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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....
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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).
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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.
*sigh* And that is just such a gross generalisation. I find that debugging is one of the programming tasks that women tend to excel at. Their approach seems to be quite different a times to that of their male colleagues. In programming teams, it often seems to be the case that when trying to squish a particularly elusive bug that member of the opposite sex will quite easily point out.
*shrug* - just my own observation.
But hey we're at Slashdot, only women we see here are blow up :)
Hardly surprising, with an attitude like that! ;-)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Based on my experience, there's really only thing that will work:
Professor Leonardo Dicaprio.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
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.
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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?
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.
Several women have recently informed me that I'm not nearly as creepy as I used to be!
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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
"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."
Who exactly is 'forcing women and minorities into those underpaid roles'? When I interview people for a job, if I was to end up with two equally qualified candidates, one male, one female, I'd probably either toss a coin or hire the woman. The problem is, the best male candidate I interviewed has always been better than the best female candidate, usually vastly so.
If women are so great at programming, then I don't understand where all the good female programmers are hiding? PC fanatics can continue to rant about evilwhitemaleoppressors keeping women out of programming, but my experience of reality doesn't support your opinion... so unless that experience is wildly unusual, I can only presume that women just aren't as good at the job.
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,
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.
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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.
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.
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!
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?
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
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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 understand that some people are truly befuddled about this. But try to see this from my vantage point.
I am one of very few women in every department I work in. I have an engineering degree as well as a master's degree in computer science. And when I see discussions like this, I feel completely and utterly belittled.
How is it so difficult to see that brilliant women can be turned off by these fields when the following are everyday occurances:
I don't know about you, but if I knew that going into a particular field would result in the above happening on a daily basis, and that my intelligence would constantly be under-estimated by my peers, I would probably want to pick a different field. I would want to learn and work somewhere where I would not be perceived as a token exception to the rule.
Just my .02.
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" ???
That's just wishful thinking...
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I believe the more appropriate term is "lure"...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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*
I hope you realize that most of us men feel the same way about many of the people we work with... "How the hell did he get that job...?" "How is he not failing out of school...?" "That guy is a moron..." It's male driven competition; no one is safe. If you want in on it kudos to you, but don't feel bad because e question your intelligence, we do it to everyone around us.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?)
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
I'm not sure about her, but for me it's because I was brought up to fight against people who thought that way. Too many women, however, are told to not stand out, not be different, accept what the lead male says, etc.
It's not just that. It's this: who wants to participate in a field where you are constantly required to prove that you aren't innately inferior, that you even should be given a chance to prove your worth?
Some people will take a "I'll show you!" attitude, and others take a "it's not worth the hassle" attitude and get a job where people don't assume the presence of ovaries is a fatal flaw.
The enemies of Democracy are
I have found there are a lot of women in the graphics and web design fields.
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?
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/
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.
"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"
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.
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
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.
Oh Madison is transgendered? Is that what you're trying to say? Doesn't make her any less of a woman.
Can't dig a tater hole in IT without finding transgendered folk. Can't visit transgendered IRC channels without the discussion turning to computers/Linux/Uniz etc every once in a while.
That computer you're posting on would not exist without the efforts of this woman http://www.lynnconway.com
Go visit the site and learn something.
And yes, I'm transgendered too, though I'm not a professional IT/programmer/tech type person.
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
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:
It's funny, you keep asking others to email mail but you don't seem willing to do that yourself. "Anonymous Coward" is indeed an apt name.
- Unless you can question your own beliefs, you have no place questioning the beliefs of others.
I am quite aware of Lynn's background and her contribution to technology. She transitioned in 1968, lived stealth until '99, and has been married to her partner of many years for quite a while now. There can be no doubt as to her contributions as a woman. As a trans-female she is no different from a bio female that has undergone a hysterectomy. If you want a fascinating journey, have a look at her website, www.lynnconway.com
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.
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.