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."

Comments

Girls in CS

[bencc99]

Worth a look is this article written by a girl doing CS at the university of kent.

Re:Girls in CS

[Anitra]

I agree. In many of my earlier CS classes, there were guys & girls who were just in it for the money, and didn't really care that much about what they were learning, or why. Most of those tended to get weeded out by the sophmore-level classes, though. (CS is harder than it originally looked to those people.)

I am an odd case - I switched into CS, and I am a woman. My original major was in the management department; when I decided I wanted to learn more about computers, I could have easily switched to an MIS degree. But I want to be taken seriously. So I became a CS major. It's been a long, hard year since I switched, but I don't regret it. I'm doing research on creating an adaptive website using a genetic algorithm, and I'm only one class short of graduating on time. I plan to go on to grad school in CS - I want to get a M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction.

I switched after the dot-coms tanked, and I knew it. The important thing for me is not whether I get a job in IT (not likely right now anyway), but what I've learned about how computers work. I can open up my PC and muck around with it now, if I wanted to. I can hold an intelligent conversation about the pros and cons of a language. I know how to customize a Linux kernel.

People always told me college was about becoming an educated person, not about getting a job. I didn't understand them until I became a CS major. For the first time in my life, I'm studying something simply because I enjoy it (although I might not agree while doing some of my assignments). I think my study of computer science has made me a more well-rounded person.

Re:Girls in CS

[sonali]

I'm a geek and proud to be called one. I am a CS grad student and yeah I also switched my career to CS! Like a girl already said this, I am glad I learnt how computers work(compared to getting a job in IT though that wont be such a bad option ;) ) On a side note, my bf is in CS too and I enjoy working on projects with him.

And as for the statement that

Girls do not like doing anything that involves concentrating on one single thing for long periods,

all I can say is oh my gawd such total BS. No one really belives that right? I did my undergrad in India in an all-women school and we used to compare ourselves with guys from other schools in our university and you know what we always came on top.

The problem

[polyphemus-blinder]

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.

Re:So what?

[GroovBird]

> All descrimination is bad, positive descrimination is included.

True, but you might want to investigate why this is so. Perhaps there is something inhibiting them to make a free choice.

Dave

Hard to be a woman in CS...

[Skyshadow]

I know two women who majored in CS -- one's a good friend and the other one is my sister.

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.

Re:you call this a career?

[SunPin]

Could it be that Hollywood has declared all geeks as their sworn enemies? And vice-versa?

I think that has something to do with it.

Re:Gender equality is a myth

[Psx29]

As long as there aren't restrictive sociocultural barriers preventing women from doing what they want, there nothing wrong with have gender disparities.

I happen to agree, this whole mess reminds of this. That is to say, political correctness and 'equality' have gone too far in today's society.

Re:umm.. Duh?

[Yokaze]

"Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes" (Edsgar Dijkstra)

Actually, in my experience, the large drop-out rate in CS is partly based on the expection of people. They think, they are going to play with computers, but they aren't. They are going to play with ideas and information.

In other languages (French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish) CS is dubbed as "information science".

Image of the IT industry

[ToastedBagel]

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.

Re:Image of the IT industry

[mesocyclone]

There are significant statistical cognitive differences between males and females, as my daughter, a neuroscientists, would be glad to tell you.

But there always exceptions, which is why arguing by anecdote is dangerous. For example, my mother was a math major and was chosen in WW-II to be quick-trained as an engineer (they took the top 100 female mathematicians in the country for this), and then worked as an electrical engineer. After the war and her children were into high school, she took a traditional female role as a teacher - math, of course. My daughter taught herself calculus (and received full credit for it, btw) when she was in junior high school. One of the earliest and most well known programmers and inventor (or early promoter - I don't remember which) was Grace Hopper. I work with a female software engineer who also has a bachelors and masters in electrical engineering, have worked with many women programmers over the years.

But... on average, women and men choose different fields partly because of different *average* inherited aptitudes for them.

Arrrrgh

[Athena1101]

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.

Re:I can assure you

[destine]

I am one of those ultra-rare cases. ;) Life is interesting. Out of 40 people at my previous job with a programming consulting company I could count the number of women there on one hand. One was the secretary, one was an accountant, one was in marketing and web design, one was our tester, and the last was a programmer. It's a bit alarming transitioning from male to female in a workforce dominated so completely by men. I watched, my friends position in the company and how she dealt with things and it came down to that she really had to be forceful to get anyone to listen to her. And she was good.

Most of my girlfriends just would rather not be thought of as geeks even with the positive meaning it now has. It would be incredibly hard to put into words what I've observed since starting my transition, but it is incredibly interesting. I wouldn't have ever actually believed it if I hand't lived it.

A lot of what I'm having to do is start over. Currently where I live, the computer job market has completely fallen apart. I just hope my future in computers isn't dictated so much by my gender.

And for the sarcastic person who remarked on how "hard" it was to tell the difference between a transsexual and a born woman on site, take it from me, it's not always as easy as you would think. I've never been clocked. ;)

Fair assessment

[SideshowBob]

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)