Slashdot Mirror
Calling All Computer Science Women?
SemiBarbaricPrincess asks: "I'm currently in the middle of starting a 'Women In Computer Science' group at my college, and I'm wondering what other groups are out there, and what they do to help boost the number of women in CS." Slashdot last touched on this subject in this article from January. For the women readers in our audience: what do you think would be helpful in attracting more women to the world of computing?
What is it about CS that keeps the women out? What is it about CS?
... it's not something that can be taught very well. That's why you see so many folks in CS that already basically know everything, and that intimidates the "normals".
In my engineering classes, there were plenty of normal women (and normal men for that matter) who were intelligent but weren't freaks. They didn't struggle more than you'd expect, and most of them stuck with it and were just as good as men.
In my CS classes, there were very few women, and the few there were, well, off the bell curve, let's say. I remember talking with more than one female who seemed to have a gigantic ego chip on their shoulder.
I did notice there were plenty of women in my intro CS classes, but they seemed to vanish very quickly.
My theory: computer science is still really not a "science"
So basically, CS is a bunch of people who already "think" in algorithms and the classes are just a formality.
Now that leads to the question: why are there so few women who already "basically know everything" about computers? Who knows. My guess is that women just don't think that way.
Could be they are also intimidated by the "men" that are in CS. However I don't know about that. Business major are usually a bunch of sexist pigs as well, for instance.
Another question: WHY does any of this matter? I'm thinking, how can we get people NOT to go into CS, so they can maybe have social lives, bathe regularly, and not go blind staring at screens all day. Oh well, maybe I'm just bitter and need to get laid.
http://wics.cs.sfu.ca/ I'm male but I know about this because I am in cs at sfu and know several of the females who started this group.
Understood. The thing is, homogeneity is boring. That's why these groups exist. The point isn't to compete with or one-up men, the point is to advocate CS to non-CS women. Lack of diversity doesn't really go away on its own.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
I'll send you my opinion to your personal mailbox. If these aren't clear enough, I'd be grateful to schedule a face-to-face explanation session...
(Wait, that might be the reason why...)
At my school there is a very active Women in Technology chapter. They are mostly IS majors, but they should have the resources you seek.
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Just thought I'd point you to Stanford's WICS group web page.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/wics/
It has some with WICS-related links, resources, articles, and of course contact info. One of the more interesting (and probably relevant to your questions) things they do is a mentoring program. These links should give you some idea what at least one group out there is doing.
Good luck!
check into s.w.e. (society of women in engineering). i work closely with them through a.c.m. and there are a lot of people who are members of both organizations. i'd also talk to upsilon pi epsilon if you have a chapter on campus.
The way I see it, there are two problems at work here. The only problem that needs to be fixed is that of turning away qualified women who otherwise would be interested in and qualified for Computer Science. The skills that need the most work are math and self-esteem--women need to be taught early to be confident in themselves and their abilities, and this should help them to better succeed in all fields.
The other problem is ancient, and possibly imaginary; you can blame it on nature vs. nurture, society, or whatever you like, but the fact is that people do what they like, and if less women are interested in Computer Science, then there will be less women in Computer Science.
For example, what sort of comments do you think we would get if slashdot ran an article that said "We need more men in Biology; what is the problem, are men not prepared for biology, are they driven away by all the women in the field, or are they just not interested"?
The fact of the matter is, I was never that interested in biology; I might have been more interested in it if it had been more concrete, if we knew more about how things actually worked. However, I was fascinated with computers practically from the moment I laid eyes on them, and I seem to have a natural aptitude for them as well.
Therefore, people who are already predisposed to a given field are not a problem at all, and no effort should be given in trying to change their minds to equal out some demographic notion of equality, on either side of the fence. Believe in yourself, figure out what *you* want to do, and then go do it.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
So is the group's main purpose to boost female numbers? Why is that important? I knew women in CS in college. They went to class, did homework, took tests, just like me. Perhaps not everyone looks at undergraduate CS the way I did: go to school, pass classes, get the degree... who cares who else is in the class. Women or not, all they are are classmates. Is there some sort of stigma attached to women in CS, that women want to avoid?
What's the typical agenda for a Women in CS meeting anyway?
1. Complain about women-hating professors.
2. Complain about women-hating classmates.
3. Discuss how to deal with weirdo classmates.
4. Complain about homework designed for men.
5. Paint each others' nails.
6. Give each other the latest Hello Kitty desktop background.
7. Plan a trip to go shopping.
8. Discuss how to get more women.
9. Discuss how to get that women-only funding.
10. Discuss jobs or grad/professional school.
What's closest to the truth? I have no idea.
I know a guy who got a degree in interior design. Many of his classes were all women. Did he complain? Hell no. Imagine: late nights in the drafting room....
-Andy
One thing that that you're going to have to tell the girls you do attract to IT, is watch out for women "in IT" who do not have a proper math/science/CS background
I hate to say it, but these queen bee bitches will be "out to get" any woman with a real technical background and real skills, because you show them up so badly.
You've seen it. The ex-operators who got to be IT "managers" of some sort and who outsource everything because they understand nothing. The ex-secretaries who started doing computer procurements and writing documentation with word.
They'll have another nasty surprise when they get out into the workforce with their brand shiny new CS degrees. They'll be expected to be documentation bitches and help-desk sluts because "that's what Susie used to do."
In other words, there are so few women with proper CS/physics/mathematics degrees out there, that the ones that do have a proper background will be lumped in with the ones who don't, and will be assumed to be just as stupid. And will be shunted into roles where, before too long, their very real technical background will become less and less relevant because the only technology they'll be allowed to use is Word, and maybe Excel.
Even worse than the queen-bee ex-operators and ex-secretaries are the psyche major gals who got to be "in" technology rather than creating technology through HFE like that stupid, stupid MS "researcher" gal who's going around saying that girls have poor spatial relations.
We may as well ask why there aren't as many women:
- plumbers
- electricians
- digger drivers
Before the abolishment of common sense in 1993, the question was never asked why some jobs seemed to be predominated by one particular gender.No, it's nothing to do with heavy lifting, hard thinking and so on. Surely by now we must understand that there are actually more than a couple of differences between men and women?
Given the number of idiotic sexist posts on this topic, it seems the best way to help boost the retention rate of women in CS is to equip them with sturdy pieces of wood for bashing clues into the heads of fools.
Seriously. To all female /.ers, on behalf of the more rational possessors of Y chromosomes, I'd like to apologize for all the sexist gits in this thread.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I'm going to say it.
I *am* sexist. I believe that there are distinct, insurmountable differences between men and women. I believe these differences make us who we are, and to deny the existence of these differences is to deny our humanity.
That is why I married a woman and not a man. I will never be happy spending the rest of my life with a man, because I want a woman and not a man for a companion. I think this is because I am a man, and one of the characteristics of man is to desire a woman for a companion. (Luckily, the converse is true for women.)
These differences are more than just physical. They are also mental and emotional. They are not learned or forced. They are a fundamental part of their being.
That is why there are not many women in some fields, and that is why there are not many men in other fields. And amazingly, that is also why there are fields that seem evenly split between men and women.
This has nothing to do with "our oppressive white male dominated society" or whatever you lumpheads call it, and has everything to do with people doing what they like because they want to. The reason why there are not so many women in CS is because men tend to want to do CS more than women.
To tell you the truth, I am perfectly happy locking myself in a room to program for hours on end and read technical documentation and other people's code.
I don't think my wife will ever enjoy it as much as I, despite her high intelligence and reasoning abilities. I mean, she picked up HTML in an afternoon, but she has no desire to use it.
Now, here's the disclaimer. I don't believe one is better than the other. I don't think CS is the ultimate field that only the best people in the world can be allowed in.
And now for something that boggles my mind. "Feminists" try to take women out of their realm and place them in masculine roles saying they are better men than men. It would be really weird to see a group of men calling themselves "masculinists" dressing up like women and trying to be better women than women, yet we are comfortable with seeing a bunch of "feminists" that dress and behave like men. Just something to think about.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I'm a woman and I've worked for the last 7 years in CIS. But it took me many years to figure out that I wanted to do that and that I had a talent for it.
My father is in CIS, and my mother is a housewife/ex-teacher. My brother went into CIS right away. Guess what I was heavily steered toward? Teaching-- a poorly-paid, stressful profession that I showed no talent for but which happens to be traditionally female.The alternative? At one point, my mom suggested that I just "be a mom".
There are huge pressures of tradition and expectation that determine what professions kids decide to pursue. To just say that men "want to do CIS more than women" is absurd. Kids want to do what their parents and teachers want them to do. Kids expect to do what their parents and teachers expect them to do.
If women are so deficient that they need support groups to survive the industry, they don't belong there. I'm not trying to berate women: I don't think this is the case, but the fact that there are these women in CS clubs all over the place makes it seem like someone is saying it is so.
:
Not to pick on you. I actually think this response applies to the general discussion as a whole
It was recently discovered (see New Scientist article somewhere) that the so-called "Fight-or-Flight" response isn't universal, that though it is present in males, it does not represent female behavior. It turns out the same stimuli that would cause the "F-or-F" response in males causes females to seek comfort from others. That is to say hormones and genetics determine how members of differing genders react to a stressor.
How does this apply to the discussion at hand? Well, when faced with the challenge of learning CS (or any subject for that matter) males either take up the challenge or turn and run away. Females on the other hand would try to resolve the challenge in a group. Alas, working in groups just doesn't help in certain fields, especially computer science.
Consequently the enrollment in CS courses of women drops as the courses get more difficult and the challenging problems that they'd have to face alone become increasingly commonplace. Maybe this describes the disparity in ration of males-to-females in Computer Science.
- Pedantic Bob
I mean, there are some very bright women in CS, and they have considerable success in the field.
Just because there's not even 50/50 parity in the genders in a field isn't proof that there's some insidious conspiracy going on under the surface.
The greater crime here is forcing women who aren't interested or qualified into CS and chasing some perfectly capable men out just in the name of making the statistics look better.
I think a key point to getting more women into careers in CS is understanding the reasons that people choose the careers they do.
Disclaimer: What I'm about to say is a generalization.
Women tend to choose careers based on the social value the job brings. They like to have a job that makes an immediate difference in the lives of the people they interact with each day. If your group can show young women the impact they can have with a career in CS, you may be able to attract more of them.
Occasionally you run into pockets of the opposite culture. At my alma mater, girls outnumber guys 2 to 1 (did I pick the right school or what?). I used to date this wonderful little CS girl there, and it turns out about half her friends were CS women. They would stick together, like women often do, and it seemed to me that the advantage actually went to the women at that program. The best sysad in the program was a guy, but the best encryption people were girls (good luck on your thesis defense, Kristin! Hugs, Theresa!). I guess that's just because girls are better at math. Or maybe at keeping secrets ;). My old girlfriend said that she went into CS because "it was the only thing that was hard for me, and I wanted a challenge".
Interestingly enough, she also happens to be an Iraqi-American. The past couple of months have been strange. Right now she's working overseas and the people there are giving her crap for being a warmongering American. What are you supposed to do in that kind of situation?
And Jaz, if you see this, email, k? I miss you.
It would be easier if Slashdot hadn't just alienated most of it's women audience by fscking up an article summary into the most vile "women have a harder time navigating the desktop" tripe.
You know what would draw more women into CS? Men taking us seriously. Really.
It would help ME a lot if Slashdot would have done me the favor of retracting/correcting that heinous 'women can't use a computer UI as well as men can' summary that had nothing to do with the article linked.
That's just me, though.
The first post about hormone treatments was ridiculing the idea of trying to make men and women exactly the same, if you'll notice. I didn't say that the women capable of math are unfeminine. I did say that mathematics was anti-social in a large number of cases. But yes, far more men are good at math, and far more men enjoy it than women. Most women don't seem to want careers in computer science, and that seems to be the problem that others are discussing. Those who do, and who are capable of it, have few problems in our society. They probably have a few advantages even. The social implications are that the mathematical subjects will always be a majority male enterprise.
The real social implications of what I've been talking about in general are that male aggression is greater for reasons of genetics. This means that the vast majority of criminals will be males, as is true in all societies that have ever existed. It also means, that in all areas where men and women compete for social status, men will probably hold most of the top positions, as in all societies that have ever existed. This is, as I've said before, a matter of the hard drugs we are taking. In most societies, this tends to lead to a separation of male and female roles in a society, but the current economic and political systems that exist certainly act in a way to undercut those social forces of separation.
I'm not making a moral judgment about the ideas in the above paragraph, I'm just pointing them out. Aggression is hormonal, and aggression in an important part of motivation. That probably means that we will never live in an equal society, no matter how much everyone wants it. Men will act quite differently about sex and about career. Women have different values in a lot of areas, and I do think that it's important not to try to force others to fit your mold of what they should be like, which is part of what the whole effort to make more women choose CS seems to be about.