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?
Let me understand? You want the /women/ in CS to respond to this article?
:)
This should be the easiest first post ever!
(It's just too bad I'm male) In my CS faculty they had a saying - that they could count the number of women in CS on one hand... with three fingers cut off
I'd start a Men in CS club, but I'd be SEXIST!!! sow.
David Cole
www.davidcole.net
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.
How about getting rid of the men?
The easiest way to boost the number of women in computer science is to reduce the number of men in it. Seems pretty straightforward.
Apparently you missed that whole "diversity" and "equality" kick that people have been on since the 1960s.
Ah, diversity for the sake of diversity? Yeah, I've always thought we needed more asian men on the Black Women's Alliance... I'm sure they would happy about that, too.
ACM is a wonderful organization to belong to,
and there is a women's division that supports student chapters.
Here's the details on setting this up.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
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...)
There are women who read Slashdot?! :-o
-psy
I think it's still a fairly open question whether the under-representation of females is because of the societal situation that pushes them away from it, or because male and female brains work differently, and thus more males end up being the right "type" for CS, or other similar fields. It would probably be an interesting research topic for someone who was both psychologically and computer-science saavy.
In any case, whatever the causes are, the results are obvious. There are women who makes great CS people, but they're few and far between. No offense, but about half the female computer professionals I've met didn't get the job on their merits. They got the job because they were female... either to attract better male employees, or because the male geeks interviewing her got a woody, or because some HR person said some department had to hire more females for diversity. The other half are badass coders, no doubt, but they are a small fraction of the overall CS-person pie.
Still, women's CS groups are a good thing - these women need all the support they can get to survive in a land of geeks.
11*43+456^2
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?"
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.
This sig intentionally left blank.
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.
I said 'most', i wasn't speaking for all. I also know of many CS guys who are great at a lot of things. However, I know a lot of other CS guys that really don't know how to carry themselves in front of a woman, and it is these people that i was speaking of.
I'm quite happy to know that you are a woman in CS. I just don't see the point of going out of one's way to put women in a career that they would not have gone into naturally by themselves.
is there any reason why we want more women in our field?
Improved dating prospects.
Organizations like Women in Science are great to help get and KEEP women in CS. The problem isn't just with CS; the problem is with MOST sciences. I was a math major. They were dealing with the recruiting problem there.
;)
The solution to getting more women in CS is to look at the problems. I almost didn't go into CS. My mother (who is a software engineer) thought I wasn't taking enough classes at one point and suggested I give CS a try. I took it the same quarter I took a chemistry lab. Suffice it to say, I spent Monday and Tuesday writing my lab papers, Wednesday and Thursday coding my projects, and then crashing on the weekend and sleeping through it. I burned myself out badly that quarter and almost never went back. It was because I didn't get into medical school and needed job skills that I took another course. My math background (and the algorhythmic thinking that supported it to begin with) was why I was able to easily pick it up in a quarter where I wasn't already over taxed. I actually stuck out in the class of 300: the teacher took a liking to me when I picked out a coding error that he'd had on his slides for the past five years so he'd pick on me lots (in a joking manner). I suppose I would have stuck out being that I think I could have counted the other females in the class using both hands. That first class nearly did me in, though.
The first class did my sister in. She had a crap teacher. When I tried to tutor her (I suck as a tutor), I found out that the teacher was just *not* teaching certain concepts to the class (my sister is an honors student and it was known that the entire class was having trouble due to this instructor).
I was never intimidated by the guys in the class. Hell, I actually got hit on more in my physics class than I did in CS. Maybe I intimidated the guys
So going back to the problems: Organizations like WIT (women in technology) and WIS really help women. It gives them a place to go in a non-threatening environment where they can often get tutoring and not give up on a subject. As I mentioned in another post, WIT has events where they urge junior high school women to stay with math and science. It's those fundamentals that come before CS classes that will definitely make a difference.
As for discrimination: I had a male friend who was actually part of the campus WIS group. It was targeted at women, but men were not excluded. To the person who wants to start a Men in CS group: go for it, but you've already met your objective (to get a significant amount of men in CS) so what's your point?
"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.
So far, I've seen plenty of "IANAW, but..." posts...
May we never see th
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.
Good point. I mean..."What can we do to boost the number of one-handed red-haired ambidextrous Jews in computer science?" has the same degree of validity.
Up at Carnegie Mellon University, a couple of years ago the university started a push to get women in CS. They did this, predictably, by mucking with the admissions requirements.
The ratio of women that *know what they are doing* is, today, about the same as it was before CMU started playing with the ratios. Also, the upper classes start approximating the old ratio -- look at some of the more difficult elective classes, like compiler design, and you once again have the same ratio as you did originally.
Affirmative action is a quick patch that temporarily fixes the symptoms, but doesn't produce a healthier society. If, for some reason, society decides that it requires a 50/50 breakdown between men and women in computer science, fine. Provide programming classes in elementary school to get people interested in CS, or something along those lines. Trying to alter things at the college level is a lost cause. None of the real wizards I know started with computer science in college. Look earlier.
May we never see th
The ones that pick on you because they sense an active mind. My physics teacher had a subtly flawed concept of gravitation, and though I never convinced him of it (didn't have the vocabulary at the time), I did put up an argument that made him think. After that when he would ask a question of the class and no one would raise their hands he would say something like, "...and for the long version of the answer we turn to Art."
The sciences had always come easily to me before that class, but after it, I had a passion for them, and now a career with them as my playthings.
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.
GI Joe is a pretty *dumb* character. If anything, he's probably portrayed as dumber than the newer Barbies.
There aren't particularly good role models in pop culture out of the intelligentsia in general, regardless of gender.
And for chrissake...Lady Ada was a very major player in the foundations of CS! There were women involved in building ENIAC. How many other hard sciences can you think of that had women play such a role early on? Biologists are predominantly female, yet biology was built almost entirely on the work of males.
I was good at it because I had a teacher who let me work ahead as far as I wanted in the book.
I think schools that let students go as far as they want and make a subject interesting produce the best students. Cool extracurricular classes are *great*. Communities and schools that can provide them do wonders for people.
May we never see th
They wouldn't have naturally gone into it by themselves because women aren't encouraged to be in math and science to begin with. And with women being the minority in CS, then other women have fewer role models to look up to. Women are taught to think things like "math is hard." After all, why would a statement like that get chosen for a girl's doll?
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
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
It's quite simple actually.
First, women have far less variation in IQ then men. Thus they have less representation at the bottom of the scale, and less at the top. They average out about the same as men. Moreover, they tend to do better with verbal tests and not so well with mathematical tests.
Women are also likely to value emotional attachment and emotional stimulation higher than the averge man. (An interesting side point is Aspenger's syndrome and like emotional introversions that tend to strike men at much higher rates.)
Anyone familar with computer science sees how this disadvantages women in the field. Luckily, it's probable that the brain development track that men take is mostly influenced by hormone levels throughout childhood. Therefore the solution to getting more women in CS is simplicity itself. Testosterone shots from the age of 6 months until 18 years. Hell, we could even sterilize the females and get rid of the secondary sexual organs through surgery. With this program of hormone treatment and surgery, I think that we can finally get rid of inequality between the sexes by erasing most of the major biological differences. I'm glad to live in this age that truly recognizes the uselessness of all 'feminine' characteristics and pursuits, and understands that it is only men, and people who are able to act like men, that accomplish anything interesting in the world. If women on average enjoy mathematics less then men, we'll goddamn have to make them enjoy. After all, it's not like some people could find it somewhat unfulfilling...
Hmmm... well from reading comments recently, it seems women really love vibration.
Then again, maybe Apple's on to something, I can't tell you how many girls at the art school I met only because I was a CS guy who uses a Mac. Of course, like a true geek, I never actually did anything with any of them. But I did learn that women really aren't impressed if you have the latest processor or video card, or what (computer) languages you knew, but what you can do with your tool.
No really, to them it's no more interesting than a hammer. Instead, show off something that can be done, such as the venerable program Lisa, and have somebody there to explain that it's a program, not a real person they're "chatting" with. One thing that impressed my mom when we were touring colleges allowed people to rate 10 different types of restauraunts, and it came up with an optimal comprimise that was acceptable to most people. No discussion on the algorithms behind it, just "once you come you'll learn how". Even my Dad, who's technical, never saw the point of CDRs ("who has that much stuff to back up?") until I compressed his entire music collection onto 4 disks and gave it to him with a CD/mp3 player for his birthday. Suddenly mp3s weren't just for music pirates anymore.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
The poster suggests creation of a group of women who are already interested in CS.
CS is not the same as IT.
Natural-science and engineering fields (a category which for some reason includes CS and math, despite the fact that neither is more "concrete" than philosophy) tend to be male-dominated environments, often to (and past) the point of creating an uncomfortable environment for other folks, even when such folks might otherwise be interested in the subject at hand.
Related, some people in our society are socialized in a way that rewards being good at math and math-like things. Some are not.
Often, people of different genders perceive the world generally. To answer your question directly: if we have more people of different genders (and other sorts of different backgrounds), they are likely to be able to bring different experiences and analyses to the field. This creates a richer environment for all. example
hm, interesting.
This is OT, but the author of that page was also happened to be the sexiest geek alive 2001. She has 3 MIT degrees in CS, and can apparently count in binary with her fingers.... definitely a CS woman.
Btw, I only know about her because she spoke at an Ig Nobel Prize ceremony...
this reminds me of:
a great hacker...
don't know why, but I find it funny...
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?
I think I speak for most of the guys here when I say that we have been searching for women in CS for YEARS.
There arn't any. Give up.
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 sorry, but this is total cr**. I happen to know of a situation where the female programmer with a proper CS/physics/mathematics background is out to get the female programmer with very little of the same, but with high aptitude and good intuition about programming. Some of us just try to do the best with our backgrounds and the amount of time available to use for taking courses.
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!
Many women cs majors that I know, myself included, are very interested in cognitive studies and where it overlaps with computer science.
Cognitive studies is a combination of computer science, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and neurobiology.
There's a good chance that women in the other four fields might be interested in computer science. Perhaps you can organize an event with all five fields and invite freshman to learn more about them.
Chat.
IRC.
Instant messaging.
Chat.
Sims.
Did I forget to mention the killer app for women - chat with tons of people at the same time for almost free?
As for computer science, why bother attracting women to that field? Those that are interested are already doing it, especially nowadays when barriers are at an all time low - computers are everywhere, free operating systems, cheap hardware, lots of online information. If they are that easily discouraged from computer science, I don't think computer science is for them. Same for almost any field.
They should pick something they are interested in, not something which people want them to be interested in. That way when the idiots and busybodies have some other stupid idea, you'd still be doing what you wanted in the first place.
Don't seem much talk about attracting men to nursing. And y'know it is helpful to have more upper body strength when you need to lift patients - to avoid bed sores, change gowns, etc.
Maybe what would help would be a greater awareness of convenient ways to be introduced to programming on most desktop computers. Whether it's javascript or java. E.g. open notepad. type in this code. save to file. load it in browser. Something happens. Change something, repeat.
I'm not that keen on javascript myself, but start with what you have... My first computer had a built-in BASIC interpreter and a pretty good manual (opcodes, BASIC, IO locations etc), that's in the days when they were called microcomputers.
Now slashdot needs users to select their gender so they can block certain genders from posting in stories.
we've gone from helping the hens find more hens to cluck with (im in deap shit for that expression i know) to the horny nerd boys dreaming of 36 26 36 schooling them with less, more efficent lines of code and spanking them with keyboards.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Not really. In a few of the large companies with large its, I have also seen what s?he describes. If it is a mis type job than politics, not performance, will dominate. All too often, I have seen several mediocre female managers go after a couple of very good female CSers. Sad, but true.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'd have to say you're plain wrong. I believe most of the apparent difference between males and females in technical fields can be chalked up to nuture, not nature.
I have a sister who has been a structural engineer/aerodynamicist at Boeing since about 1986. Currently she is the lead engineer on a large project. She also has 5 children. Though she's not technically in 'CS', she programs in C or FORTRAN whenever she needs to (self-taught, of course).
To her successes, as well as my own and 2 other siblings, I credit my mother for encouraging curiousity and the idea that we can accomplish damn near anything we want.
So. To get more women in CS or any other 'geeky field', we need to start when they're young and not lead our kids into exclusiary gender roles. I have a newborn girl and a 3 yo boy. He's seems quite technically minded and likes to tinker in the garage and on computers with me. I'll encourage my girl to do the same, if she's inclined to do so.
There is no direct physiological reason that girls should have lesser aptitude in technical areas than boys. Period.
I got her a couple years ago. I've heard rumors that there is another woman in computer science, I presume that its the woman who posted this ask slashdot.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I want to attract more frogs to Antarctica. Do you have any thoughts? Anyone want to help?
Seriously, I'm all for encouraging women to enter whatever field they want to pursue but maybe there _is_ a genetic component to being a geek. Should strong women be firefighters? Sure. Should geeky women be programmers. Sure. Should there be support networks for women in geeky fields. Most likely. Should we recruit non-geeky women for geeky professions. Maybe not.
In my business I have run across a number of women who are managing a web page and content. Many started on a whim and are now learning more out of necessity. Many earn money from home gathering information on a particular subject or selling a particular product. I think as these women talk to their friends about the profitabilty and practicality of the web, this sort of activity will increase exponentially.
My Background: I have taught college courses in C++ at a large university and have been around the CS dept for awhile. Now I work in a IT shop where its 40% women out of 40 (or so) people.
CS/IT Women:
They usually think they know more than they do
Are not as technical and "geeky". They give
up too easy and get frustrated too fast.
Are either very good or very bad. Most of the women in my IT job are posuers and really cant code so they learn easy langs like VB and ASP and try to think they are programmers.
They are really good students, they come to class, are organized and pay attention and do their work. They are not lazy. But, I do not think they are as creative, they tend to write clean code that is well structured, but mostly is not optimized. Probably because the IT women dont have the math background.
I have seen management treat women programmers better than male counterparts because women value different things.. like cubicle neatness, personality, popularity so where I work they bring down the level of technical environment.
Recently there has been a push towards taking women with data processing skills and taching them VB and calling them a programmer. I resent that based on how hard I have worked for that title.
They are generally less lazy than males, but they cannot do programming marathons and such becuase they are moms and have to put out for their husbands nightly.
Women profs can be a nightmare as well, they can be horrible as they ake the classes dumb-downed.
The IT women programmers really do not work on side projects or enjoy hardware etc. They do mostly COBOL here. They havent learned any new stuff since I been here and they dont care either.
Creating your group is a good start! I didn't go through a CS program, but as a woman who works in a related field I can say that I feel part of the problem is not having any other women around. It can add a lot of pressure to only have guys as coworkers, classmates or professors. There are always guys that will hit on you, treat you like you're dumb, etc. This can happen anyplace, but it seems to happen more in a male only environment. Having at least one other female to comiserate with can help. Having a group to go to would be a major bonus!!
Speaking of just my situation, and definitely not all women:
I agree with many of the posts on here saying that many women do think differently from men. Some women don't belong in CS because they don't have the logic or reasoning abilities necessary. I am one of those people. As an example I took Intro to Programming (with C++) at a local college with my husband out of interest. The one thing that I noticed out again and again was that for him things just clicked. With me, I could do the work as asked, I could learn the steps involved, but I couldn't come up with new ways to do something. I could mimic what I already knew how to do, or change examples to work correctly, but couldn't do much more than that. I experienced major frustration, instead of satisfaction with my work. I knew after that class that I would never be a good programmer. I think it's possible other women come to this conclusion too, and that's why they don't stick around.
Also, the higher levels of math necessary to go through the program were intimidating (for me anyway). When I saw upper levels of calculus as a requirement, those liberal arts classes looked pretty good. And it was something I knew I could succeed at.
One other thing, it seems like a lot of childhood games geared towards boys involve logic. Logic was something I never had much experience in, and didn't come naturally. I wish it was something I'd been taught more of in school.
More power to women who are into CS, but it's not the career for everyone.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
You might want to take a look at national organizations for women in CS, such as http://www.acm.org/women/ and http://www.awc-hq.org/
There are a number of women's groups at tech companies; for example, Micro$oft has the "Hoppers" group, which raises money for scholarships for girls who want to go into CS, sets up events for Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and runs a mentoring program for/by employees. That sort of model may work well for a college group.
How to get more women in CS? It starts when parents encourage their daughters to play with computers, when they play Halo and other fun videogames with their girls, and when they challenge their girls to set up their own computers and video game systems instead of doing it for them. Girls who like this sort of thing, and aren't discouraged early on, are the ones who grow into programmers and engineers.
I lead an awfully mental life.
You might try contacting Systers for advice.
From the home page: We are an informal organization for technical women in computing that began in 1987 as a small mailing list for women in "systems", thus the name Systers. It was founded by Anita Borg. There are now over 2500 Systers around the world. If you are a woman in the technical end of computing, you are welcome.
When violence rules the world outside / And the headlines make me want to cry / It's not the time to just keep quiet
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.
Perhaps the problem facing University level computer programming courses (for men and women) has something to do with class sizes. At my undergraduate university, most computer science courses were taught to 50+ students in impersonal lecture halls. The students who thrived the best in these courses were the ones who were only taking them as a formality: they were already familiar with at least the basics of the material.
Stretching from tradition to the present, girls have not been encouraged to focus on or become interested in scientific, analytical and technical skills to the same extent as boys. Doesn't it seem likely that this creates a pool of collegiate women who are unlikely to stick with an impersonal program?
Small classes, like the high school class described, allow a teacher to make sure all the students are enthused and following along. Although quite a few humanities classes are taught along these lines in universities, only a very select number of schools teach science and technical courses in this fashion.
Maybe changing how universities determine the ideal class size for computer science courses could help more women (and men who don't have a computer science background) attain exceptional skills and stick with the field.
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.
If you want the increase the number of women in Computer Science then you need hire women, from India, as programmers, cause thats where a lot of these jobs are going.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
I was basing my Biology comment on the statistics in the MIT article regarding the ratio of men/women in various degree programs and universities.
Stereotypes have power if people believe them; if a woman grows up learning that "men are better at X and women are better at Y", then she might get discouraged when she's trying to do X, give up, and do Y instead. That's why I stressed building self-esteem in my post.
Statistics are tricky things; it's also possible that working adults are going back to school to switch careers, and therefore the ratios for the majors are somewhat skewed. Then again, it could also have to do with the local job market, or any number of other things. That's why we have studies on these issues in the first place, instead of merely anecdotes.
But yes, people can grow out of such attitudes, and ignoring the stereotypes is a very good step to take. I never paid attention to them in the first place, but I might have changed my mind if I cared about being "popular" a whole lot...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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.
Me, I'm in humanities, lot's of chicks, not alot of guys. Lot's of lays. :)
The Directorate for Computers and Information Science and Engineering at the U.S. National Science Foundation has a fairly comprehensive report on women and Information Techology.
w me n/itwomen_final_report.doc
http://www.cise.nsf.gov/new/div/eia/cwardle/it_
Technically, I'm still a CS major (first year) but practically, I'm out of it. We had about 10% women out of 260 students (one of them is drop dead gorgeous) but all in all I can really understand why they don't go there: I mean I've been interested in computing pretty much since I was 10 or so, graduated a generally very well regarded high school upwards the 95th percentile in almost every topic (sure as hell in math) yet I found the math to burn me out. If you want more women in CS, cut down the math you're never ever gonna need anyway and replace it with loosely defined projects where one can be creative. That would help. It would have certainly helped me, too.
Heck, my wife is a CS woman (and I'll say she's a hottie). I've worked with plenty of women programmers over the years, too.
The difference is this: CS women don't obsess over Perl vs. Python, Windows vs. Linux, and all that. They don't view geek-hobbyist stuff, like reinstalling Debian and comparison shopping window managers and all that to be relevant. They simply get off on the problem solving and do what they need to do, staying outside of modern geek circles. In that respect they're more pure geeks, interested in how things work and how to get things done, rather than messing with the whole faux-elite Slashdot computer-science-means-hacking-emacs-scripts kind of crowd. And this applies to lots of guys as well.
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.
between Asperger's Syndrome rates and gender?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Most women I've encountered are more interested in Living things, not so much machines. Men generally like things like computers, weapons, vehicles, robots, non-organic automata. Women are more into genetics, biology things generally associated with life sciences. This may have to do with the fact that women are naturally tuned into the creation of life much more than men. I think that by itself, computer science can be pretty boring/dry once you get to an advanced level. It needs to be applied to other sciences to be really interesting.
I'm female. Probably more relevant - I have enough of a touch of OCD to be a good hacker (original def)
Any class that I didn't enjoy, or that required "brute force" to pass, I did poorly in. I did my calculus hw during roll call, because it was easy. I failed English once, because it's indeterminate and I couldn't be bothered to think the way that teacher wanted (generally I got A's in grammar, anything goes in content, the average being enough to pass)
I understand computers and logic. OTOH, I have met women who don't, and I don't understand them.
Hell would be being a manager. Money is a way to buy more techie toys.
I have no interest in a "Women in CS" group.
what do you think would be helpful in attracting more women to the world of computing?
i>what do you think more attracting women would be helpful in the world of computing FOR?
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
In 1984 I was surrounded by men at a demo of a prototype Macintosh, and totally oblivious to their presence - because I was playing with the cool techie toy.
It wasn't til afterwards I realized I'd been hogging it, so I'd bet *they* were aware they were near a woman.
Hackers don't like being surrounded by people. The really good ones can tune them out, though.
It's reassuring to know that I'm wrong.
Btw, if I may ask, do you have a proper slashdot account? I'm just after a yes or no - since I know quite a few women chose to not let on so they aren't treated differently etc..
JohnFlux
If we were having this conversation 30 years ago the answer would be as simple as female etiquette of leaning more towards the social sciences and the engineerings to more of a 'guy thing' at least in my native country, the engineering ladies were not considered to be very feminine. Times change eventually it might even out. I think the type of job is not appealing to women. I frown on those who honestly believe women can't handle the hard math and algorithms. In my opinion sitting the day away coding is probably not an appeal...no yet anyway.
KshGoddess
SlashChick
And there are a bunch more... you just have to look around.
While I like to tinker with my iBook, and install things, and occasionally design things on computers, I wouldn't want it to be the only thing I did in a job. Lots of people at work think I'm a major computer nerd and ask why I didn't become a programmer or whatever. I guess I can do a lot of things with them, but I don't want computers to be the only thing I do in my day. So I became a librarian, which means I get to use computers and help people in a direct way that I can see.
CS would be more attractive to women I think, if it was promoted as something that you can do, learn, be good at in combination with something else at the same time.
Hey I didn't start till I was 25 admittidly we used coding sheets back then , And the course I did , it was mainly the older above 19 yr olds that finished
I had a pet once
YOU Sir are INSANE
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
You make the common mistake that both libs and cons make. you paint entire cultures with an extreamly broad brush, and you are not using paint you are using vitrol. which is a poor lubericant for communication.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
You are too easy Profanity does not advance you cause as you assume that I am one of those whom you curse all you are doing is showing your ass
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
The amazin thing about that missive of pure unadultrated nonsense is that you are hiding behind an Anoymous Coward label You are probaly that little mouse down there who is spewing his hate. You are the one using those words of hate you are the sicko in this . I only reply to you because i like to view the actions of sick minds. So why don't you log in so we will know who you really are wimp.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
If anyone would read the last posts then they can get an idea of who is a nutcase and who is not You my flaming friend have resorted to slander libel and all hidden behind the Anoymus Coward if you have somthing to say then do not be afraid to register and say it with your registered nom-de-nevermind.It is not I who has filled these pages with Profanity as anybody who bothers to follow the links back will see. Look AC you are amusement I can post 2 sentances and recieve a 3 page rant from you.(Oh by the way Nobody needs to read the rest of your comment because you just repeat your self. some people(you)can stand to have no one disagree with them. that type of person would welcome tryanny because they think that they would be on top.After 26 years as one of UncleSamsMisbegottenChildern (you figure it out)I have seen clowns like you time after time
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers