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Attracting Women Into Computer Science
Frisky070802 writes "U.S. News & World Report has an article about attracting women into Computer Science. '...That sense of isolation and inadequacy is one reason the number of women earning computer science degrees in this country has plummeted over the past two decades--with women dropping from 37 percent to 28 percent of graduates--at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared. 'You look at the national statistics,' says Rick Rashid, senior vice president of research at Microsoft, 'and you just have to be appalled.'' It describes how some companies have even started summer camps to attract high school girls into high tech."
Just don't show them how we use that one-handed keyboard.
www.weberseite.at
How about just "Attracting women" for starters....
not for them you sicko's! for the smelly geeks that keep driving the girls away! That's how you get girls into IT.
For those interested in encouraging women to become involved in Linux (and computer science), there is an interesting HOWTO.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
Well you know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like a woman. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.
Why do these figures matter? How about we look at how many men become nurses, or how many men become child minders (I remember a news story on one guy being accused of attraction to children for getting a job like this, even though he never harmed a single child in any way).
I don't care if theres 10%, 50% or 103%. It just isn't important to monitor such trivial things. As long as you can do your job why should it matter if you have a penis or a vagina?
I like muppets.
Many boys are given legos. Many girls are given dolls.
Go figure.
"...some companies have even started summer camps to attract high school girls into high tech..."
Some? SOME!? Names, addresses and lists of current vacancies for said companies would be more useful...
I've never been comfortable with the social engineering of equivalising M/F ratios in any given discipline.
Omnis amans amens
you've got to be kidding me.
We all know how unattractive CS people can be, especially the ones getting red in the face over frequent online arguments about KDE vs. Gnome.
To imagine these hard-up saps actually trying to pull off a frickin SUMMER CAMP to ATTRACT some TEENAGE GIRLS into the sorry world of the code monkey, why that's the most cock-eyed, half baked plan I ever heard of!
Maybe when this fails to play out (and it will, seeing as how anyone with a brain can see right through the scheme), perhaps they can regroup and try to trick these girls into the backs of their vans, with some candy bars.
sheesh. this is why there are marketing departments, people. You just can't let the code monkey crowd interact with the public.
The figures don't matter much to one when we look how much is the contribution of men/women towards social and technological upliftment. Its just that the interest of women differ from that of men's. You cannot say that just because there aren't many women graduates, its going to harm us.
If you work on this theory, you might also conclude men not taking up cookery courses, or stitching classes.
Even that 28% seems fairly high to me. At my uni in computer science I would say probably not even 10% are female. I'm in Australia too.
No, see I don't want to work with that girl, I want her to be in "Customer Service" so if things go sower I don't have to deal with her... :)
-=Linsys=-
http://www.intrusionsec.com
I can think of any number of reasons why CS enrollment would drop:
CS = programming = coding away in a small cubicle with little social interaction (just the image - not always the reality)
Maybe they're after fields with a better job market or better pay? Or maybe they're just realizing that the Dot Com heydays aren't coming back any time soon.
I think that's the prime reason why so many Men enter computer science!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You can call me sexist if you want, but I'm not convinced that women in general are as capable as men when it comes to disciplines like engineering or Computer Science. I'm not saying that there aren't women who are talented in these fields -- they're just not as easy to find as these politically-correct types would like to believe. There will always be talented women who are drawn to Computer Science and they don't need special programs or camps to "convince" them that they will enjoy studying Computer Science.
I don't see a problem here. If women don't want to work in a certain field, then that's their decission. If fewer people with smaller shoe sizes chose to work in IT (or politics, or any other field unrelated to shoe sizes), I wouldn't care either.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I have Karma to burn:
Why do we need any percentage of male/female for anything or everything? When the phonecompanies still used operators, it was women who were better in handling all these calls. They were better in 'multitasking' then men were.
In the Netherlands, the phonecompany did exams for operators and made no difference in male or female. However the women were just better at it. They just hired the best qualified people.
If women are not interested in those things, so what? It is not that we discriminate against women, that would be extremely bad. It is not as if we let the women study and then not give them a job.
Being equal is not the same as being identical.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yeah, highschool girls at work. Thats a Summer camp I want to be a part of. *in my dreams*
..!!
But really, having read the article, I wouldn't rule out what we already know. Women are smarter. Computer Science just isn't as lucrative as many, if not all other booming tech industries. So there are less women studying CS, and still many studying other technical course. What of it?
If I knew what I know now (all of it could have been known without my degree : ( ) I would have done something else and just taken CS along as a side order....if I was a woman, alas
If women aren't entering the CS field, it's not the fault of the CS field, it's because women don't want those jobs, and you shouldn't try to find ways to make it falsely appealing to them, because they'll end up disatisfied with their jobs, and seek something more rewarding. It's like saying "there aren't enough african americans in the 'Saving Dixie' confederate history program." Gee, maybe it's because they don't care as much as certain others.
There are very few women going into CS programs. I know that sounds obvious, but that really is the problem. People feel more comfortable among others who have the same interests, ideas, gender, etc.
So, once women stop looking at CS programs and I.T. jobs as male dominated, then more women will be attracted to them.
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Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
Attracting women to computer science
:)
Or
Attracting women that are into computer science
You choose. Personally, I find the latter to be the most difficult by far
Sweden has used classes that only women can participate in. The women said it made them not feel as singled out as they would have been in mixed classes.
Of course, studies has shown both that mixed sex classes are better, as well as single sex classes... It is probably best to offer both alternatives.
I dont think that is a problem confined to tech or IT. I think that everywhere in the world, women are shying away from any work that requires them to be fixated to their work place, away from their families or whatever they believe is the topmost priority in life. ... and put work/money above all else.
Somehow, we men tend to take family ties and relationships for granted more than women
(I'm pretty sure someone has already done some research relating to the different priorities in the lives of men and women.)
Perhaps this is more of a natural consequence of the way our work is, in addition to the different priorites women have.
I think that any techie's work usually destroys his chances of having a stable relationship and sours any existing realtionship - parents, friends, fiances, whoever. Men would probably tolerate that to some extent, women do not.
...in India where there's a 70 / 30 ratio of men / women in Computer Science. Given the cultural push towards education over there, computer science isn't stereotyped as a male oriented field as it seems to be here in the US. This is also true in fields such as engineering.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Nursing degrees?
at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared.
Chemical and civil engineering, from what I can tell, are enjoying larger numbers of women. I graduated EE in 2000, and my girlfriend graduated from Mechanical Engineering last May - and the numbers of women have not increased substantially up or down in either of those disiplines from what I can tell over that timeframe. (Sample size 1; standard disclaimers apply)
With regards to women and minorities, I feel that engineering and CS are perhaps the fairest degrees; when the pencil hits the paper, the answer can be determined to be right or wrong within a reasonable margin.
..don't panic
Another point I thought of a few minutes ago seems to also explain this a little.
:)
Women enjoy social interaction and get rewards through others in most professions (Seen many male people working at a doctors reception? unlikely).
Men are happy to work with blocks (A fits into B, B becomes C, C goes vvrruumm), 99% of things to do with PC are blocks. You have Gigs on the HD, you have the ram needed and what you got. All these are basic blocks, code is simplely blocks of predefined commands linked together to make something else.
Women won't find the satisfaction most men will from watching their latest proggy run or finding a bug after several hours of searching. They tend to perfer a friendly smile and a light conversation, not really that complex is it?
But hey we're at Slashdot, only women we see here are blow up
I like muppets.
Did that ever occur to you? That maybe, just *maybe* they want to study something more interesting than some dessicated old Comp Sci professor's toy language?
and they want their sexism back. You're correct that we do want the best people, however it would appear that some of the brightest and best are not going into the field. In College, the smart women were all math majors. They were more than qualified to pursue CS, but there was so much blatent sexim in the department they were discouraged from entering the field. Its not so much as encouraging as it is not discouraging.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
From the article:
And "our" refers to "USA's," not just "HP's". The article gives reasons for it as well.
Keep this mind next week, when /. trots out its regularly-scheduled "all the American programming jobs are going away, panic!" article.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
So pompous indians who are willing to work for
peanuts can take their jobs, too!
Last time I checked, you need to be able to work productively for a real company - and that means dealing in a efficient manner with both sexes.
(Yeah, I've a 5-year-old daughter & she's fearless around computers. As it should be!)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Anyone else noticed the lack of penguins and polar bear too? How queer..
Other women... check!
Jobs... check!
Men with money... check!
Men with power... check!
Men with style... check!
Men that will leave them alone when asked... check!
Un-sexist men... check!
Yeah, that's a lot of motivation to spend 4+ years at college in a tech degree. Seriously though. Would you want to go to a sports school to get a science degree, or somewhere like MIT for sports? No, you wouldn't, as you would not fit in nor would you likely enjoy the social atmosphere.
I'm sure the social aspect has a large amount to do with it, but it's also likely that that technical fields simply don't appeal to most women. Women seem to be pre-disposed towards "social" tasks, and don't think in an engineer-like fashion anway (so psychologists say).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I went to an all girls school. We had lots of computers, but we were actively discouraged from persuing computer-related subjects at University level. Even in computer class, we learnt to touch type, and that was about it. Asking questions was met with a dirty look and a hurried explanation that never actually answered your question. I think this is an attitude that quite a few schools like mine have adopted - I know our school wanted us all to be lawyers and medics....computers are not seen to be a thing that girls can do. When I mention I'm in computers now, people froom school tend to assume I'm doing data input, or working with sales of computers...
Exactly. There's tremendous cultural inertia - if you grow up immersed in a culture that reflects certain gender imbalances, there will be a tendency to continue them, for good or bad...
Just think of all the dud coders you have to deal with - and consider that you're only scooping from half of the pool. How many great coders might have been girls if they'd had a little encouragement?
Ten minutes after it's publicly posted, and the vast majority of comments either say "how about attracting men to childrearing? Why isn't that an issue?" or "well, maybe they just ain't interested! Social engineering sucks!"
:) ). And when I have a child, if she's a daughter, I'd like her to have as easy of a time getting into a profitable profession as a son.
I've not seen any evidence that women are somehow biologially inherently uninterested in the computer science field. You can talk about interactions all you like, but I dropped out of a pretty damn decent CS program because I realized I want human interaction, which is why I'm now in _IT_ rather than in programming -- so I get to deal with people. There _are_ CS-oriented environments and jobs that offer more interaction.
My concern is that what we're seeing is artificial -- that women are either dissuaded from entering/staying in the field or are not as encouraged as men. This is bad both because we might be missing out on excellent people out there just because they don't have a penis and because if we discourage women from entering profitable fields (offshoring notwithstanding), we end up perpetuating an earning power inequity between men and women. This sucks because, well, when I get married I'd like my wife to make at least as much as I do (and ideally, much much more. Really, a sugar mommy wouldn't be so bad
So yeah. Honestly? I don't care about men in nursing; both because I don't think society has much to gain by pushing men to accept lower-income jobs (next, lets try to get affluent white kids to take up a career as janitors! That'd be useful!) and because, even in nursing, we see an earnings gap (male nurses get promoted faster and are paid more, on average, than female nurses).
Oh, and forgive me for being a selfish asshole, but the other reason I'd like to see more women in CS is because I'd like to finally be able to talk shop with my loved one; I've known exactly three very attractive women who were in IT (and had a relationship with one of them). We need more.
Ideally, the demographics of IT should mirror the demographics of hospital workers. Then we can be competitive.
Not that I'm cynical or anything.
The above has nothing to do with her being a woman. It's all about her having standads that are too unrealistic. I know that some of the guys felt the same way.
American doctoral programs, where foreign nationals still snag half the Ph.D.'s.
Faced with forecasts of a looming brainpower shortage-- When there are actually jobs for those people, here in the U.S., I'll take statments like that seriously.It's a great way to stay in the U.S. without having to go through a lot of the normal imigration B.S. One of my grad classmates is doing this. She's racking up grad degrees just so she can stay in the county with her husband - nothing to do with her career objectives. Also, our educational system is a great "export"!
I've worked with too many programmers who were engineers and scientists (including a few Ph.Ds) who went into computers just to get a job.
Surely you need to be a bit selective when your doing this, after all it could have a detrimental effect on the working/conference enviroment. You should make sure they:
The market is saturated with too many people in this field. So what if there are fewer women pursuing the career? I hope fewer people *at all* pursue it. That's good news for my job outlook.
And why does every career have to have exactly 50% men and 50% women? Women go into things like liberal arts and psychology. You know - things where they don't have to worry about getting serious about their career and they can just blow a few years at college looking for Mr. Right - who does go for the real career like computer science (to support her lazy ass).
We obviously need more cute mascots like the BSA Piracy Crusader Weasel!
Why are they worried about fewer women in Computer Science? Proportionaly there were about 3 times as many women in the CS program at my University than in the entire Engineering program. And I just graduated this year. Why are they worried about CS then?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I recall reading a very interesting thread on the Java forums. There are very few female programmer's in the industry and there are even fewer women working as sysadmins. :D
Hwre is the thread
From research conducted it was proved that generally speaking, the female mind is "weak" in certain areas of the brain which are used for programming logic and deduction. In my opinion, not having women in the IT field is kinda a good thing. Helps us with are geek status n all, ya know
I don't know what all the fuss is about. As an egalitarian and a man, I'm all for attracting women into computer science, just so long as this gender-based role redistribution scheme doesn't lead to things like attracting men into pregnancy. They can keep that one.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Just because there aren't as many women in CS doesn't show discrimination. There are biological or cultural reasons (depending on your camp) for this. Women are generally more people-oriented and are more interested in building relationships/interacting with people than technical achievements (thus why there are more female teachers and whatnot).
I don't think there's a lot explicit discrimination in CS. We're taught in history class about women in fields like flight and politics and how being the first woman to do something is significant. CS is pretty unique in that the first Computer Programmer happened to be a woman (Ada Lovelace).
Even in a utopia, I think fewer women would choose to be CS majors due to personal preferences. The only question that remains is why is this a bad thing as seems to be implied?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
What we really need is attractive women into computer science.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
The problem is that average Samantha and Mary-Jane of 17 y.o. are more interested in going to "fun-camps" in the summer rather than planning seriously in high-tech like god's forbid learning C++ in 3 months or something in that caliber. It is very difficult to attract a high school girl to IT because there are lots of other thing in that age that are more important for a young girl than sitting in an boring IT camp.
While even average Jack-The-Skript-Kiddy knows exactly in his age of 17 knows that he is interested in IT in some sort or another. Today he is a malware programmer, tomorrow, after he is caught and his conviction is served and he is free, he may have a job as a security manager somewhere. That is because teenage boys and girls respond very differently to new and challenging ideas.
Let's see, we want to attrach women into a contracting field field where if you are lucking you have the career lifetime of a sports figure but without the money. So why would any women (or man) want to enter this field again? I am not getting it.
...women with CompSci degrees != women in IT. I've worked with many members of the female persuasion over the years, and only one was even pursuing a CS degree (and only part-time, at that).
/.ers will agree, there are a lot of folks in IT right now, who have varying degrees of education and certification, who know jack shit about the IT topic at hand; while others, such as myself, who have little formal education in the field, but who have plenty of experience, and still get turned away from dream jobs in excellent companies, simply because we don't have a few letters after our names. [end rant]
[rant on] On a more general note, I'm getting a little tired of the IT industry equating education to knowledge. As I'm sure many
"I don't get it." -- ObviousGuy
U.S. News & World Report has an article about attracting women into Computer Science.
Attractive women into Computer Science? Where?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think a lot of the comments I've seen so far here have pretty much outlined why there are few women in computer science. And they didn't do this deliberately, but through effective demonstration.
Though I guess I really don't see why more women aren't pulled in initially. I'd think the curiosity and desire for a logical world that drove me to CS would be more or less universal.
Based on my experience, there's really only thing that will work:
Professor Leonardo Dicaprio.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
"That sense of isolation and inadequacy is one reason the number of women earning computer science degrees in this country has plummeted over the past two decades..."
Ah, once again the talk turns to the legendary female computer nerd! Has anybody ever seen one of these elusive creatures in the wild?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
After about the age of 3 or 4 the trends have allready been set and it will be a battle getting women interested into deckery or linux. A lot of superficial mental tokens of personal identification are reinforced and given to children before they get into grade 5 or so. By then it's allready too late. Complaints that engineering/CS fields are underrepresented by women are so because society at large treats women like property, stupid and unthinking, and expects them to act that way, at a very young age. Instead of becoming doctors they are taught to attempt to marry doctors.
And believe me, the marketing departments of large corporations everywhere, expanding their influences younger isn't going to make things any better. There's fashion clothing stores with pseudosoftcore advertisements in public shopping malls for *children*! I realize that the next generation has got to try to out-do this one, but holy cow, using children as sexual objects of desire for mass marketing purposes? this is going to mentally retard the next generation, specifically women who are the targets for the majority of these marketing ploys.
Why think when you can watch television, huh? and THAT is why you won't see quite as many women in the field.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Stop throwing around generalities in an attempt to build a straw man.
In College, the smart women were all math majors.
In what College? When? Have any numbers? There were hardly any female mathematicians at my University, the ratio was around 85% men to 15% women.
I ten to agree with the other posters - despite what everyone would like to believe, man and women *are* different. They like different things. For some stimuli different areas of a mans brain react than a woman. It is a fact that men and women's brains have evolved differently over the ages. We simply do not know enough about the brain to speculate at this point whether on average one brain is more optimized to certain types of tasks than another, although evidence would support this (women's communications centres are larger, men's spatial-relationship centres are larger).
SO, given all this uncertainty, how about instead of trying to exert undue pressure on one gender to fill a certian role, we just let people do what they want to do?. I would never, ever, ever become a PR consultant. I can't stand the type of work it is ( running aorund, chatting it up with people, lying for a living). However, that does not mean that I hold PR people in a low regard or that I do not respect their intelligence, to the contrary, they're some of the smartest people around I wager (look at the shit they get us to buy!).
So why can't the same be said of women? Why is it if a woman does not want to enter a science or computer sicence field they are being discriminated against?
You mean the 19th century telegramed, right?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
she has a CS AND Law degree...
Loves to code too.
All your base are belong to Google.
It's absolutely amazing to me that we seem to think that we can homogenize boys and girls into one common sex. It's even more amazing to me that anyone actually thinks this is even a good idea! As this article claims, boys and girls are DIFFERENT! They play different, they have different interests, and they have different skills. I'm not saying that girls can't do what boys do and boys can't do what girls do! But I am saying that this feminist agenda myth that we should all be bucking nature is crazy. If you give a typical boy dolls, he'll engage them in war games or dissect them or perform some other manner of harsh play with them. Likewise, if you give a little girl toys which are traditionally "boy" toys, she will not engage in play with them the same way a little boy would. And the argument that this is social conditioning doesn't hold any water; my son is less than 18 months old and he already exhibitsthis behavior. The differences between men and women are natural - we're wired to be different, and contrary to the recent trends, those differences are actually GOOD. I think it's great that there is an attempt to show women that they are capable of doing jobs traditionally performed by men, but I think it's wrong to make those fields artificially attractive. Women can be doctors, lawyers, construction workers, and IT professionals, but if the woman isn't naturally interested in what it means to be those things, them it does those women a disservice to artificially make those fields more appealing to them just to push an agenda.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
Several women have recently informed me that I'm not nearly as creepy as I used to be!
Best Slashdot Co
I imagine that the further from home (pre industrial era homes) oriented tasks the carear is the smaller the percentage of women you will find in them. I beleave to artifically inflate these numbers would only cause to increase social strains leading to increased negitive satistics in society.
Disclosure: I'm male. I also believe that respect ought to be awarded for _personal_ merits, not by just being born into the "right" group.
And basically what you're telling me is along the lines of "underpaid underlings are signifficant too, so it's perfectly ok to force women and minorities into those roles. And therefore it's ok to pay them less."
Gee, what a flaming idiocy.
You know what? It's not the PC crowd that are the illogical zealots, it's the relics from the past like you. Idiots who think they should be paid more just because they happened to be born white or male or whatever.
Well, let me break some grim news to you: if your _only_ merit is that Y chromosome, you're a fucking waste of air. That chromosome alone doesn't even make you necessarily smart enough to flip burgers at McDonald. Much less make you qualified for science or engineering. Much less for CS.
If you want any respect or a better paid job, show me what _you_ personally have done to deserve it. Not what random thing you've got at the chromosome roulette.
And if you actually need to blame your problems on women, blacks, jews, corporations, international conspiracies or whatever, you've just earned a hefty dose of disrespect from me. Means you're not only an incompetent piece of waste, but unable to take responsibility for your own failures either.
Let me spell it out: anyone who's anywhere _near_ competent in their job or life, doesn't need a scapegoat to put the blame on. Sure, bring in the women, blacks, indians, or the mongolian hordes for that matter. I know I won't lose my job in the process. Or will find an equally good one quite easily.
Do _you_ feel threatened by "feminazis"? Excellent.
Consider yourself flamed.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared.
Maybe because they are smarter and are going where the money is?
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Silly me.
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that in China, while there are more males in science/engineering fields than there are females, the ratio is much closer to 50:50 than it is in the US. Actualy, if my univeristy is any indicator, most of the women who are in the field are foriegn born.
There's not enough women in computer science. Aparently 30% just isn't enough. I'd like to see 50-50 as much as the next person, or maybe something even higher, but no discipline is like that. Just let people do what they actually want to do, instead of telling them how great and amazing it is and we'll have a lot less people getting bored at university and dropping out.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
we need more geeks with larger penises.
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
Isn't it a little presumptuous to think that women must be equally _capable_ of succeeding in computer science, and that any observe discrepency between male and female success in the field must be the result of a "sense of isolation and inadequacy" to the exclusion of all else? This is like arguing that women aren't as successful as men at competitive weightlifting or hand-to-hand combat because of their "sense of isolation and inadequacy", and that it couldn't possibly be attributable to hormones and sex-linked genes. When you're dealing with fields of study like pure mathematics, chess strategy, computer science, or other subjects that are so incredibly dominated by men, you have to be open to the possibility that there are simple truths of evolutionary psychology that are preventing women from being successful in these professions. This isn't like wealth distrobution where you can just point the finger at sexism. If I recall correctly, among the top five-HUNDRED highest rated chess players in the world, there is only ONE woman. You don't see that level of male dominance anywhere in the real world outside of contests of pure physical strength, and probably not even there. You certainly don't see it in lists of the richest people in the world (there's two women in the top ten). If we assume that the cause of this is simply a "sense of isolation and inadequacy" or simple sexism, we have to ask ourselves if it really makes sense that chess players and organizations are really so much more sexist and induce such greater feelings of inadequacy, especially considering how much effort major chess organizations are putting in to attracting women to playing chess.
,whether it's genes, nutrition, alien mind control, whatever, and we must accept the possibility that this reason is also applicable to computer science. Only once we understand the _real_ causes of differences between the sexes can be hope to change them. We can't eliminate sexism by deluding ourselves.
Of course, computer science is nowhere near as male-dominated as chess, but I was just using it to prove a point that there are some limited fields where the discrepencies between men and women can't be explained away culturally. There _must_ be some deeper reason why women don't play chess,
I'm sorry, but I don't remember anyone "attracting" me into a Computer Science career. All that was necessary for me was having a computer early on, (about 4 years before 13), and learning what the field has to offer by exploring online. By the time girls make it to the teenage years, their minds are pretty set on at least a few choices for a job. Trying to change that is harder than planting a seed before they make up their mind. So, I'd say give these girls a computer when they're 8, and if they're good enough for the field, they won't have trouble with the basics of using it.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Why is it that job categories must imitate the demographics of a country? If 85% of all nurses are women, should men be cajoled until it is back to 50%?
If 70% of software dev workers are men, that should not matter either.
Some of the comments on why it matters in Tech seem to center around design.
Unless something is decidedly marketed to one gender or the other (epilady/viagra), the companies would normally have a mixed design team - but that is not tech.
So the 30% female techs can be funneled into the design area, which is more lucrative anyway (than pure coding).
"how some companies have even started summer camps to attract high school girls into high tech"
Interesting...I think I'm gonna have to talk to my boss about hiring high-school girls to work in tech.
mmmmmmmmmm
high school girls.
Boy I can't wait to go to work!
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
Hasn't this ALWAYS been a problem?!?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Check here for details.
It's the yin and yang. Women are very different and the overboard left brain sided nature of the work does not appeal to their nature. There's nothing wrong with that. The sexes are what they are, the yin and yang.
Yeah there's the occasional exception but they're just that exeption... it's been quite a long while since I've had a "technical" female coworker. And currently I'm doing work at a very large company so the odds would be greater there.
-M
jokes.
"The dame was very persuasive.Somehow most dames are"
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Yeah, that's a lot of motivation to spend 4+ years at college in a tech degree. Perhaps we should write a HOWTO on attracting men into computer science.
Most of the girls I knew back in school treeted computers as tools, ok for doing the things there supposed to do, but that's about it.
There is a overly-male culture in such areas, but apart from guys being guys I havn't seen any active exclusion of the girls.
Some people say that colleges are just a puppet of the corporate world, but even if you don't subscribe to that theory here's a question for you:
Are you working in the field you studied in college? Did you ever work in that field after finishing school? Did you even graduate in that field of study?
8-PP
...and I miss-read the title. Where are these other attractive women in CS?
Don't blame me - this
Thank you, Sir. Your cheque will arrive shortly. :-)
At one of my past jobs, there were three women in a lab of thirty (we did QA work on network equipment for a company that has since been split into four entities).
Company policy was that when our PCs had problems, we had to call MIS. Bear in mind that our grunt work was done by twenty or so PCs. Multiply that by 30 people, and you can get an idea of the number of systems we had. More than 80% of the time, if one of the women called MIS to report a problem, response-time was in the order of business DAYS, if at all. Response time if the men called? Usually within a business day.
It didn't take long for these women to ask one of the men to call MIS to report the problem, just so they could get their systems up and running again in a reasonable time.
The title of this message is clear: the attitude of the male members of the IT industry needs to be more tolerant of the fact that there are women out there that are capable of the work, and would be willing to do it, if we (the men) would only take them seriously, and give them the credit they deserve for their work.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
I'm working for the County Council where I live. On the support desk, I'd say we were 50:50 men woman, but in my area (web maintenance) we're at 30:70! Even my overlord is a overlady! Mind you, the whole site runs on frontpage... /me settles down with editpadpro
http://www.neobard.info - wacky world of me
Let's see... At my college, in all ICT classes there are 7 women. That is 7 out of 419, roughly 1,67%
That's a random dutch college, we're talking about.
Hate me!
The article contains a quote that
but surely biotechnology is also `high tech', and I see no suggestion that women's representation is decreasing in that area.So, what is it? At the risk of being modded flaimbait, is it perhaps that Physics, Chemistry, and Biology are somehow seen as more noble pursuits, that Computers are intrinsically a means to an end rather than an end in themselves? That CS majors are seen as an inferior type of geek relative to their cancer-curing, drug-designing, atom-smashing counterparts? Yet other branches of engineering (bridge building, rocket science) are also fundamentally concerned with solving practical problems, but somehow they don't carry the same stigma.
Is there, after all, something intrinsically semi-autistic, and therefore testosterone-linked, in fiddling with computers?
Personally, I think the key to interesting more women in any high-tech, high-science job is to get them interested when they're still in elementary school. What if we sent more speakers into the schools to show (all) the students the possibilities? If you show them that math and science can be fun and interesting, and can be used to do really good things, when they're young, it'll help alleviate the stigma against being in science when they're older. I know--when I was in seventh grade, the last thing I wanted was anything that would make me seem geekier. Younger kids don't face quite the same demeaning peer pressure.
Live free or die
Seriously, given the number of high tech jobs that have been disappearing, and how much more difficult it has become to get IT work thanks to over-production by universities and micro-versities (ITT Tech, etc.), why would we want to attract anyone into this dying field?
"Hey look, a female! Hey baby, it's not too shabby around here, eh, the male-to-female ratio? How does it feel to be surrounded by so many men who have absolutely no idea how to please you"
Might be actually thinking twice before spouting random sexist comments about breast size and whatnot (see "she looks halfway decent at least"). Come on guys, can you just try to forget for half a second that the person in the cube next to you has breasts & hips and actually think of her as a coworker?
hold on there.
1) Monopolies create market inefficiencies
2) corporate power structures are evil Just because corporations are the cause of grief does not automatically make them some sort of scapegoat unworthy of attention. There are a lot of occurances that are unpleasant in this world, rainstorms, for example, happen sometimes, and for some are benificial, for others, they are harmful[ie tornados,etc] we must deal with them, as rational beings interacting with our environment. Sometimes that might mean revolution, sometimes that means just dealing with it.
great post btw.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
http://www.mlc.vic.edu.au/news/old_collegian_alisa __348.htm
:)
A gymnast with a degree in I.T. a sponsorship deal with a chewing gum manufacturer, a job at IBM & an olympic gold medal.
Read 'em & weep boys, Aussie girls take some beating
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
wanna see me compile your kernel??
The lunatic is in my head
Uh, thats precisely why I got into computers in the first place, and found I was so good at it.
Maybe most chicks just don't think in a way that fits the work anyway, if i had other skills I certainly wouldn't want to sit behind a bloody keyboard all day every day. Why force the issue. I couldn't build a social network to save my life, whats wrong with recognising and celebrating the differences and rather than persuing some fake artificial "identicality" goal.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
some greif, not all greif.
_E greif | corporations --> greif
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Most of my friends (High school times) were nerds, we had all spent quite a bit of time around computers at a young age. Our fathers pulled us down into the basement and showed us a few commands in DOS or whathaveyou and our interest was born. Now, maybe it is our job as the next generation of computer users to make sure that our female children (If we manage to reproduce) have the same opportunity to feel that strange joy of exploring and understanding our machines. This isn't something that should be pushed onto High school girls.. or put into college magazines. This is something we have to do on our own. Our children will create what we don't have the ability to make before we die. Investing in stocks are ya? Try spending a bit more time with that bright eyed daughter of yours. Might come out better than any money you could have made staring at a stock price graph.
... there may not be many CS's left in the US 10 years from now, male or female.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
It's even worse if you want to act "like a woman" (yes I know, gross generalization here). What I mean is if you don't stick to a dress code of baggy t-shirts and jeans, you have to fight the sterotypes even more.
Maybe there are less women getting into CS programs now because enrollment has fallen off in CS programs in general. I would think that has more to do with the lack of opportunity for anyone in the West to do high tech work. Why get a degree in a field where there is no work? If you really love technology, you can get a different major and still do the techie stuff on the side.
Understand we're talking neolithic perversions of human nature here.
If we go paleolithic then we might say women like men with territory the way men like sex (which is the real reason men are so territorial).
US programmers have been losing a lot of territory lately so whether you're talking neolithic perversions or paleolithic instinct, women aren't really all that excited by the geeks anymore (as though they ever were really -- that was just a lot of Wired hype).
Now, if you want to really get women interested in technology, do something that is going to expand the territory of life itself -- but you'd better have the right stuff.
Seastead this.
I have worked with quite a few women in the engineers and software fields, and they have all been brilliant. I think this is part of the problem. In high school, I recall the top females from the class were being strongly encouraged to enter a technical discipline, engineering, science, or comp-sci.
However, for the women who are academically average and are interested in such fields, this can be quite intimidating. Not only are they competing against males, but they are also being compared with the top female students. This is from where the female attitude of having to be a top student or else comes. There is a lot of companionship for academically average male students. There is a lot of respect for the top female students. For the academically average female student it is more like "what are *you* doing here?"
It seems a bit contradictory, but my measure of how much "equality" there is in a field is how many *average* female students there are. I don't know how it is now, but in my day it was not very many.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
The interesting cases are not ones like computer science, which have always been dominated (numerically) by men. The interesting cases are ones like medicine, where in certain specialties -- gynecology and pediatrics -- the tide has shifted from majority male to majority female or a 50/50 split. What causes this change? Not evolution! In other words, nothing inherently biological.
Idiot posters aside, I think most people can agree that there are a combination of biological and environmental factors that contribute to the low percentage of female CSers. Fine. So what are the environmental factors, and how can we control them? That's the real (and interesting) question.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Care to back this up with anything other than rhetoric? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not talking about gender when you say 'superficial mental tokens of personal identification', but just in case you are... you should really read about David Reimer. I'll even provide an article to get you started.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
I think this is the kind of attitude that keeps women out for the most part. You ASSUME that to be the case but if there are never any opportunities for young women to go to summer camp for computers, you'll never know.
I think some of it may play on the girls not wanting to go to a summer IT camp with 99% of the population being boys. We may need a temporary solution (girls-only computer summer camp) until the population evens out.
Then again I think both boys AND girls should be outside for most of the summer getting some exercise but thats just me.
P.S.
I also think that one thing that will shrink, not only women in CS but CS enrollment as well is that we have a generation of children who grew up with computers as a common item in the home. There's no sort of special "wow" factor to working with a computer at school when you can probably go home and play/work on your own.
I was excited about my computer classes in school because we couldn't afford one at home. If I were in school now, I probably wouldn't give a rip about a computer class because I can go home and play on my uberleet rig that my parents bought me.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
She was the first programmer, and she has a programming language named after her. Women are not incompetent at all in computer sciences, but they like other areas better, mainly those that they can deploy their instincts better.
statistics on the percentage of graduates that are white male US citizens graduating from US schools with CS degrees too. I bet it has plummeted as well. BC
Why bother? More women in CS just means more jobs to eventually outsource to India. The few Americans whom are left in the US tech industry need less competition from new grads not more.
In general, workers should never encourage people of any type to enter their field. Managers always encourage people to join their employees field because more people in CS means lower salaries for those currently in the field.
Lets compare... young guy gets BS and MS CS degree in 7 years, makes $75K for 5 years, skills are obsolete, his job is sent to India, and he will never work in "tech" again. Or, young girl gets nursing degree, makes $50K plus paid overtime for the rest of her life. Who is the "smart" one? Obviously the young girl.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's actually quite simple. Accepted studies show that there is no gender "benefit" to being a male and studying compuer science. Hence, if women aren't going into computer science or related fields, the profession is losing valuable insight and talent that it otherwise should have had. Or look at it this way... everyone who enters the field has a chance of doing something that benefits society at large (like develop the Linux kernel, or develop an efficient algorithm, write Tripwire, etc). If we're losing women in the field, we're also losing knowledge and development. If we want the best computer programs, we want as many women and men in the field as possible.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Why even bother? Everyone knows ALL the tech jobs are headed for India and/or China.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
Quotas are bad.
Do we really need representation of any particular sex/orientation/race/religion properly represented in CS? or even any other field?
Why not let people who are interested and capable choose this career. Not everything has to be a cross section of society as a whole. Maybe CS will be male dominated, hopefully Hooters wait staff will remain female dominated.
As someone who has been involved in a few male dominated areas I've dealt with quotas. My opinion is that the quota girls (those who don't belong in their position either by their own interest or ability) actually hurt the acceptance of women in that field.
When most the girls you deal with are not capable of doing their job, you start to assume that the girls probably can't do what you ask, it really hurts acceptance of those that can do their job.
I think this is counter productive. It is a good idea to fight the *ist problems that keep groups out, but unnaturally trying to create balance environments is a bad idea.
But why is it necessary to go to the effort and expense to "attract" them to compsci? I mean, some government bureaucrat comes up with magical numbers, that true or not, shows a 10% decline over the last couple decades, and now the old saggy feminists are in a tizzy or something? For all I know, those 10% of women decided there was more money in MBA's and they're all our bosses now. How could you possibly hope to persuade them (or their daughters, more accurately) back to compsci?
Excepting any kind of discrimination that keeps them from pursuring careers in this field, why is this a problem?
"Check out all those Lan parties where girls can enter for free"
Whoa, you've just made me aware that there was such a thing as a lan party with a cover charge!
I mean, I can imagine passing the hat, or whatever, but to charge at the door? That's just rude.
Just tell them that for every woman in CS there are at least 50 men. They might have been geeky and quite possibly rejected in high school, but in college they will be highly coveted and will have a lot of men to choose from. ;-)
And if they still want the jocks, they can wait to get out of college, land a high paying job and then go hunting for the man meat at the grill of the local Mc Donalds back in their hometowns.
Cheers,
Adolfo
It seems to me that women are just more pragmatic about career choices. With all the news about computing jobs going overseas and jobs being cut right and left in the industry, maybe it's become apparent to women that other engineering fields are better choices.
I won't argue that computing has been portrayed as a boy's world and that it can be hostile to women, but then lots of other fields have been hostile and that didn't keep women from fighting their way in. Look at the medical field, law, and other engineering disciplines for examples.
Being good at computer science requires a significant commitment from most of us. There are some who are so good that they can breeze on by, but for most of us, it's a constant effort to stay current with the technology. Computer science is still probably one of the most self-taught of potential careers. In order to be successful you have to commit to the same hours as a new lawyer at a high priced law firm, but without nearly the same pay. It's not the best choice if you want a balanced life.
I would not be at all surprised if we see these numbers turn right back around when the economic situation for programmers gets better. Perhaps this is just a case of women being the wiser gender.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
I don't think there is much doubt there are too few female C.S. But I can't quite buy the arguement the article is making by saying that is mostly down to a matter of confidence. If confidence is a major playing factor in woman dropping out of C.S. courses then why does this same logic not apply to other courses?
In writing this I have tried to think up a number of arguements to try and explain this. However all these arguements can easyily be swept aside with simple counter-examples. One of the strongest counter-examples I was thinking about was mathematics where the population split in students is about 1:1 between men and women which shares many of the same logical displines and grounding as C.S.
Basically I can't suggest an arguement that shows that men have a better preposition for computers than woman. Actually I think that many of the talents that are required by a good engineer are more prevalent in woman than in men.
My personal belief is that there is 2 fundamental socialogical problems here.
The first is the stigmatization of computers within society. Just consider the stereotypical image of the "computer nerd". Now considering women pay far more attention to their image than men, then this negative press about computers has stopped many women actually getting into computers. (Remember : Its one thing to be seen working with computers, its something else to get into them).
The second has been the constant low number of women in C.S. as compared to other subjects. Over the past century or so the female ratio in most subjects has increased until it has become 1:1. In short, no particular subject stood out as being more intimidating than the other, when considering this as a reason. However since its creation as a subject C.S. has had a very high male ratio probably for no better reason that it was just boys with toys getting into a field that held a world of fasination.
I mean seeing and having to worry about sexism and racism everywhere , boy your life must be one big bag of fun. And I bet you're a real fun guy to be around too. Don't forget , if you're really hacked off with being a man and having a penis , well , you can always go get the snip snip and really experience what being a woman is like then you can be a fully paid up member of the Poor Lil Me I'm A Victim association with perhaps an honourary membership of the Banging My Drum society.
I'm a junior female Computer Science major, and I went to one of these girls-only engineering camps way back in junior high. And it was a blast. The camp I went to was a "fun camp"- we explored concepts of logic, fractals, chemistry, aerodynamic design, and other engineering topics, in a very fun, hands-on way. I was already interested in programming before going to the camp, but to see other girls also have an interest in science, get excited about the same things that our other girlfriends considered 'nerdy'- that was worth going. It was encouraging. Also, at the beginning of my freshman year of college, I read the book mentioned in the article, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, and it really hit home. It explains why girls do or don't get into computers, and what discourages them away from it. Ideas explained in it have definitely helped me get through my studies- when I get discouraged because I feel I can't 'talk shop' the same, or do as well as the guys, which is only sometimes true, I'm glad I read this book and understand the psychological differences and different motivations for being in the field- and then I don't give up at it. I've also had fun through the last couple years, encouraging other girls to not get discouraged in their computer science classes. It's mostly worked.
At my school, University of Iowa from 2001-2003, I'd say the male to female ratio in CS classes was nearly 1:1.
Because there aren't enough computer nerd-girls in high school.
Everyone I know in college in CS who's any good at it has been coding or tinkering with his system for at least five or six years now. It intimidates me for crying out loud, and I'm one of them! When you're sitting in on your first real programming class and guys are talking about the security work they've been doing at Sun for five years (and the guy was maybe one year older than I am) you're going to be intimidated.
Why does this affect girls more? Because society doesn't encourage girls to be social outcasts. Guys, for their entire lives, are encouraged to find a few things that they like and do them to obsession. So in high school you have jocks and nerds and car guys, etc. Now, the nerds KNOW that they're social outcasts, but they've chosen that path, and gain a feeling of personal worth and justification in being GOOD at what they do. And since they generally have no girls to be wasting their time with, they do it a lot and become very good at it.
I've never noticed girls, as a group, creating that same sort of rebel identity, based on ability. I've worked a lot with high schoolers who are going into engineering this year, including a lot of girls, and none of them have seemed to have the "the world hates us but it doesn't matter, because we're damn good at what we do" mentality.
So, when anyone looks at going into CS at college, they see the average person going into it as someone who already knows about half of what they're going to be teaching. They're cocky and confident in their abilities. Of course anyone's going to be intimidated. And, by the structure of our high school society, it is more likely for someone on the intimidated side to be a girl.
My girlfriend's a CS major, too. She's an excellent programmer, and I've never seen someone get as excited as she does about her code working for the first time. She says she's never minded not having more girls in the classes; girls are silly and illogical, or something like that. However, she *has* expressed her concern on multiple occasions that the raw background experience of everyone in our classes makes her feel like she's completely out of her league.
It's a tough situation. I don't see an easy way out of it, unfortunately, since the problems tend to go all the way back to middle school or earlier.
Am I the only one who glanced at the topic and saw "Attractive woman in Computer Science" ???
IT Geeks have never been able to attract women, sad but true.
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
'Having a place in the home' isn't inferior, I respect it a lot, and actually "feel" more "worth" in it than in most jobs. It actually ticks me off a bit how girls are made to feel that all the classic "girl" stuff is so inferior to all the classic "boy" stuff and they could do math too if only they realized it; doesn't that actually reinforce the idea that things that require social skills and a "nurturing" nature aren't respectable? But social skills and a nurturing nature can be found in men, too, and not every woman is like somebody's idealized idea of femininity. Some are pretty offended by the notion that that's what they're supposed to be like, just like some men will be offended by the notion that they're supposed to be the money-making, fighting-the-hostile-world protector types.
I don't want to be told that I must/mustn't take this or that route because of the genitalia I was born with. (Yes, I think sexism always goes both ways, even if men get paid more for behaving appropriately.)
...just kidding. Now that I have your attention...
Women will always been in the minority in the math and science fields, and sorry, but it has damn little to do with societal norms or cultural pressure. As many have pointed out here, men and women are inherently different in ways that far transcend physical appearance. That doesn't mean that women aren't up to snuff for CS work, just that in general, most women aren't interested in such fields. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. There have been women that have made outstanding contributions to science, from Marie Curie to Admiral Grace Hopper. But they ARE exceptions. Biology (in the brain, specifically) has the most to do with this. Men and women are wired from birth for different tasks, in general, and there's no way to change that with a summer camp or targeted programs.
As for why the ratio may be worse in CS? Well, CS is mainly about programming, and as people here say, have you SEEN the programmers? Let's face it boys...there are a lot of geeky basement dwellers that have the duel curse of looking like an extra from Real Genius, and having the sexual fantasies of a Penthouse Forum writer. Not exactly a formula to make the ladies comfortable in a cubicle farm full of coders. Again, there are exceptions here. There are coders that are good looking, athletic, have good manners, etc. But CS definitely has a peculiar culture, and one in which many women just don't find desirable. The exception rule, as always, applies. So trying to artificially increase the ranks of women is probably a waste of time.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That's just wishful thinking...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
As I posted more than 12 years ago:
Seastead this.
I believe the more appropriate term is "lure"...
You mean when the job market for a particular type of job goes down, student enrollment does too? Amazing.
I think a better study would be, "The effects of cattle-prodding incomming male Computer Science students on their willingness to study a subject more conducive to their actually finding a job."
`which fortune`
Attracting woman into Computer Science (CS) isn't something which can be done by taking a 20 year old female and saying "have a job in CS". At the moment, such drives seek to undo the 20 years of the female being told both directly and (almost constant) indirectly that industries like CS and similar technical subjects aren't for them and that they should look more at people-focused industries (which just happen to be the lower paid industries like the service industry etc.).
This aptitude is enforced right from early childhood with the increased cuddling of baby girls and the buying of barbie dolls right through to all the ads telling them to spend their teenage allowance on cosmetics and other items in preperation for their 'need' to find a husband and start a family in their early 20's.
Yet most female recruitment drives seem to think they can undo this lifetime of enforcing a aptitude of "technical stuff isn't for girls" in a few weeks or less.
Ofcourse its not going to work, not that I can think of any method that actually would work. Would need a smart person.
The rewards would be large however, I have that if such attitudes were gotten rid of, the benefit to the economy would be the single biggest positive effect ever noticed, millions of extra workers and all.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but if women chose not to do Computer Science, so what?
I mean, its not like there's a general shortage of Software Developers.
I don't think positive discrimination is ever the right answer.
I don't really care about this issue, but a couple of things in the howto made me feel it really refers to a geek community remote not just from women but from most men...
Since women are socialized to not be competitive and avoid conflict,
I don't know where they found this Planet of Meek Women, but in any area of business I've been in the females are just as deadly as the males. This sounds like what someone _wants_ to believe.
That is nothing, absolutely nothing, to what the music industry does on a more-often-than-daily basis. Are there no women in the music industry? I don't see what this sort of shenanigans has to do with anything -- every industry has it and it's pathetic but luckily nobody cares.
Don't tell sexist jokes
Here they seem to be from the Planet of Dumb Men as well as the Planet of Meek Women. Who the hell still makes this kind of joke in an office? I don't think I'd want to work somewhere where you wouldn't get fired for (publically) offensive jokes, not because I care about offensive jokes but because I that's how companies that I want on my CV are likely to be.
Don't call people bitches
WHERE ARE THESE GUYS WORKING???
This says nothing about Linux or IT or the modern office. Maybe the stockroom of Walmart is different...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Well, actually, I attended a total of three summer events at colleges, while I was in Junior High or High School.
;)
The first one was called Summerquest and was at Eastern Michigan University. It was for both genders and covered a wide variety of topics. I was there for the Creative Writing part. I don't think anyone from that group is earning their living through writing...
The second one was called Summerscience for Girls, later, I believe, renamed, though I could be wrong. This was obviously just for females and included groups on Physics, Chemistry, etc. I was in the Physics group. I truly do believe that more of us ended up with an interest in science. In addition, I heard quite a few stories from girls who really had been discouraged by teachers and other adults from science and math, and I think that this summer program may have given them a bit more strength on that.
The third program I attended was the Michigan American Legion Auxillary Girls' State. Essentially, it was a thing for learning more about politics, and many of the girls who went were ones that were very involved in school politics and the like. While some of them were very bright, it was definitely not true of all of them, and I enjoyed it considerably less than the other two, where participants were sent based on academic record. It also totally turned me off any idea of going into law (I was my "city" lawyer) or politics.
I, personally, have not had a problem with _teachers_ or _parents_ discouraging me from science and math. I've been exposed to computers since I was four (ah, the TI 99-4/a), and always told I can do whatever I put my mind to do. On the other hand, I have certainly felt discouraged by peers, while I was in high school, at any rate, with the typical ridicule for getting good grades, being "too smart for my own good", and reading too much.
Despite the fact that I went to a college (www.rose-hulman.edu) that was only allowing women in in my class, the class of '99, I did not feel that there was anything wrong with my being there. I feel very little pressure of that nature here at work, despite being a programmer on a defense project.
Should be "Attractive Women Into Computer Science"
Do schools these days may computers available for girls to use, or do they have to fight off the nerdy guys?
And what happens when they get to uni, are they confronted by a bunch of undersexed drooling geek-lecturers/lechers and matching staff?
And don't forget if she actually survives that, usually by becoming an honorary bloke, there is the work force, where the customers and your co-workers all assume you're the one for the pabx, not the coding. You get put out in the hallway cube, you get zero peace and quiet for actual coding and you get the boss standing over your shoulder, trying to peer down the front of your shirt and then trying to tell you how to do your job when he clearly doesn't know how to work an IBM mainframe editor. Sheesh.
You see the guys who are slack bastards and do half as much work as you, get recommended for promotion ahead of you and your boss says "you aren't ready". Never mind the smary guys hiring at some other company think your fine.
Oh and working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that some companies expect, severely interferes with having a life.
I can't think why girls want nothing to do with it, even the geeky ones. It's easier to be a maths teacher in high school.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
As a father of 2 boys I have to agree with this post. They are very different to their female peers, this seems to peak when they are young and become more similar when they older. My younger son wanted a kitchen for Christmas when he was two and we bought him one which he was very happy with. Some friends who has more defined ideas of what they wanted their little boy to be refused a request for the same present. My son has moved on to be obsessed with football, to the point of sleeping with one every night, whereas his freind is one of the most effeminate boys I know (but a very nice child all the same)
But back on topic, CS is a huge field and why can't we adapt parts to gender specifics. My wife is an excellent linguist and has a very good eye for design, I can't spell in one language yet my wife finds me wierd because I can memorise all our credit card numbers and write many lines of code without notes. I often ask her advice on UI design and she comes up with much better ideas than I ever could.
This is only one example and I don't want to generalise to an "All women are good at arty stuff and men write code" level of simplicity. However, if we recognise differences are gender specific perhaps we can tailor courses appropriatly to appeal to all, rather than "CS is just assembler and code" reductionism which may put many off.
I remember when I was in High School, and when I graduated and went to a tech college (still there, going to 4th year) I heard a lot about this. My mother worked in the guidance office for a while when she got bored staying at home and shared a lot of interesting things.
One of the biggest things she saw was the advice given to these girls. Some of the guidance counsellors hesitated to suggest girls pursue technical interests. My high school is better than some, a fairly high ranking (nation wide) public school, and we're better than the majority of schools as far as this kind of thing goes, but it still happens. If the good high schools have guidance counsellors who hesistate to support the girls' interest in a technical field, what kind of message is that giving them?
High school girls (and of course younger) are constantly being told they don't have what it takes to make it in the tech world. It's often quite subtle, or even good natured such as guidance counsellors trying to help. But the result is that these girls have the idea impressed upon them that technology is not a field they should pursue. In high school they're pushed towards the honors and AP liberal arts classes, as opposed to the sciences like biology (always had the most girls though), chem and physics. The math department in my school was fairly homogeneous as were the AP science courses, but when it came to honors or electives you didn't see as many and I know people who came from other schools who said there were hardly any girls in AP math and science courses.
The industry has obviously shown it would love to have them, and the universities are trying to entice them, but I think most of the things preventing more women from entering technical fields are happen at a young age.
Presently here, but not there.
- UNESCO/GAB
Toolkit on Gender Indicators in Engineering, Science and Technology
- Comp Sci and Women (Yale)
- Gender and the Workplace
- Gender and Innovation Stats - DTI
Some further thoughts: here.It would also be really interesting to see what can be found in the Engineering Trends databases
This just in - the housekeeping industry is absolutely appalled at the lack of men in the profession. They have started summer housekeeping camps for highschool boys to try and attract more into the career.
More breaking news, the garbage collection industry has decided that it is also appalled at the lack of women in the industry, and has also started its own garbage-based summer camps for kids.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
That was the first thing I thought of. Where I work now there has been a good number of attractive women. They have all been Business Systems Analysts or Admin Assistants. They don't fall into the Computer Science category but who cares!
Losers whine about doing their best
Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen!
I dont think this would be an issue if not for the fact that many men (of the heterosexual persuasion at least) in computer science are not happy that there are very few women around them. Unhappy employees is bad for business. Though the article is by one "Marci Mcdonald", its audience is a bunch of news for nerds types who know what a HOWTO is, though they dont know how to. In the long run, I hope the culture of computer science will change, and help men become more sociable rather than retreat into themselves. Less HOWTOs and IRC and more hangin' out, keepin' in real yo. Perhaps this should be a topic for discussion in the future, and possibly even a HOWTO (HOWTO not need HOWTOs anymore...)
"Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country, and neither do we" - George W Bush
Yah, so im anonymous,(dont actually have an account, sorry) and can't prove that I'm actually a girl... but ah well. I go to Drexel University in Philadelphia, and am one of aproximatly 25 female CS majors (thats the entire undergraduate college)
My dad was a Cryptographer for the US navy, so there have always been computers around my house. I have known how to use them, and knew a little about programming when i got into school.
However, freshmen year I looked at the ratio, heard people saying "It will be hard" and there is alot of numbers involved and yadda yadda, so i majored in Political Science (I am joining the military after college, and wanted something that would help me pursue a career in the intelligence field)
Basically i couldn't stand the major, the classes were unchallenging, the professors opinionated and openly biased. I found because of a mutual interest in gaming, and anime, hanging out with all the traditional "geeks", and, since a couple of them were the "kde vs gnome" debating kind, i learned alot from them. I started asking them questions, and looking over their shoulder while they did their homework, and then at the end of freshmen year i took the one programing class allowed for non-cs majors
It was visual basic, and i got an easy A in it.
That fact, along with the support of my friends led me to change major the next year.
so, long story short, I'm a junior now, and i like where i am. Since im in the military also, it was easier to adjust to being in the minority, but i must admit it is strange to be the only girl in a 60 person lecture hall (one prof called me out, saying "the odds are good, but the goods are odd")
I personally think that all this talk of how girls cant learn math as well is BS, but it does influence girls when they pick their major... the idea is "you will be better at x and x and y"
its an uphill battle to prove them false, the only thing we (current girl cs majors) can do is be visible after graduating, and hopefully we will finally prove it wrong.
Why is it so important that women be in everything? If they don't like it then why force them? For some reason we are so damned concerned with quotas in the U.S. Are there an equal amount of men as gradeschool teachers? Do we care about that? Are there an equal number of white basketball players? No, of course not because "it's based on skill". When a white guy is more adept at something it's because of discrimination. If any other group is then it's "a victory for $group_name";
I said nothing disparaging about girls, girls in summer camps, girls in CS or women. I hope you aren't missing my point.
I merely find it hillarious, the idea of some pasty faced nerds concocting this scheme. Think 'Revenge of the Nerds' part(N)'s potential plotline.
Hell, the real camp would probably be run by some of the women in the CS industries overseeing the cirriculm. I wouldn't know.
It is still funny to imagine the hard-up geeks scheming up a captive audience like that.
I think that perhaps this recession could be a natural thing. All of the female CS students really have a passion for learning about computers and technology. This is something that wasn't taught to them, but something that they pretty much have always had. Certainly, you can't expect every group of people to have the same likes and dislikes of every other group, so it could just be that at this point in time there are less females interested in CS than before. I think the only thing that we really need to watch out for is females who are interested in CS but feel like they can't do well because of their sex.
SIGFAULT
now...also notice that the subject in question didn't turn out to be a CS major, did [s]he?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
1 - The total number of CS majors in the USA has dropped. There are probably less percent of all minorities approaching the field. The original hard core was white males, and that's what it's returning to as CS jobs become blue-collar in the USA - like food crop farming today compared to the 70s.
2 - CS isn't as attractive a major across-the-board anymore. The luster is long gone from "computers" as a general career. A CS major in 1990 meant a six-figure entry level job. Today it doesn't even mean a job. The computer has become a commonplace and regular work tool rather than a mysterious arcane item requiring the constant supervision of a skilled master. An IT degree is more than enough for most real-world techs these days. CS and Systems Analysis are now, in terms of post-collegiate careers, closer to Physics or Mathematics degrees than any of the concrete-bound disciplines like IT. The less mainstream appeal, the less diversity from the hard core.
3 - Also there's the white elephant of socialization that no amount of hand-wringing is going to change. Females in the society are still in large part conditioned away from hard sciences at an early age. As geeky careers fade out of the mainstream limelight and become commoditized this should change, but it'll be really (generationally) slow going.
4 - The "boys' club" mentality of traditional corporate America is also a roadblock, one that the typical open-minded liberal nature of engineers (who have been married to corporate America) dovetails with to create a new situational environment where females cannot use the old method of female advancement, sexual predation on males in the hierarchy, to their advantage, but are also not "raised up" to be equally considered along with men. A smart girl will fail, and so will a slut, and so will a slutty smart girl. There's no way to win as a woman unless you just get lucky.
...the number of women earning computer science degrees in this country has plummeted over the past two decades...
I can't help but think how this time period just happens to be the same as the rise of Object-Oriented Programming.
Now, I wouldn't have come up with this if it weren't for the fact that I read an OOP-mainfesto paper out of Rice University that, among many other arguments, asserted that OOP is better for women and minorities. (!) And yet, I pondered, the rise of OOP is synchronous with women running from the CS programs in the last 20 years.
Not sure how to make a cause-and-effect theory out of this. However, the paper I read argued that women prefer more "real-world problem solving". Although they asserted that OOP satisfied that, I might think that procedural applications are more in that category than a focus on purely abstract component design as in a lot of OOP programs.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
You know, I used to believe in all this equality, bring women into male-dominated fields, etc. Lately though, I'm wondering "who" is trying to please "who" with all these initiatives? I've known plenty of women that went into engineering/comp sci careers. They didn't seem to have any problems using their smarts to get in. So why do we need to encourage more people? If they want to, the door is open. If they don't want to, fine. All these attempts at changing the culture by trying to get more bodies in seats feels like a hack. I think a lot of it is driven by men who want more women around just for a change of pace, or women (and men!) already in the field who just feel there should be more because "it feels right". Leave the door open, and let them decide. If they don't want to, so what?
Wow, I misread the title as "Attractive Women in Computer Science". I thought, yeah right, next we'll see "Microsoft Security", "Great Profits in Dot Coms", and "Easter Bunny to Bring Cash after Dentist Sues".
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
I thought it said "ATTRACTIVE Woman IN Computer Science". I got pretty excited there for a moment.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If a woman ever gave me crap, I'd be like, "Listen missy, you get your bitch ass back in the kitchen AND MAKE ME SOME PIE!"
We have a thread which basically only says "let's try to attract them to CS. Who knows, they might even like it?"
We're _not_ talking about enforcing 50% quotas. We're _not_ talking about punishing people for not hiring women. We're _not_ talking about any extra incentives to hire women either.
It's _only_ about introducing some people to programming. Just a stupid summer camp with computers. That's all.
Yet someone feels a need to throw a tantrum about "feminazis" and "man-haters", and inherent gender differences, and how it's ok to keep them in underpaid underling roles. 'Cause, you see, those are important too.
Someone for whom the very idea of women even being invited to a stupid CS-themed summer camp, is already enough to trip a whole rant.
You're talking about conducting an interview to see who's got the skills. (Much as I believe objective CS interviews to be on par with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, but at least the intention is there. Or the wishful thinking.) Whereas he is going on a tantrum at the mere idea of women being introduced to computers.
Sorry, that _is_ discrimination.
Dunno about you, but I'll call him a flaming idiot all right.
Dunno about you, but I hope such bigotted idiots aren't allowed anywhere _near_ a hiring position. Someone who's mortally offended by the idea of even letting women near a computer on a summer camp... there's no way in heck I can believe that such people can be objective and biased in a job interview. More likely he'll just go offended by the idea of women in non-underling roles again.
Look, I'm not demanding quotas or anything. (Although, come to think of it, it couldn't make hiring in this industry more of a joke than it already is, anyway.) I'm not saying to prefer hiring women or anything.
I'm just saying: start with an open mind, and at least try to keep prejudices out of the way. And FFS, don't throw tantrums to the mere idea of a CS summer camp for girls. That's all.
And if you're already doing that, well, you're not the kind I was calling an idiot anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Every year, various IBM sites around the world hold a week long summer camp for grade 7 and 8 girls. The do various type of projects including programming Lego Mindstorm robots...
"women dropping from 37 percent to 28 percent of graduates--at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared"
Sounds to me like they are just better at not being duped by things like the dot-com craze. A whole lotta women scientists, just not computer ones....
Most /.'ers would like to know how we attract more women to computer scientists.
That said, the answer to both questions overlap. I've spoken to a few women that dropped out of CS programs because they felt inadequate in an all-boys club.
Maybe if they felt comfortable with us, they'd actually stay in the program. Oh, and maybe a few of us would get to date them too.
Real live women... that actually like computers (as opposed to only seen via a computer)... you gotta like it.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
It was pretty darned cool to walk into a roomful of ms/phd female cs students. We had women from all over the US and Canada. I still keep up with some of the women I met.
The issue of why so few women are in computer science is a complicated issue with no easy fixes. I think we all suffer whenever there is a lack in diversity in any of our workplaces. At my school, we started a group for female computer science students. In the undergrad program, women were about 11%; grad, ~ 33% and most not american students. The general trend is that women come into the program excited about the major. Over time and in their classes, the enthusiasm is extinguished and the women switch to other majors. The objective for our women in cs group was to offer a support group to combat the isolation and retain the few women we had. I think consideration of the women in cs issue will improve the field for anyone that does not see themselves as the 'typical' male geek hacker getting sunburn from their monitor.
I strongly encourage anyone really interested in the dynamics involved to pick up the book mentioned in the article, Unlocking the Clubhouse by Margolis and Fisher.
Going to all those CS classes filled with guys, and no girls to look at, really sucked. How can one be motivated to learn?
100% Insightful
I agree with you they should stay out of IT, but CS is a hot field right now! http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/26/pf/college/pay/?cn n=yes
Ok just to make my viewpoint more clear. I'm not trying to say that we are predetermined by nature. However we are not simply products of our environment either. Influencing children's interests is not as easy as giving Timmy dolls or Teri toy guns.
Are people good at things because they like them, or are do people like things they are good at doing? Its not an easy question to answer and I believe that it has a lot to do with childhood development.
I'm sorry, all packets to and from msn.com and all it's subdomains on this network are sent to the black hole. But google will suffice today.
Its easy to find material that supports both sides of the issue, the link I provided earlier was uniuqe in that he was a twin and early on Dr. Money used him to provide evidence to support the Nurture crowd. How did you choose your point of view?
I'd say for starters, he killed himself with pills[right?]...more common method used by females to commit suicide.
Poor example... lots of men kill themselves with pills too.
being a social reject turned into tomboy freak.
He didn't know he was a boy until he was 15.
this is a poor example, secondly, as having early childhood trauma of having your penis burned off would well put a person out of their normal state wahtever that may be
This is a really good point, but you must also consider that he was under frequent physicological treatment by Dr. Money, who at the time was considered a leader in the field.
No time to spell check... forgive any errors.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
It seems that computer science, as a whole, is on a steady decline as far as popularity goes. Here in Australia, most computer science courses are now easier to get into now than they were three years ago only because nobody is interested in that field anymore.
Coding can be stressful. I've seen computer science students (female, incidentally) burst into tears because they can't get their code working and it's two hours to the due date of a two week assignment. Teaching standards are declining and most research topics are uninteresting for a final year project. I've found not one CS graduate who has thought that their computer science degree was worth it.
No wonder nobody wants to do it anymore.
Thats just it nobody can tell anybody what to do you can only be told how important you are and how much you are needed and maby you'll understand the honor and responsibility of your gender in the fabric of all our lives.
For more about this theory, see Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists? by Ellen Spertus.
All said.
They don't offer a CS degree. They don't even have a CS department- the Math faculty teach the half a dozen CS courses we offer. (IMHO, not a bad thing) Explain that to me. I've asked people and never gotten a coherent answer beyond "We don't think that it would be a big enough major to justify the expense." Meanwhile, less than 10 miles away another women's college has 5% of their students graduate with CS degrees.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Maybe there are fewer women computer science students because there are fewer comptuer science students overall. I have seen articles about this. It makes sense, who would want to spend 4 years of college majoring in a field that is being outsourced? I'm glad the dude from microsoft in the article is appalled, but if he wants more American women in computer science perhaps he should convince his company to stop exporting quality computer sciences jobs overseas.
I don't see why anyone, male or female would be attracted to computer science these days. Salaries have fallen and there are not many jobs (we won't whine against outsourcing right now). Also, there's a tendency for women to get paid less than men in the tech world. And the best looking guys are in Pol Sci :)
I am constantly chasing my daughter away from my computer. Of course, she is not quite two and her best trick is to press the power button. Thank god for autosave and journalled filesystems!
The real silver bullet to good programs is caffeine; lots and lots of caffeine! *twitch, twitch*
Anyone ever see linuxchicks.org? I once subscribed to their mailing list in order to meet women. Of course, I had to use a female name in order to subscribe. It was interesting reading posts about why representing decimals as doubles didn't cause them to be displayed twice. twice.
:)
Anyway, I've cracked the cause of why there aren't so many women in cs! I tried connecting to linuxchicks.org and discovered that it had been "explicitly blocked" by my company's web proxy.
How are secretaries ever supposed to get into IT, if they can't connect to linuxchicks.org, whilst sitting around and surfing all day?
Good think I'm an Anonymous Coward.
This aptitude is enforced right from early childhood with the increased cuddling of baby girls and the buying of barbie dolls right through to all the ads telling them to spend their teenage allowance on cosmetics and other items in preperation for their 'need' to find a husband and start a family in their early 20's.
The nature vs nurture debate has been completely, conclusively and totally won by nature. In addition to that, the nurture side was completely, conclusively and totally obliterated.
Your fem-chauvinist bullshit might have worked ten years ago but it won't wash now.
Just give me a computer and get out of my way. Really. You can affirm my value as a programmer or scientist after I've accomplished something - just like anybody else.
Computer work is women's work isn't it?
Come to think of it, what do women do? I see a lot of women in health care, secretarial, teaching.
When I studied computers there weren't that many women, but most of the female students continued into graduate school.
More and more girls are getting educated it seems due to economic and societal pressures. I guess out of sheer probability the female enrollment in computer science will increase. Computer work nowadays is neither strenuous nor time consuming. It can be done at home. Women with children can still work. It's ideal.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Dupe!
(I'm joking)
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
A study was done at Texas A&M University regarding male and female monkeys playing with toys. It seems the monkeys preferred toys according to their sex, and right in line with sexual stereotypes.
Boy monkeys played with toy trucks and girl monkeys played with dolls.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I would be interested in hearing more real-life examples of this theory. Something to back it up.
I also would be interested in what evidence you have that homosexuality is a function of being sexually and politically marginalized. I'm kind of skeptical of your claims about Christianity as well - you seem to be saying that lack of Christian faith is a result of some kind of white guilt, which implies that humans are inherently Christian. I find this to be a largely unsupported statement.
Why should companies want females with computer science degrees? Simple, they can do the work as well as anyone else, and you get to pay them 78% [SeattleTimes] of what a man will work for. Imagine the savings.
When the percentage of female geeks is noticably less than female mechanics or builders, *then* I'll be surprised.
I'm all for female geeks, but I'd rather not force them in the name of political correctness.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
INDEED!
Of the few girls there are in my Engineering and Computer Science classes, the ones that are actually doing well cannot relate to the majority of other girls.
A female friend of mine refers to the majority of girls as "fluffy."
And she proclaims herself not to be a girl, but a Female Engineer. The vast majority of her friends are male because by her own admission, men tend to be more logical.
I, for one, am a firm supporter of women in engineering (you think I like my classes being sausage parties?) but artificial enticement is wrong and will not help women be successful in these fields.
I teach lab at a university as well, the few women students in my labs are at extremes of the spectrum, there are some of them that truly enjoy what they do and exceed most, if not all of the male students (whether out of uncanny natural ability or by the desire to prove themselves), and there are some that are the worst students I have and have to be spoon fed everything and do not seem to really want to be there.... they seem to have been pushed into their degree for whatever reason. There are not that many in the middle of the curve. Its pretty much A or F.
Oh you don't do that, that is just some women who do that and some men as well?
Then why do you lump together all men?
I have worked with a number of women in both tech and non-tech, in both boss and superior roles and I think that sexism goes both ways and you just proved me right once again.
Many techies are not the greatest communicators, don't attribute to sexism what can be attributed to pisspoor verbal skills.
I sometimes get a kind of glazed look. It usually happens when a non-geek woman tries for whatever perverted reason to join a geek conversation. The glazed look comes from trying to work out how much you gotta dumb down the conversation without it becoming insulting. The same occurs when non-geek guys try to talk geek but there we don't care about being insulting.
Best way to avoid the glazed geek look? Don't talk to us. Many many women already took this advice.
As to the problem of CS students. I think many men take CS because it is their hobby. The few women I met who are into CS mostly took it as a career option. They figured that it is light physical highly paid work and they got the brains so why not. Or they become programmers as a step up to management. Only one woman I ever met in work was into programming for her hobby. And she was working in Human Resources. Oh the irony.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
when i started reading the topic my reaction was ...first they refuse my articles, and now are publishing every mail they get as articles, even spam!"
"what the?!?!
What you say sounds strangely comforting (even though it does get me riled up a little), and I wish I felt like I had a place, but I suspect that in the real world I won't ever be capable of actually living by either gender's role without sorta reassembling my mind, and even then it might not be the "appropriate" gender's role. And the same or something similar goes for most of my friends, I believe. I'm all for pointing out that being a house-wife/-husband isn't a "failure" in any way; all I'm really opposed to is telling one half of the population that that's their "place" and the other half that something else is theirs, biologically predisposed or not.
So what if there aren't enough women in CS? So long as there isn't some troll department head with a hatred for women turning them away in droves, what do you expect us to really do about it?
:)
It seems to me, if you want to get more women into CS (or any other technical field) you just need to get their parents to let the idea slip into their daughters heads ever now and again. My wife was once a CS major, thankfully she changed to civil engineering. She was a miserable cuss when she had to start debugging. I love it, she hates it. It's not a statement about the sexes, but a statement that sometimes you have to do what you want to do. She is an amazing civil engineer, somethng that I would be a miserable cuss if I had to do. It's just personal preference.
She would make the worlds shittiest nurse
The funny thing is, she wanted to be an art major. Right before she graduated high school someone finally made the suggestion that she try engineering. She was (is) very good at math, and no one told her engineering was a career option until her senior year. She liked it because it blended art and math, really a natural choice for her. You don't have to take a girl to a summer camp to get her interested in something, you just have to say "Hey, you might want to look into this, it could be good based upon your skills". That's all it takes.
Of course CS peeps could do much better about not being such lonely and sad people. I have a male friend with the name Kelly. He's a CS major, getting his graduate degree right now. One day he turned in his assignment and the TA began emailing him. Why? Because he thought Kelly was a girl, and he decided to email "her" to let her know that "her" code was so beautiful he wanted to know how a girl did it.
My friend freaked out enough thinking the TA knew he was a guy. I can only imagine how pissed off a woman would have been had the TA been right about the sex. This from a TA at Georgia Tech. Totally uncalled for.
So the solution is obviously get parents to actually show their children the jobs that are available from a young age, and for young CS guys to stop getting off on every techie chick they see. Sure, being a techie chick makes you totally hot, but keep it in your pants young man! You don't hit on people in class, you hit on them after class. Jeez.
But if you aren't a guy in college, or a man with a daughter, what the hell am I supposed to do about it, and why should I care?
I've been told by my university professor that in Spain over 50% of the students is female...
I've noticed a phenomenon, too, that I call "geek chest beating." To picture it, think of gorillas trying to intimidate one another by standing tall and beating their chests. Geeks (male geeks) do the same sort of thing.
Everytime one geek jumps down the others throat because the first forgot a semicolon in a piece of code he posted during an online discussion ("Your code doesn't even compile, dunce!"), or because the first called Windows XP an operating system ("An operating system is technically only the code that deals directly with the underlying hardware!!!") -- that's geek chest beating.
You see examples of this in other professions, where men jump down one another's throats to correct trivial inaccuracies in an attempt to prove that they are in fact the alpha of the group. If someone where to claim that it is at its worst in computer fields, I wouldn't dispute the claim.
What woman in her right mind would put up with that kind of crap?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
The nature versus nuture question is a red herring in this debate (which I guess I have to address anyway). If we're going to argue that one sex is inherently "better" than another, as a woman in the computer field I'd argue that I'm better at what I do than most of my male collegues? Why? Because I've had to try three times as hard just to get legitimacy. Yes, this is arrogance, but it's no more arrogant than the dozens of comments on how men's "innate" ability makes them better able to work with computers than women. I had to do the group projects and study groups just like anyone else - and still wound up with a 4.0 (often for approaching problems from different/new perspectives) - while most of my classmates seemed to think I was failing. Fortunately I'm fairly stubborn and know I'm good at what I do. I also was lucky enough to have a couple of mentors that saw what I was capable of - both inside (all male mentors) and outside of the field. Why do I make that last comment? - because I believe that men (and the few women) in the field need to understand that women and other minorities can add value too and that it is to everyone's advantage to encourage both sexes/genders, as well as other minorities, to explore what they want to do with their lives.
There are multiple studies about the "clubhouse effect", particularly within the scientific community. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it means that even where there is no innate difference in the abilities of the "club member" and "outsider", it is less easy for the "outsider" to get the support needed to succeed. That is a real experience of nearly every non-traditional computer student or professional I've talked to (primarily female or african-american male minority groups).
I mean, what will the benefit be? To those women, to the industry, to the companies? I really can't figure that one out. Why doesn't the headline read: "40% of women want to be in IT but can't get into the clique", instead of: "WE want more women in IT, because, err.. well because!".
I couldn't care less if the were less or more women in my CS classes, and I don't think they care either.
I attended a fairly highly regarded engineering school in the 70's, which had started admitting women only a few years before and where women represented only 10% of the student body. One thing my female friends consistently cited as a factor making the school uncomfortable was the fact that there was never the ability to choose when be noticed vs. fading into anonymity; for example, they were always the woman in the class, and their presence or absence was always noticed. In short, they lost the ability to control their "presence" which we all usually take for granted.
I suspect that it is possible to try too hard to attract women (or any demographic group, for that matter) and consequently make the situation uncomfortable simply because it becomes the center of sometimes unwanted, even if well-intentioned, attention. Which is not to say that it is not worthwhile to figure out what the negative factors in the environment are and try to remove them.
Achille Talon
Hop!
All that can discourage women already in the field, but it can also discourage their daughters. Do you think mom's job looks attractive when she comes home complaining that a room full of men wouldn't let her run her meeting, or interrupted her presentation with chest-pounding attention-getting nonsense? Do you think she raves about her male co-workers gathering in packs for career-enhancing back-scratching? Do you think she praises the model of fairness that is the performance appraisal process?
Amy
There are too many people in this field as it is. I don't think we need to "attract" anyone. Male or female.
Computer Science? Please, they just need to look pretty, make me a sandwich, and maybe pop out a baby or two.
The day I see an article titled "Attracting women to the garbage collection industry" then I will start believing in "equality". At the moment, however, it appears ok to leave those jobs as male dominated, but jobs which pay well and are performed in nice environments for some reason cannot be male dominated. Give me a break.
Even better, hire women in INDIA!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Peer pressure wether it is to do well or not well is immense and very hard to resist for most people. Geeks seem to be imune to it. Ask any real geek if he/she ever felt pressured to wear a certain type of clothing, fail or pass an exam, listen to certain music and the answer will probably be no.
We may feel the pressure like you feel discouraged but we don't let it influence us. Some people call this being socially inept. Not caring about others opinions does have some drawbacks but it also allows you to go against the stream.
For some reason many girls are unable to do this. The pressure to get a boyfriend and to please this boy even if this means dumbing themselves down is just to great.
Whose fault is this? No-ones really. It is just the way it is. You can blame men for being boys but if boys are such assholes then blame mothers for raising them and wives for having their childeren.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Lemme get this straight. Don't tell sexist jokes. Don't call people bitches. Show some respect. Don't make sexual advances. Don't treat women stereotypically. Yet the website for women interested in Linux is called LinuxChix ???!!!
So I shouldn't make sexual avances or call people bitches, but calling them chicks is OK?!?!?! WTF!?!?!? I smell a double-standard here.
I'll say that I feel as though I'm a white male being left behind and biased against due to these M/F ratios.
... and what do I see happen? She gets the coveted co-op at Cisco. Why? Because she has a vagina.
I attend Rochester Instute of Technology's Information Technology program. We have almost no females in our classes. Whatever, the entire college's ratios is like that, nothing special in IT. (something like 8% of IT is female) -- They have females in IT groups, etc. -- whatever.
I've always viewed that there's two types of people that go to RIT for technology school:
1. People who have been into technology forever, and go to RIT cuz its the best, so they actually learn more.
2. People who woke up yesterday, decided they'd play with a computer, and go to RIT cuz of the name, and don't have a clue.
RIT is designed to be for group 1. Based on what I see at normal schools (ala Penn State University, University Park Campus), Nearly every IT course PSU offers -- RIT assumes you've learned in HS.
Now here's my ratio beef: I've had a few classes with this one girl -- she's from Type 2
She doesn't understand technology. All she does is studies real hard, retains info, and regurgitates it. She has no comprehension of the subject matter, how to solve a problem, or write a new SQL statement. She passes her classes because she does extra credit, completes all the assignments, then barely passes test. (at RIT, its more than just a midterm and final that determine your grade).
This I have a problem with. She will indoubtdly continue her education at RIT, not actually learn how to troubleshoot/(or even how to learn things on her own -- she only learns by being force-fed the info in class) -- she never does anything with technology outside the classroom..
And now she will have no problem getting a job in the workforce, even though shes a poorer quality worker.
Because she has a vagina.
I rue the day she is applying for the same job as me.
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
John West rejects need not apply.
You need logic to program computers. You can't program them with emotions.
I am a housewife with a CS degree. While I agree the field should not be made artificially more attractive, the measures for keeping females in the field seemed mostly reasonable.
I do agree that boys and girls do tend to like differant things. I've seen many boys investigate how toys work, something my daughter does not do. Instead she prefers to make up stories about them. Howver, remember that boy brains and girl brains are biological systems with a lot variablity individuals do have unique preferences and talents. Not encouraging girls to go into math or engineering if they are interested in these things could lead to an unfortunate waste of talent.
Simple as that.
It's an industry where we pride on being slobs but get an amazing accomplishment met before insane due dates. It's where we practically shut away everything else and sit at the computer for hours/days/weeks/months on end. We'll overlook social events and even other possibilities just so we can finish something that seems stupid and rediculous to normal people.
It's just an endless stream of puzzles that we like to solve.
But, if we accomplish our goals, we don't get fame or grand fortune. Recognition of achievement is sometimes enough for us and that doesn't even come right away. There's no superficial reward that you can easily advertise.
Like taking caring of cute, cuddley animals? Be a vet. Like taking care of little babies, be a pediatrician. Every stereotype undersun can easily advertise and encourage woman to these fields. How do you introduce computers to a young lady's life?
Besides, those who've attended highly technical schools/classes realize that it's not easy for a girl to take this field seriously. The work's rediculous, guys are constantly hitting on you, or hanging around, who are more than willing to give you their work to which they gain nothing. Tech schools will always have a rediculous ratio of guys to girls (mine was 9 to 1). Imagine if the tables were turned, how could you concentrate in an environment where you'd be one guy out of 10 girls? This isn't a field where you afford to lose your concentration.
It's practically a gender lockout. It's not as easy it looks. Especially with the recent decline in technical majors, and the downing tech economy, it's not exactly rewarding.
First of all, not everyone is the next Hemingway or the next Chopin. We can attract as much as we want to say music, but that doesn't mean that suddenly we'll have so many great musicians. We will have a couple more, but also a great number of people you'd never want to listen to.
Attracting people to a place of work, or a school, makes sense - people have an idea what direction they want to go to and shop for the best offer in that direction. Attracting people to direction is a perfect recipe for plenty of disillusioned and frustrated career changers later.
PS: Haven't we seen enough of dot com bust?
One thing I've observed that is different about computer science from other fields, even other engineering fields is how early people express interest. Many hardcore techies from a very early age say things along the lines of "Ever since I first used a computer, I loved every minute of it, mastering everything about how to use it blah blah" and so on. For whatever reason, that isn't as common with chemistry, law and other fields.
When people start their first year computer science classes, you put these people in the same class with other people that may have dabbled with computers, but really do not know much. It would be the equivalent of a first year chemistry class where half of the class already made solid state rockets. The teachers and TAs, who are often computer scientists first and teachers second, often tend to gravitate and spend more time with these whizkids and leave the others in the dust. I know of many people -- male and female -- that have experienced this frustration of being left in the dust.
Why this is a phenomenon that seems specific to computer science is up in the air. Maybe it is because of the relative accessability of the field; you can practice computer science on a $800 PC, but chemistry sets aside, you cannot practice advanced chemistry at home.
For whatever reason, these people that fall in love with computer science at a very early age tend to be male, for whatever reason. This isn't to say that one has to rule computer science out if you are not into it by one's tenth birthday, just that it is most certainly a barrier.
Okay, I'm only seeing posts from guys, or from women who are actually working in IT, not from women who like computers/programming but who AREN'T working in IT.
I was interested in computers and took a programming class in high school --PASCAL. (Yeah, I'm old.) I was one of two girls in the class; the instructor ignored us both, unless he was standing WAY TOO CLOSE. The guys did not want to partner with us for programming projects (although MY code always worked, dammit). My dad bought a PS/2; I was the only one in the house who used it. I took another class in college (Hypercard, also called Computer Programming as a Liberal Art). Two quarters. It was interesting (and taught by Don Crabb, anyone remember him?) but not very technical. My technical questions (How Do It Work?) were met by pats on the head and suggestions to just work with the program, not take it apart.
I got a job in a very women-friendly field. However, my job brought me in contact with SGML/XML and (surprise!) Perl. I taught myself Perl from an O'Reilly book. I did a huge conversion project, all by myself, that would have cost my employer $25K to send out-of-house. When it finally ran, perfectly, I spent twenty minutes trying to find a co-worker to tell who would understand why I was so happy!
I love Perl and use it almost every day. I enjoy programming immensely. I have three computers in arm's reach (two Macs and a PC) and another two in the next room. I don't need to call some guy to fix my network settings or my printer (I replaced the rollers on my laser jet myself). I might not be the best programmer ever, but I can hack my way through most of the problems that I need to solve. I even interviewed for a programming job once, but only as a way to get my then-employer to realize how much I was actually worth. (It worked, I got a 15K raise.)
Perhaps we don't need to encourage women to go into CS, but rather let them know how CS skills can enhance their worth in other jobs that they may be interested in. (I find that I don't like to hire people who express disdain for computers -- it's like hiring people to do construction work that don't like hammers.) Also, I totally don't understand why people say women aren't good at programming -- they're programming LANGUAGES, aren't they? Women are supposed to be good at languages. (I find a language like Perl, that has so many Ways To Do It, very easy to work with. If the computer doesn't understand me the first time, I just rephrase my question. Just like I do with my husband. Simple.)
(And I would have loved a computer camp. All those cute geeky boys, at a ratio of 5:1 or better?)
When societies go into degenerative modes the leading males tend to be more sexually exploitive so I can believe Papadopoulos's failure to connect the dots appropriately is driven by some sort of decadence, as you suggest.
Seastead this.
I thought the reason women entered CS was to find rich husbands. Now that the bubble has burst and there are fewer rich men around, they are abandoning the field.
For crying out loud, the only thing the majority of you seem to be able to say is: "but men and women are different".
The whole point is not to make women more like men. If the only answer to getting more women into Comp Sci was to make women more like men, then we might as well all save our collective (very repetitive) breath.
We know that many women are smart. We know that many women are excellent problem-solvers. We just don't yet know how to inspire women to use their talents in the Comp Sci field. That is where the challenge is. It isn't in getting women to change. The challenge is finding a way to think outside the traditional, linear box that Comp Sci sits in right now, to come up with the way that this vast, untapped group of people can use their own skills in a way that satisfies them and inspires them!
And, by the way, yes I'm a girl geek, yes I am good at what I do, and no, somehow playing with dolls as a child did not naturally predispose me to be a nurse or a teacher. That's right, I am feminine - analytical - and a geek and proud of it. The fact that I act like a girl (and have since birth) has nothing to do with whether or not I am capable of getting a comp sci degree. I'm very sorry to disappoint you... Just because we're different does not mean we cannot accomplish the same goals.
Ug. Now y'all got me riled up....
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
According to a study done at Bernard College, most women, despite their mathematical abilities, had little or no interest in pursuing a career involving mathematics. Other women were found to be stricken with anxiety about their math skills, even though they were significantly capable of it, and were discouraged out of related careers.
I'm not saying that all women are worrisome; I'm also not saying that there is no sexism in CS, because there is...some. Sure, maybe they were qualified to pursue CS, but perhaps they found some other field that better suits their interests, or maybe they didn't feel that they could keep up with the more experienced professionals (geeks), so they decided to study another program that they know they're good at. I considered CS at one point in time, but I wasn't "good enough" in my mind, so I decided to pursue CAD. I still think that I'm not smart enough to continue my education in the CAD field and have considered becoming a police sniper, even with 3 years of CAD under my belt!
Damn the talking Barbie that said "Math is hard". If damn Mattel didn't put that doll out, we'd see more more women in CS.
People speaking with you may, voluntarily or involuntarily, be taking in just what it is they are looking at. As you are well aware, you are not the same as most women out there, which has the potential to confuse a lot of people.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
+ve != -ve and males!=females
females and males are different no matter what anyone says
i dont know abt ur statistics
there are only 50 or so...female students in our uni(CS dept)why???
because the entrance tests test maths physics and chemistry in which **I FIND(my O)** males have an advantage
you only have to look at the JEE http://www.iitd.ac.in/jee/ results for proof
but check out the public board exam results
of X grade....here females outscore males...
why???
somethin like above
Are you the thought police? This fascist way of thinking is going to make everybody miserable in the long run.
What kind of an absurd statement is it to "keep your hormones in check." I'm sick and tired of being told that I am to act like a goddamn robot.
if there were som attracting woman in my CS dept in college (actually there was one girl) and one at work with me she would def. not be feeling isolated - i would make sure of that...
I direct the Interdisciplinary Computer Science graduate program at Mills College in Oakland, California. We offer a unique set of programs allowing people with a bachelor's degree in another field to transition into CS or interdisciplinary work. About three-quarters of our students are female and only discovered after college that were interested and talented in computing. There aren't many programs specialized to such people, male or female, and they add a great deal to the field, both as straight computer scientists and people with cross-displinary expertise.
Anyway, we're having an open house on Thursday, August 19. See ics.mills.edu for more details.
Carnegie Mellon has done studies on closing the gender gap, and they also have a book out, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing
I have found there are a lot of women in the graphics and web design fields.
Reality is, point by point, it can be 100% refuted today.
Reading down the comments modded 4/5 there seem to be a huge number proposing that to get more women involved, us geeks shouldn't chat them up, and we shouldn't ask them out, and we shouldn't hit on them.
The fact that so many people could write this, and the fact that so many people could moderate this horsecrap up probably explains alot of why women don't want to be in our fields.
Let's start with some basics:
1] Women want sex. Often as much as men, sometimes more.
2] Women like attention - a woman who hates to be chatted up/to is very, VERY rare.
3] Women like things that build up their self esteem, such as being asked to dinner, etc. etc.
However, counterpoints:
1] Women don't like to be asked out the blue, that's creepy. Don't hit on someone you've never met in the office - get to know them first, chat etc. Make a point of conversation, regardless of how obvious. In fact, if it's obvious you're straining for it then great, this is what's known as FLIRTING. Smile once in a while too. Maybe fetch her a coffee or something.
2] Women don't like to be HARRASSED. If you received a "no" then leave it at that. But you can keep chatting to her and flirting (though maybe tone it down a bit now). The ball is now in her court.
3] Women like clean men. So wash. Every morning. Cut your hair regularly and shave every day or two. Ask a female friend or your mother to take you out, and spend ALOT of cash on some well cut clothes that fit you. If things don't fit you because you're out of shape, then you'd better pray your personality is good, or that you find some willpower to burn some pounds quickly.
The above is fairly basic advice, but from the loooks of all the comments on this thread it seems it needs to be said. If people want evidence, how about looking at other environments with both male and female workers:
Bar Work - girls and lads fuck. Alot.
Office Work - girls and lads fuck.
Shop Work - girls and lads fuck.
Sales/Marketing - girls and lads fuck. Alot
Everyone fucks. Thats both men and women. Why the hell do so many blokes think that women want to be treated differently in our profession than all the others?
Parent is an OBVIOUS joke - and was modded up "funny" until the troll patrol hit it up.
I hope the meta-moderators have better sense of humor
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Why should I care about this? If sex doesn't make a difference then why should I care? Women are weird and you'll never change their aversion to being alone.
can we continue this discussion on YIM? My YIM and /. nicks are the same. l8tr
How many women are put off by the dredging work and assinine politics that most software projects consist of?
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Pay a programmer $75 per hour, and the women will start coming around. Make a programmer a manager, and the women will start to line up.
"Power attracts wealth, and affection" - Unknown
I think the issue of women in IT is a distraction and a waste of time. It's hard enough to get a diverse workplace in IT in terms of race and culture, nevermind gender. And even then- with the sustained deskilling of the IT profession- this is all going to an entirely different level where the cheapest third world backwater is where the meniality of code production is going to be anchored.
Let's focus on taking computing out of university computer science departments, turning it into the apprenticed trade it deserves to be, with salaries and respect commensurate with an apprenticed trade. The female issue can be dealt with after this, for those who think it important, silly as that is.
Can we have a new mod category for comments on stories about this: "+5 I'm male and I don't understand the need"? ... and a way to filter those out?
my university does a summer camp for high school girls. My lab gave them a demo (robots).
:P
Most "CS people" aren't code monkeys. Especially the people they introduce these girls to - remember they're trying to get them interested in CS. So we demo one part flashiness, one part educational. And during my demo I heard a couple whispering "hey he's cute"
You're thinking of the overall slashdot crowd, which from what I've seen, knows very little about CS in general. Those of us who actually make a difference in the world of computing don't care about KDE, Gnome, Microsoft or whatever little pissing fights slashdotters get themselves into.
-
There's that one that hung around Charlie Babbage, and the one that found the first "bug", a moth in this case, inside the ENIAC, and that one that seems to follow Billy Gates wherever he goes.
Then there's Lynn Conway.
I've been in the IT profession for 10 years now, I am good at it, and I love it. One of the things that has allowed me to succeed in this profession is that 1) I can't stand spending too much time with other people and 2) I have accepted #1.
I don't wanna go to lunch, I don't wanna go shopping, I don't wanna talk on the phone. Ever.
I want to net search a solution to my latest tech problem; I want to program a visual display of the mandelbrot set in C in my spare time. I want to crack that tricky sql query. I want to advance my Cisco certification. I want to lurk on slashdot. So, leave me alone with my machine!
But I had to accept those things about myself. It was hard for a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. I felt sorry and slighted when I knew other women were planning get togethers and lunch dates (even though I didn't want to go anyway.)
Lest you think I'm a total geek, let me add that I never had any shortage of interested men --- probably the result of being the only female around who knew what they were talking about. But that served as a bit of a distraction too!
Now I am on my second marriage, I have a son, 2 daughters, and 3 step daughters. They are all teenagers now. I have encouraged them all, since they were little, to express their opinion (even if it didn't exactly "count"!) and to not be ashamed of their perceived "failings". Most of all, I told my daughters, "Don't worry if you don't have many friends. Friends aren't everything, you know." Which was the exact opposite of what I was taught as a girl.
Now they are very strong minded, intelligent, and forward looking girls who seem unafraid of the challenges in a man-dominated world. At least for now. Time will tell if I did the right thing.
http://ob-la-blog.blogspot.com/
Sorry, but Y! won't let me log on with Gaim anymore I think.
... if maybe these statistics are not what we really should be looking at. Most of what I learned in college I taught myself. Sure the classes had some interesting stuff to learn but what was there that we can't learn on our own from books? College (at least for me) was more a method to prove how well you can learn (earned degrees) and provide a rich environment to concentrate on a subject (friends, fellow students, reason to sit around and BS about some program or another). There is no use for programming by itself. Never was. No use for computers by themselves. No use for networks by themselves. All of these are just tools to get some "real" task accomplished whether it is balancing a checkbook, video-conferencing remote surgeons to diagnose a problem, change traffic lights or introduce the world to the newest singing sensation. With the advance of tools to get all of this done and the advances of technology ergonomics, computer science as a whole is getting easier and easier to do. Some hardcore stuff will always be a fairly exclusive area of computer science but lets face it... most people getting those degrees are not going to be doing firmware design, compiler work or anything that complex. With the tools becoming easier, wouldn't it be prudent to get a degree in the field you are writing code for instead? Is it easier for a person with aptitude for programming to write accounting software with an accounting degree or a computer science degree? The real question should concentrate more on how many women there are entering the IT industry, not how many are in degree programs.
just that - they get carried away, as with any "mandate" or "policy" that tries to change subtle differences in life by bulldozing into the opposite direction, all else be damned.
Many of you have made generalization about women in the sciences. However is you look at the figures released by the NSF regarding the involvement of women in the sciences one can see that in all non-computer science fields, women have become increasingly better represented. Computer Science stands out as the one field that has failed to show improvements and in fact has shown what some would call a dramatic decline. Other research has shown that the major issue with getting women into the sciences is recruitment, in Computer science it is an issue of retention.
A particulalry interesting study(read unlocking the clubhouse:women in computer science) was conducted at CMU, of which the computer science program is exceptionally selective. Students accepted into the program(including the women) consistently came from strong programming backgrounds. None the less, women were 4 times as likely to drop out as male counterparts.
This is not happening in the other science fields, its happening in computer science alone, so generalizations about women and the sciences cannot dismiss it.
Obviously recruitment is an important part of opening up the science to more women, but I think some simple adjustment of attitudes can drastically improve the retention of women in CS.
I heard that the originator of Ninnle Linux and NinnleBSD, the reclusive Dr. Ninnle, is female. Her first name is Christina or something like that.
Thank god I switched to math. Girls are better at integrating than hashing.
As a female PhD student in CS, who has worked professionally as an employee and as an independent contractor, I find I really have to respond to this thread.
I personally have done a lot of work to try to help women interested in computers to follow that desire, and I have witnessed a lot of the "reasons" for the lack of women in the field firsthand - the sorts of things found in the HOWTO and books like "Unlocking the Clubhouse". Like any complex problem, if there was any *one* reason for it it'd be really easy to fix, right? And it's always really hard to figure out where the "fault" lies - sure, we know women are uncomfortable, but how much of the "fault" lies with the men, and how much with the women? Engaging in this discussion with an expectation to lay blame is sort of like getting into an argument with your spouse about whose turn it is to do dishes - nothing productive comes of it.
The truth of the matter is that a whole host of reasons go into discouraging women from pursuing careers in CS, just as a whole host of reasons go into encouraging women to go into fields like the aforementioned nursing. And there are good reasons why more gender equity in *all* of these areas could be a benefit to all.
As far as the value of increasing percentages go - I do think that men and women are different, if you can broadly categorize people based on gender, and that they are often different in very *complimentary* ways. Men and women (whether because of nature or societal influences, the cause is not important) often approach problems in different ways and with different skill sets, and for this reason, trying to attain gender equity in *any* field is a worthwhile endeavor. You learn from each other, and you help each other.
A job is never just its surface-level of skills - to be a scientist, you can't just be a good analytical thinker, you also have to be able to communicate your ideas in persuasive ways. Likewise, you can be the most nurturing nurse in the world, but sometimes being able to lift heavy unconscious people is an asset. Hey, but what if you have two people who work together, where Person A is better in Area A, and Person B is better in area B, and they collaborate? Good stuff happens! Sort of like what happens when your right & left brain work together, right?
Part of the problem as I've seen it is that traits that are *not* necessarily essential to a given profession become conflated with that profession. So, you want to be a software developer at MS, right? You've gotta be aggressive, forthright, able to argue & challenge in pointed ways - that's more or less what I've heard from friends who have applied/been hired to work there. But should everyone *really* be like that? Isn't it also useful to have some people who are skilled in resolving conflicts, in smoothing ruffled feathers? Do self-righteous people always win arguments? And once they do, do they get the sort of buy-in from the "defeated" argument partners that a development team really needs to work productively and efficiently?
Although gender roles could be assigned to the scenario I just described, I'm not trying to do that - as a blowhard myself I know that not all women are conciliatory smooth-talkers. But the point is, by-and-large traits that are not both necessary and sufficient conditions to make you a good CS person become associated with that profession. Since most people in the CS field are men, lots of these conflated traits are male-leaning. When this starts impacting the hiring process (as in the aforementioned MS grill-session job interviews), this implicit gender bias becomes explicit.
reach this magical 50/50 split of men and women in every single job profession.
Some professions will have more women, some more men, and some will be equal. The real question we need to be consern about is: Do women have equal opportunity, compared to men, to become what they choose? If the answer is yes then society's job is done and what is left is to the individual.
...we need IDEs that have pretty pink, mauve and chartreuse colors, compiler error messages along the lines of, "Girl, don't let him have that unmatched brace on line 32!", and use the Apache "ESP" module. A successful compile might have a little flash animation pop up of a pink and white pony galloping across the screen, or a dancing field of flowers, etc.
I, personally, would love a Daria-based KDE/GTK desktop theme, especially if it had hooks for detecting when it is interfacing with Windows-based machines, and popped up lots of good, snide, back-handed insults.
There are women smart enough to go into it (obviously, because there are a few who do venture forth into engineering fields), but somehow I think the stereotyped culture of Comp Sci probably turns them away.
Oh well.
Funny you say that -- googling on the first 10 or so points seems to support that they're valid, even today. I didn't bother with the rest -- I'd rather hear exactly how you can back up your statement. Oddly enough, while we're listening to *white* males whine, many of those same points can be made for racial minorities. Moral of the story: Look up numbers before you make a blanket statement based on them.
Email me we can still chat. Maby I should check out Gaim.
Interesting 'other side of the coin' story: My first computer science teacher (actual teacher) in high school was a woman. I remember hearing a few years after I graduated that there was a case of one of her male CS students actually stalking her. You could say there's a bit of a barrier forming--women being taught by male professors who patronize them, or female professors not being taken seriously (or too seriously) by male students. I'm not calling for strict segregation by gender for CS classes, but it's interesting how it's on both sides of the issue.
I know we'd have 50% more male IT professionals if the women were mandated to code with their shirts off.
not to mention the 'late nights' coding at the office.
and a cowboy hat would be nice, but not necessary
"its just not fair that 90% of the Engineering students are men" (I find this to be more unfair for the men but I am getting off topic) "Someone should do something to encourage more women to be in science". She went on to say this included preferance in admissions..
I pointed out to her my University (SUNY at Buffalo) was 52% Woman and 48% men so if there was a huge discrepency in other departments (in particular Nursing, PT, and Education). And that maybe we shoud "do something" about that.
Thank goodness she corrected me and told me how uninformed I was, it seems thats just because people want to go into those fields at those rates, it has nothing to do with institutional discrimination. When I asked her what specific discrimination she faced she could not give an example but assured me "they were out there"
Yes there is.
I have worked with only a few other women. WE're not common. You know what? Only about 50% of women in the field seem to be competent. Compare that to about 85% of men in the field knowing what they're doing. Maybe women who feel incompetent and out of touch shouldn't be encouraged to stick it out! When I tutored programming classes I had all of one male programmer - and he was a MechE trying to get some wider experience! The real question is: why do so many women go into a field they're not suited for? Not just CS, but millions of other fields.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
I know a girl who was going to be a doctor. She went to college, realized it was going to be rather hard, and decided to marry a doctor instead. Guys don't have that option. I don't think women have less capability than men, but they have an easy out, especially the attractive ones.
Most of this thread is just tools trying to derogate women in an attempt to make up for their relative lack of reproductive value.
anthony
"In February, Sterling and Jan Cuny, vice chair of the Computing Research Association in Washington, D.C., persuaded Microsoft to fund a CRA-sponsored workshop for female computer science and engineering graduate students to help counter both their alienation and escalating dropout rates. "
Is this the same Microsoft headed by Bill Gates who is quoted as having said, "We can hire twice the women at half the pay rate for men because they're only women so they'll do the grunt work?"
I always wondered what Melinda thought about that quote? I suppose when given the chance to marry a billionaire, feminism goes out the window.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
This reminds me of a joke from my Comp Sci department:
What do you call a woman in the Comp Sci department?
A visitor.
What do you call an attractive woman in the Comp Sci department?
Lost.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
The reason I responded to you is I feel that people are way too quick to cry "descrimination" in this country. Not a 50/50 male/female balance? Must be those evil men descriminating again! Evil evil evil!
Sometimes I feel like I live in a nation of wussies with each person trying to be a bigger victim than the next. You want to know what I think? I think people should just do what they want to do. If women want to major in CS, they should. If men want to major in nursing, they should. Whatever your calling is, you should do, and you shouldn't need any encouragement or special treatment, and you definitely shouldn't whine about it.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Is "attracting woman" the same as "attractive woman" or is it the opposite?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Don't be fooled by these companies that want to "help women". All they really care about is increasing the number of qualified workers. That means they'll get better quality for cheaper due to the higher competition for the same number of jobs.
My CEO keeps spewing this crap about there not being enough EEs in America so they "have to" outsource. There's plenty of us here. We just want too much money.
Women's culture needs to prioritize "self reliance" before it will be compatible with computer science culture. Geeks would benefit from women's insights into interdependence. Until they converge in this defining value, women will be scarce, and geeks will be boys.
--
make install -not war
I think the root of the problem is that parents teach their girls that all that can be considered 'geeky' or boyish is bad for them. I call it the Barbie syndrome, because I haven't seen Barbie mechanical engineer, Barbie computer programmer and so on.
Girls play with dolls. Boys play with 'action figures', and also with tinkertoys, legos, 'my electronic kits', 'build your own rocket', electronic toys, and such. Girls can do all that but they aren't fascinated like boys.
I remember an old study (in the 80's) which told that girls 9-10 years old began to get lower grades in science and math than boys. The hormonal factor?
Personally, I haven't met a women yet who has written code just for the fun of it or couriosity. I know many who are good programmers, they just don't love doing it.
The only bad thing about women in IT is that you must treat them professionaly, can't hide posters behind the racks, boring wallpapers, etc..
For instance, when I go to thinkgeek or jinxhackwear to check out the t-shirts, the first results in women's shirts are almost always some variation on "I love my geek".
I AM the geek in my marriage. I fix the computers and I work in a geeky field (web developer learning real programming). My husband is in Customer Service. Why can't I find a mens' shirt that says "I love my geek"?
It's one of the things that pisses me off most - the almost unnoticable sidelining of geeks who are women. You'll notice I put geeks first there - I have a hell of a lot more in common with any geek guy I've met than with any non-geek woman.
Mmh... can't we do that here?
No one is talking about the absence of male kindergarten teachers as though it were a problem. Like no one is complaining about the lack of women auto mechanics. Let's stop pretending we're the same. For what ever reason alot of men prefer to work with things and alot of women prefer to work with people. Neither one is right, just different.
The article mentions the "Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology." Is this for real? Sounds like something Bart Simpson would say while spanking to Jeri Ryan. Speaking of which, is Jeri a member? I, for one, am totally in favor of Women and Technology. And Anita Borg.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
actually, I think that these camps would be illegal, since it is not "equal" to offer something to only girls and not boys.
... so thats one thing they prolly have to do.
I have heard of a lawsuit against the Girl Scouts for having a computer room in a school only for Girl Scouts, and after they lawsuit, they had to open it up for boys as well.
I didn't see anything in this that said that the camps were 50% girls and 50% boys
just my two cents,
-g
"Principal" means "primary". As in "principal weapon". Which was the phrase you used, except of course you spelled "principal" wrong.
Dumbass.
By the way, Orwell was assuming something like the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Language sets hard limits on thought. But that's questionable (few competent linguists take it any more seriously than I do, btw), because languages do change and adapt. In fact, our most distant ancestors didn't have any language at all until, by some gradual process, they developed one. Then that language split, and split again, and again.
500 years ago, no human language had words or concepts to deal with very much of what modern first-world people deal with every day. Things change. If language were as fixed and limiting as our lungs, you and I would be experiencing the mental equivalent of an air-breathing mammal trying to survive underwater. In fact, if we couldn't think about anything not already provided for by our language, the first world as we know it would not exist at all. Change would be impossible.
The goals of Newspeak cannot be achieved. You can slow people down and fuck with 'em, but you cannot control their minds like machines.
Left-wing control fantasies aside, language is a tool that people use, and they use it to do whatever they damn well please. Every time we deprecate a derogatory epithet for some racial or ethic group, some previously acceptable term mutates into a new derogatory epithet. The meanings of words are not hard-coded into the fabric of reality. We've changed the language that people use in polite company, but this has not made even a tiny dent in racism. Why not? Because it's not addressing anything meaningful. It's not changing anything significant inside anybody's head. It's just a great big wheel-spinning waste of everybody's time. If there really is anything we can do to put a stop to racism, we're too busy playing stupid word games to do it. And that's a real shame.
With the corporate-philes in power in this country, I think it should be a crime to encourage anyone, even men, to go into CS when the f*ckers in power keep giving more and more incentives to offshore the CS work.
Encouraging people to go into CS in this environment is essentially saying "hey we have fewer people going into a dead field with no future, lets try to get more people into it". Why? "misery loves company"?
And on that note, how can anyone who is "For America" encourage US corporations to destroy American's livelihoods by moving their jobs overseas just so the "company" can make a bigger profit.... When someone says this is good for Americans, how is this good for us? Well if you're a CEO, its good for you, but otherwise?
Has anyone thought that it might be the other way around? It very well could be that more "men" are being attracted to the field (causing the apparent decrease in women graduates) because of the rise of computer gamers (who are mostly men). I have found several "men" who really don't belong programming but are seeking a degree because they want to make the next cool game. They spend more time playing games than programming any form of software, but nonetheless are in the CS major.
With a little ambiguity and mastery of words, even correctly sampled statistics can prove whatever you want them to prove.
I also agree that white males are among the most stereotyped and disadvantaged people on earth. Lets face the facts, speaking from actual people I know. In CS alone, women can get special scholarships just because they are a woman. Foreigners can get full-rides to grad school for coming from out of the US. Something like 1/8 blood American Indians can get full-rides to just about any major. Though I feel some of these groups have some merit to scholarships, white men are left out in the process, based only upon race and sex.
White men are now discriminated by reverse-discrimination, and it seems only to be getting worse.
I was in a [not to be named] corporate environment that had this kind "preferred" diversity program that seems to have you so frustrated. Oddly enough, I am part native American. However, I've never attempted to claim that status since I've seen a reservation and, as far as I'm concerned, they should get whatever resources are available.
But that's another story - back to the subject at hand. The point is that I also found this implementation of "Affirmative Action" to be quite vexing. I came up with a great "parting shot" for when I resigned though. I did some research into "gender dysphoria" with the intent of putting together a very convincing rap that I had recently been accepted as a candidate for sexual reassignment surgery and in about 2 weeks would be starting to take on a female persona as part of my RLT (real life test - I made it a point to get the jargon down to sound convincing). Of course, what I had really done was give my 2 weeks notice. I just wanted to watch the other people in my office spend my last couple of weeks trying to determine exactly how a transexual fits into thier "affirmative action" protocols.
Sadly, my supervisor stole my thunder by just blurting out that I was leaving. Oh well, it might have been pretty funny had it have worked.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Our eyes only seem to gloss over but in fact this is an internal battle. Believe me, it is very hard to stand in front of a beautiful woman and avoid looking at her breast, especially when one is an unattractive sociopath, like most of us in computer science are, as I am sure you have already noticed. This is hardly a disrespect. This is libido. Additionally, when we are showing off with our knowledge it is not because we want to prove we are smarter, not at all, but because in our laughable naïvete we foolishly assume that smart and beautiful women might find us attractive just because we are so intelligent. Sadly, it doesn't work. But what else can we do? Besides our great knowledge and impressive intelligence we have really nothing else we can be pround of, do we not? I can only assure you that not every man in computer science is a stereotypical nerd. Nevertheless, please let me sincerely apologise in the name of the entire Slashdot and scientific community. It is outrageously shameful that women feel disrespected only because of their beauty and the very fact that we are nothing but a bunch of miserable loosers. I perfectly realise that our high IQ and a bunch of fancy PhDs and Mensa membership cards doesn't make us any more attractive, but again, what else can we do? I believe I speak in the name of every Slashdotter. The very important problem you are talking about might actually be more depressing to us then to you. Believe me.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I've been a computer guy in the US for 20+ years. I look at my future employment prospects and wonder why we'd encourage anyone to get into computer science in the US.
Better to go into a field with a future, like bonehead reality show participant or sports star. Or for real upside potential, be a CEO or politician or another form of white-collar criminal.
Okay, I'm cynical, but think about it....
Attractive Women?? Where!? Where!?
.... "Attracting Women inTO Computer Science"
... as long as they're attractive.
OOHHHH
yeah, whatever
Are there ANY tech fields where women are 50%? ME? CE? EE? CS? I went to a flight/aeronautical engineering school and it was about 20% female. Besides for all that the stereotype of long hours and late nights sure isn't going to attract anyone that thinks they might want to have kids and actually get to see them.
How about we just focus on attracting people who have actual talent and love of Computer Science to it? Reguardless of age, gender, race, creed, linux flavor, etc., those are the people we really want.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
That's all it is. you can take that and whatever PC propaganda and shove it.
Well, my experience when I was helping to hire programmers was as follows: looking through the hundred or so CVs we had been sent there was just one person with a female name. She would have automatically got an interview, for rarity value if nothing else, but was no longer at that contact address. I hear stories about how there are 50% women in IT and I am wondering if the news stories are coming through from some alternate reality.
everyone should study something they enjoy. if their heart is not in it, they shouldn't study it. this goes for women and men. if there aren't a lot of women interested in it, then they should study whatever they are interested in. however, if they are interested, but just afraid to try it, that is where changes should be made. but trying to get them to study something they don't care about is just silly.
Because these women's jobs were seen as secondary incomes, they often accepted or were offered lower incomes (and sometimes less respect) than men would have demanded. This tended to deter men from entering the profession. So companies were faced with a huge pool of female applicants. Of those, it's not hard to choose the "best", and the remaining men (who obviously couldn't get higher paying, more respected jobs elsewhere) were perhaps not always the most talented.
In fact, I suspect this continues in positions like marketing, human resources, and communications. Since many women originally crossed over from secretarial positions (as opposed to men, who move from sales or other more respected positions), these roles have sometimes become ghettoized. When I was an intern in university, my boss said he only hired women because they were the best communicators. However, since men were traditionally given more guidance/mentorship for higher paying roles, I'm not sure it was always that the women were "better". The pools weren't the same size.
-- SYS 64738 --
I wonder if nurses and hairdressers agonize for hours on how to attract more men to the job. This is stupid. There are plenty of women in technology, and if any individual female wants to break in, she can. End of story.
As somebody with an English lit. degree, y'know, and speaking as our company C++ language-lawyer and the guy our CS-degree guys come to when they're having trouble with yacc, I'm inclined to agree.
Math?! I can't even balance a checkbook. Programming ain't math.
It may be possible that women tend to object more often than men do to the isolation from other human beings that comes along with serious programming, but I'm waiting for hard numbers before I believe that (see painting anecdote below for counterexample).
What's the rate of Asperger's Syndrome among women as opposed to men?
I've an ex-gf who's a painter, and she's into painting in precisely the way I'm into programming: Sits down with a brush, then suddenly it's eight hours later and it hurts to stand up because her legs have been in the same cramped position the whole time (see "isolation" above; she's much more isolated when she works than I am, and she thrives on it). If she'd taken an interest in logic instead of the human skull at a young age, she'd be a programmer now. But, y'know, give her a good skull to contemplate, and she's happy as a clam.
Who the hell cares if girls are interested in computer science? I sure don't. And if they write code anything like they drive, we're all in trouble.
- Hearing conversations about how women are just naturally not as good as men at science/engineering/other complex field
That's why we need Affirmative Action. To make up for women being naturally stupid. What's that you say? Women aren't born stupid? Well, maybe it's time to start speaking out against AA. You've certainly seen its ugly effects.- Being told that women only get into graduate school because of affirmative action
- Being told that women only get good jobs because of affirmative action
See above.- Walking into yet another lecture hall where you are the only female
It seems AA isn't working, anyway.- Having most of the men you meet assume that you only got where you are because of your looks, your youth, or affirmative action
Your looks? One of my majors was CS... don't go there... Your youth? Being female makes you younger? AA is the culprit, but you already know that firsthand, so I don't have to tell you.Anyhow, what do you care what other people think? Someone think you're dumb? Prove her wrong. Don't like your boss or coworkers? Start your own company and hire people who aren't assholes. But for pete's sake, your complaining is totally misdirected. Help to get rid of AA, a system that favors less-qualified people at the expense of those people's (and every other woman/minority's) personal dignity.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Your viewpoint does not take into account the cost of the accidents. Insurance premiums are not calulated entirely on the probability part of the risk equation.
Risk = probability * consequences
If women had a lower cost (consequence) then they could have lower premiums despite being in more accidents.
As equally as almost any woman can say sexism lost them a job, or made men question their ability - They could just be...not as good, less qualified, etc. I'm not saying all women are, but it could be in equal percentage as men who have the same problems getting a job, getting respected. Yet somehow its construed as sexism. I'm sorry, but I have yet to witness a case where a woman worked harder and didn't move up faster than lazy ol' me.
Only about 50% of women in the field seem to be competent. Compare that to about 85% of men in the field knowing what they're doing
I have no idea what percentage of the women are competent; I haven't run into enough of 'em to hazard a guess.
But I can sure as hell tell you that at most 20% of the men know what they're doing. About 50% are grossly, laughably incompetent, even now, years after the "hire any warm body" days came to a welcome end and most of the dot-com crowd have gone back to delivering pizzas.
This field is full of idiots. With Y chromosomes. People with real jobs on their resumes, who can't sit down in an interview and ace a simple quiz about pointer arithmetic and the like. It's a fucking nightmare.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
Is that you?
Go hug some trees.
I have really no idea whether that is anything unusual, but I actually enjoy listening to women much more than listening to men. Actually, I would consider it quite natural.
Granted, I have seen your picture, so you might argue that I am no longer objective, but I can assure you that I respect every woman, even not as beautiful as yourself, generally much more than I respect men, including myself, however strange that might sound.
I always anjoy interacting with women, anytime and everywhere, more than men, be it in the store, in a server room or on the road (yes, I do consider women better drivers, because having the same technical skills as men, they are additionally nice and kind).
Sadly, I don't think that it all makes me any more cute, no matter how much I would want it. I never act like a macho, I believe I am kind, I like being kind to women, and lots of women I know consider me a nice guy and a good friend, but that's it. I don't make them weak-kneed just because I am nice.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I am a guy and part of the glamour that attracted me in the business is the classic stereotype of this industry:
:)
-The more your desk is a mess the more you are successful.
-Gorging yourself of unhealthy sugared and caffeinated liquid is not only accepted but highly regarded.
-Your coworkers also remember the STNG episode that you are speaking about.
-Having a disputable apparent body hygiene is the minimum dress code. (The rule is as long as it not smelling its OK)
Maybe if IT companies were more girl interests oriented...
-The more your desk is neat and cute the more you are successful.
-Free manicure all day.
-Your coworkers also remember the Sex in the city episode that you are speaking about.
-Having a new pair of shoes each day of the week is the dress code.
or something like that
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
How would you like to have your tight little vagina pounded into a sloppy wet mess by the Living Incarnation of Pure Evil?
You know where to find me...
*raises hand* :)
;D
Soo..what about 'Attracting Atractive Women Into Computer Science' then?
Become a software eng... so your job can be shipped overseas..
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You don't know how good somebody is until you work closely with them. You don't know how good most of your 60 techs are. I take it you have seen at least two cases where women asked for advice and projected from that onto all women being incompetent. Problem was, you worked closely enough with one to see that your perception was false in at least her case. How good are the males among your 60 techs? I bet many of them are quietly accomplishing little or nothing, or wasting time going in a bad direction. They should probably be asking advice, like the women you judged as incompetent did.
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If I was hiding that why do you think I would have linked to it? Do you think I don't expect people to check out the site? That said; I wasn't trolling and I very much am a woman. You saw the picture, do I look like a guy? No. Do people who meet me think I am a guy? No. Do people I interact with professionally see me or treat me any different than any other woman? No. The only way you could know that something about my history was different would be to check my chromosomes or ask me. Every other aspect of who I am (socially, physically and mentally) female.
Get out of the 50's.
- Unless you can question your own beliefs, you have no place questioning the beliefs of others.
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I assume that here you are referring to Lynn Conway of Conway and Mead, who wrote one of the early pioneering books on (what we would now consider) low level VLSI design.
Lynn Conway is a transgender person. She used to be a he, if I recall correctly. Whether we can count Ms. Conway as an example of women succeeding in science and engineering is a more complex question.
But stepping back for a moment - there is no question that Conway, regardless of gender - has made significant contributions.
First of all, why worrying about "attracting" anyone to Computer Science. As soon as they graduate they will find out that their job has been outsourced to the guy who will work for 1/40th of their pay.
Because of the vastly higher cost of living, education, taxes, corporate overhead etc there is no way that current CS grads (at least in the West) have a snowball's chance in Hell. Only so many of them can flow back into the Universities and teach.
What's insane is that a buddy of mine is paying through the nose because he defaulted on a student loan payment during finals weeks. Rather than paying off the US Governments official bloodsucker "credit re-education" contractors, he immediately paid off the loan. This doomed him to a lifetime of credit default even though his credit has been nearly spotless since.
After graduation he finds out that the same government that was happy to loan him money and went overboard to destroy his credit, took payoffs to outsource his job to someone who barely had to pay anything (maybe nothing) for his education.
So he is still being punished for his shot at the "American Dream" only to find that that's been outsourced too.
Time to outsource Congress.
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I did not spell "principal" wrong. I spelled it correctly.
In your original post you spelled it "principle". Your desperate splitting of hairs won't save you; you fucked up. And then in your second post, the one with the link to something at Princeton, you compounded the error by insisting you'd gotten it right the first time. You're an imbecile.
For someone who is purporting to be a linguist...
I referred to linguists in the third person, explicitly contrasting them to myself. You're an imbecile.
I never said you did. You're an imbecile.
Blah blah yammer yammer verbs etc.
In modern colloquial American English, "Dumbass" is a complete sentence, correctly spelled. You're an imbecile.
I pointed out that it causes people to second guess themselves.
Who cares? What bizarre dementia leads you to believe that I give a rat's ass about your opinions about anything? I wasn't addressing any of your muddled, brainless little thoughts at all. I chucked in the Sapir-Whorf thing because it was relevant to Orwell's ideas about Newspeak, not yours.
Furthermore, you somehow managed to conflate "doubletalk" (which is something else) and/or "doublethink" (also something else, but at least Orwell did coin it) with Newspeak, and then attributed the error to somebody else.
All together now: You, my feculent little flower, ARE A FUCKING IMBECILE.
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Given the current state of computer science employment, I'm not sure that I'd encourage anyone, regardless of gender to go into this field. Given the instability in employment and flat job market, the only reason to go into computer science is because you love it.
I went to a talk by a woman professor at the UC Berkeley engineering department. She pointed out that women act a bit like canaries in a coal mine. When they start to disappear, the field is getting toxic. I think that in may ways we have a toxic profession. Some of the best jobs are now with the government. This is a bad sign. It is a sign of an unhealthy job market and profession.
In addition to the current job market we have a profession that is infamous for its age discrimination (look at empolyment statistics for engineers over 40). I doubt that it is an easy field for women to work in. I suspect that there is gender discrimination as well. This is why you see women gravitate to large companies like IBM and HP, or to government jobs. These organizations at least attempt to actively work against gender discrimination.
So it should not be a surprise that while there are now notable women in mathematics (like Ingrid Daubechies), we are not seeing as many women in CS. I suppose that at least we can pat ourselves on the back that our field is better than Wall Street, where humans in general and women specifically are treated badly.
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Amen. While currently a female in the IT field, I have been insulted so many times by the ignorance of males that it makes me want to go elsewhere. Typical things that happen:
* Guys automatically assume I am male (my name is a very common female name) and address me as Mr./Sir in emails.
* In meetings, I get no attention when I speak up about something. The males in the room just cut me off and speak over me. I have to be rude and interrupt multiple times before I can get something in.
* I do not get respected as an engineer. People (who do not know me directly) will go to the guys in my group instead of me, even though I am their senior.
* With customers, I am assumed to not be an engineer, but some admin person instead. This also includes being talked down to as if I didn't understand technical jargon.
* And of course, I get those guys whose eyes stare lower than my face when talking. Some say things that I find really insulting and I can't believe they still have jobs. These tend to be older guys, who grew up under a different work environment and haven't fully adapted to the modern one.
I keep hearing "We want more women in the field," but hey, I don't see the mentality for those guys to handle being around women. Not all, but definately a lot. Different ethnic groups also treat women differently. I won't point fingers, but some are obviously more comfortable with women in the workplace than others. In Silicon Valley, where I work, there is such a diverse mix that I get a lot of interaction with all types of people.
Hahahahahahaha!
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I know it's a cliche, but I had to say it. Take care.
Does that make her a troll?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Guys automatically assume I am male (my name is a very common female name) and address me as Mr./Sir in emails.
Blame the broken English language for that one. There is no good way to speak to a person in a fashion that doesn't specify gender.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I never thought I'd be one of those women affected by the fact that men dominate in Computers. I had straight As in my senior year of Computer Science and I'd done gradate level openGL courses that wowed the entire class+professor. On top of that I'd freelanced for Marvel, so I was both programmer and artist. I thought hmm I like games, I like art and I can program...I can go work as some kind of game programmer and work my way to Technical Direction!
:P
I have a friend who worked in the game industry for many years on titles like C&C and CS. One day I told him I was deciding between Biotech and Computer Graphics for graduate school, and he just flat out told me:
"But you don't know anything about graphics!"
Yeah he's just a geeky guy who doesn't know how to communicate well...but constant put downs over the year when I was deciding didn't help. I had at least one depressed bout triggered by his insensitive/overcompetitive comments. One time I was so mad at him I yelled, but all he said was "you're so serious sometimes!" and went back to telling me all about the latest game he bought.
Bad pay, bad management, bad hours...and now my close friend of 7 years was being a total geek-jerk. I wondered what it was like in an industry that was 99% males who were, in the worst case, all like my friend (if not worse)
I chose biotech and never looked back
28% - hell when i was an undergraduate EE at marquette in the 80's, i had at most 2 girls in a class. in EE grad school at U of TX in the 90's there were NO chicks in any of my classes.
so what's news here?
you are what you is -- FZ
If a teenage girl who was interested in majoring in computer science were to read the comments posted in response to this story, she would be completely scared away from this field. Nearly every message board on /. is full of masturbation jokes, sexist or stereotypical remarks about women, and other miscellaneous juvenile comments. Women who post comments on /. are often ridiculed. And you people wonder why more women do not pursue degrees in computer science, or science and engineering in general.
The answer is right here on the screen in front of you.
We all believe in stereotypes, whether we realize that we do or not. For example, when I read some of the posts on this message board, I found myself making judgements about the people who posted them. Some examples - pimply-faced teenage boys who can't get a date and spend all day long playing video games; frustrated men who have lost their tech jobs due to out-sourcing; or
incompetent white men with outdated skills who lost a promotion to a more qualified woman and are looking to blame someone else for their failure.
Most /. readers would resent being placed into these stereotypical nerd categories, even if there is an element of truth to them. Stop trying to do the same thing to women who are interested in computer science. We do exist and
we read /. often. I am a woman, I write code and I LIKE it. I've considered changing careers, not because I don't enjoy the work, but because I am sick to death of putting up with misogynistic garbage like most of the postings on this page.
[warning, a bit of a rant:]
Really. I was in computer engineering where the percentages are MUCH lower than CS. The women I knew there were simply not interested in the subject. Some enjoyed the challenge or the problem solving, but none actually were intrinsically interested in computers. Most had engineers as fathers and were in computer engineering because it was a "hot" area at the time.
All of these women now have good high paying jobs, even those who barely passed. Many of my male friends are unemployed or at crap contract positions even if they were good students. Perhaps we can advertize to women: even if you're terrible, you'll succeed because you're a woman. I remember when the co-op applications went out and EVERY girl was ranked first. The smartest girls didn't even do the co-op. These girls barely passed and would beat out guys in the top 10%.
I think the root is that most women do not find the technical and artificially logical world of computers appealing. This is probably compounded by the fact that men finally get with a group of people that share similar interests and are not always receptive to women who don't share this interest.
You have been trolled. MadisonK is a man who pretends to be a woman online. Please moderate his posts downviolently.
You have been trolled. MadisonK is a man who pretends to be a woman online. Please moderate his posts down violently.
You have been trolled. MadisonK is a man who pretends to be a woman online. Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
I doubt we need to pull in would-be teachers.
Of people who have the temperament and aptitude to be engineers, we want to get more of them. We suspect that we're getting a pretty low percentage of suitable women into the field.
(Could be wrong - could just be that the percentage of women suitable to be engineers is much lower than of men - but I don't think we know the answer to that, and I think it's reasonable to guess there are untapped suitable women out there.)
Given this assumption, it's reasonable to look at whether women are considering the field and whether they're getting turned off by cultural cues or working conditions or career path issues or what.
Basically, coaxing of unsuitable candidates is not called for. There's been enough of that among men.
You do know other cultures have different morality do you not?
Regardless of right or wrong, not everything is as is in the USA.
THEY ARE in the USA. Wouldn't I, a white American guy, be expected to make a reasonable attempt to respect local customs if I were in Bangalore or Bangkok? Wouldn't I be considered a jerk if I didn't? Yes, and yes.
If you've got one standard for me and another standard for people with a different complexion, you're a racist. BZZT! Thanks for playing!
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
Well, are you? You seem rather obsessed with this. It's already obvious that most of the people are mature and can see past their close nose. However, don't let me spoil your fun.
- Unless you can question your own beliefs, you have no place questioning the beliefs of others.
Madison may be a woman, but you, Veronica, are without a doubt a man.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
Why do you fucking care? Get a life.
we need more people in CS period, and they're thinking they'll get better marginal gains from recruitment efforts in the relatively untapped female population than from continuing to scrape the bottom of the barrel among white males.
(no word on minorities? - i'd say they're way more untapped than women.)
You have been trolled. The above AC is an escaped mental patient who devotes considerable time to harrassing some woman because she has a dick. If you think nobody's dumb enough to harass strangers for reasons as idiotic as that, you must be new to Slashdot.
WHAT TO DO:
Heh.
I'm all for more women in my workplace. Especially attractive women. But in general, more people in computer science means more competition for the few jobs that are going to be left once china starts siphoning off all the computer work from the rest of the planet. Look out India, China is your worst nightmare.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
I don't know about where you live, but in both Colorado and Arizona, when you sign up for an insurance policy (and each year thereafter) you are required to disclose both the number of miles you have to drive between work and home, and the approximate number of miles driven annually.
This is because the insurance companies do in fact adjust your premiums based upon the number of miles you drive.
You might call a few insurance companies and inquire regarding this. Ask if your premiums would be higher if you got a job driving cross-country for a living, or as a local courier using your own vehicle. You might be surprised... or maybe just lucky.
Keith D.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
(a) people in Computing/IT all have the stigma of being nerds. (even if it's completely undeserved which i believe it is) - ever tried tellign a chick at a nightclub you cut code for a living? watch the lights go out real fast... this doesn't appeal to women at all...
:) i know that'll upset some people but you get that :)
IT as a career is pretty sucky (just watch Office Space if you need clarification), is it any wonder peopel in general aren't "turned on" by it?
(b) it shouldn't be about male/female but BEST PERSON FOR THE JOB END OF STORY.
(c) IT requires a logical mind.. as i watch my girlfriend rapidly reduce my credit card / bank balance, i wonder if they have the disposition for logical thought
the brentmeister general signing off
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
You have to measure how many women enter computer science over how many women want to enter computer science vs the same stat for men.
Too many statistics only measure the number of people in the field and claim it is due to discrimination. They totally ignore the possibility that there might be more men interested in cs, and more women repulsed by it.
I don't have any numbers, but I wouldn't be suprised if the discrimination turned out to be against males.
The other arguement is that society has brainwashed men and women to be different in their likes/dislikes. They always quote the difference in baby toys et cetera. Can you really attribute all these differences to baby toys? I don't think so. Males and females have different hormones coursing through their brains. That is why we think differently. Inject hormones into your brain and you will probably have some behavioral changes.
This isn't just about computer science, but technical vs social, or any field you see a discrepency.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
but I would just to like to say that found your comment very interesting.
I guess there are some tangible benefits to diversity after all!
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
s/Veronica\ Moonlit/MadisonK/o cean@alteeve.com
s/VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com/
Lose a little weight; work on your appearance.
Then guys become afraid of rejection and thus don't hit on you. Works great til you come up against the guy who overestimates what he has on offer... but that's much less common.
Re: this topic; I am in agreement with those who say "just leave it alone." Any type of social engineering effort (and possible special attention (treatment?) for women) that goes into this causes (1) resentment by males and (2) possible inflation of the abilities of certain females --> priming for the fall.
I must be a man deep down inside tho cuz I just hate talking about this shit...
Darling, give teenage girls more credit (you were once one... I was once one).
Any person (not any "girl", any person) who is scared away from doing what he or she wants to do by a little mental midget masturbation should definitely turn around and not make the journey.
You want the gold, you're gonna have to grab for it and, yes, there will be adolescent, ego-challenged (perhaps over-ego'd, perhaps under-ego'd) individuals (not just men) who will try to get in your way. If you let them deter you, you obviously don't have the stuff for the big leagues.
Yes, it really is social "software differences", including phrases such as "sense of isolation" (and nothing more) that are holding women back. I simply can't accept even the implication that in the case of mental tasks like computer science or even chess, hardware differences between males and females are involved. That is true in something like weightlifting because there is a specific, obvious hardware difference- testosterone in the building of bone and muscle mass. That difference explains why male Olympic athletes have higher maximum potentials at certain sports than females. The strongest males simply have different bodies than the strongest females. Try though they might, no women cross over into the "male" realm in this regard. (Short of major surgery +hormones.) It's a real, physical, hardware barrier.
.0001% These women aren't outliers, "mutant" women who somehow have "male" neurology or whatever pathway you're even hinting at might explain the professional gender descrepency. These are just your normal women who trained their brains to code, just like men do. There are women with women's brains and bodies who like geek tech as much as any guy. So it's not the hardware.
But in the Computer Science, plenty of women DO cross into the "male" realm. Like the article says, there are women circuit design engineers working at Intel, women PhDs and women professors in computer science. Like 27% women, not
It's the "software"- social things like traditions, attitudes, desires, and emotions. These things are ephemeral and exist only as long as we keep believing in them, accepting them and reinforcing them. We can change our social software. If more girls and women are shown and encouraged to enjoy the fun of working with computers and solving problems, they'll be capable of enjoying computers just as much as men in that regards.
As for your chess examples, how many of the top 500 players in the world are black? What percent have red hair? A low percentage? I'm not even remotely prepared to reach the conclusion that people with black skin or red hair are somehow less equipped to play chess. Neither with women in computing. I'm strongly guessing it's not that women's hardware doesn't handle chess- it's just that it's socially less acceptable for women to "waste" thousands of hours tinkering with little toy pieces on a checkerboard. They're told they have families to raise and careers to pursue.
If girls and women are told that tinkering with chess toys is a waste of time, and when they try join in anyway, all the male chess geeks are rude/inept to them, they probably won't try for long.
IF girls and women are told that tinkering around with computer toys is a waste of time, and when they try to join in anyway, all the compuer geeks are rude/inept to them, they probably won't try for long.
We can change this!
PS: repeat this to yourself a million times, Men's greatest fear is rejection. Men's greatest fear is rejection. ...
Then you will see the brilliance of my suggestion!
Gussy up and they leave you alone... because then you have the power to hurt them and that is something to be avoided at all costs.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
You seem to be seriously obsessed, answering every comment in this thread, posting no less than five of your moronic "warnings" under my comment alone. I guess I should thank you for directing me to the website Madison has personally linked to in the post I was referring to myself. Thank you very much indeed for the enlightenment.
That having been said, the way Madison was born or who she once might have been is completely irrelevant to this discussion, nor does it invalidate anything I have written. Madison is not only a woman but, as I have already said, also a beautiful woman. I might have not considered her beautiful few years ago, but now I do, having seen the picture I was talking about.
Furthermore, even those few years ago when she was looking very different, she was still a woman, the same woman and the same person she is now and she always will be. I do really hope this concept is not completely beyond any understanding for such a simpleton as yourself.
I cannot even imagine how my life would look like if I had been born in a female body (or with any other serious physical defect for that matter, because that is what we are talking about, a physical defect which needs medical treatment) but I highly doubt that some infantile imbeciles foolishly pointing it out in their idiotic "warnings" would help me feel any better.
I was already apologising for things which are nothing compared to what you have just done. I am really speechless. Answering your comment was a complete waste of my time, as I am sadly quite sure you will not understand anything and will not apologise anyway. I can only hope Madison does not pay any attention whatsoever to childish excesses of such outrageously foolish cretins as yourself.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
now.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
... about those high school girls. I keep getting older, they stay the same age.
Someone had to say it. This is just a thinly vailed attempt at computer nerds trying to take a look at some of those 3 Dimensional girls.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
No sh!t, you don't say?
- Unless you can question your own beliefs, you have no place questioning the beliefs of others.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
riiiiiight.
/. are really cool and don't give a hoot about my past. So I don't know what you goal really was (beyond getting someone else to email me... which didn't happen) but the end result was positive for me. For that, thanks!
Well, seeing as there probably isn't anyone else left reading this thread please, do whatever it is that makes you happy or "secure". You have already proven to me that the vast majority of the people here on
- Unless you can question your own beliefs, you have no place questioning the beliefs of others.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at ocean@alteeve.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
N/T
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Of course it must have bothered you and that is why it made me mad. I'm glad you enjoyed reading my comments. You not only have nothing to be ashamed of, but actually should be very proud of yourself. I seriously admire your strength and courage. I'm very serious and I'm saying it as someone who fail every time I try to do something with my life even when nothing really serious is against me. (You can read about it in these journal entries of mine, if you want to: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] but don't waste your time on anything else, as there is nothing serious in my journal other than the links above. By the way, I feel better right now.) Once again, your strength is beyond my imagination. I wish you best luck with your transition.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You are guilty of gender stereotypes:
>possess the innate (also innane sometimes) desire
>to carefully take in every word communicated to
>them and analyze it to death.
So, a genetic female who doesn't over analyze words, like my mother or sister, is not a woman? That's like saying that women who don't watch soap operas aren't women, or that women shouldn't be in IT because they aren't good at math.
Funny thing is, my mother, sister and counselor have all said I over analyze what people say to me.
However, I don't recall ever claiming to be a "woman" whatever that is, but I do claim to be transgendered.
I still suggest you visit:
http://www.lynnconway.com
It goes into great detail on TG/TS issues
Check your logic, please. Yes, there was a historical problem with descrimination. Then there was Affirmative Action. Now that past wrongs have been corrected, AA is harming women and minorities and should be abolished.
What are you giving me credit for that for? I never said that--you did. Read my post. I said AA trivializes the true achievements of women and minorities. Read it again. A woman/minority actually earns a promotion or a position or is accepted to a university and yet it's dismissed as affirmative action in action. If there were no AA, then everyone would know that the promotion, position, or acceptance was truly earned and not just a handout for being born to a privileged sex/race.
You think you know me? If I owed you a biography you'd see how wrong you are. But you can't even post non-A/C, so you're not even worth it.
Does it make you feel good to put words in my mouth? Do you feel all superior by attributing racial slurs to me when I never used them? Do you think that because I am against race-based AA that I am a racist? If so, you are not listening to me and you are not thinking for yourself.
First of all, nobody is more stubborn than me. Nobody. Secondly, what is this? Fantasy land? What "friend" and for that matter what kind of deranged "parent" would tell his/her child she can't/shouldn't follow her dreams?
You have obviously never been a parent, or you would know better. Kid bangs on the piano? Parent sees future Alicia Keys. Kid pounds on a computer keyboard? Parent sees future Bill Gates.
So you tell me, Mr. A/C. Does being a white male mean I was born and raised in a magical house in the suburbs with 2.2 kids, a dog, and the proverbial white picket fence? Or has your logic broken down again? Being a white male does not automatically imply being born into privilege.
I'm not sure I do understand, Mr. A/C. I'm not sure I understand how being black means you don't get to eat. Could you please enlighten me as to how there are still black people and how they have not all starved to death? Are all black people poor, Mr. A/C? Be careful what you say, because when you say all black people are poor gang-bangers, some people might construe that as racism.
Well, sometimes the closed-mindedness of the people who think they are being helpful just baffles me. I mean, just look at you. You see that I am against AA, so you assume that I must be some kind of KKK grandmaster. But you don't even bother to try to understand why I am against it. You don't even ask. You just assume away about how awful a person I must be.
But then l
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
There is no good way to speak to a person in a fashion that doesn't specify gender
...
::gasp:: use their name! Notice that I have no idea what gender you are, yet I successfully have not made any references to your gender. It's not hard - just requires thinking.
Hello ! In response to your issue concerning 'x', we feel that
Your statement is exactly my point. Just because you cannot determine someone's gender, does that mean you call them male? If you answer 'yes', then you are part of the problem. No woman likes be addressed as a male. It is just as no guy (in most cases) would like to be addressed as Miss. You can use words like "you", "their", or actually
WHAT TO DO:
Please moderate his TROLLING posts down violently.
E-mail him at VeronicaMoonlit@hotmail.com and tell him how you feel about being lied to.
Mark him as a foe and set your foe penalty to -6 so that his lies will be automatically hidden as soon as he posts them.
You just figured out the secret, Mr. AC, women prefer assholes. Actually, they refer to it as being "confident" or "assertive" but its exactly what we call "being a jerk".
Once I figuered that secret out, it didn't take long for me to finally have some success with women. Including my current girlfriend of 6 years.
Since being an asshole is a bit unnatural, I'll give you a couple tips. There's no need to be dishonest (in fact, your being brutally honest when being a jerk). And there's no need to belittle or abuse girls emotionally. Just focus on what you want (sex). If she resists then be rude and demanding. Either she'll give in and enjoy it (which as you know, never happens with the nice guy) or there was never a chance anyway and your better off not wasting time on her.
I really think guys of my generation and younger are seriously at a disadvantage because we were brought up primarily by our divorcee mothers in a world where "feminism" is the accepted fact. Women still instictively respond to "assertive" men while we've grown up thinking that its evil to treat women as anything other than objects of chaste worship.
I can think of tons of outside forces that wouldn't qualify as gender discrimination. Unless you take a wholly "genes determine your destiny" approach, a large part of what people are is culturally informed. In most cultures, men and women do not have identical social roles, and most men and women do not even think that the two sexes should have identical social roles. Therefore, it's to be expected that their likes and dislikes may differ on average. So fewer women like sitting at a computer and programming all day than men. So what? Why do we need to change this? Is there something inherently good about equal percentages of men and women enjoying programming?
It's one thing if there are women who truly enjoy programming, who are the sorts of people who sat around at home through high school puttering around on BBSes, who then can't go into CS because they're unwelcome. That's gender discrimination, and ought to be dealt with. But if on average fewer women want to go into CS, because they simply don't like it, then why does that necessarily need to be changed? Why does it matter? There's percentage-wise more Indian CS PhD students in the US than white CS PhD students. Is this prima facie evidence of discrimination against white CS PhD students? I don't think so.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"a more qualified woman" - ha ha now there's an oxymoron in *IT* if ever i've heard it..
in reality, the only decent looking woman i've ever seen in *IT* is in the sales/marketing/management sections because they don't have the brains, persistence to handle the low level *real* tech stuff. VB doesn't count girls..
*85%* of female managers in IT that i've seen have also gotten to where there are thru (a) shaggin the boss or (b) fulfilling a companies stupid politically correct quotas for female inclusion in management positions.
WHAT TO DO:
# Please moderate his ENLIGHTENED posts up enthusiastically.
# E-mail him at cburley@theburleys.net and tell him how you feel about wanting to throw yourself at his feet (if you are female) or wishing you could be more like him (if you are male).
# Mark him as a foe and set your friend modifier to +6 so that his every utterance will be automatically shown as soon as he posts it.
That's pretty much true.
>Veronica Moonlit is a misogynist gay man who >pretends to be a straight woman online.
This is funny. My sister once had a co-worker call her a "feminazi" and she told him, "You should talk to my brother, he is more of a feminist than I am."
You should also know that I'm not attracted to men at all, sorry. So I can't be a gay man, who pretends to be a straight woman online. In that site that you link to, I openly say I'm transgendered so how could I be pretending to be a straight woman.
Hope you're having fun, take care.
Madison is a woman. It's in her nature. You can tell by the way she communicates. She may not look 100% feminine--look at her face (and prolly her crotch too, since she's pre-op, right?), but as you say, she is a woman in her head and her heart.
So if you're so analytical, follow the conversation.
- I suggested that Madison is not the same as most women and that she might be getting blank stares as people try to wrap their heads around what she is.
- She agreed with me, but said her experiences are similar to those of other women.
- You come along and ask what makes a woman a woman and implying that I can't figure out what a woman is (hell, I married one... hopefully I've got it figured!). Remember, at this point it was already clear that Madison and I agree that she is a woman. So your post is, at best, irrelevant, but more than likely you read my post, saw that I said she was "different", and automatically assumed that I was clueless as to what was going on without even bothering to understand what I wrote.
- So I called you on it and I pointed out that while you may want to dress up like a woman, you communicate like a man.
- Then you put words in my mouth about women needing to watch soap operas and such. Seriously man, nobody should watch soap operas. And that is so typical male for you to even say that.
I have little doubt that you are transgendered, but I also have little doubt that you have a man's brain. There's nothing wrong with that. You can't help the way you are. But, the way you communicate just screams "gay guy in drag".Madison communicates like a woman, despite her being born with male body-parts and hormones. Such is life, I guess. I wish you both the best of luck.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
It is very easy to remain gender neutral in English, unlike many other languages where all nouns, verbs and others have to be inflected depending on the gender of whatever you're talking about, or to.
And in Poland, the last name is often different between husband and wife (*ski/*ska). English is not considered to be one of the easiest languages for nothing. Only English natives have trouble spelling; count yourselves lucky, your language is trivial.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Having my own kids has opened my eyes to the fact that PEOPLE are different, "virtually from day one." Regardless of whether they possess a penis or not. One of my sons is a "typical boy," the other is decidedly not. Both are chromasomally male, and have all secondary sexual characteristics of boys. I suspect that, were I to become a pod person and actually purchase a Barbie (blech! ptui!) they would have decidedly different ideas on how to play with it. I dig that about them. Glad I didn't tag 'em with certain qualities at birth.
You really claim to be able to identify the "gender" of someone's "brain" based on a few Slashdot posts that you yourself deam to be irrelevant? That's some amazing hubris you have there. Well, I guess it saves you from actually having to interact with people, because you can apparantly figure out everything there is to know about them using only a small text sample and your amazing psychoanalytical powers. Yay.
Thirty years of "studying females." God, stop, you're killing me.
>and those stereotypes exist for a reason.
Stereotypes are stereotypes, doesn't make them true. doesn't make them accurate. And it most certainly doesn't make them a "good thing"
>As a hetero male, I have spent 30 years studying
>females, and you, sir, are male. You may have
>hacked your wang off, but you are male.
In my 37 years I've studied the "female culture" probably more closely than you have. The fact that you claim women over analyze words based on a small statistcal sample, your wife?, does not make that statement applicable to a women. Which is what you did. Then you claimed that since you perceived I lacked that quality I wasn't a woman.
What makes you think I've "hacked of my crotch"? I haven't.
>Madison is a woman. It's in her nature.
>You can tell by the way she communicates.
How can you say this without more data, especially data involving real life conversation?
You have to remember, Madison is younger than I am, about 10 years I think. She started her transition, I haven't done that. She's taken hormones, I haven't. I've spent a longer time, having to live the male role.
When I was young, I got picked on for being a "sissy and crybaby", so I had to repress that part of me. Even today, I find myself holding back in conversations and emotional responses, and social interactions because of that. My instinct says to do/say one thing, but my head stops that because I'm afraid of other people. For example If I start "gushing" in a conversation, I pull it back, and then I get ashamed for pulling it back.
I've spent decades repressing every little thing that might get perceived as feminine and now you throw it in my face. Thank you oh so very much.
Your words hurt me more than those of that AC's No you didn't mean to do that. Here I am sitting at my computer and crying.over a Slashdot post.
My Question about what makes a woman a woman was rhetorical, it was designed to get you to think.That's what I was trying to do.
>I have little doubt that you are transgendered,
>but I also have little doubt that you have a
>man's brain. There's nothing wrong with that. You
>can't help the way you are. But, the way you
>communicate just screams "gay guy in drag".
You don't know this, but words similar to that paragraph are often used by T-folk to put other T-folk down. Basically trying to say that they are more "feminine" than others. It hurts.
I do have a question, why do you think I'm attracted to men? I'm not. I know it's a stereotype, "They do it so they can have sex with men and not feel guilt" But it isn't true.
>Madison communicates like a woman, despite her >being born with male body-parts and hormones. >Such is life, I guess. I wish you both the best >of luck
You don't know this either but self doubt is why so many T-folk delay their transitions. All those years of repression helps one doubt ones one thoughts and feelings. Let me tell you that isn't fun at all.
I know you didn't mean ill. Thanks for your well wishes.
could you remember this one thing. If you ever have a child that is transgendered or different, could you give them all the love you can and then some? They really need it.
Take care.
She may not look 100% feminine--look at her face (and prolly her crotch too, since she's pre-op, right?), but as you say, she is a woman in her head and her heart.
The sky's the limit! Bravo to you!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
This is espesially true of calculus and differential equations. I've known some downright ditzsy girls who could solve diff eqs effortlessly while its rare to find a man who could do more than crank out enough partial credit on the exams to pass the diff eq course.
I remember once one of my friends was tutoring a group of yourger EE students on basic circuit theory. He was teaching phasor calculations for RLC circuits. The guys were cranking along, not really even writing out any equations (just solving the simple multiplication/division in their heads for each part of the circuit). One of the girls protested that she "didn't get it" and asked "Why can't we just set up a differential equation?" The guys all scoffed that it would be rediculously hard to solve a circuit that way. So my friend (the tutor) set up a new circuit on the board. The guys all proceeded to solve the problem by phasor analysis. The girls solved it in approximately the same amount of time using differential equations!Just to clarify a few things:
- Of course the sample of women I was referring to was of greater size than 1. We are talking every female friend, relative, coworker, romantic interest--you name it.
- Remember that you are not the only one who was teased in school. Children can be so cruel to one another.
- Who is a woman depends upon who you ask, I guess. What George W. Bush would say vs. what the local fetish club would say are two vastly different things.
I do hope that you are able to become more comfortable with who you are and accepting of yourself. You don't have to go too deep to see the difference between Madison ("I am a woman") and yourself ("who me? I never said I was a woman--I'm TG"). Your last post was much more feminine, of course. You expressed your feelings instead of saying, "Go look at such and such a website".Well, it's getting late and I'm sure the last thing you need to deal with right now is some jackass on slashdot, so I'm going to sign off. Seriously, I hope you are able to figure out who you are and what you feel. Accepting yourself will help others to accept you. Again, best of luck.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
You should die, pussy.
The use of "they" as a singular does not qualify as a "good" way to avoid gender in pronouns. It's just done that way because there is no good singular "it" pronoun that works for people.
Notice that I have no idea what gender you are, yet I successfully have not made any references to your gender. It's not hard - just requires thinking.
Your post was stiff and uncomfortable to read. Now I know why. While being genderless in speech is possible, it does not lead to pleasant sounding speech. Hence my claim (that I still stand by) that there is no *good* way to do it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
"X is worse than Y" does not have to imply "Y is good". They could both be bad. This is precisely what is happening here with your comparasin of how Polish and English handle the situation of unknown gender.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
"Wir werden nicht als Mädchen geboren, wir werden dazu gemacht" (Ursula Schen, 1977)
"Geschlechtsspezifische Sozialisation" (Helga Bilden)
Ya I guess we could but I think it would be nice to chat with you(a seemingly intelligent woman) by a more fluid means ala IM (AIM, MSN, YIM, mIRC, etc.).
Quit trying to pick up "women" on Slashdot.
I think I understand how your "amazing psychic powers" work.
Anyone who agrees with everything you say must have a "female brain".
Anyone who dares to disagree with you or question your "obviously superior intellect" or who takes issue in any way with anything you say must have a "male brain".
Yeah, you're an idiot.
Hee... well, thank you ~ more than just seemingly intelligent, I hope :} -- but, see, I never said I was a woman (OR a man)... maybe you're setting yourself up for disappointment? (I'm sorry, but I just prefer not to be treated on a gender basis)
Oh well, at least I amuse myself.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Such as?
Have you been raped recently? Groped by someone you have no interest in? Have you had people who are physically stronger than you "jokingly" overpower you? Had the serious things you said in important situations ignored because of your genital apparatus? Gotten a lower salary for a job? If these things aren't a part of your daily reality, then you're benefiting. If people aren't taking you seriously because of an "accent" or because of your class, well, that's no fair either. But freedom from the kind of shit women have to put up with isn't something you accomplished on your own: that's something that was handed to you as part of the whole social "package." :-) Isn't life grand?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I mean, jeez, half the computer people in the country are unemployed, let's go out of our way to bring more people into the field. Sorry ladies but this boat is booked.
This is my sig.
Why is this automatically a good idea? Surely the important thing is that everyone has similar opportunities to pursue the career they want. The actual numbers taking particular opportunities will depend on individual preferences. You can't force people in to doing jobs they have no interest in to try to enforce some spurious idea of equality.
Boy, I must be really lame that I can't even start a troll anymore on slashdot.
This is my sig.
I will end my futile attemp now and not continue this thread. Maby I should start a blog although it seems a little to trendy for me.
Jaa
Did you see the movie Splash? Did you know that you're named after an avenue, as a joke?
I think the main points of the article is this:
1. If a woman does bad on a test she thinks it's her fault. If a man does bad on a test, he just shrugs it off and gets on with his school work.
2. A woman wants to go into a career that will make a difference in the world. Men not so much so.
3. The nerd factor. Women see it as for men only. And are overwelmed when there is so few women compared to men.
Now I shall put my opinion on the 3 points above:
1. This is unfortunately the way women think. It's stupid because if one of the men going for the same thing tells her to just shrug it off like he did, she won't. And I don't know why.
2. Why do they want to do this? I don't know. Men want to go into IT because of the money, not really to make a difference I think.
3. Women don't seem to know why it's so much fun like men seem to find it fun. It could be cause of high school.
As for other careers going up in the percentage of women going into them, there is only so many women around. When one field gets more women, its gotta come from some other field. When other fields are going up, they are going to get the women going into them from somewhere.
It's the same thing with the economy. Money is always the same amount everywhere except when inflation occurs, only then is it increased. Wealth is never created or destroyed, just shifted.
My Gawd WTF...
The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
do you have any pix of your cat online?
soupy twist