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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?
Yeah, yeah. I know I'm replying to my own post, but...
I just wanted to say that I meant no offense, really. What I said was halfway tongue-in-cheek. And I'm not against single gender groups. What I am against, however, is any sort of double standard. When it comes to gender, race, or anything of the like. I don't feel that any race, regardless of history, should be allowed to exclude any other race, but gender is a different issue. It just seems that often the people who are interested in female-only groups are also interested in stopping male-only groups. Not that that is the case here.
So, yeah. Whatever. I'm not trying to bait flame.
David Cole
www.davidcole.net
Um, you're very wrong. I happen to know several CS guys who know lots about other things: motorcycles, classical music, biology, irish dancing.. you name it.
And it isn't just guys who want women in CS. I particpate in Women in Science through IBM and one of the projects is once a year, we give a presentation at a local junior high school to women to try to interest them in science. Why? Because the majority of women don't stay in math and science (because our culture supports other fields.. boy do I want a barbie that says "let's go kill something" and a GI joe that says "math is hard" in a girlie voice) and are not able to get IT jobs in the future. I stayed with math because I was good at it. I was good at it because I had a teacher who let me work ahead as far as I wanted in the book.
I'm very luck to be at IBM. Not just because I'm employed, but because my particular group has a MAJORITY of women in it. In my team at some times, there has only been one guy on it (I want to say we had an all girls team at one point but I can't remember the time). I know that there are few other places that have that kind of percentage.
Oh, and to cover my legal butt, my statements are my own and I do not speak for or on IBM's behalf
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
Until a statistically appropriate number of women graduate highschool with the belief that they are good at math, you won't see them in the CS fields.
<OSU [our story unfolds]>
My Dad was an outstanding high-school math teacher, and (as his profession would suggest) we couldn't afford a sitter much. Thus I ended up sitting through many years of high school math. When I got to high school, of course, I had little use for math instruction and ended up assisting others during all the "you may now work quietly" times.
My observation is simply this: The way high school math is taught is the way boys will most easily understand it. Obviously, there are men that assimilate data like women and women that do the job like men. I'm not dismissing the diversity of human cognition but asking for a moment that you acknowledge that there is a trend in the teaching methodologies that work best with a particular gender, and that they are not identical.
The male teachers were by far the worst. They taught, and thought, right down the line like men think. When asked why you do operation X to dataset Y, they had exactly one answer each time. That was the best answer, and if you didn't get it, then you didn't get math. Since teenagers, typically riddled with self-doubt, are prone to hear this kind of negativity whether it exists or not, they are very quick to pick up on it when it is in fact their teacher's opinion. At that point they just give up. And I got to hear them say, "I'm just not good at math." It raises my blood-pressure twenty points just to type that phrase.
In keeping with their superior networking skills the girls in high-school were more accepting of help than the boys, and (in my heteropinion) much cuter. So I ended up helping girls almost all the time. And though there was one girl who drove to the edge of my sanity getting the points across, without exception they were all capable of getting A grades.
The problem (besides male/academic snobbery) was knowing how to teach. As Alton Brown, or Bill Nye or other excellent teachers illustrate so plainly, there are a nearly infinite number of ways to explain something, and any good teacher has 2 to 10 available for any given subject. Where he or she doesn't have a handful of explanations, as a true master of the discipline s/he should be able to come up with them.
What is more, a teacher should observe the trends of the kind of explanations that work for a particular student, and, whenever possible, answer that student's questions with that class of explanation.
In each case where I studied regularly with student, I was able to change their minds about the most important problem they had to solve. The simple belief that they were in fact "good at math." With that lesson learned, they could go to class with confidence and not just shut down when the teacher explained something poorly. Shortly after that conclusion, they would usually make up excuses to hang out with the cute football players, but I digress.
</OSU>
When this problem is addressed and solved, I think you'll see the CS applicant numbers come closer to where actual cranial aptitude would have them. I'm not certain it would favor the men either. Perseverance in the face of failure and broad multi-tasking awareness are far greater assets in my programming endeavors than any I gained in calculus. If we ever get there, I'd love to compile the stats.
There's a lot more information about this here, if you're interested, guys. I'm going to wade through the MIT paper, and when I get back, I hope to hear a lot of informed, intelligent discussion.
:)
(Yes, I know it's slashdot; I can dream, can't I?
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Actually you'd be suprised, I started a CS degree at Melbourne University (in Australia) this year and there's quite a lot of women doing the Introduction to Programming (Advanced), I'd estimate about a 3rd of the people taking it, this also does include people doing various forms of engineering from the engineering faculty and people from the science faculty, but in the end it's women doing computer science. Also the brightest cookie of the lot I've met is a woman, so nrrr to all you disbelievers.
It seems pretty obvious from most of the posts here that few people understand why there are more men than women in computing. Many of the posts show gross insensitivity and a serious lack of understanding or compassion, which might have something to do with it.
I would like to see a women's group get together and research this topic and then publish the results on the web. I think only women will be able to really say why they don't currently like CS and what would need to change for them to become interested.
By the way, in the Space Shuttle software group, it's about 50% women. I think everyone who works for the group, both men and women, is married and they also work only 8am to 5pm, no overtime. If more programming jobs were like that, I think you'd see more programmers in general, both men and women. A 60-80 hour work week is just no fun for the average person, especially if they have children or a social life.
As with the military, certain things must change in the computing world to accomodate more women. Many of the suggestions I've seen have been based on guesswork. I'd love to see serious discussion and suggestions from women who've chosen to leave CS for something else.
Ouch! The truth hurts!