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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."
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.
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.
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.
...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
My sister and I were both given Legos when we were young. We were both given dolls too. And it happens that I'm now into computer science, while she's baroque music. So even when given the same opportunities as kids, grown up by the same parents at the same place and going to the same schools until we were 17 year old or so, we have completely different interests now.
So, either we were born with differences, be they related to gender or not, or there are just too many factors to be taken into account through one's life and any individual signal we pick and try to analyze is completely undistinguishable from the overall noise.
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?
I certainly don't agree with you. The reason why girls are less attracted to sciences is not some god-given natural fact. It's how boys and girls are raised and possibly lots of prejudices and sexist comments from science teachers etc. I remember quite some anecdotes of physics teachers mocking the girls in class that they don't even know how a washing machine works. And I was on a mathematical and natural sciences high-school, that was an all geeky place. Guess what the boys/girls ratio was.
Ignoring the discrimination of women means to waste a lot of potential. That, by the way, is the most important reason against gender based discrimination in the first place. 50 % of the best students you haven't even found yet!
What I am really getting at is nature vs nurture and I am willing to say many of the societal disparities between women and men aren't natural (while some are).
Tell me that again when you have kids of your own.
I used to think a bit like you do. Let me tell you - having your own kids, and watching other family members and friends have kids, really opens your eyes. Boys and girls are very different, virtually from day one. In fact I think the male/female characteristics are probably more pronounced in young children and mellow as they get older.
There would be a lot of happy parents around if they could influence the behaviour of their children as much as you think they can. I can just imagine it...
"My little boys used to run around screaming and fighting all the time, but then I brought them Barbie dolls and showed them how to cook and now they're calm and spend all day helping me around the house! Parenting's so easy!"
Why do these figures matter?
These figures matter because women have long been discouraged from going into science for no reason other than the fact that society thought women weren't smart enough or tough enough to work in science.
These figures matter because when you have some professions that are chock full of women and others that are devoid of women, it's easier to discriminate against women. Compare salaries for teachers and nurses against those for software engineeers. It's easy to say "oh, it's okay that nurses make 60% of what software engineers do, because there are lots of nurses, and nursing is less technical and less important." Well, there's currently a huge shortage of nurses, and an overabundance of software engineers. If you think it's less technical, you don't know much about modern nursing. The nurses I know save lives on a daily basis, and that would seem more important by any measure than writing, debugging, and meeting with other people about code.
These figures matter because I like women. And not just to look at and fool around, but to work with and talk to and socialize with. The best projects I've worked on (best here = most productive, highest quality code) are the ones where I've worked closely with a woman. Same was true in college. For whatever reason, there's just been a really good, effective dynamic there in terms of helping each other to understand requirements, come up with good designs, and build solid implementations. But the group I'm in now has zero women out of thirteen programmers, and the one I was in before had two women out of twenty-five programmers. Getting more women into software development would be a good thing.
It just isn't important to monitor such trivial things.
It is very important to monitor and learn about such things. The reasons behind these changes tell us useful and important things about our industry, and about society. It could turn out that there are legitimate reasons for the change in the rate of women entering computer science. Or, it could turn out that schools and businesses are discouraging women from entering CS, and that discouragement might rise to the level of unfair gender discrimination.
One obvious reason to monitor such things is that there's a history of discrimination against women, and we want to make sure that we're not falling back into that historical pattern.
As long as you can do your job why should it matter if you have a penis or a vagina?
Exactly. So, why does it seem to matter?
Maybe there's a difference between the genders that just makes men enjoy the challenges that software brings, and makes women all want to go into nursing and teaching. Maybe it works out that way completely voluntarily, because we're all enlightened and obviously everyone is treated equally and without gender discrimination. Let's just accept that for a moment.
So we've got this fairly interesting gender difference staring us in the face. It's so strong that it accounts for a 4:1 ratio of men:women in computer science and probably other engineering fields, and a 1:4 ratio in teaching, and a 1:15 (or something like that) difference in nursing. Wouldn't it be important from an academic point of view to study this difference? What is it that drives men into some fields and women into others?
Alternatively, there's some outside force, something other than innate differences between those of us with a Y chromosome and those with a double dose of X, that has at least some impact on the matter. And I can't think of any kind of outside force that wouldn't qualify as gender discrimination.
If there is unfair discrimination, then hiding your head in the sand and saying "why do we even bother monitoring silly things like this" is the thing that allows it to continue. Trying to understand it, and to make sure that you and your own attitudes are not part of the problem, is the only way to begin to end it.
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.
When I was in 9th grade I asked for a typewriter for Christmas, instead my Dad suggested a computer. Where he got that idea I have no clue, but I got one. After my brothers helped me put it together (none of us knew anything about computers) I taught myself how to use it. I was hooked! I took all the computer science courses at my tiny high school and my teacher (much
Now that I have a BS (in CIS) and have been working a few years, I do notice most other women I've worked with in IT really don't have the driving interest in technology I do. It's more like just a job. Hence I bond more with the geeky guys where we can chat about the new video cards, OSS, or whatnot.
Really you can't force a love of technology on anyone, male or female. If they're into it, they'll find their own particular area. Not giving them the exposure or serious chance is the worst crime.
Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
True, BUT that isn't what I see the question as...the question is WHY ARE WOMEN DRIVEN FROM THE IT INDUSTRY?
Why do women start in the industry, but then are pushed out at a higher rate than men. It may be just a genetic predisposition, but on the other hand, maybe they aren't treated fairly.
We have a young woman who started in our department about 18 months ago. She has a degree in MIS and wants to do project management. She is bright, responsible, and reliable. But she has been passed over for promotions twice because she is also attractive and married to an attorney, so the higherups just assume that she is only working here until she gets pregnant, why bother training/promoting her?
Her drive and thirst to succeed are being crushed because she isn't being taken seriously by managment. Guys who have come in after her with fewer skills are given opportunitys she won't get because they fit the mold.
I see this as the problem. She WANTS to work in the field, but isn't being given the same opportunities as a man.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
I goofed and missed it on the preview, meant to add that my high school CS teacher was female. That might have helped somewhat, on top of the fact she was an excellent teacher and geek herself.
Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
What a brilliant fucking idea! Respect... women... Treat them like you would anyone you respected. Judge them by their actions, not the descended/undescended status of their gonads...
Naw, that will never work! We need a HOWTO that tells us not to use the word "bitch"! No, wait, we don't need that, because women suck at math and don't want to be programmers anyway, and it's not sexist to acknowledge this obvious fact!
Damn. Anyone who wants to study why women feel unwelcome in computer fields simply needs to parse this thread and see who is actually in the field themselves. I think they'll find the answer right there.
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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.