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?

Comments

what is keeping the women out?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it about CS that keeps the women out? What is it about CS?

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" ... 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".

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.

Re:what is keeping the women out?

[Urox]

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.

I think in algorithms. Because of it, CS was very much a breeze for me. I have other female friends who also think in algorithms. So obviously, there are some women who "think that way."

Why are there so few who "basically know everything?" Because women are social creatures. Knowing everything about a subject implies long hours of learning it... locked away in your basement or whatever... and not being social. I'd personally be out hanging with my friends than learning everything there is to know about computers. When I have the time (and interest.. after all, I could be reading Feynman, Fermat, or something on the all-pairs closest points problem), I ask my SO to teach me about networking, but I highly doubt I'm ever going to get to the stage of knowing everything.

Oh, and I believe one of my female friends in CS grad school said that the ratio of men to women gets more even up there.

Re:what is keeping the women out?

[Blkdeath]

In my CS classes, there were very few women, and the few there were, well, off the bell curve, let's say.

In the high school I worked at, the Cisco instructor decided it would behoove her and the program in general to inspire females who showed aptitude in computers (and when she couldn't find enough of those, essentially any female who could type) to sign up for the program.

What they wound up with were a smattering of females who, to put it bluntly, exhibited the female stereotype to a 'T'. One would concentrate on her cosmetics during class, one or two would flirt with all the guys in the class, one would fret about when she could get out to have a snack (and roam the halls, talking with friends as high school girls do), and the rest just plum didn't get it.

Test results were abysmal. CCNA Semester 1 Chapter 1 is a basic introduction to computers. "This is a Central Processing Unit (CPU). This is a Network Interface Card (NIC). This is a network cable.", yet atleast a third of them failed it miserably, the others went on to either fail, drop out, or barely pass (which wouldn't have happened if Cisco hadn't dropped the >70% requirement to pass right out of the starting gate, but I digress).

Moving on to college, I found about a 15% female population in a networking course. Most of them were very bright women who were sure to go far in the career of their choice. However! Information Technology (sorry, I never was much for CS, but they're analagous enough for my point) is not that career.

Many of them were obviously there because they'd found themselves in similar situations in high school - pushed through the CCNA program by faculty, parents, or administration. The vast majority of CCNA grads picked up the routers again after the summer within hours, but the female CCNA grads had to resort to 'cheat sheets' to configure the routers, not realizing they had to modify their implementations, specifically WRT the IP addressing scheme on the 'cheat sheet' versus the assignment. Other females in the class were sore over the fact that (and I quote) "There were no requirements for computer courses spelled out beforehand."

I've known some brilliant female IT, and I've known some females in IT who should seriously consider a career change. I've also known some females in IT who just plum have too much resentment over their lack of success to be working with other people. (n .b. the same applies to men, but since we're singling out women, I'll talk about women).

For example; I've had several women, right out of the blue, accuse me of sexism because of their lack of understanding of the subject material. Be it a discussion between peers, or helping out people with problems, it's happened several times. In one case, a female's keyboard and mouse stopped working after she'd re-assembled her PC. I suggested, after listing a few possibilities, that it's possible the connectors (both PS/2) were reversed (this being before they were all colour coded; I've done it myself, it sucks, but you flip it and move on, lesson learned - take the extra 5 seconds to do it right the first time). I was treated to a barrage of how wrong I was, about how she wasn't inferior just because she was female, and how my "boys club" mentality and blatant sexism weren't appreciated, etc. etc. as she dug for a manual that explained how the PS/2 ports were interchangable (based on the voltages). I'm thinking Information Technology isn't the right career choice for anybody with this mentality, regardless of the size and shape of their frontal appendages.

So, to make a long story even longer, either you'll believe me to be sexist to the Nth degree, or you'll (hopefully) see my point; diversity for the sake of diversity does not work. Trying to shoehorn people into CS, IT, or any other discipline for which they do not have a) the mindset, or b) the desire to succeed will only lead to failure, resentment, and under-capable graduates flood

Re:what is keeping the women out?

[FroMan]

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.

I think you are onto something here. Look at the hobbies that a lot of CS guys have: anime (porn), newgroups (porn), web (porn), video games (soft porn), porn (getting redundent here huh?).

Maybe women find porn sexist, perverted, unwholesome. But consider how prevelant it is even here on slashdot, which is usually considered a geek tech site. You would be hard pressed to find an article's comments not including link sexist comments. Sure, the signal to noise ratio goes to pot on public sites, but here its terrible.

Just a couple days ago there was an article about women getting into gaming and there were so many sexist remarks as replies to it. My wife and I chatted about it (she reads here also) and she simpley doesn't enjoy many games that come out now. Why? Nearly _EVERY_ game that has some sex object, er scantilly clad 13 year old boy dream, in it. Is that absolutely necessary? My wife, who loves games has a hard time finding games that are fun for her because of it.

Is she being overly sensitive? I don't think so. I think a more likely senario is that many women feel that way. Why would they want to always be treated like a sex objects. Sure, they want to feel sexy sometimes, but when the whole atmosphere around computers only has women treated as play things, it would be hard to get respect.

Re:Men in CS

[Chris Acheson]

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.

Why aren't there more men in childcare?

[dotgain]

Yes, rhetorical question.
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?

Re:Why aren't there more men in childcare?

[Blkdeath]

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?

Thank-you. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who understands what I'd always thought to be fairly obvious.

When I heard that local fire departments were under pressure to drop the weight lift/carry requirements in order to accept more females, my first reaction was "I live in a basement; affirmative action can finally kill me." If a fire fighter can't haul my 240lb ass up the stairs and out to a waiting ambulance, sorry, but I don't want that person to be a fire fighter. Period.

Here I was under the impression that differences are a good thing, based on all this new PC propaganda we're seeing nowadays. So why is it good to be different, but only if you strive to be the same as everybody else?

Women and men are different

[jgardn]

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.