Partyin' Hard!
What are we talking about, CS or IT? CS is the study of computers. IT is the study of Technology when related to Business and Information Systems. Of course the two disciplines share some commonality. For example, IT requires certain aspects of CS because many IT positions require programming proficiency. However, I don't expect someone who is in IT to code up a simple OS or a basic language and compiler just as I don't expect someone in CS to design and develop a solution for a national call center's contact management.
So, are girls not interested in CS, IT, or both?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
My observations over the years has made me conclude that college is for two types of people. Firstly there are those that do not have the dicipline to train themselves. Second are the ones trying to obtain a position that they have no natural talent for. Programming is not really something that can be taught you have to be built for it. Ninety percent of the programmers that I know fit into the first and second category. The good programmers I know are in the last 10%, they do it because it is their god given talent.
Got Code?
I was a CS major until I found out I had to take all that damn calculus.
What does calculus have to do with computers? absolutely nothing.
I hate math but I love computers, I'm a guy, but I've heard girls are not usually good at math.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The real problem, IMO, is that there seems to be a couple of guys in any given CS class who seriously cannot handle women, and who one way or the other make life hell for the women in the class. Some are just plain creeps, some are always trying to upstage them, some seem convinced that women in CS get through just because they're given preferential treatment. My sis used to get comments like "Geez, you're smart for a girl" at least once a semester -- that's a pretty shitty thing to say; if you think it's a compliment, it's not.
Then there are the usual stalker types who get their jollies sending out creepy emails and eyeballing girls in the class -- my friend decided to work rather than go to grad school at Madison because this happened *twice* (on the level of restrining order), fer chrissake.
Granted this is just anecdotal and two people does not a study make. But say what you want about societal pressures on girls not to be scientific or a predisposition against math, what I've seen drive them away is a hostile environment that doesn't seem to exist in most other fields.
What can we do to fix it? I just don't know. When they bothered my sister, the solution was obvious but definately not constructive. My friend used the law to help her (restraining orders and all), but that didn't seem to help in the overall scheme of things either -- who needs that sort of pressure while taking 400-level CS courses?
Anyhow, that's the problem as I see it. I don't have a good solution, but it's something we *must* work on.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Computer science is lonely, i hate that feeling you get on a friday evening when your stuck in a basement lab debugging on your own. The only difference between boys and girls in CS is that girls realise that its going to be like this _before_ they choose their degree where as us guys dont realise until half way through the second year that actually, human company can be more interesting than assembly language.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
> 19,000 boys and just 2,400 girls
Before you get ecstatic that you have a 10% chance to get laid, out of those 2400 girls 1000 are lesbians and 1000 are dating businessmen and lawyers. So it's more like 1%. Now go have a beer!
Although it is written about Linux specifically, I think it applies to the topic at large. HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux
I think part of the problem is that male geeks tend to have a bit of a superiority complex as a generalization, and that same is not true for female engineers, so they tend to feel like they are not as good as the guys simply because all the guys make them feel as such. It's not really inviting
I would say that the environment is not one to be condusive to a female. Let alone the hormone factor.
A very appropriate comic.
I think that much like females outperforming males in elementary school they also do so in engineering programs. I knew a few Engineers at school that could kick any guys but in what they did.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
This is NOT news for nerds; albeit stuff that matters.
Could it quite possibly be because the majority of women are not interested in CS? Hair stylists are for the most part women, but it's because most men are not interested in it. I hate the knee-jerk reaction, "It's not 50/50!! There must be some form of discrimination!"
So, here's the scenario: A bunch of IT guys standing around the water cooler, discussing IT stuff, laughing and obviously having a good time. A woman comes up
Woman: What's going on?
Men: (Instantly shutting up) Nothing.
Woman: What's so funny?
Men: Sorry, we're not allowed to tell you.
Woman: Why aren't you allowed to tell me?
Men: You know the rules, women aren't allowed in IT, or to know anything about IT.
Woman: Well, I'll fix that! (stomps off)
You see how easy it could be?
Never ask the lunatic if he's crazy.
Okay, let's take all 2nd year ICT classes at my college. For various reasons I won't explain the nasty details and difference between the dutch and the US education system, so please don't go ballistic over any grades and/or level of progress we use. It isn't my idea anyways, let's just assume the average age of a 2nd year ICT class is 18, for comparisons. To get back at the subject, we have about 140 students (2nd year ICT only) of which about five are female. Two off them never show up for some mysterious reason, but my best guess is that the either don't exist or have left already. So about 3,6% (notice the comma, thank you) of all 2nd year ICT students are female. I don't know about other years or other colleges, but my best guess is that 1st, 3rd and 4th year ICT classes have the same percentages and that this is applicable to other ICT colleges as well.
Then again, one of the three remaining girls is in my class. Blonde, blue eyes, single, nice butt and actually quite smart. (I'd give further comments, however, I'm not secist, I'm going to show her this after I posted it and Slashchick might throw a hissy fit again if I do so, so I won't.) She's capable of coding in C++ (a bit, we're still only students after all) and is quite good with networking as well. And she's snuggly, too! :) If there is a God, I'm sure he prefers quality over quantity!
Hate me!
I just got into computer science, 40 people, just one girl.
It's far worse than Electric Engennering I studied before (25/3).
I found when I was at uni that it tended to be an all or nothing affair with girls and coding. They either computely sucked at it, or they really were good.
I have absolutely no clue as to why that was the case, but it was!
maybe the girls are waiting 'til IT's N0T such a cesspool DOWn here?
.asp, if you waNT to, but don't come crying to US, when nothing trickles DOWn.
hangin's too good for those scurvy ba$tards upon wall street of deceit.. it'll be a warm day in finland before they get any more trickle DOWn from US, up on the pacific crest, right robbIE? tell 'em.
why, we wouldn't buy into any more payper liesense, billonlyUS stock markup fraud, if they tickled all over US.
you can bet your
look for: va.msn.?net?, trickle symbull: (VAST)
girls are stupid! they rather go to Cancun or Mardi Gras.
How many people can actually really afford college? I am a student, paying my way through community college. I've actively applied fro student loans, and surprisingly, there is little available for me.
Why is this? Think what you may about what I'm about to say, but I'll tell you the reason. Men are the minority because we don't qualify for the same types of financial aid that females and "minorities" qualify for. I make very little income, and yet, I was denied by FAFSA. There are plenty of "women in engineering" or similar grant programs. But what about men?
Also. Aside from typical minumum wage jobs, how many women get into manual labor jobs that require little to no college. I'd say that less than 5% of construction workers are women.
Just some stuff to think about.
Iam currently applying to study a mixture of comp.sci and electrical/electronic eng at uni for 2003 in the UK, and I've found the number of girls applying for CS is low, but is actually slightly higher in EEE and computer engineering (i.e. CS+EEE).
;)
:)
I have to say though, the girls applying to study humanities (english, history etc) are much better looking than their science counterparts in general
Perhaps if Universities made CS more sex-ay they'd get more girls applying - like, why not have a module on computer fashion?
It strikes me that it's precisely what we enjoy so much about messing about with technology that drives girls away from the whole scene.
Never mind the fact that a guy over 30 with a tech job is a total (marriage-minded) babe magnet, a fifteen year old student is where the attitudes are formed.
People who have no idea about computing and who are dragged into our department for some cross-concept work (e.g. SMS marketing initiatives) are more than a little surprised by the decent cars, good haircuts and sharp cufflinks we're building a rep for...(just joking - but the point is valid - there are deliberately no visible geeks in the team - but we are there...)
.A fifteen year old sees the "spods, geeks and wierdos with alternate lifestyles" that dominate the only computers in the school. Forget about seeing the career, most people pick their degree for a mix of reasons - social life being at least in the top ten. Take a look at civil engineering degrees as an corroborating example.
Until the initial salaries rise far enough that women/girls want it even though the image is bad (e.g. lawyers), then there'll be no change in the situation. Then you'll see an avalanche.
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
I've noticed quite a few women in Computer Science here. However, there are very few in engineering majors. I think CS tends to be one of the most women-friendly technology fields.
You know, I actually asked one of the 2 female programmers we have at my work, and she said that she thought it is because of the mess.
Many woman study Math, but not Physics and CS, because Math is tidy and orderly, where Physics and CS are mostly chaotic at best.
I think it is genetic, woman require order, while men are better at chaos.
-H
That men outnumber women in IT.
I am a female who graduated from Computer Science. I had consistently better grades than my male classmates, and I have no problem with being seen as a geek. Anything computer related is a good conversation to me.
BUT...I have also noticed a 'boys club' in this industry. I have been unable to actually get a job, even after numerous interviews, and every female I run into that actually WORKS in this industry backs up the fact that there is a sexist attitude. Women have to prove that they can fix a computer, and often have to be exceptionally qualified or exceptionally skilled before getting a job.
Maybe THAT is why there are far fewer women in IT.
I'm a guy in a CS program, and the women are lacking, but not completely absent. There are a lot of Software Engineering women actually than CS, but men are still the vast majority in tech programs.
Anyway, as for why more women don't go for CS or other tech degrees I am uncertain, but I believe I have pinpointed the reason that they drop out. My College (RIT) will tell you that you don't need to have prior experience to go into CS. This is a lie. If you haven't coded before in your life, you're dead where you stand. First day of CS 1, objects and UNIX. loops? printf? int x? forget about it if you don't know the basics your screwed. The other problem is high school guidance counselors. They see a student who likes computers. Where do they send them? well computer...science! Even when IT was the correct choice for this person. More CS majors go to IT in my school, its rediculous. And there are quite a few girls in IT that do well, I know some of them.
So the reason that people drop out of CS is because they really wanted IT, but their guidance counselor was stupid, and they've never coded before in their lives.
So why more women? Well you've got a major where coming in you've got very few women. An equal percentage of women and men belong in IT, so now you've got less of each, but losing 2 in 20 women hurts a lot more than losing 8 in 80 men. This is just an educated guess, but I didn't know any girls that could code in high school. Not one. So it would be a good guess to say that a higher percentage of women had no prior experience. So the smaller group loses a higher percentage of people. You end up with say 70 guys and 3 girls. And you started with 80 and 20.
How to get more women in CS? Teach computers in high school. High schools buy all these computers and they use them to facilitate learning in other subjects. Use them to teach computers! That's all they're really good for. Hire a techie, there are lots who need jobs, and make every kid learn basic C, basic object oriented concepts, and binary math. Have a hardware class, teach everyone how a PC works, and how to build one. If its mandatory just as many guys and girls will be interested. Nobody is going to go for a CS degree in college if they've never done it before in their lives. Oh yeah, I'm going to commit to lots of money and 4-5 years at a university doing something I've never tried. Yeah, sure.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Perhaps girls don't go in to Comp. Sci. because they have no interest in it?
I'm in electrical engineering and the same "problem" is here. Meanwhile my school has nursing, fashion design, and early childhood education degrees; the majority (85% or more) of individuals in those programs are girls/women: yet there is no preceived "shortage" of male nurses. Why is that? I'll leave the answer as an excercise to the reader.
The same thing occurs in the specialization of surgery in medical school: there is a "shortage" of female surgens. Perhaps the real answer is that women aren't interested in surgery as much as (say) pediatrics. Want to know a secret? There are more female pediatricians then there are male pediatricians: there's an imbalance! Quick! Enforce quotas!
If there are x spots available in a program, let the people who are interested in that program, and qualify, get those x spots.
Anything else is stupidity.
I live in Utah which is fairly sparse when it comes to minorities. Yes, we have them and yes, they do make up a part of the population, but white is the dominate race. The University of Utah is always worried about diversity. I think diversity is a great thing, but if the pool of professors you are drawing from for department chairs and such is mostly white, then it makes sense that most department chairs will be white. It doesn't have to be that way, but my issue is trying to force it. My problem with affirmitive action and diversity seeking, is that it doesn't take into account the individuals. Girls don't want to be CS majors, so why should the CS department hamstring itself. Especially since the girls are smart enough to beat the guys out anyways. I would like to see an impossible to realize affirmative action based on socio-economics. I spent time in inner-city Baltimore, Maryland, and the white kids were just a disadvantaged as the black kids in the city. Where as out in the county, the kids regardless of race were typically much better off for getting into college and such.
I am jealous of my roommate; he has managed to get the ONLY cute CPE in the entire program.
At least I'm chasing after my own EE, even though she's in Elementary Ed...
There are other reasons why women would not be interested in computer science. As mentioned the work is pretty intense and does require a genuine interest. However, the work can often be fairly individual as well. Although you may be working in a team on a project, this doesn't mean you are in constant interaction with people. There can be times where I go a whole day or two without speaking to people, while working that is. I can't see many women being interested in such a profession. When I go to other departments which are basically being run by women, such as payroll, it seems like they are having a party everyday in comparison to our work enviroment.
Back to the genuine interest, as someone mentioned men like their toys be it cars, computers or even that ball you bounce around while thinking. We love to play with things, break things, make things work. We tend to have a passion for our toys, we could spend days just tweaking things which would seem pointless to others. Simpily put we have a passion for playing. Whereas women tend only to hold things such as releationships as close to them as we hold our passion for playing.
some of the comments made here are disturbing. I thought this was supposed to be a scientific site, where people think critically.
Where I go to school, we have quite a few ladies in the CS program. They fit in just fine.
We had one guy a while back harrassing them about being women in computing. He felt the rage of all the CS students.
If you honestly believe that women can't do just as good of a job in CS, then you are sadly mistaken. I'll work with the whoever is good at what they do.
Fund research into A.I. Dildos - ones that will listen without trying to solve everything.
I've gotten sick of defending myself and my gender time and time again, but I'll do so one last time. Just because most people on slashdot is male doesn't make me male, just as having most people on slashdot be of a certain race or nationality or religion doesn't assure that any single individual shares those characteristics. But I can cope, since in the greater scheme of things, it's no big deal that a few ACs continue to have their doubts.
There is a bigger problem, though. Go ahead and look at my previous comments. Nearly every one of them has one or five AC replies to the effect of "suck my dick" or "I want to fuck you in the ass". Throughout history, female authors have been denied recognition for their work, because it was commonly assumed that women were incapable of creating what they created. And throughout history, women have been spat upon, threatened, battered, and gangraped by the same men you'll find here on slashdot. For all I know, you yourself are one of those same ACs.
Ask yourself what you gain by contributing to this climate of fear and hate. Ask yourself that question when you scurry off for your nightly porn fix. Ask yourself that question when you insult and harass people on slashdot.
Yes, I AM female. Dammit.
-- Anne Marie
I just graduated from a small Christian school wish a CS degree. The school is about 65% women, but out of 50 CS students, there's only 2 females. Our main professor is female, and she's talked with us about these sorts of things. One thing that we found out was that the majority of the guys got into CS because they played computer games as kids, and then wanted to learn how to make them. Both of the girls (and the prof) got into CS for love of math and logic. So the moral of the story is if we can get young girls hooked on computer games (ex. The Sims), then we've got a good inroad to get more into CS.
As a current manager and former student, my opinion is that the CS curriculum beats the MIS curriculum in preparing people for the real world of IT.
As you say, IT!=CS. But if look at the total number of IT "applied technology" jobs vs. the total number of CS "hard-core engineering" jobs, the statistical reality is that (like it or not) most CS grads end up working in IT.
There is an old test in psychology that involves aligning a rod in a frame. The job is to move a little stick such that it is straight within the frame (which may not be straight).
In the 60's and 70's this test correlated strongly with many things and failure at it was thought to be an excellent way to determine general failure in life and high chances of later psychological pathologies.
Women suck at this task. Someone pointed out that the task primarily reflected a distinction between men and women (who at the time were less likely to be successful and even today are more likely to have a psychological desease).
Now, some enteprising researchers decided to modify the task such that the rod was a picture of a person. Now, there was not distinction between the sexes.
Someday, interface design will become important in CS. But, will that happen AFTER we figure out how to encourage women to go in CS, or must it happen in order to encourage women to go into CS??
I'm currently at McGill, a major (30 000+ students) Canadian University, and here it's quite obvious that girls don't dig the programming. In my Intro to Comp Eng class (that everyone in Comp or Software has to take) there were four girls out of 15 students. Of those four, two were brilliant (and one was attractive too), and the other two got Cs.
The CompEng male-female ratio definatley isn't true for the rest of Engineering here tho: Chemical is almost totally female-dominated (any ideas why? we don't know) and civil is about even. So yeah, even in Canada there arn't many girls in CompEng/Software/ECE...the faculty of arts however, is a toally different story.
Cue The Sun...
this is all rather ironic, since, along with babbage, she started it all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've got a female family member who's a stats major and she's got the same problem. Misogynist teachers and creepy peers. One professor refuses to ever call on a girl and has stated openly in class that woman have no place in math related fields. She also has to deal with the freakshow peers...
I wonder if anyone conducting any of these studies ever considered the possibility that these fields didn't attract females simply because they girls aren't as interested in computers as boys, and that this isn't a cause to cry "DISCRIMINATION"?!?!?
These types of things really piss me off, because our society (at least here in the states) is coming to a mindset that any unequal distribution of just about ANYTHING implies a social injustice. I for one am tired of it!
Well, fellow gay stud nerds. Being gay this is good news. Now if we could just get geeks to work out more..
There are definitely a lot of factors at work in situations like this - things are never simple enough that there's an easy quick-fix solution. I'll front just one of them to consider.
Going into CS, like most subjects, has a prerequisite of interest. Ignoring all those people who go into programming thinking that there are going to be high salaries involved (are there still people like that nowadays?), most others do it because they're interested in the subject and the material. The question to ask then is why are they interested in it?
I'll go out on a limb and say that most people choosing to go into CS have significant background experience with computers. Of course this isn't true 100% of the time, but I'm going to generalize and say that it's the majority. This experience could be anything from playing lots of games to just feeling really comfortable in an OS (any OS), but generally more than just using a word processor.
So someone with a strong computer background is likely to be interested in going into CS. Fair enough. So how many women have a strong background in computers? And by that I mean how many women have been raised using computers, who tinker around with an OS, and feel comfortable with the technology? I would venture not many.
For those of you that grew up using a computer, how young were you when you first used a mouse or keyboard? How much of your time in your youth was spent interacting with a machine? And more importantly, how did your parents respond?
Here's my point. No matter how progressive universities are and how accepting of all sexes their CS programs may be, they're nothing compared to the forces of society that shape expectations. While it's much more acceptable now for women to be interested in computers and it isn't even unheard of for them to get encouragement, remember that there are a _lot_ of parents out there that are _not_ going to encourage their daughters play around with an old Apple or Pentium or what have you. Never underestimate the impact of dolls vs. legos on a child's development - think about the message being given to the child.
It doesn't necessarily have to be active discouragement for it do be discouraging. How many men in CS are there who were never encouraged to use a computer? Or may not have had a computer? Or might have been told that that wasn't for them? Or didn't have a social group of peers with the same interest? Don't underestimate the powers of peer pressure - at least most nerd boys know at least one nerd they can be friends with and get encouragement.
In summary, a reason that we would see more and more women in law and medicine but not CS is a reflection of our current society's attitude towards girls in that field. At least with law and medicine one doesn't generally have a strong background in the field before one begins to study it - CS is generally a different case.
Experts agree: everything is fine.
So now they want more female geeks. Not that my prayers haven't been answered, but doesn't this mean we will do less all-night coding and more all-night.. you know..?
The article was mentioning something about THE IMAGE of IT industry and I think that it is one of the biggest reasons why not many women go into IT. Ms. Fiorina does not fit into the stereo typical image of IT person, but I look at her as a businesswoman (good sharp one, of course) not as an IT person; many others, I'm guessing, view her as a businesswoman as well. So the image of IT industry (mostly geeky looking pale extra thin or chubby men) hasn't really changed much. Hmmm... yet another reason why we have to think about what Mr. B. G. is doing to the whole IT industry.
Compilers would keep complaining about a mistake you made twenty versions ago.
And debuggers would refuse to say anything except "If you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you!"
You're absolutely right that IT and CS are largely unrelated.
In 22 years of post-college IT and software development work, I've only ever had to use higher math once (the "winding number" problem, for HTML image-map random polygons), and a one-day web search found me everything I couldn't remember. But IT as practiced in the last 10 years isn't even that close to CS - I know large numbers of MIS folks who can't program at all. And their work doesn't suffer from that! Much of "IT" these days is software installation and trouble-shooting. The same thing happened in the late 1980s in the mainframe world, so it shouldn't be any surprise.
On the flip side, Comp Sci is an academic discipline, like physics, philosophy and mathematics. The primary goal of undergraduate CS departments at the university level (ignoring community colleges etc.) is the production of graduate students, who will eventually become researchers in the field. Their goal is not generally to create COBOL or VB programmers for business applications. In many universities, that's a function of the business schools.
The author also wrote a book on why single-sex education is good ... and it shows.
I have serious reservations about gender-oriented education. I'm female, and I *don't* fit in with the averages. I *was* outspoken in my classes, and I *did* major in CS. I didn't even know what "programming" was when I took intro to CS, but after the first assignment, I was hooked.
In this article, they talk about trying to change the CS curriculum to involve fewer "girl-unfriendly" elements.
From the article:
"The environment isn't girl-friendly. Intelligent, creative girls want to do larger-scale programs that actually do something. They don't want to look at a logarithm that deals with a math thing and how we're going to apply it. They don't like puzzle problems -- or they don't exclusively, and yet that's a lot of what the Advanced Placement test is about."
Give me a break. If someone doesn't enjoy or do well at puzzle problems, how on earth are they going to turn customer requirements into a working product? Maybe there's a reason the AP test focuses on these things?
And sure, I don't remember a lot of the math I learned in college now, but understanding the foundation for algorithms, why this one is faster than that one, etc. when you're learning them is pretty damn important.
If these people had their way and the educational world were divided into girl sections and boy sections, misfits like me would definitely lose out. Maybe instead of trying to separate kids because the girls (on average) won't speak up in a class with boys, we should *gasp* look at the root causes -- the socialization that goes on in the home and on the streets.
I saw a little girl the other day, maybe 2.5 or 3 years old, with her mom in the store. They were looking at some themed candy -- different cartoon characters decorated the containers. The girl picks the Batman candy, and mom puts it back. "Batman's not for girls, honey. Why don't you pick something more appropriate? How about Tweety? You like Tweety?"
Until parents learn not to put predispositions in the minds of their kids (girls, don't do math or contact sports, the boys won't like you; boys, be tough and never show the hurt, or you'll look like a fairy), there will be uneven numbers in the different disciplines. That's just the way it goes.
On a side note, and I may be totally off-base, but I wonder if anyone does studies on how many young men major in english lit and education?
-monique
i don't say this as any form of insult to either gender, but you have to accept the differences without the pc police coming and saying you're a bad person. for instance, girls can have babies, boys cannot. if we are that different physically, why not mentally or emotionally? now, my observations have led to a few realizations: 1) girls are better than boys at multi-tasking 2) boys can focus deeper/longer than girls both from above explains to me why girls do so well in school, because high school is an exercise in chaos. it also explains why boys get so annoyed when you interrupt them, because they can't do 2 things at once. while each has it's benefits, they fit our previous biological needs. boys needed to have the attention span to see a problem to the end. while girls had to manage a household (about 5 million things at once). so while you would think mult-tasking makes girls smarter, it does, just at things that require that. like MANAGEMENT. (yes we're all doomed/blessed to work for girls). while a boys ability to focus more deeply (along with their ego and stubornness) allow them to perform tasks like programming. the gender gap in IT is more about interest than ability. women can perform the job quite well, it's the abilities that i've noted from above that appear to drive interest. (explains why i don't want/can't to be management)
Some of you might find this interesting. Discovery Channel is going to have a special on Science of the Sexes. From what I can tell from the commercial, they're going to discuss many gender stereotypes and the biology behind them. It'll be on 9PM e/p.
/There are 10 types of people in this world; those who steal sigs and those don't
I'm EE majoir and a System admin for an internet media company and have lots of frined who study CS at other colleges and work in the field. we notice the majority of the girls that study CS get into it for the money not the luv of it.
Thats where the supposed discrepancy comes in. I remember back when i first started working for another internet media company and we got all these ppl that got these CS degrees that had no idea what they were doing and had didnt have ne luv for the craft.
so yes there is a discrepancy overal in this field
CS is boring, thankless and soul-less work. Women should raise happy well adjusted children and men should work (in something hopefully more satisfying than CS) outside the home.
We still have a chance to save Western civilization, but with things like women who never where interested in the sciences forced into it by a feminist lobby, and things like 'man versus beast' on TV, we are quickly heading into the history books as Roman Empire part 2.
I know of a geek grrl who's much interested in CS. Her name is Sacha Chua, currently studying at the Ateneo de Manila University. She's been making waves in the local CS scene here in the Philippines, as well as international stuff. She's one of the members of the academic team who won the Microsoft .NET BEST contest held recently, in fact. Ironically, she's a big advocate of Linux and Open Source (and Emacs!). She's recently awarded as a special science awardee in my school, aside from running for Cum Laude honors.
She also started three AskSlashdot main threads: 1 2 3
You might find her essays about girls into CS insightful: Essay 1 | Essay 2 (taken from her science awards nomination thingees)
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
As a gay male, I'm more interested in what it would take to get the men to work out once and a while.
Statements like that make me cringe... Generally such statements are soon followed by "investigations into discrimination" and "affirmative action policies".
Of course, everybody on the planet ought to know by now that if girls don't feel like doing something (such as going into IT, with long hours, no overtime, etc) then all the policies ever written ain't gonna make them change their minds. And that's perfectly fine with me.
What really irritates me are the idiots that set rules like, "you must employ equal ratios of men, women, white, black, yellow, straight, gay, able-bodied, disabled, etc", because rules like that can lead to companies being forced to lower job requirements to be able to attract the correct ratios.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that there aren't any "men, women, white, black, yellow, straight, gay, able-bodied, disabled, etc" smart enough to hold down good IT jobs, I'm saying that just because not enough minorities are employed may mean that the rules are fucked up... It doesn't necessarily mean that employers are deliberately discouraging minorities, or anything sinister like that.
Of course, there are almost certainly some employers that do discriminate, but there are cases where that's absolutely necessary. For example, a person confined to an electric wheelchair probably didn't ought to be a liontamer... Similarly, a blind person might have a lot of difficulty working with microscopes in a lab...
Amen, brother! I've been programming professionally for 22 years and hiring programmers for about half that. In that time, I've learned that the sole indicator of a programmer's skill or likely success is how their eyes light up when geeking out. Programming can be taught, and journeyman programmers can be created, but genuinely creative and gifted programmers are born.
Interesting stats: in my CS department there are more gay men than there are women total.
If you think IT and CS are even remotely the same, you belong in IT.
OK, I don't want to sound prejudiced or sexist. Please don't troll me down or anything.
;-) ). There's something about the IT field that doesn't attract the smart ones.
At my shop, there is a signifigant number of programers that have come from the former Soviet Union. Both male & female.
The problem that we have is that the male Russian programmers, do the work of 2 people. That being their own, and the work of at least 1 female russian 'programmer'. Usually they're relatives, or married. Working in different groups, but the guy does all the work.
This is no joke.
Fortunately, it's not happening in my group, but I've been seeing this for years in others. We've even done some minor investigative work, where we figure out the login id's of the people involved, and then go into the system (Mainframe), and check the ID's on the female's code. It's always the male programmer's. 100% of the time.
I can't say how the ladies get past the tech interview. Our thinking is that this group of people has someone 'up there' somehere who has enough juice to let the hirings happen.
The ladies draw a full developer's salary. They're usually not senior developers, or even programmer analysts. They have straight 'coder' titles. But that's still good for $50K -> $70K. For doing nothing but sitting in their helper's cubes, taking smoke breaks, and going to lunch.
We thought, with the economic slowdown that this would 'go away'. It hasn't. In the last 8 years there's only been 1 firing over this. Well 2 really. One pair was fired for a mistake that booked a billion or so too little to the ledger.
My point. Well, these are the majority of female developers in my shop. I see no capacity to learn, or even try to understand what they're doing. The others, all seem to have admistrative, or business related jobs. No coders.
There's 1 group of about 5 women that runs our Function Point / Software Development Life Cycle program. You can imagine what a mess this thing is. It's even worse than you can imagine. Non coders, trying to measure coding productivity.
Yeaahh Riiigght.
I know that there are female doctors, female scientists etc.., but in my career I have not seen 1 competant developer. Not 1. It's not that women aren't smart enough, or can't think logically( when they want to
Who knows what it is? Is a programmers work really that much different from any other service or science related job?
Huh?
My daughter is in her second year of HS Comp Sci, and will be taking the AP exam in a few months (we have high hopes of a 4, and think a 5 isn't out of reach). The AP-CS class is just over 20 students, with 5 girls (~25%). For an academic elective class with a killer exam at the end, that's considered a high level of female participation.
Enrollment in CS at my campus is in the dumper this year. All the people who thought they were going to make a ton of money because they can squeak through a CS program have gotten the word that there's no jobs in IT anymore. About a third of our Freshmen/Sophomore students jumped ship, mostly to Bio and Psychology. Upper levels have seen similar attrition, though the CSAB accredited program (where all the REAL CS students go) is still going strong (1 person out of 40 enrolled left in the last two years).
We did have a number of female CS students, in the low 20s (percentage). They've thinned out in the last year, I'm not sure what the ratio is now, but I think there are less than 10 female students (full time), so it's around 3%.
I'm a second semester sophomore CS major and this is what I've seen thus far.
.5-1.0 points higher than most of the girls she was talking to and I ended up outscoring most of the girls on AP tests. Her darlings usually had around a 900-1000 on the SAT, I had a 1270 and a 1390 on the SATII (760 American History). I got a 5 on the US history and US government tests, a 3 on the comparative politics (class wasn't even offered at our school and everyone in the surrounding region who tried, got a 1 and I had only 1.5 months to read the entire textbook) and 3s on both English tests. I graduated with a 3.8 weighted GPA (only 5 weighted classes at our school). So no, I'm not bitter, I'm very much amused by how stupid the female cheauvinists are.
The majority of the girls in CS that I've come into contact with fall into one of three groups: those that could be good but are too self-deprecating to push themselves, those that think they're hot shit but aren't and those that cheat and just suck. I've only known one true "computer geek girl" and she wasn't a CS major.
At my university you have to have an overall 3.0 GPA in your freshman CS classes to be guaranteed to be allowed to declare your major and register for sophomore classes. In my last freshman class, I was probably the best one in there and the professor had no problems hinting that he felt so at times. I wasn't the teacher's pet, he demanded more of me than the other students. I noticed that only one of the girls would talk to me, the rest acted like I was an asshole or something. I'm not the stereotype of a geek. I dress like a cross between a prep and a skater, am built a bit like a football player and tend to not act like a geek in general public. So here I am, scratching my head about why this is and I realized something.
My theory goes something like this. In school, before college, girls are given a lot more attention than boys because of "past discrimination." It doesn't matter of course that we've moved past that point. Girls do really well because they push themselves and beat all the guys who don't take their math and science classes seriously and as a result they think that they're hot shit. When the girls get to college and do math and science, lo and behold, they're surrounded by mostly geeks and nerds. Yeah, the guys who do take math, science, hell practically every other remotely interesting study, seriously. For the first time, they're surrounded by a lot of guys who are good, know it, and can best them everytime.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that none of the girls in our CS program could match the best guys, regardless of which CS chic you picked. A large part of the problem is that the girls tend to not be adventurous. Here I am, downloading the D compiler to see what it's like. I'll probably never use it for more than a few code samples on my website, but it's another language I can get familiar with. All of the girls I know, know only 2, maybe 3 languages: C++ and Java and some, VB. I have a solid grasp of C++, Java, PHP, C# and a decent understanding of VB and Python. I'm at the point where I can often figure out a language's syntax just by looking at sample code, unlike the average girl in our CS program. I can read Pascal and little bit of ASM, and I've never formally tried either.
It's my experience that "geek girls" don't make good girlfriends. There are exceptions, but most of the ones I've met are too neurotic and immature to make good girlfriends. The drive to have a geek chic seems to be the reason why this topic keeps getting posted. I've come to the point where I've realized that geeks are generally a waste of time. Stop actively trying to recruit girls because it's a waste of time. Coding isn't for most people, regardless of gender and you're only doing a disservice to them and making yourselves look desparate. You think they don't know the real reason why most guys want a larger female population in CS?
If you want to have a chance to encourage them, make HS more like college. Stop babying them in HS and push them no harder than the guys. I saw too much of that at my HS. I was frequently insulted by a math teacher who would bend over backwards to help the girls, but who looked at me like I was a bumbling idiot when I asked a simple question. Which amused me then and still does. My GPA was about
This topic is just another way for most guys here to say "how can we enlarge our dating pool." Here's my suggestion, pick up a musical instrument and start hanging around the music crowd. I've found that I have more in common with musically-oriented girls than computer geek girls.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I started as a CS Engin. student at Cornell University. My seconds semester (spring '94 semester), I took CS212, which was basically honors second semester CS.
The class was limited to 75 students. The first lecture, three females showed up. By the next day, one had dropped, so we had 2 females and 73 males in the class.
I became good friends with one of the two females. The female-male ratio in the class and in the CS departments together were a frequent topic of conversation. I got to know her as a very intelligent person, and someone who worked very hard (two requirements to stay in the class).
In a situation like that, the other students, the TAs, and the prof are all going to look at the females differently. They are obviously not the norm in the class, and it is all too easy to expect then that they will act differently. They could do well (which my friend did - the two of us often got the highest scores on the exams) and people chalk that up to "She is female in an all-male field. Just surviving is hard enough, so only the really tough ones survive. It is not surprising that she is doing so well." If they do poorly you can chalk that up to "Well, it is rough for a female to survive in an all-male field. That does not excuse the poor grade, but the situation does have to be realized."
My firned, of course, just wanted to be judged against the males in the class without a second thought about her sex. When you are the obvious exception, though, things you do normally are looked at with that difference in mind.
I learned a lot about how rough it is to survive those sorts of ratios. I think it would be difficult for any female to walk into a program with a ratio like that.
[Also, I am simply flabbergasted by other posts to this story that show an ignorance of the pressure that would face females going into a male-dominated field like CS. "Maybe they just do not want to" and "Girls do not do well at math" are just about as absurd a thing as I have read on Slashdot, and I have been here a *long* time. They demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of the full issues surrounding the topic.
Also realize that I am a Libertarian and I am opposed to Affirmitive Action type solutions. Instead, I think that colleges could do a better job of providing better support systems for females that do enter fields like CS.]
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Maybe if CS majors didnt have to take Math I'd be a CS major again/
If you arent a natural math genius you can forget about taking CS unless you want to be in college for 5 years.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If we accept this for the sake of argument, could it be that women get pissed off at debugging more than men? Anyone want to support or refute? My sample size of women is too small to draw conclusions.
Perhaps what we need is more pair programming in CS courses. It makes debugging less frustrating. (Also, for those of you who subscribe to the "women want more social interaction" philosophy, it provides that.)
When I was in CS, every 'girl' in CS was nasty looking. The best one of the group had half of her hair missing and smelled of stale urine.
Would that be James Madison University?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
So, I had the same experience with a number of teachers - to the point that I dropped out of highschool after my freshman year and got a six figure job that I've been working at in the computer industry for the last eight years.
I just couldn't tolerate the teachers who refused to encourage my participation despite my knowledge in the areas and their refusal to place me in more proper advanced classes that would have helped my career.
Oh. And I'm male.
So this could explain why, AT PRESENT, there are much fewer women in CS. Some of the brain functions that make for a capable programmer may overlap with this overall behavioral condition. But it is very possible that at least high functioning asperger's,which almost certainly begins as a neurological condition, is made more prominent via social conditioning of the sort that males receive as children (strong, silent types, etc).
If women receive similar social conditioning as men (which, as the father of a 6 year old I can assure you they do not, despite considerable effort on our part to create a gender-neutral environment), I would suspect that we will see a rise in autism-related conditions and consequently a rise in the kind of mind/brainset that is conducive to programming.
Not that Aspergers is a bad thing: I've known many socially maladjusted people in my life that qualify for that label. I kinda prefer them.
At my university, I'm currently in CS and I must say it is boring as hell. The theory is good, but unfortunately you never actually do anything with it. That's why I'm changing my major to Computer Engineering. yo!
This is one way to get around guys like him.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
and not "women"?
What woman wants to be a 'geek' or be around 'geeks' all day?
I bet 90% of the readers here dont even have girlfriends because of the same reason women dont go into IT.
I'm a male IT major and I've seen about 20 or so freshmen girls that are in IT. I've also heard that there are only 3 or so freshman female Comp Sci majors.
Unfortunately, I don't know how many students there are total in the majors, but you could probably look it up if you cared enough (www.rit.edu)
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
Judging from the AP exam statistic -- who takes the test -- fewer than 13% are female. Not even the studies that have shown disporportionate ability among boys would support this difference. These girls are being discouraged, and discouraged early -- despite showing greater math aptitude before about age 12. Women gravitate, but they are also guided.
I myself didn't do a shit in school. I talked loud in class and skipped classes just to play around with my computer and I had a passion for computers since I was 9 or 10. Girls just sat in school and did all their homework and cared only about their grades which left them with no extra time to get interested in anything technical. Boys got a hands on grip on something before they began to study it, but many guys I know that would have wanted in to CS didn't get in because they had been programming too much and didn't put any energy into school. This is a general problem with school and easily explains why there are more women in universities, but it really has to do with the fact that they actually do homework in school.
I myself had terrible grades in school (in everything except math), but got second in the national high-school math contest, which gave me a free pass into computer science to any major university in my country; otherwise I would have had a hard time in the admissions. Now studying computer science, I find it quite interesting that guys usually find a programming job for the summer vacation, while girls work at some restaurant or similar. The problem is that they don't know a shit about programming until they've studied it for a few years, because all they did in high-school was studied when they should have played around with a computer. Of course many get interested during their studies, but guys had a few years lead on the practical aspects, which helps them a lot.
Obviously there are lots of guys with no programming experience, but they usually have a passion for what they study and they might have played computer games or something similar for quite a few years and are thus interested in the computer itself. Unfortunately there are 5% women in CS at my university and only a few have any programming experience prior to their studies.
Strange enough, but in Eastern Europe (particularly in CIS states) women make up half of all technical disciplines. Moreover, throughout high school I have never seen a single male math teacher.
:)
Having studied CS on one of Russian universities, female:male ration was almost equal. Perhaps (or most likely) that has to do with the society itself. Women have always been allowed and enoucraged to persue higher education, they have always worked "male" professions (i.e. painters, bus drivers, engineers) and hence is the high admission rate to technical faculties.
However, having also worked for a number of Russian (Moscow) companies, I have rarely seen women occupying positions in their fields of study. Most women either get married and leave their diplomas collect dust, or take on a completely different job.
It can also be said that a lot of people who take, for instnace, political science (I ended up doing just that), sociology and other disciplines, choose to persue a different career from what they have studied. My fellow "politicians" all but a few took MBAs and other business-related courses and ended up working for private sector doing radically different work from what they first intended.
So if you're in school to merely obtain a degree, you would choose something easy and at least fun (frankly speaking, CS is hardly any fun for women).
Although, a person in charge of CS department in Carleton University (Canada, Ottawa) is a woman, a PhD in CS, and a rather attractive one
- Convert institutions of learning into institutions of conformity and political correctness.
- Socially engineer maleness as a disease, which must be punished and medicated.
- Institute affirmative action for men.
Ok, stop the machine, I want to get off.From experience, I can tell there's a quite major difference between girls and boys in CS (read computer science, not counter strike you idiots :) )
I used to manage groups of programmers and I was doing the interviews/reviews.
In a 3 year period we hired 12 girls. Only one was still employed after those 3 years. She is quite impressive in what she's doing, but we must know her life style to understand how she got there. She is a true geek. If she's not working or learning she's sleeping. She don't go out with friends, do shopping or other girly things. She's living a geek life style.
Most of the other girls we're leaving at 5 to go do their girly stuff.
To be good in CS (and any field actually) you need more then a degree.
But the same things apply to guys. If they aren't really interested in what they are doing and don't give more then what's accepted, their progress will be minimal.
The Geek term is mostly appy to computer but geek is true for most of the fields, especialy science fields.
The best mathematiciens, physiciens and doctors are the one who love their jobs and give everything they have into it. There's always something to learn and improve.
It's all a matter of choice. You have the choice to work for food ($) or to work for work. money will come anyway.
I also notice a difference in the way guys and girls think, solve problems. well, everybody do, but I notice that girls always went the hard way. I never say a girl simplify her coding/structure.
I think in general guys simplifu everything anyway. Our way of thinking and doing things is different.
On a road a girl will prefer to take to safe road and the guy will prefer to take the shortcut or try to find a better/faster way.
We are different but equal.
Actually, I don't. I think it's a ridiculous and annoying concept that someone should obtain a free passage simply because of heritage, gender, disability, etc. Sure, it's one way around obnoxious stereotypes... But it's not a method that I'd want to take.
-Sara
My long-term g.f. is a very strong analytical thinker. Please, stop the horse-shit.
24 out of 195 programmers are female. I could have missed a few, having some trouble with non-European first names. The fraction is higher when you include testing, documnentation and specification specialists. (We are the largest scientific software conglomerate in the energy industry.)
...but only in certain fields. If you're actually a court lawyer, or you do civil suits, then I can see that. But corporate lawyers spend huge amounts of time pouring over obscenely thick documents and analyzing them in excrutiating detail - very much like programming, actually, except that the computer executing these commands is a distributed network of highly sophisticated (and unscrupulous) neural networks. And don't even get me started on *international* law.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The local LUG is a dick farm too. I knew I should have been gay...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Soory, but it was the first thing I thought of when i saw the title... And I can understand... The guns, terrorist and violence...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
A few years ago I spoke to our company recruiter about putting out a job description that was more truthful than the description I was given. I suggested something like this, "You are going to work long hours be under paid, run a sprinters pace for a marathon, with no finish line. In addition the more you know, the more you have to work, and the less other people can understand and can relate to what you do." She told me no one would send in a reseme for this job. Now is anyone supprised that women do not want to do go in to IT?
Thats a little less than the national average of 57%, but near parity. About 40% of SB degrees are computer-related, but I dont know the sex ratio of that.
It is BECAUSE women tend to excel in the liberal arts that they will appear in greater numbers at the top of the IT/IS ladder. They will do this without having advanced science degrees. I see this happening already.
What so many male geeks lack, having attained great proficiency in math and logic, are these skills:
1) Ability to speak clearly and intelligibly;
2) Ability to listen carefully to what others say, and understand what they want;
3) Ability to express their understanding of the executive wing's goals using the written word. Properly. In many small to medium sized companies, where job security is better than it is in the Unfortunate 500, it's not all about the precision of your code; it's also about being able to communicate with non-technical people who know what they want and rely on you to get them there.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
That's nowhere near as funny as most of the "in soviet Russia" jokes...
GIRLS can get laid.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I'd imagine the majority of the CS crowd were fairly high performers in school, but I honestly don't see too many of them being validictorians and such. They tend to put doing exciting activies above their studies NOT related to computer science. We're typically not a well rounded bunch when it comes to academics. Personally my home libary is greatly biased because of this. I've got books one:
The ratio to tech books to other is 5:1, if not more lopsided too. Face is, CS people tend to only ever concentrate at one thing at a given time. Women just aren't wired this way, which is why hanging out with "CS creeps" doesn't appeal to many of them.
Just my two cents anyway. My last job had 3 women in a company of about 16. One was a programmmer, the other to were hired as programmers but moved into management positions because they got so sick of programming. My current job has erhm... 2 women out of 25 in technical positions. It's just a different type of person that likes to do this stuff, and women don't find it appealing. Fine by me.
Yes but white males already get a free pass, so why shouldnt their competition get the same?
I see your point, but why should you have to work twice as hard and be twice as educated to get the same job and same salary as a white male?
And then even if you get this salary, white males who you work with will not respect you as an equal.
Its not about a handout, but what other way is there to make things equal? Its not like you'd get a fair salary without affirmative action, in fact most places wouldnt even hire you assuming because you are a woman that you somehow just are less qualified.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The reason is obvious. On average, girls are dumb.
Girls simply can't figure out analytical thinking. When it comes to matters such as numer theory, binary logic, propositional calculus, algorithm design, etc., girls simply choke.
How many female mathematicians do you know? Exactly. Female philosophers? Ditto.
Girls can emote and symapthize and become nurses, kindergarten teachers, social workers, and other useless things. They can graduate from colleges in higher numbers, holding useless humanities degrees. But when it comes to logic and analytical thinking, it's men who get things done. Women are genetically disadvantaged when it comes to Things That Really Matter.
Admittedly, I know a lot of CS majors who shouldn't be in CS, or even in college at all. But I also know a lot of people, excellent programmers, who don't need college for the skills they'll "learn" (my best friend is a freshman in college, started working for a cellphone software developer in high school), but because businesses want to see that piece of paper. And outside technology, it's pretty hard to train yourself in a lot of fields. I'm a political science major because I want to work in the American State Department, either as a diplomat or an analyst of some sort. Tell me, how do you propose I train myself sufficiently to be qualified for this sort of work without any college education? How would a doctor "train himself"? Would you want him to?
Frankly, sir, I find the idea that I am somehow *less* competent because I am going to college to be offensive.
I'm the stranger...posting to
My girlfriend graduated from university with a BA in English. She decided she wanted to be a technical writer so she took a certificate course and completed that. She then spent a year trying to find a job without luck.
So she spoke with a few people in the industry, curious why she would find it so hard to start her career. She thought it might be because she had an arts degree (actually, she took a lot of sciences in university but that's not obvious) but the common response she got was it was because she is a woman. Why is this bad? Because the TW industry is dominated by women so there is a big push to hire more men.
She's going to go back to school in September but hasn't yet decided what to do (she has a number of ideas, she's just still doing research). Personally, I think she should get an CT diploma so she can be on the other side of the affirmative action coin.
(Disclaimer: This story is rife with anecdotes and personal experience and may only reflect trends in our area of the planet. This also wasn't an attempt to bash affirmative action, so don't interpret it as such. YMMV)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Who knows, maybe they're just castrati.
Oh, hang on. You meant The New York Times
Once I got past "places of education", I actually experienced remarkably little gender-related prejudice. (Other than the odd tendency of Slashdot guys to add me to their "friends" list. :p)
Generally speaking, sexism is most prevalent in places like computer stores(Compusa, Staples, etc.), educational institutions, and financial institutions. I can't speak about racism--I'm white, but if you walk into the average tech shop--whether you're a guy or a girl, if you have an interview with someone who knows anything, and you speak both "Geek" and "English", and are able to establish a rapport, then you're on an even playing field.
If anything, in NYC, tech places are more willing to hire a minority (People from Asia and India, particularly) the consensus seems to be "They work harder".
-Sara
Looking at todays typical IT careers it becomes obvious why only very few girls get interested in high tech careers:
In your twenties you get to work your ass off.
In your thirties things are only slightly better.
From then it goes downhill until they fire you.
Also a sabbatical of as little as one or two years seems to make you unemployable.
Girls are smart and they know this system is completely incompatible with their dreams. Raising kids and having a quality family live just doesn't fit in anywhere.
Only during the dot.com era when it looked like anyone working in this field could make a million in her twenties this perception was changed for a little while.
Unless the typical career path gets fixed I think the numbers will get even worse.
Since when do whites have a free pass into college? It is Blacks and Hispanics who are average to somewhat below average in the body applying to X Elite College that get a free pass, and the Whites and Asians have to work harder to make up for it.
"but what other way is there to make things equal?"
By establishing some equality, not by putting in more inequality.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
HanzoSan is just a whiner. Make him a foe, as so many others have done... If only the silly 'H1B-sky-is-falling' folks would do it under a user account so that we could filter them down to -1, too.
In my Computer Science I class at the University of Iowa, I'd say 50% of the class was girls. 1% of the girls I would actually think about touching, only if I was drunk though.
The computer itself is incapable of sexism, racism, or any other form of discrimination.
So why are there fewer girls in CS?
At my school, the percentage of freshman CS/CIS/CS(BA) majors was fairly high. However, many dropped out of the program before junior year. (So did many men, but a lower percentage)
I think there are two reasons for this. First, many women simply don't like programming. I don't know why, they just don't. They have good grades, but they leave CS anyway. Another reason is that I have noticed that the guys are more likely to stick with their major than girls. If guys do poorly in a major course, they will often retake it. If girls do poorly, they will often look for a new major.
A relatively small percentage of boys asked their parents for Barbie dolls last Christmas, while a similar percentage of girls asked for Tonka trucks.
I'm not great. There are better people than I in CS at my university. I was establishing more or less where I stand in regard to the rest of the students in both HS and college. I am better than most of them, got a problem with that?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
There's a fair few comments of the type "Men and women are different, and that's why". To which I say, yep. There are differences.
:).
How big are those differences? There is nothing quantitative being cited at all. From distant menory, I think that the differences are of the order of 3-5%. I wish I could cite something, but I can;t find anything (not my field
A difference of theat order of magnitude is a reasaonable match to the sex difference between people studying mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
So the real question is why is the the difference in student numbers greater than the statistically observed difference?
And if someone can point me to some hard numbers on this one, I'd be very interested.
ah how many cs graduates here actually took an AP CS exam? I know I did not..how about you!
NY Times number are screwed up.. the numbers of male and female CS graduates are very much different formthe numbers quoted..
Its about like saying that everyone that took a pre-engineering test in HS went on to engineering school..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Even Barbie says that math is hard...
I'm just wondering what *exactly* the benefits are of affirmative action? Other than some nebulous idea like "diversity" or "equality", I don't see what the big benefit is to haveing 50% male, 50% female in college, in a field, etc. Do these universities considering male affirmative action also mandate boy-girl mixers, so they're making sure that everyone has a date?
i dunno. i'm female. i'm in IT. i'm a straight up geek girl. (and omg, i have a life)
i started my love for computers and math on my very own when i was less than 10 years old. the largest influences on that were my engineer father who helped me with math when i was young and the purchase of our first computer.
i knew it was what i wanted to do. i never questioned it. my relationship was with the computers and not with other people. especially since i was self-taught. i never felt that i was not 'allowed'. i never felt any different from any guy out there. computers were what i wanted to do and being around other women was not a big deal. oh, and the 'reputation' or whatever of being associated with computer geeks? so what. like i said, my relationship was with the computers.
maybe it's because in grade school, instead of people telling me "no, you can't hack it because you're a girl," i got "no, you can't hack it because you're too young." (i had already skipped a grade and was taking courses a year ahead of my classmates.) all my administration fights in highschool were because i maxed out my math&cs&science courses junior year. not because i am female.
frankly, it wasn't until reflection years later that i realized that i was the only girl in those courses. it wasn't until significantly after the fact that i realized (after being told) that i was the "only hot cs major in our class".
after college, i managed the internal network and had three direct reports. all guys. i worked closely with the network ops team. guess what? all guys. it was never an issue.
i don't notice. i don't care. my sex has never held me back. i knew what i was good at and i was going to do it. if someone is going to be an idiot and assume that i don't know anything because i'm female, well, too bad for them. as an aside, honestly, i've only been a victim of true sex-discrimination less than five times over the course of my life. ("no, listen *miss*, i need to speak to a *TECHNICIAN*") i just feel that when we stop thinking of ourselves as 'different' or deserving of more attention because we're female, we'll get the 'acceptance' that we're looking for. and as i've never felt any different from the guys i was taking these classes with or working with, i've always felt accepted.
who knows? maybe it really is just a lack-of-interest thing that keeps women out of IT/CS, but i see that more starting from a very young age and not necessarily majorly influenced by highschool/college teachers. though, this is only my personal experience. i don't see a lot of the discrimination that i hear other women complain about...
I think the number one drawback to careers/majors like CS is that the social interaction is too low. Girls are probably more sensitive to this. This is exactly why I dropped CS as a possibility.
girls in CS??
what next?
allow them to vote too?
girls can't handle the cock.
-r.
Very true. I had never written a computer program before sophomore year in college. Loved it so much I changed my major to CS. I still graduated on time, with a very high GPA in major.
I'm not saying this to brag, but to say that programming requires certain innate abilities that cannot be taught.
I think a large reason why very few women are in fields like CS, engineering, etc is because very few women are into hardware (as in the toys, the fruits of the labor, etc) which motivates so many men at the outset. They, also, perhaps as a result of the lack of experience with them, lack the same intuitive sense that many great engineers have--the stuff that they don't teach you in school. It's something so fundamental that I just can't explain. Now before you go and call me a sexist, let me say that I was raised by one _very_ smart mother (by far one of the smartest people I know: PhD in EE, top of all her classes, dozens of patents, founded a number of highly successful tech. companies, etc) and my sisters were educated so that they could pursue that path if they wanted (e.g., ~1600 SATs, top notch education, advanced maths, etc). I know from experience that women can put men to shame intellectually, that they can do just as well or better than men in a classroom, in the boardroom, or wherever. However, in engineering and CS, for whatever reason, very few women are as enamored with the material or as comfortable with it--I'm not talking about the course work. If you look at most successful male engineers or programmers, almost all of them were, at some point in their life, turned on by the actual hardware (or applications). How many male engineers were into HAM radio, played with computers, cars, and so on? Almost all of them had something that sparked their interest. This interest is, of course, not a sufficient condition (there are many what, I'd call, "techies" that are NOT engineers), but it is practically necessary. Very few people are exceptionally good at something that they don't enjoy.
Taking my sisters as an example. All of them did every bit as well in math and science as their male counterparts. They performed exceptionally well on SATs, APs, grades in tough classes, etc. On paper, at least, they had everything that was necessary to succeed in engineering and choose practically any university that they wanted. They also all started out with at least some interest in engineering or CS. Of them, only one of them has stuck it out in her degree, but even she is steering now towards academia/mathematics.
Now I know this isn't the most scientific survey. I know that many young women are turned away from mathematics and science for social reasons or aren't exposed to sufficiently rigorous education, but with my sisters and a handful of other women that I know, this simply is not the case. They had ample opportunity, the academic talent, the will power, the willingness to work, etc, but not the burning desire to lead them to be engineers. Even if you don't exclude those women that lack the intellect/education/etc, there are even very few women that have that sort of inclination which leads many engineers to spend hours upon hours, miss sleep, showers, and so on to solve whatever problem that is in front of them.
I sincerely believe that women can do just as well as men in virtually every field of endeavor, even those where men still dominate (e.g., as CEOs, top level gov't, law, research, etc)...but I don't think that engineering is one of them. When women start receiving the same quality of education en masse and the level of expectation is the same, a lot will change, but I'll be very surprised if women are ever well represented in engineering for the "reason" (however rough it may be) that I just laid out. It doesn't make women lesser, by any means, just uniquely different in some areas and almost certainly better in other areas.
They realize right away that the guys are all...well...geeks.
the 2001 AP exam in computer science drew 19,000 boys and just 2,400 girls
Really? Suppose those numbers don't change much between the AP exam and the actual job world. That would mean that better than 1 in 10 coworkers are women...yet I've never seen that. I've never counted, either...but I would've guessed something like 1 in 15 people at any job I've had in 17 years were women (and that includes sales, admin-assistants, HR, etc...within just development maybe 1 in 25).
It would be interesting to see numbers broken down somehow. In my last job almost all of the tech-related women were Program Managers. Maybe 3 or 4 devs. 1000-person company.
Maybe the girls are getting smart and realize this is a dieing industry.
mod this up
I don't think the whole story is that there are fewer women taking computer science classes and going on to graduate with computer science degrees, but that the field as a whole is experiencing some drastic enrollment shortfalls. Face it, would you really want to go into a discipline that will put you into a position of being neglected, overworked, and possibly underpaid? It isn't that women are doing it less, everyone is doing it less. That, and the splitting of what-was-computer-science (some math courses and some electronics courses, bam, here's your degree) into 'modern computer science' and then into computer engineering, electrical engineering (with chipmaking, etc), computer science, information systems, and whatever else has cropped up in the past few years.
From what I've heard (and it is only from 2 schools), enrollment is declining overall for computer science. It just isn't happening. Think about right now, the economy is kinda crappy, and we've just come out of this bizarre greed-affair of stocks and internet millionaires that most people would really like to forget. It just isn't as sexy to the general population anymore.
I also wish to take issue about the gender equality statement, just because I can't seem to get it to make sense to me. Law? Medicine? We don't have recorded history long enough to find the origins of those professions. (I won't mention the profession of courtesan, oops, I did.) The fact that computer science and electronic information technologies are so young doesn't really make for a good comparison as to where the gender equality situation stands. Should we take a survey of modern-day sanitation workers? As someone else said, sterotypes are self-perpetuating/self-replicating.
OK, I'm done now. Yes, I am a CS student. Advice: get your prereq courses done at a community college and put the rest of the money in a CD or bond or something (CD, look it up, it's an investment vehicle).
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
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Follow the link: Vienna Teng. I guess that if I could sing like her, I wouldn't be doing this either. Listen to the link, you'll be delighted.
I think what it is is that programming requires a sort of compulsive nature not often seen in women. It's sorta like model train sets. You can see a man spend months building a perfect little model train set, hovering over all the small little details like the trees and buildings trying to make it just right, but it's not something you'd really see a woman do.
It's that same sort of compulsive nature that makes programming appealing. It's not that you'd never see that trait in a woman, it's just far far more common in men.
but in fields such as biology, mathematics, physics, engineering, etc., women are commonly anywhere from 40% to 60% of the division population. Then we look at CS where the number drops precipitously.
There are indeed differences, but the tenacity for in-depth knowledge in a subject is not the difference. Or were you going to say that math was not requiring an in-depth knowledge. Perhaps biology is just four or five years of fluff. Oh, I know! All of those women who are receiving medical degrees are just coasting along with no in-depth knowledge.
And just to pick apart that "concentrating on a single thing for long periods of time," I have just one word: mother.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
IMHO, I believe the problem lies within the environment created by males in the IT industry. For any female interested in IT, they soon realize that males tend to deal with other males. Even though I am a female in IT, I am highly disappointed with how I often get addressed as "Sir" or "Gentleman" when I receive email. I see it constantly in mailing lists as well. It's truly annonying. Men just assume their audience is male and it leaves females uncomfortable. In the work place, males manifest their dominance -- perhaps unconsciously.
Until men can create an environment where they put aside their prevalent demeanor, women are not going to be drawn into IT. I know this is not the case for all, but the majority sets the tone. When I think "IT", I see the stereotype middle-aged male in a suit. This is what needs to change. Whatever gave me that image (media?) is what other females see as well.
I wouldn't date a girl that fucking stupid anyways. You know, there are multisyllabic girls out there, and they are wonderful.
--sdem
Just look at what you need to do in order to be really successful in programming.
1. Spend enourmous amount of time on your tech hobbies in young age. Free time being limited, it means you don't go out much and don't do well in school (who wants to spend time memorizing when each king/president/whatever came into power when you could be perfecting your tic-tac-toe algorithm?)
2. If you go to college, you will spend your time fighting off professors who want you to mechanically follow the book to do things you already know how to do better. Structural programming experiences, anyone? In addition, you will study subjects that are extremly tedious and are never used in programming, or at least never done manually. Why draw an LR state table by hand when you can just do yacc -v? The best outcome you can hope for is that professors just realize they can not teach you and rubber-stamp your grades to let you move on.
3. Repeat the previous step at work with various Ph.D. - carrying managers that have strong opinions about function names and calling conventions. Finally, give up a good portion of the programming work you wanted to do in the first place to go into office politics and grab good projects, people etc.
Perhaps girls have a tendency to avoid such antisocial lifestyles. After all, there are few female terrorists (well, except for no-longer-Soviet Russia), polititians, mercinaries and so on. It's theoretically possible to imagine a geek-friendly society, but it would involve human-rights abuse of normal people. For now, look for it in an online game near you.
... can actually generate real random numbers!
My wife and I are working on it; we have at least two of three daughters who are very much into computers and learning to program. The oldest is only 13, though, so no requests for dates -- Daddy and Mommy can be very protective ;)
What do we present to our young women as role models? Britney Spears! Barbie! Sex in the City! Even TV sci-fi fails; women are either kick-ass warriors or love slaves. Even when a woman *is* an engineer (as in Firefly), she comes off as a bit odd and disconnected from her peers.
Learning programming is critical to success in any scientific or engineering field. Office monkeys can get by knowing basic applications -- but to be involved in the leading edge of technology, understanding computers is essential.
All about me
> Information technology, despite its relative
> youth, has been far slower to approach gender
> equality than law or medicine
That's a load of crap. When the field was young (Yes, in the 80s), there were MORE women in computer science than men.
Of course, only us old farts would remember that fact.
... girls seem to run away from CS courses at University. The few adventureous that take one step futher and decide to start a CS course get to scaried we us geeks and run away too. I think we should try harder to conviece then that "geeky" is sexy.
A lot of this discussion is extremely frustrating. There are so many stereotypes ("Girls aren't as good at math..." "They don't like computers anyway..." "They're just NOT INTERESTED") that are the precise reason that the ratios are so low. How do you know? How many women have you talked to that fit these stereotypes? And have you ever thought *why* some might not be interested? I never owned a set of Legos or an Erector Set as a kid -- plenty of Barbies, though. Computer classes at my high school taught word processing and spreadsheets (at an all-female school... clearly teaching us all we ever needed to know in our future careers as... secretaries?). I'm currently arguing with them right now about updating our technology AND math and science curricula after they drastically cut back on them, thereby screwing over anyone who had any desire of entering such fields in college. It's not encouraged at all. The only reason I'm in ECE (with a CS concentration) right now is because practically by accident my high school ended up with a FIRST robotics team and I fell in love with the programming and wiring. Without it, despite my ability and interest in computers, I probably would have ended up a humanities major just because it never would have occurred to me that engineering or CS was something I was really interested in.
And don't make assumptions on what women do or do not want. I am perfectly willing to stay up all night coding surviving only on caffeine. I buy clothing based on whether or not I can carry my Leatherman in a pocket. I have attended many a Warcraft III LAN party with my boyfriend and his roommates. I build my own computers, run Linux, and for God's sake, I read Slashdot. ('Nuff said..) And I'm not unique -- I got to Olin College of Engineering, which has a 50-50 male to female ratio, and there are plenty of chicks there just like me.
Just keep in mind that it's very much a matter of exposure. For example, one girl in my class had never had any programming experience and only went into engineering on a whim, but loved our first CS class so much she soon after taught herself Perl in order to keep the college Quote Board organized. Another girl who had been considering journalism instead of engineering went crazy with her first introduction to CAD modelling and power tools. It's just that so many of the girls there had never seen any of this before, didn't realize it was out there, and only by some fortunate chance ended up finding it in college.
But please don't assume that women aren't interested. Think of it instead is that a lot of them just don't know what they're missing.
Ever seen the figures for physics !?!?!? :-(
Toon Moene.
I don't think so.
I have been for some long years on the computer field and I may say that some of the most intelligent beings here are girls. They preform very well in some more abstract or theoretical tasks. However there are a few constraints that make a girl's life much more harder in this field.
First is the stress. To hold up in the IT field, one frequently is submitted to physical and psychological stresses much higher than in many other professions. I have seen geek girls trying to hold up rythms and hard tasks that I and many other of my colleagues consider "routine". After such situations, most of them, just "turn off" for a few days.
Second is the environment. Most IT rooms are a chaos of dirty coffee mugs, papers all over, tons of computer gear, kilometers of wire. Frequently, dust, noise, lightning conditions and some other things can be added to this. For many girls, this is the Hell in Flames.
Third, is the abnormal sexual enviroment around many IT experts. The computer, frequently, deprives people of some common pattern for sexual behaviour. Many become asexual or gives ground to weird sexual behaviours. In result, girls, who care more for some common denominator, feel some sort of weird discrimination. Among many girls, there is a frequent stereotype to consider most computer experts as impotents, sexually abnormal, or having trouble with their orientation. This weird environment is enough to scare many girls. Anyway they love some attention and care. And cannot cope with a full bunch of guys playing CounterStrike.
Fourth. Girls have lots of troubles when they become pregnant and start to care about their children. While there are some interesting exceptions, more than 90% of girls usually get a serious blow in their jobs, when they are forced to give up the IT world. A girl who tries care up for its child for the first years, usually is forced to expect a much lower position when she comes back to the IT world. Even six monthes out of the regular work is enough to send her into some secondary job.
And last. No matter the intelligence, girls are more prone to find easy jobs (aka more lazy jobs). And more prone to stability, order and care. In the core bottom of the chaotic IT world, most just quit at first try.
Yes but white males already get a free pass, so why shouldnt their competition get the same?
As a white male, I resent the implication that I've gotten a free pass. I resent the implication that my job is the result of my caucasion schlong and not because of my experience, education, skills and knowledge. I resent the implication that I am incompetent but am kept on because of my WM Membership Card.
If you put a quota on IT/SE/EE to hire 50% females, then you will be placing those same assumptions on females. Is that your goal?
You need to address the core of the problem, and not the symptoms. Affirmative action only addresses the symptoms while letting the core problem fester.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I'd have to agree with you. While it's been over a decade since I graduated with my degree in CompSci, even then the majority of my classmates didn't belong in that degree program.
At my Uni. (at that time anyways) the business school offered a degree in Information Systems Management that would have been far more appropriate for most of the CS students.
More schools should offer MIS undergrad degrees (if they don't already, I really have no idea) and they should be promoted as credible alternatives to CS degrees for students that want to pursue careers in IT rather than 'pure' CS.
(I may be coming off sounding elitist here and I really don't mean to.. I think IT is a perfectly valid career path and universities should be adequately preparing students for that. Simply put, the knowledge and skills needed to design and manage a database system (or whatever) are a lot different than the skills and knowledge needed to write the database software itself)
I think I speak for everyone when I say, "DUH!". Actually, I went to Purdue to study CS, and there were i'd say about 15-25% females. I think Purdue's focus on women in technology really helps draw them in, obviously not in proportional numbers to men though. Perhaps other universities just need to enhance their women in technology programs as well, as I think perhaps some females just think that it is a man's profession (incorrectly too). My girlfriend graduated from Purdue with a Technical Graphics BS, but is now doing Cold Fusion programming (which she describes as the PowerPoint of programming languages), and enjoys it more than doing Flash work.
today is spelling optional day.
This is part and parcel of what I do for a living and most of you have this entirely wrong.
It's not discrimination, or dislike for single tasks, but something fairly simple. The Times article almost says it, but not quite.
Women, as a group, tend toward careers that have clear social roles. Areas like psychology, sociology, education lead to careers that contribute positively to society and individuals. Not only do they lead to those careers, they *obviously* lead to those careers, without anyone having to tell them that people with degrees in widgetology can go on to a social career.
Engineering and Computer Science often lack that. The fields that do best are Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Bioengineering, and maybe Chemical Engineering. They suggest more societal, humanistic careers and as a result have significantly higher numbers of women participating.
Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and so on don't obviously suggest societal careers. Everybody pushes Intel and MS as employers. There's little attention paid to bringing power and communications to underdeveloped nations as there is with Civil Engineering and bringing clean water and waste treatment to the same population. If that was part of the culture of these fields, you'd probably attract more women to the field.
Once in the programs, women consistently outperform men. The problem is marketing and focus. The discrimination angle is easy to claim since the people in the field have historically not been interested in social issues - so people that bring social issues are ignored, and the cycle repeats. In order to get more women into EE, we need more women in EE, or at least more men in EE that see the field as something more than inventing the next blue LED.
I ask, what socially oriented career would you suggest out of CS? I'm not suggesting that they aren't there - rather that nobody has bothered to think about them, let alone articulate them.
There are two lines of thinking as to why women look for social careers. One is the nature angle where women are maternal and driven to help people, the other is the practical angle where women realistically need to consider careers that they can leave for a few years and return to. People don't change nearly as quickly as technology, and careers that emphasize technology over people are much harder to leave and later return. Consider leaving the programming field altogether for 5 years and trying to return to a career. Not impossible, but not easy either.
Browsing through this thread should give anyone a pretty good sense of why women might not be going into the field.
./ guy knows what she experienced better than she does.)
Could it be connected to the fact that anytime the gender disparity issue gets raised, the reaction on the part of men is to reply with old sexist jokes and pathetic rationalizations ("women just aren't wired for computers")?
Then, if some amazingly brave woman actually has the courage to relate her experiences with sexism in CS departments (I noticed one -- thank you neuroticia), the thanks she gets is accusations of paranoia (becuase obviously some blowhard
Even a man relating the experiences of a woman he knew in CS being stalked gets met with claims that women are just being too oversensitive.
There isn't one simple explanation for why women aren't going into computers, but it might have something to do with men's total lack of restraint in making blatantly sexist and obnoxious comments whenever the subject is raised.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
An important quote :
the school gave preference to "qualified male candidates on the margin," says Robert Massa, vice president for enrollment and student life. The idea gets mixed reviews among Dickinson's students. "It reeks of affirmative action," says physics major Michelle Edwards. But Massa emphasizes that "the men we admitted were as qualified as the women."
That last line is key. Remember the real definition of affirmative action :
The practice of the government of posting job listings in alternative news media in order to INFORM more minorities of job offerings.
Despite the fact that this has been bastardized to mean hiring / accepting based on things other than your ability, such as race, gender, or economic status, this is NOT affirmative action. It's discrimination.
More fun with definitions :
racism : Any policy or belief which is biased towards or against a specific race
sexism : Any policy or belief which is biased towards or against a specific gender
So just be aware, were they to give extra points to men (of which I am one, btw) trying to get into college, this would be sexism, NOT affirmative action. Keep this in mind next time you hear some crap like this.
With the gross swings in fortunes in the IT job market, overtly hostile actions of the US government towards the profession (ie H1-B and the Fair Labor Standards Act exemption for hourly paid programmers) and poor treatment by employers in general, why would any intelligent individual want to make a career of IT?
The declining enrollments plus the rejection of the field by anyone with any ability to interact with others on a person to person basis (i.e. NOT INTJ Myers-Brigg) spell continuing turmoil for this as a profession.
I have already told my children that there is no future in technology careers in the US... they are looking at humanities, not sciences as the road to a happy future.
So this means i'll have to take classes like biology and english to meet girls. bah.
- Joe
I did not read the article, cause I did not want to register.
But, as a grader for BSCS at a University, I've seen more women in the undergrad CS courses than men.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
At my current job it takes for a woman to be twice as smart and work twice as much to be considered half as good. Especially if one is not fat or ugly (pretty == dumb?)
Not to mention that we get paid less, on average
This has already been written about extensively.
8 9
/. and read a freakin book every once in a while.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/02621339
You GUYS should stop reading
I've worked for a female MIS who would take credit for engineers' work and have emotional fits when she was corrected by technically proficient people. Your comments reminded me instantly of that experience. The person in question was once quoted in a management-oriented tech journal as saying that our organization had moved to thin-client technology. The fact was that she thought our IBM NetVista all-in-ones were "thin clients" because they had LCD screens and a small footprint. When it was pointed out later that PCs with a full operating system, a 10-gig disk full of software, and 256mb RAM were not exactly what was meant by "thin," she claimed she was misquoted by the tech journal.She was a tough person to work for at times, but she did bring lots of money into the department by virtue of her golden tongue at executive meetings.
All this is to say that it is not desirable to have a non-technical person directly in charge of engineering/developer types. But the ability to communicate well can get you far, even if you lack hard technical background.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
I don't think that the article reflects the overall picture in CS - just the picture evolving out of high schools, but not who is actually in the college classes.
I have 15 years of various academic studies, all CS-related. Throughout, I have seen a fair share of girls / women in these classes - not necessarily 50%, but a fair share.
What I did notice, is that the women in these courses were typically from India, China, Russia, or the Mediterranean, and on rare occassion - perhaps Eastern Europe.
I did not personally notice the girls being treated any differently than the guys with regard to academic standards or grading. Also, ultimately, I question a tenent at the end of the article - that programming is critical to CS / IT. It may be important, but lots of jobs and interests may be devoted to non-programming aspects of CS : varying forms of analysis and IT do not necessarily have strong programming prerequisites, and much advanced CS boils down to discrete math issues. You can learn programming if need be in college, but having a good math foundation is most helpful.
Sam Nitzberg
sam@iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com
I doubt the problem is one of statistics on intelligence. Women just aren't encouraged to go into anything computer related as much as men are.
Upon becoming interested in computers, I've had people like my father ignoring my new obsession. He'll sit in front of me and talk about his newest techno toy with my brother, and anytime I try to comment he'll pretend to not have heard me.
And as one more example, I'll recount my experience at the store just last week. I went in to trade a PCI Ethernet card for an ISA one, and the guy started asking me questions while he was hunting around for the card. His boss started talking to me about Linux, and asking why I use it. He mentioned that he found it odd for "a girl like you to be interested in computers." It's this inability to go beyond someone's gender in everyday conversation that gets me. It would have been a perfectly lovely conversation if the guy hadn't brought my sex into it.
I don't want to be regarded as a girl who likes computers. Gender shouldn't have anything to do with it. It's not test scores or percentages that are going to give you the answer to why women avoid CS.
You know what? There's no problem with this. It might be a combination of upbringing, interests, abilities, whatever. There are fewer girls in CS. Big deal. There are fewer guys majoring in English. Is that really a problem? As for why the number of girls in CS has been dropping, I might hazard to guess that some of them who were in it before were in it just because they thought they would get a good job. Girls (maybe) care more about financial success vs. pursuing true interests more than guys.
~~~
Mod me for being a pig.. but CS, Engineering and other "technical" fields have some serious issues if you are a single parent or the "homemaker" in home where both parents work. Why? Obscene hours, being on call (Jim, the server's down) and the lack of job stability make any project oriented job difficult for women who want to or are mothers. Hell, it's hard for us Dads...
$G
-- $G
As a woman who was in the IT field ("senior software engineer", until I became disabled), I can understand why few women would want to become involved. The hours were horrible, the pay sucked, and I routinely saw men ignoring whatever women had to say about the project. Plus, given the last item, men got all the promotions to management, and more money, while the women were allowed to bring them coffee.
During my tenure at the company, we had 4 women who worked there. Three of us left, and the 4th only kept her job by boffing the boss at lunch. This is *not* the kind of environment that women find "inviting". Small wonder why few women are inclined to get into this field. It's just not worth the trouble.
Lemon curry?
Just a thought.
Using the MBTI, I assume that IT is better done by Ts than Fs. Approximately 70% of men are T, and approximately 70% of women are F. Further, the minorities (30% men, 30% women) are usually brought up around the majority, and used to that. Thus, it is unlikely that women would enjoy the work.
Have you read my journal today?
Could there be a direct correlation with more males in IT, and less males in college?
I didn't go to college (I probably should have, I know) but here I am making a decent salary for a 20 year old (in IT) and absolutely loving my job.
Both of my room mates: same thing. No college, yet doing excellent in IT.
Sig.i>
I don't see why women NEED to be in CS jobs. I know it makes it a little harder to get a date, but other than that, who cares if women as a group go into CS? I don't hear the fashion industry decrying the lack of men? Or the press?
As for anyone, if you'd like the flexability to go into any carrer, you need to be able to both handle sci/math issues and empathic/literatry fields. If many women don't strive to get the math/sci backgroud, then they won't have as much flexability. I see many men who do the exact opposite in shorting themselves in the empathy/literary vein. They couldn't write a understandable document to save their life, and they can't empathize what their co-workers are feeling.
I personally will try to get all my children to excel in BOTH areas. But if they don't I'll point out what flexability that they are loosing and be done with it.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Your boyhood dreams of growing up to be a volumptious woman with a wife at home waiting can come true?
Ah... whatever.
Actually, there are plenty of women in my CS classes. But they're almost all foreign, it seems like for non-westerners, CS is perfectly normal field for girls to go into. And to me anyway the ratio of male foreigners to female foreigners seems about equal.
:(.
This doesn't help me much, though, because most of them don't speak English that well
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yes but white males already get a free pass, so why shouldnt their competition get the same?
I am a white male. I grew up in a 4 room rental house with about 800 square feet of living space. My father worked 60-70 hour weeks for years to save up money for my college education. Even then, I had to work full-time while going to school full time to afford to go to college. It took me 6 years to get an engineering degree because I couldn't pass a full course load and work full time. And I didn't qualify for grants because my father had the ridiculous idea of working hard to better himself and his family, so we were not "poor enough" to get a free ride.
I made more in my second year as a junior engineer than my father or grandfather had ever made in any single year in their entire lives. Next year I make twice as much as my father ever made. Thanks to the hard work of several generations, my children now have better opportunities than anyone else in my family has ever had.
I sure wish I had known about these free passes. It would have been a lot easier with them, I guess.
I bet i know more about computers than you do, from EXPERIENCE.
I know about Data Structions, AI, Object Oriented Programming, Top Down/Bottom Up and other various Design Models, I know how the hardware works, I know the physics involved, I know the way CPUs are written, how they are designed, why they are designed in the way they are, I know current silicon chips are at the end of their lifetime, I know about biological computing, I know about quantum computing and how it works, light based and water based computers being experimented on.
I know how all of this stuff works to the point where I could work with it in the industrym but wait
I dont know the weird math and calculus equation dealing with the movements of light or whatever the hell we are supposed to be calculating with calculus?
Please, no one Ive ever met whos a computer science in the industry has ever used calculus unless its too write a game and even then games dont use real physics so unless you want to make a sim of the atomic bomb explosions or work on writing a genetic algorithm to help boeing design new aircrafts what Math are you talking about.
Math rigor? What is math rigor? yes you do problem solving when you write programs sometimes but 90 percent of writing programs is fixing bugs and using code thats already written, most algorithms are already there and you can just steal them, sure to be a GREAT programmer you need to be good at math but the average programmer they only know up to algebra.
Discrete Math I dont have a problem with, I dont have a problem with Combinatorics, I dont have a problem with Algebra even, its calculus that I have a problem with, and Linear Algebra and the BS stuff they teach us which has absolutely nothing to do with computer science.
You will use statistics more than you'll use Calculus or Linear Algebra, you need to know how to calculate statistics when you work with AI.
Computer Engineering however is what you are thinking of, or maybe Robotics?
Give me an example of when you'll use math, the only math you will use is Combinatorics and
some basic Algebra.
Calculus isnt even about logic, I agree learning Logic is important but Calculus is the wrong math to use to teach logic.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It's not like we are purposely excluding women! I think most geeks would love to see more female geeks.
Girls statistically outperform boys overall in grade school
Perhaps because most grade school teachers are women, and teach things the way they make sense to them (which does not necessarily make sense to boys). Most IT teachers (and most college teachers in science / technology areas) are men, and that could explain why males seem to learn those subjects better.
Of course, men and women do have different tastes (or so say cannibals), but I suspect the gender of the teacher plays an important role as well. I know I tend to understand (study / technical) books written by men (or men and women) better than I understand books written (exclusively) by women, even when they are teaching basically the same thing.
RMN
~~~
I don't have any comments about no girls in CS. Here, at our School of CS, I can easily count by my hands how many girls there are. This is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the article that linked against. The study was totally BIASEd. The whole study was based on Arts faculty. Go look at Engineering, Math, Physics, Chemistry, CS and other hi-tech ones. I can surely see male domination there.
The reason we don't have many women in CS may be the same resaon we don't have many women mechanics - they simply don't want to get into it.
Maybe they don't consider it 'feminine'?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
That's because she was a salesperson--not an engineer (or systems administrator or help-desk troglodyte)--before becoming CEO. The average chick in CS (or "IT" as you put it) is more like Mary Shaw, Judy Estrin or Anita Jones than Fiorina.
Theorem:
On average, the more time you spend on doing academic stuffs, the better you'll be at these academic activities.
Fact:
Our cultures have produced a LOT more boys than girls who are more active in pursuing sex.
Implication:
Given that both boys and girls have 24 hours a day doing all their stuffs, boys spend more time on the pursuit of sex thus less time on academic activities.
Corollary:
Girls perform better than boys academically.
THANK YOU!!!!!
:)
I totally agree that if girls aren't going into CS, then there is about as much effect on IT as on the price of banannas
(thats not completely true, but seriously people, if you know you're going into IT, why the heck do you want to take hard classes, when you can get a degree in MIS and have an active social life (which women stereotypically desire))
Need a Catering Connection
... might I be the first to say, so what?
Perhaps they're just not interested. I'm sure that they aren't being pushed away from the computer industry, guidance counselors are pushing EVERYONE into the computer industry.
Perhaps... we're just not all the same, and we shouldn't push high school girls into computers merely to even out a statistic and make ourselves feel nice about being "equal."
Just my $.02
Based on my experiences and of people I've grown up with I think that the biggest reason that women don't go into CS is because most of us had little or no experience with anything other than Barbies when we were young. For many people, strong interests develop at a young age and are built upon as you grow. The only reason I became interested in computer science was because of my dad (who was surprised to learn that i read /. all the time) because he always was doing things with computers and electronics around the house while I would stand near him wanting to help. As, I got older my dad taught me more about computers and in my junior year of high school I took my first programming class, note that this would not have happened without my interest of computers being sparked by my dad. The following year I took ap computers, and scored a 4 on the ap exam (better than my boyfriend at the time ^_^ ). All I can say now is thank goodness I took those classes. Sure I still love programming and everything but just from those 2 classes I realized that I could not do that for the rest of my life. I needed more human interaction. I can't speak for all women and I have no way of proving it but I think it may be the case that more women (not all) need more social interaction. It is not because we are intimidated by the men in CS or because we aren't interested; there are just some things that interest us more. True, things like stereotypes, incompetent counselors, and knowing that we probably won't be completely satisfied with our job effect our career paths, however, one of the main reasons why women don't go into CS is because that little spark of interest was never available to us. This is not to say though that as many females would be in CS as males if everyone had the same opportunities to develop an interest.
I remember reading on slashdot that CS folks were working for peanuts, but I didn't realize things were that bad.
The fucking World trade center statue has nothing to do with this discussion you fucking moron.
Has anyone ever considered that maybe the reason there are few women in CS (or any other occupation or field of endeavor, for that matter) are because, for whatever reason, they simply don't WANT to?
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Who are you talking about? I know the administrative staff is all female, but I thought all the PhDs were male.
Their faculty page http://www.scs.carleton.ca/people/faculty/
seems to support this theory.
And if any of the administrators have PhDs, why the heck hasn't that been mentioned on their listing? (http://www.scs.carleton.ca/people/admin/)
- Confused
As a woman in cs (grad school right now, 1 year of fulltime programming before), noticing the barriers for girls/women to get into and stay in CS comes very easily to me, unfortunately. For those of you guys who don't think there are such, the proverb "Whoever is well-fed does not believe/understand the starving" is well suited. if you don't see such barriers - look twice. it doesn't take too much smartness to notice them, as long as one cares to pay attention. All it takes for a guy to be in CS is to be at least somewhat smart and/or really interested in CS - it takes that and much more for a woman (i am not
saying a woman needs to be smarter, though this could indeed help - i am just saying there
are other qualities,interests, values, that she needs to posses in order to be happy in the
cs/IT world as it is today). I've seen enough female colleages and friends who were both smart and really interested in cs, but who eventually decided they had it enough with the cs type of life they were forced to live, and "chose" to do something else.
Just think about all the jobs you probably have changed - and how doing the very same thing may feel so different in the different work environments. For example, working on the same technical thing at a typical startup and a typical big company could be so different - and different people will enjoy it differently and have different preferences. My point is, work environment matters *a lot* - not only to women but to everybody. The experience of working/studying is a sum of many things - field, what exactly you are doing, atmosphere, etc. We all aim to maximize this sum - and
unfortunately it seems that currently for many of the women interested in CS the overall sum is bad enough to make them switch to something else.
I used to encourage girls who were obviously interested in CS to at least give it a try.
Nowadays I am much more cautious about it. Truth is, it is hard to look somebody in the eye and say this is a great career for a woman - not because i don't feel this way about my career, but because of all these other girls i've seen being crashed by stupid stuff which has nothing to do with computer science/IT per se, but has everything to do with being in this field these days.
Would anybody who knows CS/IT women happy with being in CS/IT, and who has some theory about why they are happy with it and/or what has helped them ignore or overcome such barriers, please share. Personal qualities, environment - parents, friends, something in the school/univ they went to, anything? it would be very interesting to hear such impressions.
http://more.abcnews.go.com/onair/dailynews/brainga me020731.html
We can see that there are general differences between male and female brains. Producing high levels of testosterone *generally* gives males an advantage in this way of thinking. Female brains are *generally* geared more towards activities and skills we call "social". It's that simple.
But, I think human brains are generally patterned at birth, but not fixed-patterned. In terms of data (language(s) spoken, cultural contextualization, self-care, literacy, IT skills), I think we're blank slates. Absolutely no input there. But the potentials for these skills are there, undeveloped. Appropriate conditioning (teaching and socialization) will bring these potentials into fruition.
Take, for example, Afghan women engineers. Something like 30% of engineers in pre-Taliban Afghanistan were women. That's a hell of a lot more than the U.S. - check out
t able.html
http://www.swe.org/SWE/ProgDev/stat/discipline_
for figures. Not bad for a country that's been at war ex- and internally longer than many Slashdotters have been alive, has a culture generally more gender-conservative than ours, and maybe 0.01%, at its best, as much economic resources as the U.S., eh?
I think the U.S. could get a lot more girls into CS, if we really want to do it.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
And I can tell you that girls are getting more interested in computer related professions now. I think it's mainly because girls use computers more. They use them to chat, AIM and now a lot of girls use them to keep journals/blogs online (nearly every girl I knew in high school had a LiveJournal). Which they later wanted to learn how to use HTML to add colors and what not to their journals thus learning HTML. Two girls I know liked HTML so much they bought books and created their own websites. And both of them are taking technology related classes at UC Davis (California).
*snickers* at the parent. =]
Jay.
guys don't go into education or childhood development.
Oh yea, I forgot, those don't fit with NYT liberal bias.
For example, can you become a theoretical physicist or mathematician without going to college and then geting a PhD.
NO!
A mathematician or physicist without a PhD is a joke, nobody takes him/her seriousty. All big scientists of XXth century, Einstein, Bohr, Born,Heisenberg, Feynman,Pauli, Bethe, etc, etc were PhDs. In the XIX century a genius like Faraday could be a big scientist without college education. Unfortunately, this is not possible anymore
"I see your point, but why should you have to work twice as hard and be twice as educated to get the same job and same salary as a white male? And then even if you get this salary, white males who you work with will not respect you as an equal."
I think you're naive if you think this is still true. 99% or more, companies and schools treat everyone the same. Affirmative action had a place at one time, but now does more harm than good. The problem with affirmative action is it gives people the excuse to say "he just got in to that school because he's black", making it difficult for minorities to prove they really earned their positions, rather than receiving them to fill quotas.
Vote for Pedro
of Cleavon Little saying "Where's all the White Women at?"
WTF? Over?
I'm currently a senior computer engineering student and will be graduating in May. My major is best described as half electrical engineering and half computer science. It is true that in my school's computer science department that there is many more males than females. In a course of approximately 35 people there are usually four or five females other than myself.
However, CS is in much better shape than computer engineering in this respect. In my electrical classes there have been many times I have been either the only female or one of two females in the class.
Why is this? I really have no idea. Personally have been interested in computers and their design for a long time. It seems that most females are no so interested in the design process. The only engineering major that actually has close to 50/50 male/female ratio is chemical. And for anybody that says that the girls have a good shot and finding dates if they are in CS or CPE all I have to say is the odds may be good, but the goods are odd.
The media would have me believe that Girls are too busy Going Wild to be interested in CS. I don't know if that's the true reason though...
Jane Margolis and Allan Fischer had a close look at the situation of women in computing at CMU. Based on their study, CMU developed a program to attract and retain a larger percentage of women, which actually worked.
Some of their methods are not easily transfered to other schools. For example, they increased the percentage of women admitted to computing by changing the selection criteria - not by watering them down, but by unbiasing them (e.g., women tend to have less previous experience with computers). CMU could do so and still maintain their standards due to the large number of excellent applicants, which might not work as well for schools that are less popular.
Nevertheless, the CMU study produced interesting results, some of which suggest ways to remove bias against women where it exists.
Chilli
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
Most new cs grads will get low paying help desk jobs if they are lucky because the demand sucks all thanks to the economy and H1b1 bisa's taking away american jobs and dignity. I love computers and would like to take cs courses. However I love a good paying job more so I would not major in cs.
My theory is that only the most die hard cs freaks are staying in the program which means they are almost all men. Many who are merely but not insanly interested wont major in it for obvious reasons. Sexism aside boys with mild forms of autism make up the majority of cs students.
http://saveie6.com/
ehhh, what exactly is a date ? :-)
Who cares if women want to go with careers
and degrees that are traditionally sound ways
to earn a living rather than gamble on the
absolutely shitty IT scene?
Never have a I seen such a horde of ravening
jerkoffs as in the NOC of any small ISP or in
the cubicles of killer_app_startup.com
The ladies are just using their finely tuned
sense of self preservation. Who wants to share
the environs with hentai worshipping, arrogant,
unbathed geeks with yellow teeth and deskbelly?
..Free Live Free...
Are chemical engineering or mathematics tracks less in-depth or less focused than computer science? I don't think so.
My point was that there is no inherent aspect of women/girls that makes CIS/CS/CE an untenable field of study. The differences are mainly social or difficiencies in the way CS programs are run.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
http://www.nmt.edu/~val/howto.html
How many website designers, help desk support techs, and programers do you see doing calculus when performing their jobs?
Perhaps programmers at NASA or McDonald-Douglus do this but not %95 of the programming jobs out there. I included help desk support professionals because if you look in the want ads today you see that EE or cs is required for them??? With this poor economy today this might be your only job after graduation after studying all that advanced mathmatics.
My father was a software engineer for almost 20 years and has never did anything beyond basic algrebra and good logic when writing his programs. He did quite a few bubble sort and btree routines using assembler and was quite good. I agree with you on logic as essential. If you can't think logically well then you do not belong in computer programming. Sure writing a compiler or a scientific program that has to be determined not just how but when a program would finish would require this advanced math. This is mainly done in simulation programming which only universities or research institutions actually do. This is a niche and not required as a whole.
CS students know mathmatics well but do not know how to program well because they spend there time writing tiny mathmatics oriented programs rather then learning how to program large projects effectively. Infact thanks to Microsoft bribing oops I mean contributing to universities many cs students do not eveb know how to login to a unix box but hey, they know these exotic Djiktras aligorthms. right?
What is needed is computer programming as a major. Bussiness skills and accounting mathmatics should be applied since that is what programmers will write after they graduate. I think it would be great to have teams of 3-5 students write huge bussiness oriented programs that are over a million lines of code so they can learn how to code effictively. Methods of code and language use should be discussed, taugh, and graded. If you write code that looks ugly or can exhibit bugs then that student should recieve a lower grade regardless if the program worked. If another group applies supurb software engineering practices in a complex language like c++ then they should get an A+. A few hacking courses like assembly should be included as well. A graduate with a good GPA will perform well at any programming job. Someone whith a poor GPA because he/she does not have good spacial skills should not be considered a poor programmer. This is what I am in favor for.
I also think CS should remain a major for those interested in algorthm research as well as those who want to write compilers and operating systems. I just think the industry is so huge now that programming should be added as well.
What also pisses me off is that cs majors have to take alot of liberal arts courses but liberal arts majors never have to take any math or science courses beyond the into to "x". I would like to physics for poets.
http://saveie6.com/
"Girls not goin into CS"
And I can assure you.. the number of CS guys going into girls is far less!
[alk]
Give it up, HanzoSan! No matter how much ass kissing you do, you still aren't going to get laid!
Look, as long as CS/IT wages are above average there is no glut out there....
Wages mean squat! Existing companies want to keep the few employees they have because they are the only ones who know how to run the show since everybody else is gone. IOW, companies kept only the best (or who they perceive as the best) and they value them. Plus, they work the remainders twice as hard because they know they can't leave. "Hotel California"
Once the market loosens up and people start moving around more, you will finally see the results of the glut come to fruit.
It is dead out there. Dead dead dead.
Table-ized A.I.
I live in Australia (Sydney) and am currently doing a Science degree with a Compsci Major and an Ecology Major... in my comp Science Classes there are plenty of Girls, just not of european descent.. I am the ONLY non asian girl in most of my comp sci classes, (not that this is bad) but I am still yet to figure it out.
i don't see what the big deal is. men still get paid more...and finally women are getting their chance to be on 'top' then its a national epidemic. come on, give us geek girls a break. when i lived in arkansas, i applied for an job at a company that manufactured joists. the head guy of the comp. dept. said i was more qualified than the others (who all 6 were male) in front of everyone. alas, after we left that day i never got a single call, even an apology. a few months later i saw the guy that didnt give me a chance, and i said what was up with that? and he simply he looked down at the ground, shook his head, and walked out of the texaco where i was working. so even if women are succeeding academically, we still don't get the chances we deserve (especially in the hick south)... :D oh yeah THAT rant felt good.
misty
"It's a time machine Napoleon, I bought it online."
After years of frustration, I've come up with some simple guidelines:
Now go out there and get laid!
The economy is probably going to recover in four years, when they all graduate, remember.
You don't get it. The CS jobs are going overseas. The internet makes it so easy to shuffle work off to people who make $2 an hour in India or whatnot. I am guilty of it myself: I found a web hosting service that is dirt cheap because it is run by non-Americans.
It is no different than factory work. Sure, it may be gradual, but programming and sys admin is a dying field in the US. The future careers are in the 3 M's: Marketing, Management, and McDonalds.
Table-ized A.I.
No, the truth is that IT is a subset of CS. The domain of CS is ultimately the study of all the potential uses of computers. IT is just one practical application of CS.
Students at the Stevens Institute of Technology are NOT surprised.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
Hyperfocus is also a classic symptom of attention deficit disorder (ADD). There are many, many good resources on this topic for the interested.
It is increasingly suspected that ADD/ADHD have a genetic origin, involving one or several genes. The genetic trait may be sex-linked as well, given that the disorders are predominantly found in boys.
For most people, ADD does not translate into a competitive edge, more like a learning disability. The afflicted appear to have a normal range of intelligence. Although ADD is more prevalent than previously suspected, I don't suggest that it accounts for some fundamental difference between the sexes!
I spin this out a little because ADD/ADHD are so grossly mischaracterized in popular opinion. I studied psych and was startled to hear about the hyperfocus symptom a couple of years ago, because it seems so counterintuitive (actually, it's not: ADD is a disorder of regulating attention, and cuts both ways). Lastly, the most common medication used happen to be stimulants, but are in dosages too small and release profiles too long to act as "speed." Moreover, a new nonstimulant drug has been developed with nearly identical effectiveness; if it pans out, it will likely displace the controlled substances and their problems.
Thank you; great example. Some people here argue that women are different, contrary to the teaching of the Women's Liberation Movement. The direct quote from Anne Thwacks,
"The nature of the subject, and anything else requiring in-depth knowledge, will not appeal to most girls."
I may agree with Anne Thwacks, BUT one of things that the article points out is that the ratio of female students in CS is considerably low at the beginning of the freshman year. My guess is that most people (including boys) don't know much depth knowledge is required as they continue studying CS or whether they'll like it or not. However, there aren't too many women at the start line. Why? The reason, I think, is the image of IT industry. Soccer; great example. Are these women (or girls) going to play in England Premiership or La Premera Liga in Spain? Probably not; I even doubt if they watch England Premiership or Premera Liga on TV before they start playing soccer. The point is that they don't know much about soccer, But soccer is so popular in US, because soccer is portrayed as a really cool sport FOR cool fashionable strong women (by Nike, of course). Image really changes the entry point of soccer and of course, computer science.
I'm another like you, mrsmalkav; going through a trifle young, realising only afterwards that I was the only girl in many of my classes, because I never found it an issue. I think some of it is being thick skinned, and frankly not very observant; there might have been issues but they would have to be really blatant for me to notice, and under such circumstances (which only cropped up on a very few occasions) they were so obviously over the line that I had only to point it out.
:-) It is, therefore, time I stopped posting to slashdot and started the current round of thesis editing.
Another part of it is parental support. I definitely had it. My parents would have encouraged me in anything I took an interest in; from repairing cars to embroidery. They *never* suggested there was anything I couldn't or shouldn't try to do, so there wasn't much chance of me taking notice of anyone else making that kind of suggestion.
And it helps to be brilliant, so that your ability can never be called into question. I wonder, just now, if that wasn't the most major contributor to my comfort in my chosen discipline; because no-one *ever* suggested I wasn't entirely capable of the work I was doing. There was altogether too much evidence showing I *was* capable. My university departments were happy to put me on an accelerated program, and find me projects and one-off courses.
Why isn't there a 50/50 gender balance? There *are* differences between the average strengths of men and women; but to me that only says that the numbers should be 40/60 or something like that. I do think social pressures significantly exaggerate the differences. These are probably exaggerated further in the case of IT - not only is the programmer or sysadmin stereotypically male, the stereotype covers youth, ego, lack of concern for appearance, and occasionally lack of hygiene. Girls at 16 are significantly more mature, and cultural pressures make them more aware of appearance; if there had been equal numbers of boys and girls at 13, playing in the computer labs at lunchtime, by 16 or 18 chances are that the small fraction of distinctly unpleasant males would have discouraged first a few and then just about all the females. It would eventually have worked even on me.
My discipline isn't computer science, but physics; which has similar problems to a slightly different extent. I went into physics because of an active interest in this field. I'm in the final month of a nuclear physics PhD.
Rachel
I think girls are more scared off by the rampant superiority complexes in IT than anything else. I can't talk to the head IT worker here because he thinks I'm stupid. I asked for an address (for my laptop) on the company network and he replied, "So you'll need that for a computer?" I couldn't help but choke back a grimace. I also have friends in engineering degrees who speak degradingly of "pretty girls in engineering", who can never be truly intelligent or have a good reason to be in their degree.
;)
I really feel for the girls who have posted in this thread and seriously love (and are good at!) what they do. I think I would have followed an IT path myself if I hadn't been bloody-mindedly convinced that I could make a career out of drawing (and I have). But even though art is viewed as a "feminine" field, I'd say illustration is not - I am the only girl in my section at work. In the history of my company I've been the only female artist to stay for a significant period, and the second female artist ever.
In every part of my life, I'm clashing with guys who are convinced that they must be more intelligent than me by default, because I am female. Whether they are or not is not something I care about, but that attitude itself stinks. Any comment along the lines of "you're good, for a girl" is not a compliment, it's a hideous insult. It's easier to sit in the corner and let them think I'm a stupid Mac user than it is to try and convince them that I am not deficient just because I have ovaries. Believe me, I try, but sometimes it's just not worth the effort.
By the way, if any of you have the presence of mind to admit that girls can do what you can do, and not place barriers on a girl because you think she's good-looking, you may actually get lucky. Girls who are dedicated to what they do tend to appreciate the same quality in their geek boys.
I fully agree with this, my school is very strongly female (around 75%), yet in the CS department, there are only about 14 women. I'm one of them.
Men and women are fundamentally different, no matter how much you wish it wasn't true.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
AiS was created just for this. To get more females into Computer Science, Math, etc.
Too bad the DOE cut funding for it.
Here's the website:
AiS
"Shut up about my driving. You're still alive."
Let's say there is a big market for artists, and I go to Foo University Art School. I'm not really into art, but I'm studying it in the hope of learning enough to get a high-paying job as an artist. Unfortunately, I'm competing with the other students, many of whom are obsessed with art. They are compusively sketching and painting everything in sight, making me look rather lousy. I just don't get it -- it's like a game to these people! Unless I become a total art fanatic really fast, I'll never get past the first course.
Of the CS women I met in college, only a few were computer hobbyists in their spare time whereas a much higher percentage of the men were "playing around on the side". Consider the other majors: how often do you meet someone who is obsessed with chemistry, history, or sociology?
Let's face it, CS is way too much work UNLESS you're a 24x7 geek already. If you look at the total time commitment, CS is about the same amount of time & effort as medical or law school. If you have that kind of mental firepower and energy, why not get a degree with a longer shelf life than a tub of sour cream? Otherwise, why not find an easier major?
I know of more than a few women who wanted CS as a major and ultimately as a profession, but they had broader interests. At some point, they learned how foolish it is to compete with the one-dimensional bit-head unless you are willing to become one. This issue of competing with hobbyists only gets worse when the field of competition shifts from the campus to the workplace. My theory is that there just aren't as many women as men who are willing to lock out the rest of the world and play with computers.
Everyone complains about the CS types that lack non-computer skills, but the people who truly excel in CS are often those who neglect everything else in pursuit of that knowledge.
For many years, I was one of those one-dimensional bit-head hobbyists. I lived alone, with a condo full of hardware. Just down the street, I had $3 million worth of my employers' toys to play with during the off hours. I had nothing better to do, so I played and played and played. Over the years, I got promoted ahead of all my peers, despite having failed to finish my BSCS. Each day I would show up for work with some new idea or concept that I had played with the night before. Any "normal" person would be hard-pressed to compete against me, if for no other reason than my lack of a life.
Do you actually have a point or do you just enjoy rambling?
BTW, here's a fact - Frank Rhines (sp?) is the CEO of Fannie Mae, a company with so much annual revenue that they actually have a "trillion dollar day" (the day where they actually earned their trillionth dollar of revenue). Their revenue exceeds the GDP of all other countries in the world (except a small handful like Germany or England). Oh ya, and did I mention that he's black?
What's funny is that there were talks a year or so ago by the NAACP (or some other organzation) about Fannie Mae hiring too many "White Male" employees. Frank came out and said "hello, umm... I'm black. Why would I do that???" Momentum suddenly dwindled.
Get your facts straight, pull some examples, and make a point instead of rambling.
Do it for da shorties
My wife quit a computer science program because most of her classmates had a horrible body order which made it hard for her to concentrate. Particularly, Indian/Chinese/Pakistani students with the occasional unwashed gamer type.
Here's what you get for a CS degree if you're a woman these days: -You get to hang around with the type of geeks for whom a 2d picture of a naked woman is the closest they ever get to sex. -You have to put up with a group of men for whom a Pentium IV running at 2Ghz is MUCH sexier than you will ever be. -6 years into the industry, you'll get laid off because somebody who speaks Hindu will steal your job and do it for $2.50/hr Under these job market conditions, why would ANYBODY want to invest $40,000+ in a CS degree? Ted
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
How is this news for nerds? Are there nerds out there that aren't already painfully aware of this? Doesn't putting numbers on the obvious just through salt in open wounds?
ôó
Gosh, everybody, way to form your opinions about human nature in its relation to computer ability from 2 (maybe 3) personal experiences.
If there's one thing you can learn from this discussion, it's that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT and there is no reliable way to tell the strengths and weaknesses of any given person.
"I've heard that girls are bad at math, but I know two girls who are really good at it."
"My school's ratio is 90-10. I think it's because women inherently don't like machines." "Well, my school's is 50-50! That means the genders are equal!"
Why bother making the generalizations at all? It won't benefit you or anyone else, and it also has a chance of hurting someone (including you).
As a society, we can pay attention to the statistics without perpetuating them by acting as if they imply something about human nature. As any sociologist can tell you, it is extremely difficult to separate the effects of "nature" from those of "nurture". Don't complicate their jobs any further by perpetuating scientifically unsupported stereotypes. (The claim that "women's brains aren't as analytical as men's" is a gross oversimplification, and just as suspect as "men aren't as good at social interaction.")
As for me? I'm getting out of the computer racket for pretty non-gender-related reasons. I'm still a sucker for anything computer related, and I'm perfectly at home with the "geek" moniker. I just want to get away from the "computer lifestyle".
The average career length of a good programmer seems to be 8 years, after which there is a swift burnout. During those 8 years, you get paid an above-average but uninspiring salary to sit around all day letting your eyes and muscles atrophy.
As not only a woman of the female persuasion but also a Human Being who has only one life to live, I can think of far more pleasing, more sustainable ways to earn a living.
//------------- "Boring!" -------------//
BTW, there is a book that addresses this issue: _Unlocking the clubhouse:women in computing_ by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher (ISBN: 0262133989)
They start with the assumptions based on gender roles. For example, there is an assumption that boys "just get" math and computers. Then they address gender inequality in instruction. Boys become active learners, answering questions from the teacher. But girls aren't expected to know answers to questions, so they become passive listeners. A teacher needs to watch for this and try keep both genders actively involved in the learning process.
They also address the lack of female role models. One of their solutions was single-sex classrooms (or lab periods) and more female teachers... Definitely worth a read if you care about this issue!
Someone asked if I supported affirmative action. I said "no", and gave my reasons.
a.) Yes. I had a point. Re-read my post, and if you still don't see the point, I'd be happy to elaborate.
b.) I don't think I rambled nearly as long as I usually do.
-Sara
I believe we've tangled before, friend. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to call your bluff. There's no way in hell you understand the physics of computing without a good knowledge of calculus. So where do you use Liebniz's tool? Timing, scientific computations, Fourier transforms for example. Additionally, there's always a need for calculus in calculus math packages and software like matlab. I think I'll argue that without knowing calculus you can't know what to use calculus for. And because we're friends and all I'll just dismiss the Linear Algebra line.
If we throw out calculus, why not throw out College Algebra? How many zeros of a function have you found using a computer? Or what about writing? I mean, outside of comments there's no need to learn a second syntax called English. Most programmers out there aren't writing the technical documents for the end users and technicians. And you know, I really don't think many BS in CS students end up writing interpreters or compilers or OS's so lets drop those classes from the cirriculum.
To be a programmer just requires a language and a book. To be a computer scientist means to have a language, an idea, and a means of investigating it. Most of programming indeed doesn't require a new algorithm, just some glue to plug applications together. Of course, most programming jobs don't require a CS degree either.
Machine learning is one of the most interesting fields I see in graduate level academics but sometimes it seems hard to draw the line at what AI is and isn't. I mean, is hardcoding the optimal play set into ROM intelligent? Its definately artificial, however. How do you see yourself? An average programmer? Or a great programmer? I don't know much about Bayesian networks but I do know they're something of a hot topic that looks fairly complex to me, so I'd wager you'd say "better than average" at the least. So why discard a potentially powerful tool?
Finally, don't shoot me, shoot the accrediation board and the math dept. They seem to believe that students should be familiar with calc 2 concepts as a prereq for Discrete or Combinatorics and Linear Algebra.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I read about half of the main posts on this topic. Heard a lot of great views. One topic I particularly agree with is that Geeks or men in IT are typically more accepting. Thus creating space for women.
I have two problems with women in IT. If a female comes into the work place God forbid her to be attractive. All the guys flock and talk about the "New Girl". I'm tired of that. Really nothing I can do about it....and is no reason for women not to enter IT.
My other complaint is (with my experience) women in IT always have something to prove. Just read the posts by other women. They have to tell you how great they are. They are not listing personal experiences just accomplishments. Women in IT have this great competitive nature but it seems they don't know how to handle/display it. Let your actions speak for you. If you are the best employee and your manager can't see that then you have a bad manager. Getting overlooked happens to a lot of people, not just women.
Why must a gender difference be evidence of overt or covert discrimination? In my opinion, the CS gender differential comes from differences in hardware, rather than software. Drop me in the "nature" bin on this question: I think that women, on average, differ from men in such a way that they are less likely to be interested in computer science. I could get into why I believe this, but it's all anecdotal, and wouldn't convince anybody who didn't already agree with me.
Note that this in no way justifies discrimination against women. This discrimination is still clearly a reality, and must ultimately be eradicated root and branch. It is wrong to prejudge individuals by the group they belong to, not, as extreme "nurturists" would hold, because there are no differences among groups, but because respect for ones fellow humans requires that we treat them as equals. I.e., equality of opportunity is a matter of ethics, and ethical principles shouldn't be held hostage to questions of animal biology.
For those who wish to wring their hands about this gender discrepancy, must every field be split, 50/50 (well, 51/49)? Is the only possible "just" society one where soldiers, professional athletes, nurses, artists, even rapists, thieves and murderers, are exactly as likely to be male as female? What if the average woman doesn't care very much about computers, or artillery, or how to hotwire cars, not because of Barbie, or because their math teacher didn't call on them in seventh grade, but because she simply finds other things more interesting? If such women exist, discrimination "on behalf" of women in many male-dominated fields would ultimately make women less happy. It would, by definition, divert women who would otherwise be happier doing something else into male-dominated careers, to satisfy some sort of mathematical imperative of justice.
That is why I'm very leary of those who would rush to affirmative action-ize CS. You might not side with me on the "nature" side of this question; but regardless, I think the nature/nurture debate in this case is too far from resolution to be sure whether such programs are a net benefit or harm to womankind.
That's why I have a problem with Chinese/Indian whatever engineers as well. They're great at memorizing and vomiting, but change the problem a little bit, and the confused-looks/shoulder-shrugging festival begins.
Please donot generalise. May be the people you have dealt with are like that. I have had experiences with people, whom i could classify as nothing but absolute morons, but that doesn't mean I consider their entire type to be the same.
In the same vein, there generally appears to be alot of resentment towards asians particularly Indians coming in and taking up jobs. Well remember this America was built by immigrants orignally. Any great civilization requires fresh input so that it continues to evolve. The minute it becomes insular, it signs its own death warrant.
hi, i graduated with a bs in cs from psu. i had a pretty good experience overall, regarding fellow students. many profs were not so good as teachers. this is an unfortunate fact of college, in many fields. it really stood out for me in my cs classes. most of the time was spent watching someone write programs on the chalkboard. what percentage of people, in the general population, learns best this way? i don't know the figures, but i think probably most undergrads would benefit from some portion of the coursework that involves guided hands-on learning. (not after-hours cs lab try to figure out yourselves).
now i work in the field as a programmer, and am given a lot of responsibility and freedom, both technical and creative, and i love it.
In some Dutch studies, it turned that out that girls
(though indeed more bright on average) choose on
average studies slightly below their capacities, and
avoid all heavy studies. (beta studies and heavy other studies like econometrics), while boys had the
tendancy to choose slightly above their capacities.
Why does every personality or cognitive variation in human beings that makes it difficult for them to fit into industrialized society have to be labeled as a disorder or a syndrom? IMO there's something wrong with a child that can sit still and be brain washed 8 hours a day in school. Any parent who allows their child to be put on ritalin or dexadrine, or any other drug to treat
"ADHD" is simply too lazy to parent properly and is guilty of child abuse. Dyslexia is a bunch of hooey too... yeah some people have trouble reading, but guess what? For most of the time that modern humans have existed there was either no written language or most people couldn't read and write. This is getting way out of hand. A friend of mine told me about how her brother was diagnosed as having DISCALCULA-- the inability to do MATH! With that said, as it's been alluded to by a few brave souls, women in general aren't good at working with computers. Women in general have problems with logic, and perhaps more importantly, they aren't inclined to take risks the way that young males are. A person who's willing to dig into their computer system and risk breaking it(and any computer user worth his/her salt has broken many systems) will learn much more than someone who sits there timidly. It's not something any woman should feel bad about, computers have only been around for 60 years and they were invented by men. Someday when computers have feelings and you can talk to them then women will be on an equal footing.
Stupid.
I don't like to be seen as under-qualified for a job position because my race belongs to visible-minorities. I earned the position because of my abilities ( having middle class parents certainly helps...)
Here is a good article by Professor Glenn C. Loury.
I have a life-long problem with writing which would seem to be the inverse of dyslexia: 'b', 'p', 'd', 'q', are almost always scrambled [randomly?] in my handwriting. This is more than enough to make me sure that dyslexia is a real neurological disorder.
Thelma, I'm not making ANY deals.
>>Information technology, despite its relative youth, has been far slower to approach gender equality
I would love to see more women in IT. In over 20 years of working in IT, I have never seen anything done to keep women out. For whatever reason reason, women just don't *want* to work in IT.
This reminds of those: "Oh no, fewer CS graduates!" articles. I would say that less than 25% of people who work in IT have degrees in CS.
Look in any newspaper or job site. IT employers seldom look for CS degrees. And when they do, they will almost always accept the "equivilent"
To be a chemical engineer, you need a degree in chemical engineering. To work in IT, any degree will do, or no degree at all.
I am 100% confident a girl(-geek) can do/accomplish the same things as a boy(-geek), and vice versa.
:).
But, the main question I think is "where does one passion lie in"?
I have a sister whom I thought "real computer geeky things". And she could do it with fliyng colors. But she didn't have the passion to embrace the things I thought her and learn more on her own. So she stopped evolving into a geek'ets
I as a boy-geek, I do what I do because of the passion that drives me. There is no need for someone coming along and motivating me to do what I do, because I do it on my own. [they come to motivate me to do other things too : )]
When I first learned my first thing about/in computers, [do the cd-command], something in me just wanted to know what more there is that the computer can do, and showed intressed in that I wanted to learn more... and look several years have passed and I still have my craving for more : )
I recon:
Everyone has the potential to become anything they want -- but, what is that "thing?" you want to be?
That said, it doesn't mean/have to be a 50%-50% gender orientated workplace in every segment or any for that matter. Not every segment out there is or will ever by a equriblium. It just is what it is, who has the more passion for something will strive toward it more than the other. Think Darwin put it short&nice "Survival of the fittest".
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Women go where the money is, hence the number of women becoming lawyers and doctors. With the IT industry on the downslide women are not interested because 1) Wages are getting lower for men, imagine how bad it would be for a women and 2) No glamor.
FYI, There have been a few studies in the recent past, resulting in "cures" for dyslexia. These studies went on the idea that dyslexia is actually an auditory problem. The inability to differentiate between the b and d sounds etc. Kids new that they existed, but never trully "heard" the difference. So what they did was play tapes of the sounds V E R Y , V E R Y slowly, so that the differences between sounds was clear. This had an amazingly good effect on the children, and caused most if not all signs of their dyslexia to disappear.
-jj-
After teaching AP Compsci for six years in the late 90s (yes and missing out on the dot com boom), this was a common frustration.
Generally you had about one hour to convince a female to stay in the freshman programming class. On the first day of class, many females were looking at their future classmates. If too many were talking about h4xoring AOL, then I'd be sure to see a drop notice from the counselor.
My first year of teaching programming was filled with projects I thought were fun. I let the students create violent video games, chatted about Romero and doom, talked about guy stuff and sports.
By the 2nd year, I was tearing down posters of idsoftware, and putting up portraits of Grace Hopper (one of the more famous CS ppl) and Ada Lovelace. Our district gave out invitations to get MIT female grad CS students to talk about careers. When I would go advertise, I would talk about medical software that helps people rather than what it took to create Grand Theft Auto.
High school females in general are more mature than their male counterparts. They want to know that it all leads to something useful -- an emotional connection.
Those statistics mean nothing for actual CS ability.
Hell, most every "A" high school student was in the 99th percentile in grade school. Anyways, general intelligence estimates are a poor judge of a CS student. I know some very very bright people who would make shitty CS majors. As for college graduates, I know many who got degrees who don't know a stack from a heap. Show me an accurate statistic that says "Girls outprogram boys 9 times out of 10", and maybe I'll give it some merit or even "On average, girls generate faster and more efficient CS algorithms than boys"
Before I type this paragraph, let me point out this is not mere sexism. I do believe that the sexes have an aptitude for particular fields moreso than others.
Quite frankly, if they aren't there, it's most likely because they lack the ability. From my somewhat limited experience, all the girls I know who went into CS struggled through it, normally had to study very hard, and got average marks at best. For them it was a challenge, and an effort. The guys I know, it's like second-nature, they breeze through it, and speak CS like a second language, not like a an ordinary skill. Not to say there aren't exceptions to the rule (I've met some kickass female CS students), but on average, from my experience, guys outperform girls in CS, hands down. P What's next? Guys complaining about a lack of male ballet dancers or something? I'm not graceful, I'm not built for it. I acknowledge this. Is it so hard to accept that, in a majority case, a particular gender may not be that great at something? Sheesh, PC these days is a pain in the ass.
"What happened to make us so afraid? You couldn't make a Mel Brooks movie today. I saw Blazing Saddles yesterday." - SR-71
A CMU study on this indicated that the guys came in with much stronger CS backgrounds to begin with. It's not surprising that it comes more easily to them. It doesn't mean they're intrinsically better at CS, just that they're more experienced with computers.
I resemble that remark, and hope someday someone can know the joy it felt to finally find someone in my life who took the 'take this job and shove it' line seriously.....
Hey hey hey! This isn't about me, this is about you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Queen's University recently introduced a program in Biomedical Computing and has discovered a much better gender ratio of applicants than its regular Computing Science program. Obviously we believe this is due to the greater human involvement. Therefore: if you want women in CS, make it squishy!
Would you rather be a waitress or a construction worker? Teacher or an electrical engineer? Women are getting shafted at every level of our society, but personally I think it's their own damn fault.
I have a BS in Computer Science and MS in Electrical Engineering. I've been in the semiconductor and embedded software industries for ten years since. From this vantage point I feel that CS is a useless anachronism, a throwback to the 70's when computers were new, expensive, and exclusive. Other than complexity theory, a standard computer science curriculum is a collection of trivia. The skills learned in an undergraduate CS program are tools which can be used to investigate real fields of study, like signals and systems, materials, or physics. A CS undergrad degree is more like being a carpenter when you wanted to be an Architect.
If you are looking for an undergrad degree that qualifies you for geek work, then I strongly urge you to find a good Computer ENGINEERING program. There you'll learn true geek skills, not useless trivia isolated from the real world.
Did you have Dr. Krupp as a calculus teacher too?
--sdem
Repeat after me: "CS does not equal programming." Computer Scientists do not all write code that will eventually be used by someone else. Perhaps you're confusing CS with Software Engineering?
Computer Science graduates command much higher salaries than those without a degree. Many positions that I have seen or have been hired for *require* a CS degree. I haven't seen many which want "equivalent experience" or "certifications". They usually say BS in CS AND X years of experience.
The point, quite simply is, that they get what they pay for. If you hire a Quack Doctor, you should expect low quality work, if you hire a professional you should expect HIGH quality work. IMNSHO, some of the people out there who don't have degrees in the IT field are out there for the buck or are attempting to fool either themselves or their employer.
When the bubble burst back in 2000 the first people let go were those who didn't have degrees, at least that's what I saw.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
The biggest factor, IMO, was dealing with public school in K-12. I'm sure anyone here can imagine how much I was ostracized by my peers when I went to computer summer camp at age eight. Needless to say, I've always been a very independent person and never really cared what others thought, and I think that made all of the difference.
It also depends on your home environment. My father raised me on a steady diet of Star Trek, RPGs, computers, science fiction, fantasy, and Monty Python, and my mom was perfectly fine with this even though she wasn't interested in any of it (I still have no idea how they've managed to be married for over 30 years :). Most of my friends as a result when I was growing up were male, and I joined the Computer Club when I was in high school.
Yes, I was and am a geek :) I didn't care one bit--and still don't.
Kyrene http://www.livejournal.com/users/kyrene
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
It's completely criminal that some of these posts have been moderated down, especially yours. I have a minor in sociology, and I've done extensive reading on the issues of minorities and women.
Of course, not wanting to hear the truth doesn't make you a racist, does it? We'll just mod down anybody who requires us to think.
According to your web page, you went to Clemson University. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but if you had gone to a better university, you would probably have flunked out in a couple of weeks.
"BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Indiana University was crowned the nation's No. 1 "party school" Monday in an annual Princeton Review survey that school leaders and medical experts derided as irresponsible and unscientific.
Following IU in the rankings were Clemson University, the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Florida..."
A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices.
"The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant,"
said the master.
"Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson
is over for today," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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