Slashdot Mirror
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."
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).
Let's put it this way. Within one week of taking my first day of a "basic" programming course in HS, I had dropped out and switched to art (And I'm totally non-artistic). The teacher a.) refused to shake my hand when I introduced myself b.) never called on me when I had my hand raised for a question or for an answer c.) only called on me during the two times I was not paying attention, d.) argued with me when I had given a perfectly acceptable alternative workflow that would half the work, and e.) Refused to reccomend that I be put in a more advanced class, despite the fact that I knew more than 20% of the students in the more advanced class. I decided I'd MUCH prefer taking a lousy class I had no interest in than taking a lousy class I was absolutely interested in.
Flash forward. Another HS. They stuck me in "typing classes" and "word processing".
And what do I do today? I'm an IT person.
I'll NEVER take another IT class in highschool (because I'm too old) or in college without first speaking to the teachers in-depth and deciding if a.) taking the class will teach me anything b.) the teacher will be willing to teach me anything and c.) if the class is equal to or above my current level of knowledge.
I've found that it's beneficial to introduce myself with a full list of my creds, experiences, and a categorical list of what I do and do not know. I seem to get a MUCH better education/reaction from tech guys that way than if I tried to be a modest lil' girl. The problem with most women is that they're either so timid, or they lie about what they know to come across better. Fools.
-Sara
Let's go further than that... CS is geekier than IT when you look at what the two subfields really mean. Since most schools have now broken CS and IT into seperate majors, usually in seperate departments altogether, it make sense that girls are picking IT instead of CS, causing CS enrollment to show a loss.
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
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
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