Gender Gap in Computer Science Growing

EReidJ writes "Looks like finding a compatible girl geek in the computer profession is becoming even harder, as an already wide gender gap among Computer Science majors is becoming larger. From the article: 'A Globe review shows that the proportion of women among bachelor's degree recipients in computer science peaked at 37 percent in 1985 and then went on the decline. Women have comprised about 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degree recipients in the last few years, and in the elite confines of research universities, only 17 percent of graduates are women [...] The argument of many computer scientists is that women who study science or technology, because they are defying social expectations, are in an uncomfortable position to begin with. So they are more likely to be dissuaded from pursuing computer science if they are exposed to an unpleasant environment, bad teaching, and negative stereotypes like the image of the male hacker.'"

Comments

Good!

[JPamplin]

Who needs yucky girls anyway. Cooties! ;-)

Re:Good!

[diersing]

Lets face chicks just aren't willing to go to the extremes of getting degreed to find new and innovative ways to download pr0n, they're just wired differently.

Re:Good!

[wcleveland]

circle circle dot dot, now i've got my cootie shot... bring on the babes!

Re:Good!

[mrtroy]

On a serious note, How are so many girls getting out of the kitchen? And maintaining jobs while pregnant? And getting jobs while barefoot?(haha)

Consider that 50 years ago, women were second class citizens. That is less than a generation ago.
So lets stop wondering why there aren't many women in CS, and lets start looking at the big picture, things have drastically changed in society. Of course there will never be "equality", because of people's interests in careers. I bet there aren't nearly as many men in certain positions because of personal preference too.

Unplesant environment

[winkydink]

Like how many male computer geeks lack the social skills to interract with the opposite sex and mistake friendly interraction by female coworkers as "interest" in something more.

Re:Unplesant environment

[rocketsled]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN LACKING SOCIAL SKILLS, my 20 sided die guides me with any social situation.

Re:Unplesant environment

[xIcemanx]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2003/20030630l. gif It's sad that people like that exist in my CS department. We have people search on Facebook for female CS majors and then poke all of them in hopes of a relationship. Rather than, actually, you know, talking to them in class.

Re:Unplesant environment

[IAmTheDave]

Seriously!

For fucks sake, I am so tired of this pandering if certain things are not entirelly, totally equal. Wait - only 48% of people in profession X are female? Well there must be some gender bias! Quick, admit more women into universities into these studies! Quick, discourage males from being allowed to propigate such a gender biased view of things!

Maybe less women WANT to go into CS! Listen, there is, and will always BE, fundamental differences between the sexes, between the way the mind works, between general interests. Yes, there is overlap, but the majority of young boys don't want to play with Barbies in pink dresses. Does that indicate some gender bias? Sure... is it wrong, bad, or need to be corrected? NO! It's nature, just let it be already.

Re:Unplesant environment

[xIcemanx]

I don't think it's a 48% difference here. I think such extreme differences can't be explained by an X or Y chromosome - it's symptomatic of an overall negative CS attitude towards women as a whole that needs to be fixed anyway. There's nothing fundamentally male about CS - it's just we discourage women from doing it, thereby robbing ourselves of potentially valuable talent.

Re:Unplesant environment

[Billosaur]

Like how many male computer geeks lack the social skills to interract with the opposite sex and mistake friendly interraction by female coworkers as "interest" in something more.

As far as I can recall, they never offered "Etiquette for Geeks" as a part of the Comp Sci curriculum when I went college, but then again that was back in the age of the dinosaurs (the DEC-10).

Social skills isn't that big a factor. I find very few of my programming peers who fit the "geek programmer" stereotype. Plenty of us are married, have houses and families. Mind you my wife is not a tech-head and we don't discuss my work in-depth, but she could probably understand it. Geeks aren't going to find women on the Comp Sci track anyway; they'll do a better job impressing the bubble-head peroxide blondes who talk into their mouses.

Re:Unplesant environment

[IAmTheDave]

I fail to see how we (humans) actively discourage women from entering the CS workforce. It's true that some IT professions have gotten a reputation as existing as a couple of overly obese 35 year old virgins in a server room without windows, but I'd like to see an example of someone (overtly or not) saying "women should not do IT" or "you as a woman do not want to enter into the IT world." Obviously it doesn't have to be that forward, but actively discouraging women, and women being discouraged by an untrue or outdated stereotype are two different things. A positive eduactional campaign may be in order, but anything more than that - actively recruiting women just to close the gender gap that may or may not be simply the nature of things is unnecessary and unfair to those men that actually WANT to do CS, in my opinion.

Re:Unplesant environment

[Hannah E. Davis]

Unfortunately, it also goes the other way around -- if a male geek is just ineptly trying to be friendly, a female co-worker might misintepret it as interest. Because, y'know, if a guy is trying to talk to a girl as an equal or even as a friend, he obviously just wants in her pants! Especially if she's ugly and he's already found himself a cute geek girl. Yeah, really.

Of course, if the girl has any kind of brain in her, she'll just talk to the guy, say "Sorry, I'm not interested" and whether he was actually interested or not, that will be the end of that. It's always worked for me anyway (when dealing with both geek and non-geek guys).

Re:Unplesant environment

[keraneuology]

Couple the declining quantity of women in CS studies and the overwhelming majority of women in college in general and a pattern begins to emerge. Anybody who can't read the numbers is seriously deficient in critical and analytical thinking and doesn't belong in CS studies in the first place.

But the bias concern is only applicable to gender stacking towards more men: women outnumber men by far in nursing, education and womens' studies yet nobody makes a peep about the inequities involved (or outright discrimination).

Re:Unplesant environment

[Pxtl]

Enough that a clever girl can get through a comp eng program without ever having to write a line of code if she plays her cards right - at least at the school I went to.

Re:Unplesant environment

[Pxtl]

That's a good point. Walk into a comp-sci class and ask around. You will be hard pressed to find a single guy who wouldn't like more girls in his class - even ugly ones. The repulsion problems don't seem to start in the working world. In undergrad, most guys are more than cooperative to female classmates. Occaisionally pathetic and creepy, but cooperative.

I think it starts younger. Raise girls to be princesses and moms, and you get women who's highest goals are domestic crap and social climbing.

Buy your girls lego. It can be pink, but it still has to have wheels and jet engines.

Re:Unplesant environment

[NetRAVEN5000]

"Boys are (often, typically, not always of course) encouraged to play with things like Legos, GI-Joe, Toy Trucks, etc; while girls are encouraged to play with barbies, dolls, and the like."

No, they aren't. It's just that it's assumed that guys are going to prefer trucks, dinosaurs, or army men or something, and that girls are going to prefer dolls and play makeup. And usually, that's the way it is.

It's instinct - females are typically gentler and more nurturing, and males are typically rougher. That's why if a boy is all alone, he's more likely to play with Ninja Turtles or GI Joe than Barbie and Ken, and why if a girl is all alone she'll probably prefer to play mother to a doll than pull out a bucket of plastic army men and stage a battle.

Not that boys would never play dolls if that's all they had - but if you've ever seen boys play with dolls, they're more likely to play with the Ken doll and race around in the sports car than play with Barbie. Same with girls - seems like if you give a girl a Ninja Turtle she's more likely to make it into a nurturing creature than a crime-fighting superhero.

Not that it's sexist or anything - that's just the way it is. Guys and girls are different, that's all.

Re:Unplesant environment

[jasonwc]

Sorry, for the crappy formatting. I accidentally chose HTML formatting. Here's a readable version:

You're assuming that women are choosing not to enter Computer Science because they simply have less interest in the area. While this may be, it doesn't explain the whole story. There are many areas where women show great interest and are still denied equal access. This, and not women's waining interest in CS most likely explains the decline in female CS majors.

  The legal profession is a good example of the discrimination the poster is referencing. Over the last few decades, women's enrollment at law schools has expanded dramatically. Most law schools now have equal or higher enrollment of women than men. I don't believe this can be fully explained (or explained) by greater interest in the Law on the part of women. Rather, Law Schools have made efforts to make the environment open and inclusive. While women faced discrimination in the 70s and 80s, Law schools now provide a far more equal teaching environment.

  Yet, despite this increase in enrollment, women attorneys have been leaving the field. While nearly 50% of new associates are women, less than 10% of partners are female. This can't be blown off as being due to lack of interest. Associates at large firms put in 60+ hours a week, and are surely commited to the responsibilities of partnership. Despite this, men are dispraportionately chosen for the highest paying positions. As in CS where women are often not given the same opportunities or support from faculty which is predominantly male (in CS I believe 80-90%+ if my memory serves me correctly), and thus decide to enter other fields, women are finding that Law firms that are willing to hire them as associates, are refusing them the higher paid and more prestigious partnership positions, and thus are also seeking to either leave the field or to start their own firms. The "Old Boys Club" is still alive and well in the United States. It's too easy to ignore these issues, and say that women are simply not interested, but this is an oversimplification of the issue.

  And as to your statement about boys not wanted to play with barbies- do you think this could possibly be caused by the fact that girls are socialized from birth to act in a manner that is appropriate for their sex? Their rooms are adorned in pink, they are given pink clothing to wear to seperate them from their male coutnerparts, and they are shown dolls and makeup as proper means of entertainment. The fact that we live in this society doesn't mean that is in any way natural, neutral, or necessary. We push girls to act a certain way, just as we push boys to act in a certain manner. Then we justify their inculcated differences as "natural".

  Jason Wittlin-Cohen

Re:Unplesant environment

[theStorminMormon]

You should check out an article at the Escapist Magazine discussing gender differences from an evolutionary pyschology standpoint. I'm not going to try and tell you it's in any way definitive, but I think it demonstrates a rationale framework for a biological basis for gender differences.

Women in Games, by Chris Crawford
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/17/3

You've go to remember that individual variation will be greater than group variation, and I definitely think that we sometimes use tradition to override individuality (and that's a bad thing). But to say that "it's just arbitrary tradition" doesn't really make sense: where do you think tradition comes from? Traditions evolved with society, and I think that both society and, therefore tradition, are essentially products of evolution.

-stormin

Re:Unplesant environment

[Chris Burke]

Feh. Have you dug around the many articles about women in computing here on /.? You can find plenty of men expressing the opinion that women should not enter software or engineering, because they "have different interests" or "aren't as capable at math and logic". Is the Dean of a major university saying exactly that not overt enough for you? Just because you won't hear that expressed in the halls of your workplace due to fear of reprisal doesn't mean the sentiment doesn't exist and that it doesn't enter in to hiring decisions.

So combine this active discouragement with the not overt but quite obvious to someone sensitive to them factors such as lack of female role models or even peers and I'm not surprised at all at the widening gender gap.

The problem with actively recruiting women is that we can't because they aren't there due to the problems above. The only part of the gender gap that "may or may not be simply the nature of things"* is the tendency of a privileged group to feel threatened by and try to exclude another group from joining and possibly stealing their privilege. Justifying their exclusion as being the natural state of things is absolutely classic.

* By the way, good job not being over or anything in your discouragement of women; just leave it open to debate like a good reasonable engineer. I'm sure no mere female will catch it and determine that the male establishment feels she doesn't belong. Is this what you meant by not actively discouraging?

Re:Unplesant environment

[theStorminMormon]

Your post is a pretty good example of why not to trust statistics. You jump straight from the different statistics for male and female lawyers to conclusions as though the correlation between gender and salary is causal. You have to do a lot more work to get there.

Personally I think there's a lot of uncertainty here. For example you just assume that since women are willing to work 60 hours a week they must be just as motivated as men to go for partner. I don't think that's obvious at all. What about women who want to be mothers?

I also think that the whole "society tells women to play with barbie dolls" thing cuts both ways. Now society, instead of telling girls to play with barbie dolls, tries to tell young women that they can have a career and be a mother too. I believe that this is just setting women up for failure and dissappointment. This just sets women up for feelings of conflict and guilt and inadequacy when they can't live up to the mythical "do everything" mom. Plus I've always been saddened when I talked to girls my age or a little younger (in college or just graduated) who have this glow in their eyes that they're going to really *do* something - they're going to have a *career*!

Who the Hell talks like that? I'm not saying you shouldn't be excited about your career, but women are being sold a bunch of horseshit here. A career means welcome to the 9-5 grind. A career means a cubicle. A career means having to accept the authority of some corporate boss. That's what a career is. Sure, not all careers suck, but by and large Dilbert is what a career is, and yet women are being sold on this idea of a career as the path to fulfillment, enlightenment and self-actualization. What a crock!

It's this awful Orwellian lie that somehow becoming a cog in some corporate machine is the straight and narrow path towards really being someone. What it really is amounts to nothing more than a materialist, consumerist trap for women as well as men. It's the basic Tom Sawyer painting the fence story - and yet the vast majority of people, men and women alike, are lining up to trade their toys for a chance to whitewash the fence.

-stormin

Re:Unplesant environment

[IAmTheDave]

Why is it that we have this awful attitude that being a mother is somehow this dead-end proposition that requires no job skills?

This is (dare I say it) at least partially the fault of the women's movement. It's the same pendulum swing that all issues go through - from one extreme to the other.

Things start out with there definately being a gender bias in everything - down to denying women the right to vote. Women's suffrage comes along, gains traction, gets the right to vote, and keeps on moving (rightfully so.) But as every movement has, certain radicals decided that not only should women have equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work, but that the traditional roles of the female were to be shunned. Now that the opportunity to have a career existed, women chosing not to do so were holding the movement back, and were themselves the product of a still-unbalanced culture.

Whether or not culture still does favor men over women in the career/pay department is not the debate here - I think that we're at least starting to see the pendulum swing back towards center again. Women go to college in droves - to most young people, there is no understanding of a gender bias in continuing eduacation at all. Women are executives and CEOs, and are starting to have real representation at the top of the ladder. What this means is that said pendulum is now free to swing back, and people can start realizing that it's choice that was lacking before. Now a woman can choose her path - career, stay-at-home mother, or even both, and it is that choice that we support.

It's true, there is no more nobel a calling than motherhood. There is a reason that no matter how a child was raised, most would instantly kill or be killed for the welfare of their mother. So now women have true choice, and people will hopefully stop judging so harshly for any choice, be it stay-at-home mother or career woman. And like your wife, that choice can be mutually exclusive from the level of education or intelligence a woman may possess or strive for.

Re:Unplesant environment

[jasonwc]

The problem is that women are in essence given the choice of having children or a good career with advancement opportunities. Men aren't required to make this choice- they can have both. While it is true that women can have kids without staying home and that their husband can stay home with the kids, this doesn't happen for several reasons. First, there is a social stigma against women who have children and use day care rather than staying home with the child in his/her infancy. Secondly, and more importantly, very few men are willing to stay home with the kids and sacrafice their career. Society doesn't expect them to do so, and by and large, they aren't willing to. Women on the other hand, are expected to have children, and to stay home and care for them. The choice women make to have children and to stay home, and to care for their children isn't made in a void. Societal pressure and the unwillingness of men to take equal parental responsibility accounts for much of the decisions that we view as reflecting women's true will. We should recognize that societal discrimination affects the choices people make.

Re:Unplesant environment

[lahvak]

I know that this seems to be very rare and unpopular attitude these days, but when I went to college, me and most of my colleagues studied math because we liked it, we were interested in it, it was fun, and we were good at it. Of course, we sort of hoped to get some sort of math related job, but that was mostly because that way we could continue doing what we were good at and what we liked, and be payed for it.

Some of my friends from college have math related jobs, just like me. Some of us do use functional analysis, measure theory, PDE's and whatnot on daily basis. Many of my former colleagues have jobs that have very little to do with math, at least with the kind of math we studied. Some are in IT, some in banking sector, some are lawyers, even few politicians, but all of them tell me that the time and effort spent learning advanced math was not wasted for them. Even though they never use any of the stuff they have learned, they acquired skills that are very useful for their jobs.

Even though the lady that is the subject of this conversation most likely won't teach advanced calculus to her kids, she undoubtedly will teach to them her love of learning, intellectual challenge and curiosity, and appreciation for knowledge. I think that's the best we can give to our children.

Re:Unplesant environment

[Ironsides]

How many men are elementary teachers? I can think of only a few. Is this an example of a gender bias againts men?

Re:Unplesant environment

[mollymoo]

There's nothing fundamentally male about CS - it's just we discourage women from doing it, thereby robbing ourselves of potentially valuable talent.

If you can accept a strong geek Asperger's/Autism correlation, you automatically accept a gender correlation too (as Asperger's/Autism is more prevalent among males).

Re:Unplesant environment

[Cerberus7]

Your post is worthless without pics for the rest of us.

Re:Unplesant environment

[Kiffer]

unless I roll a 1 I am set

A 1 is not an automatic failure for skill checks http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm#s killChecks

um... never mind.

Re:Unplesant environment

[Chris Burke]

If you're referring to Larry Summers, that's a misrepresentation of what he said. His claim was that *on average*, men are more interested in technical fields, and there's strong evidence that this is true. (Whether it's due to biological or social issues is a separate matter).

Bull-cocky. He explicitly referred to intrinsic -- meaning biological -- differences in aptitude being dominant over social and discriminatory factors. The relevent statement from his speech:

"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination."

I'm pretty sure the majority of male IT workers would be quite happy to have a higher percentage of females around.

Sure, "around", but how about "competing for promotions"? If the women were around but in a non-engineering capacity would these male IT workers care?

Re:Unplesant environment

[bnenning]

Bull-cocky. He explicitly referred to intrinsic -- meaning biological -- differences in aptitude being dominant over social and discriminatory factors.

That was the second of his three reasons. The first, which he placed the most weight on, was differing levels of desire to work in "high-powered jobs". He also specifically mentions differences in preferences relevant to engineering positions.

in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude

In many traits, including IQ, men appear to have a higher standard deviation than women. (This makes sense if you think about it; there are fundamental evolutionary reasons why it's better for nature to "gamble" with males than with females). So if you're looking at Nobel prize candidates, you may be 4 standard deviations out for males, but 5 for females. If you want to dispute the premises that's fine, but Summers's conclusions follow directly from them. (And if you do reject the premises, I hope you it's for a better reason than not liking the consequences). And again, this does not mean that any specific woman is incapable of being at the top of any field, nor does it justify sex discrimination.

Sure, "around", but how about "competing for promotions"?

Why would it be worse to compete with females than males for promotions?

Re:Unplesant environment

[theStorminMormon]

Dude, what are you smoking? This is an old and boring game.

1. Find some statistical differences between genders/race, etc.
2. Now pick the gender/race that is being oppressed.
3. Concoct the theory for why their position is evidence of oppression.

Note the orders of steps 2 and steps 3. That's where all the fun comes in.

I can only assume your previous bit about a "dean at a major university" was directed to what's-his-face at Harvard. In a meeting where the topic "why aren't more women in math/science classes" came up he said "gee... maybe women are just different and don't like them?"

How the Hell is that biased? If that's sexism rearing it's ugly head, then you're conclusive evidence that the medicine is worse than the sickness.

What if, and this is just a quesiton, what if women really don't like CS as much in general? The really scary thing about you is that your politics take precedent over questions about reality. That's like someone debating about what the answer to a math question should be instead of doing the math.

You seem to think that if a man ever tells a woman she's going to be less successful at something because she's a woman that this is sexist. But the fact is that, whether that's rude or not, SOMETIME'S IT'S THE TRUTH. In the real world where the rest of us live, men and women have different body shapes. A woman has wider hips for childbearing. Men have narrow hips. This means men can run farther and faster then woman. So if you take a bunch of guys and a bunch of girls, get them ready to race, and then tell the girls "anything guys can do, girls can do better" you might as well tell them "it's OK guys, 2+2=5 if you really want it to".

You're so caught up with the bogeyman of repressive patriarchy that you can't just see what all the rest of us on planet earth have noticed: men and women are different. When we say "you know, maybe women don't like math in general" it's not some hidden agenda - passive or aggressive - to keep women out of CS. It's actually a geuine question. We know we're different phsiologically. We know those differences extend to the brain. We know that numerous studies have shown that under the most controlled of circumsmtances gravitate towards different types of tasks and different methods of problem solving. Given this load of evidence it takes a truly dogmatic, knee-jerk reaction to be able to see past the blindingly obvious to find yet more evidence of repression where there really is none.

In my mind the real sexism is your sexism. You're the one that wants to take a male-dominated subject (CS) and use that as the criteria for judging the "success" of women. You're the one that says that if not enough women are in the CS field they are not succesful. Might as well pretend that men and women have no physical differenes, draft a few women athletes into the NBA and then hold them to the standards of Kobe Bryant or Shaq. That's fair, right? Let's just not pay attention to the fact that a slam dunk is something you hardly ever see in the WNBA and it's something you see every night in the NBA. While we're at it, let's see if we can get a few women track stars and suit 'em up for the Superbowl and see how long they survive before being crushed to death. At least we'd be treaing them equally though, right? They'd gasp their last as equals on the field of sports.

At least that's how you might see it. The rest of us would see it as a couple of 300 pound behemeths reducing a few women to pulp in a grossly unfair contest that pitted men in their strenght (bashing each other with sheer weight) against women out of their element.

No one is arguing that women (or men) should be restrained in their "element". I don't think we know what that element is. We don't know what differences there are between men and women exactly. But only ignorant fools pretend their are none. Let women and men do what they like. If there is genuine repression, then we need to stop it. Just as we did when

Re:Unplesant environment

[mj2k]

This entire article is a load of BS... I'd give an arm and a leg to have _one_ girl in my CS classes, and most guys in CS would do the same! Hell, I would give just about anything to meet _one_ female every semester in a class... And don't give me the "you should try going to parties" routine, I go to LAN parties every other week, why just last month I kicked this girl's ass so badly at quake, that after cussing at her for being an f*ing n00b, she began to cry... Afterwards I offered to give her lessons on strafing in the privacy of my home, and she still wouldn't go for it... Damn female... and they say I have problems with social interaction...

Re:Unplesant environment

[keraneuology]

You really need to stop cutting and pasting from web pages. I strongly urge you to try reading the documents you cite.

You say: "these from 2000 and 1999".

The document says: data as of "Fall 1992".

I told you that the data was 13 years old and you respond with the publication date. What does that prove?

And your data itself is incomplete: you post the interpretation of "Four out of five full professors are males" and in the fall of 1992 this was true. HOWEVER - the significant data would include the averge time employed of those at the rank of professor. The devil's in the delta - compare the average time since bestowment of professorship of women then compare those numbers with the count of men awarded professorship during that period of time. Cross-tab with years of experience. Then we'll talk.

Summary

[gunpowda]

Looks like finding a compatible girl geek in the computer profession is becoming even harder...

Does it help that the summary itself contains a male-point-of-view sterotype?

Best quote on Comp. Sci. gender gap

[precize]

"During my freshman year in the computer science department, there were more guys named David than there were girls."

Re:Best quote on Comp. Sci. gender gap

[brontus3927]

I think anywhere you go just about, there will be more males named David than females named David. No big surprise there. :)

Re:Best quote on Comp. Sci. gender gap

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Yeah, but the blame is entirely on the parents. Gender equality should extend to the naming of their child.

Re:Best quote on Comp. Sci. gender gap

[CommiePuddin]

I once dated a girl named David. Best seventeen seconds of my life.....

Trinary

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as the hard-wiring of binary mathematics spun the entire twentieth century about a simple yes-no axis, the invention of the three-state switch promised to revolutionize twenty-fifth century computing. After all, with three states (negative, positive, and null charges) on nanoswitches, computers could now think in terms of yes, no, and maybe, greatly humanizing their internal logic.

This would have brought many, many more female engineers into the field of computer science (hence accelerating the pace at which computers could do useful things besides transmit, compress, and enhance pornography), except that the same abbreviational logic that turned "binary digit" into "bit" turned "trinary digit" into "tit." This nomenclatural error set computing back nearly three hundred years, and two entire generations of promising computer scientists were lost trying to keep abreast of bad puns.

-- The Tayler Corporation. "Plotting to take over the world since 1998"

Re:Trinary

[damiceious]

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
(Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.)

You don't need to meet a cs girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet a bio girl, have her become a doctor, and spend your days changing diapers and compiling the latest ubuntu release.

Re:You don't need to meet a cs girl

[RatPh!nk]

Seriously good idea. Everyone wins. Too bad more people can't take it seriously.... Fanning the flames of the rat race to get a job so you can afford to put your kids in daycare is one of the silliest logical exercises I have ever seen people engage in.

Gender gaps elsewhere...

[zubernerd]

I've noticed whenever I hear about a gender gap study or story, the gender gap is a about a shortage of women in good, clean professions with upward mobility and high pay. I've never hear or seen a story about a shortage of women in garbage collecting or ditch digging, or other lower pay and often "dead end" jobs. I've only seen one female garbage collector ever, out of dozens of male garbage collectors, in the various places I've lived.

P.S. I have nothing against garbage collectors... they just happen to be the most visible "down and dirty not high paying" job I can think of. They do a great service for us, I'm not putting them down. I would like to see more women going into CS as well. I'm just pointing out something I've noticed.

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[RingDev]

Garbage collectors also get paid pretty well, probrably (depending on municipality) comprably to most custom business software developers.

-Rick

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[rAiNsT0rm]

I'm not sure if you are aware or not but here in PA, A "Waste Engineer" - read garbage man - makes a comparable salary as me... a Network Administrator for a mid-sized bank. They even have better benefits. You'd be surprised at the average garbage man pay, I know I was when a buddy of mine went into the business straight out of High School and is a rich bastard while I have student loans and a stressful job.

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[Mr. Slippery]

Garbage collectors also get paid pretty well

They also have one of the most dangerous (your garbage collector is much more likely to be killed on the job than a cop) and important (along with your plumber, your garbage collector is more responsible for increased life expectancy than your doctor) jobs around.

Somewhere around here I have an old Fenton comic strip with dialog like this: "Did you know a garbage collector makes more than I do?!" "Then get a job as a garbage collector." "Are you kidding? You couldn't pay me enough for that kind of work!"

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[just_another_sean]

That's an interseting observation and after reading your post I have to agree. I also notice a distinct lack of gender gap articles in things like nursing. You don't see a lot of "out of X nurses graduating this year only 2 were men" articles floating about the news...

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[CastrTroy]

Also, they rarely ever talk about the lack of men in female dominated jobs. Some of these fields are pretty stable, and growing. Think of nursing, daycare, and many other female dominated professions. Maybe it's just that women aren't interested in computers, just like men aren't interested in taking care of children.

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[Red Flayer]

"You don't see a lot of "out of X nurses graduating this year only 2 were men" articles floating about the news..."

That's because the gender gap in nursing is disappearing. It's only news when the gap is increasing.

Re:Gender gaps elsewhere...

[Hektor_Troy]

No, I think part of the problem comes from "OMG HE TOUCHED THE CHILD!!! CHILD MOLESTER!!!" type reactions from certain people. It's so bad in some places, that men can't even take the boys to the bathroom of fear of the repercussions.

Money

[mumblestheclown]

Is it sexist to mention that as computer science is no longer the gateway to financial riches that it was once seen to be (new motto: "we outsource you") that more people who would not otherwise be drawn into it, well, don't and that this might have something to do with it?

Those numbers can't be right

[Chemisor]

28%? Come on! Which university did they go to? Some girls college, no doubt. In my graduating class there were two women and a about a hundred men, so that works out to two percent or so.

And to think that...

[lampiaio]

The very first geek was a women...

Re:And to think that...

[91degrees]

Ada Lovelace was a complete fruitloop. She had a highly overinflated opinion of herself, and didn't create nearly as much as she was given credit for. Read The Cogwheel Brain by Doron Swade. It has exceprts from letters where she gushes about her on genius.

If you want a proper early female geek I'd suggest Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper. The "inventor" of the software bug. There were probably a decent number working in Blethcley park during the Second World War.

As a geek girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like how many male computer geeks lack the social skills to interract with the opposite sex and mistake friendly interraction by female coworkers as "interest" in something more.

As a geek girl myself, I'd put it a bit above half. sucks.

Re:As a geek girl...

[Austerity Empowers]

As a geek girl myself, I'd put it a bit above half. sucks.

As a geek guy, I'd put it a bit above 95%. You only hear from the ones brave enough to come forward.

Speaking of which, what are you doing Friday night?

Re:As a geek girl...

[GreaterThanZero]

I hear ya. It's better sometimes, it's worse others, it depends on the particular environment.

I was on my university's Computing Science IRC channel at the insistence of one of the CS majors. Another chatter asked me to introduce myself, so I said I was just a typical (insert university here) CS student. Then the insistent friend pointed out that I was among the 10% or so in CS courses who lack a Y chromosome. Then the conversation went something like this between he and I

Me: jesus him. stop outing me.
Him: haha well you're not exactly 'in the closet'.
*buncha closet jokes*
Me: i find that in most online areas is it preferable to go as long as possible without revealing i'm female. it's ridiculous.
Him: "Do you have breasts?" "yes" "with a matching vagina?" "yes" "YOU ARE INTERESTING CONVERSATION. I MUST PAINT YOU."

sad thing is, he's dead on about those situations. :)

Though I'll grant, everyone WAS cool with it and he wouldn't have outed me if he thought they'd be assholes.

Re:As a geek girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of which, what are you doing Friday night?

Going to recompile the Linux kernel and fix the m0n0wall issues. Just like any other Friday night. You?

Re:As a geek girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

will you marry me?

Re:As a geek girl...

[Total_Wimp]

As a geek girl myself, I'd put it a bit above half. sucks.

So how many, after you politely say no, persist in their pursute? I can understand why a woman would be upset by persistant unwanted attention, but I've never understood why women so often are upset by unwanted attention that goes away as soon as a negative answer is given.

Yeah, the guy is creepy/ugly/smelly/whatever. But what on earth is wrong with him asking, "will you go out with me," even if he does so ineptly while looking at his shoes the whole time? Unless women want to turn things around so they do all the asking, they're going to have to put up with saying "no" evey now and then to someone they don't like. They should get a grip and not act like it's their right to not be asked in the first place.

Put another way, if a good woman wants to get the attention of a good man, why would she be surprised when every one else pays attention to her as well?

TW

Re:As a geek girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, they don't ask. They stalk you. They hang around drooling, mumbling into their smelly tshirts. They pester you. You ask them to go away because you are trying to get work done, and they don't.

It's repulsive, harassing, and beyond irritating.

Re:As a geek girl...

[Eli Gottlieb]

Instead of just changing careers and leaving those obnoxious guys obnoxious, why not teach them some social skills? It can be done, I assure you.

Re:As a geek girl...

[Total_Wimp]

The problem is, they don't ask. They stalk you. They hang around drooling, mumbling into their smelly tshirts. They pester you. You ask them to go away because you are trying to get work done, and they don't.

It's repulsive, harassing, and beyond irritating.

Yeah, stalking and harrasment suck. I appologize for my gender and peer group. My comment was just meant to point out that I've seen many women interpret plain ol' interest by a guy as harrasment and not even have the guts to tell the guy to go away.

Sure, it sucks for the dude to be told to back off by the girl. It sucks far worse if his boss has to tell him the same thing and he never even knew there was a problem. But if you already told him to take a hike and he didn't, maybe he needs to learn the hard way. Speaking as a boss myself, if I knew someone was told "no" and they persisted, I'd have no problem showing him the door.

TW

Re:As a geek girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes my day when a man shows interest in me, no matter how creepy/ugly/smelly/whatever he is. A compliment is a compliment regardless of who it comes from, and I certainly don't think any less of the guy for asking me out. Any girl who acts digusted or angry is putting on a show.

However, it's interesting to note that, of the men in my engineering classes who asked me out or asked me to have sex with them, 100% ended up pestering me day after day, or tagging home after me like a little lost puppy, even though I reminded them every time that I had a boyfriend. I had to resort to being mean and nasty in order for them to leave me alone. I probably just attract the weirdos, but it seemed like the male geeks were either too shy to do anything or went way overboard.

Now that I'm working, the male geeks still ask me out but politely drop the subject when they find out I'm not available, and become great friends in spite of it.

So I chalk it up to guys maturing at a slower rate than girls, geeky or not.

Re:As a geek girl...

[guaigean]

As a geek girl myself...

Is this a Turing test in action?

Re:As a geek girl...

[guaigean]

and become great friends in spite of it.

That's because he's hoping to stand in line as a friend, thinking that he may have a chance later. Unorftunately for him, and most of our geek brethren, it will only ensure his future failure by placing him in the friend category.

Re:As a geek girl...

[guaigean]

Speaking as a boss myself, if I knew someone was told "no" and they persisted, I'd have no problem showing him the door.

There's a big difference between persistence, and crossing the line to pyschopathic behavior. Persistence can pay off, so long as it involves a respectful interaction between the participants. More than one marriage has formed after the guy being turned down first, but often we geeks lack the social skills to notice the difference between a "Get the hell away from me you creepy smelly dork!" and "I'm saying no, but I just want to see how much you like me." Don't try this at home (or work) if you aren't fully aware of the difference.

Re:As a geek girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

By the power vested in me as the Anonymous Coward, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife.

You may now send smilies at each other.

Re:As a geek girl...

[drinkypoo]

Interestingly enough (to me) I have just finished sexual harassment training (stupid name; should be sexual harassment sensitivity training or something) and you can definitely ask someone at work out. What you cannot do is ask them again after they turn you down, or suggest that if they go out with you, it will help their career, or if they turn you down, that it will hurt their career. It's not harassment until you know it's unwanted (this is true of all harassment) and you can't know it's unwanted until you're told, so you get one shot at asking out a coworker... Make it a good one.

Re:As a geek girl...

[RevRa]

As a geek girl myself, I have to disagree with you. I think there are entirely too many factors to consider when making this kind of statement. A lot of the situation depends on where you live and what kind of environment you work in.

I live and work in Phoenix Arizona USA and I work in an organization with thousands of geeks from both ends of the spectrum. Hardcore nerds who write obscure code all day, to technical project managers who do mostly paperwork, fill out request forms, and assign projects to sysadmins.

I work with, and talk to lots of nerdy/geeky guys and gals who seem able to differentiate between friendly chat and an interest in having a relationship. From what I've found here, there are plenty of nerdy guys around here who are capable of communicating in an effective manner, and are perfectly acceptable mates for nerdy women.

There are lots of excessively flirty guys for sure, but most of them can take a subtle hint that you're not interested. They're socially stunted sometimes, not mentally retarded.

Also, lets not forget that many nerdy women are the same way. I find it excessively difficult to relate to and talk with other women who aren't technical. I don't really have much in common with them. I find making small talk to be quite tedious when some non-technical co-worker wants to blather on about her -precious- toddler, and all I'm thinking about is the lan party tonight where I'm going to frag the crap outta' the guys in BF2.

Lots of that social akwardness starts to fade away as we get older though. I'd say by the time most geeks hit 28-29, they're getting a better handle on life and have more experience with social situations. Just my observation though.

~k

Re:As a geek girl...

[lonesome phreak]

uh-huh. Never heard of the Ladder Theory, have you? read it here then tell us what you think off all the guys hitting on you!

Re:As a geek girl...

[theStorminMormon]

Blanket statements suck

Hmm... I'm not sure if that's a tautology, a contradiction, or just plain irony.

I really don't mean to be harsh but I can't state emphatically enough how many things are wrong with this position.

Men are taller than women. It's just a fact that, as a group, guys are. It does no good to say whether or not this generalization sucks. That's like saying that it sucks that 2+2=4. Whether or not it sucks it's just the way it is.

So we have two options of handling these kinds of differences. If we think that differences are bad and scary and inequitable then we can shout as loud as we want and pretend they don't exist. We can pretend that guys are not actually stronger then girls, or that girls aren't socially smarter than men. We can obfuscate, complain, and trash anyone who makes the mistake of pointing the obvious out. But this is at best living in la-la land and at worst dangerous. When we have to lower standards so that we can hire enough women firefighters I think we've just gone to far. As my mum said (in reference to rules changes that said instead of a fireman's carry dragging a victim down the stairs was sufficient to become a firemen) "Who are these stupid feminists? I don't want some 5'2" woman dragging me out of the building, I want a 6'2" giant to carry me out!"

Sure, some men are 5'2". And there are some women who are 6'2". But how many of either do you know? And how many women do you know that are 5'2"? Or men that are 6'2"?

Look, the reason I say "I don't want to be harsh" is that I understand what it is that you don't like. You don't like it when people use a generalization to apply it unfairly to an individual. That's discrimination - and in many cases it's mean, evil, wrong, etc. But trying to make discrimination go away by trying to outlaw generalizations is like trying to make electrocution go away by outlawing electricity. It would be stupid to try and in the real world it's not possible anyway.

-stormin

Re:As a geek girl...

[TerranFury]

>My comment was just meant to point out that I've seen many women interpret plain ol' interest by a guy as harrasment and not even have the guts to tell the guy to go away.

I've actually had this happen. Just once. Actually, it was worse than what you describe: What I thought was simple general-purpose friendliness was interpreted as sexual advances.

I went to a party with a girl, who ran into a friend of hers who I didn't know. I was introduced to the friend, I assumed, simply because that's what people do to be polite. I tried to be friendly to this new person but didn't think I showed any particular interest. I found out much later that apparently she did, and that she'd told another friend of hers that I'd been hitting on her and otherwise paying her unwanted attention. That shocked the hell out of me. I thought I'd hardly said more than hello.

That made me angry for a couple of reasons. First, that someone would think of me in those terms at all -- I aspire to be a good person, and have always thought that that was the impression I gave. Second (this is the tiniest bit contradictory), that, if she did think that I was making advances, that she was offended by them (why, what's wrong with me?). And third, because I felt that I had to change my patterns of behavior with other people as a result: I began to get the paranoid thought, "I cannot say 'hello' to other people. They will translate it to mean, 'I would like to sleep with you.'"

I've told this story to a few other people in a self-questioning way, and have only received comments to the effect of, "Don't worry; you don't come across that way." But what would I expect people to say? You can't trust people not to tell little white lies to you.

So anyway, I figured I'd post this story, at the very least, as a demonstration that the issues that everyone seems concerned with run in all sorts of directions.

Re:As a geek girl...

[bleckywelcky]

By "great friends", do you mean listen to you whenever you have something to complain about, bend their schedule around to do things with you, give up their saturday afternoon spent recompiling kernels to have lunch with you, and pay for more than 50% of the stuff along the way? Good friends ... right, they're still hoping for something and getting used along the way :\

Re:As a geek girl...

[Polyhymnia999]

I agree completely. As a grrl geek myself, I have a strong geeky circle of friends, male and female. Since they came to realize (after a few years and a few reminders) that we are neither alien nor predator, we're all having a lot more fun AND being a lot more productive. Nothing like getting good beta feedback from someone who literally experiences the world from a different perspective, and can communicate in technical terms. We even celebrated a few geek mergers and the birth of a couple of MiniGeeks this year.

Re:As a geek girl...

[MaidMirawyn]

Yeah, the guy is creepy/ugly/smelly/whatever. But what on earth is wrong with him asking, "will you go out with me," even if he does so ineptly while looking at his shoes the whole time?

Umm, in my case, how about the fact that I am married and wearing the requisite ring? It's amazing how often I get hit on in geeky locales-sometimes with my husband only a few feet away. (It's a widespread phenomenon, afflicting most of the married female geeks I know.)

Of course, I can think of several possible explanations. #1: He didn't notice the ring because he was staring at my chest or his feet. #2: He saw it and didn't get it. (But how oblivious can you get?) #3 He saw it, understood its signifigance, and thought, "Ehh, what have I got to lose?"

Frankly, none of these leave me inclined to spend any time with the guy, even as a friend. Remember, a smile and common courtesy do not a come-on make. And guys, check for the wedding ring!

Re:As a geek girl...

[theStorminMormon]

Woohoo a nomination.

Just for clarification, what exactly are you angry about?

Are you angry that I think girls are socially smarter than men, or that I think it's clearly proven? If the latter, then your anger is misplaced. I don't think it's clearly proven, just believe it to be true and generally (not universally) accepted. If you're angry that I think that, well, that can't be helped.

But lest you think that I'm just pulling stuff out of my ass to annoy you, here's an article for your reading pleasure. It presents a logical argument, based in evolutionary psychology, for my conclusion that as a group women are socially smarter then men. I didn't say proof: "socially smart" is a lot harder to measure than "physically strong", but I don't want you to leave with your impression that I'm just disguising my opinion as accepted scientific fact.

Chris Crawford, Women in Games: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/17/3 [Escapist Magazine]

As for the inherent contradictions in posting the most subtle and simultaneously stupid posts you've come across, I'll just chalk that up to your clearly highly emotional state.

Please tell me one thing, however. You say "it works", but I'm not sure what you mean. What do you take my objective to be? If I'm trolling, then I would want a flamewar not a+5 moderation. Do you think I'm just out for the mod points? I guess I can't convince you that I don't care about those, but I'm really not sure why you're so riled or what you think my insidious scheme really achieved.

-stormin

Re:As a geek girl...

[Prune]

There's a good bit of truth to that site, but too much simplification and generalization, as well as some bias suggesting that he hasn't slept with that many women. One implication is that if you don't possess the money/status/looks you don't have a chance. The fact is that you can make up with all those things by personality/behavior -- which is something that can be faked until you learn to do it really well. I speak from experience, as I'm a regular looking guy that is, by the fact of posting on Slashdot, a geek. I used to be shy and never approach women, but then I met the right people to teach me and now I've been with more good-looking women than I could have previously thought possible. The fact is, a man's behavior speaks tons to a woman's subconscious, and it's much easier to modify than looks and riches. The trick is finding the right advice, and being persistent with practice until you get it working and becomes a second nature. I'm surprised more geeks haven't figured this out, given their brain power resource, and getting laid more, enriching the gene pool with their 'smart genes'.
There has been a recently published book that looks into actual organizations of people that study and discuss how to get women. It's worth looking into, though I would take everything in it with a grain of salt; I know personally people that use such methods, but I don't think it's the best way to go at it. It's too convoluted and, er, sneaky; what I'm talking about is learning to behave like the guys that are naturally good at this.

Re:As a geek girl...

[renoX]

Blah, blah.. No proof, only wild assumptions.

When one doesn't really know, one should better avoid making such empty assertions especially this strongly, that's how you get all sorts of disastrous strong belief..

Uhhh

[oman_]

Think this might have to do with the fact that after the dot com crash computer science was no longer viewed as the way to ensure a profitable career?

I have met VERY FEW women who actually LIKE programming among the women professionals I've met.

Re:Uhhh

[Zordak]

That point of view is sexist, politically incorrect, and probably absolutely true. All of these "gender gap" studies (in any field) seem to start with the premise that every field of work should have basically a 50/50 gender split. I think that is patently absurd. The differences between men and women extend beyond just plumbing. My personal experience is fewer women enjoy computer science -- not because they're uneducated or incapable, but because they simply prefer to do something else. Should we be trying to force them into a field they don't enjoy just because it conforms to the way we think things should be? I think our loftiest goal should not be to promote a 50/50 gender split at all costs. Nor should it be to exactly match the demographic for any other group. It should be to make the profession available to anybody who cares to pursue it. If that means that only 1/4 to 1/3 of the profession is composed of women, as long as that reflects the actual number of women who wants to do it, there's nothing wrong with that. If we try to artificially inflate the number to 50% just because we arbitrarily decide that's what it should be, we end up with a lot of women in the field who would really rather be doing something else.

Re:Uhhh

[Aranel Alasse]

It [our loftiest goal] should be to make the profession available to anybody who cares to pursue it. If that means that only 1/4 to 1/3 of the profession is composed of women, as long as that reflects the actual number of women who wants to do it, there's nothing wrong with that.

I agree. I'm also glad that my employer attained the lofty goal of making the profession available to me (a female computer programmer).

I know I went to an unusual (and small) college, as far as the ratio of guys to girls is concerned (about half of us CS majors were female), and I often heard that we were an unusual CS department, but it didn't truly phase me until after I graduated and was looking for a job. Finally I came to the realization that I was in the minority, but thankfully, I never suffered because of it. The first place I interviewed at hired me--which I'm very grateful for, but I still think is weird, because I'm the only girl in a department of 14 of us.

Some days, I think to myself, "Wow. If I didn't REALLY like what I do, I'd probably be miserably lonely."

(Other days, I think to myself, "I'm glad I'm the only female, because then I don't have to compete with anyone."--And I'm NOT talking about competing for the guys (I'd never date/marry anyone I work with), I'm talking about competing with any other girls in the sense of annoying competitions regarding appearances and other sorts of materialism. It's very freeing, sometimes, to be the only girl.)

I think one of the things I really liked about my college was that I didn't feel like I had to be a geek/nerd (take your pick) in order to be a CS major (although, I felt like I could be, if I wanted to be). I think (but I'm not sure, since I'm just speculating) that I would have felt more pressure to be geek/nerd-ish if I had gone to a bigger, more gender-lopsided school.

I think it mostly comes down to personality type (I'm an INTP personality type), and perhaps girls are less inclined to be of the personality type that enjoys things like programming.

Oh well. *shrug* I just enjoy doing what I do. And I'm glad my employer is ok with the fact that I'm a girl.

Re:Uhhh

[PureCreditor]

Affirmative action is just the same way to artificially inflate different demographics to pursue a 100% match between student population and general population, regardless of the qualifications.

Look at UC Berkeley's admission stats. Once affirmative action was struck down, percentage of whites stayed just about constant, blacks went sharply down, and Asians shot up, indicating that that gap of Asians (or any other group) has been artificially suppressed in the name of affirmative action and anti-discrimination.

And there's no such thing as over-represented minority. If asians represent 20% of the best talent pool, then let their performance and achievement speak for themselves, not their ethnicity.

Re:Uhhh

[CAIMLAS]

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: the people (women and stupid men, mostly) that bitch about "gender gap" do not want equality.

If they wanted equality, you'd see studies like this done about fields like plumbing, carpentry, construction, and other "unskilled" jobs. You don't see this kind of thing about a (technical) field like massage thearapy or salon duties (both of which pay pretty well) - because women already have the majority in fields like that. What the bitches that trump stuff like this really want is to trump men financially - to "wear the pants", if you will - and their behavior shows it. Women like this are simply bitter hags that have a bone to pick - and likely a full skeleton of bones in the closet.

Stinky-pants

[visionsofmcskill]

Maybe the thought of an exciting career working closely with balding, over-weight, potato-chip eating, diet dr pibb drinking, socially inept, 12 hour funk from working without moving, and red-stapler asking, porn addicted 90 pound eye-glass wearing (weird foreign accent too?) wimplings isnt exactly the ideal or "cool" environment with mass appeal to the females.

Im sure there's always that 19% whose intrests in computer science balenced with their ability to tele-commute are powerfull enough to overcome any obstacle. Even being harassed into wearing their hair like Leia.

--not that programmers are ALL like the above, but its a pretty tough image to beat, mainly because theres is a substantial segment of programmers who do unfortunately fit the bill.

Re:Stinky-pants

[ryry]

over-weight ... 90 pound ... wimplings

Man I sure am glad I chose an English degree over CS ...

Re:Stinky-pants

[Rary]

In my experience, what you just described is actually the minority of cases in professional IT. The guys who fit that description are largely the basement-dwelling 1337 h4x0rz, whereas the guys who actually find employment in industry tend to (have to) have social skills.

Don't forget that thanks to the dot-com boom, working in IT became fashionable, so that everyone from all walks of life wanted to get in on it. As a result, the old school computer nerds now work side by side with the jocks who beat them up in high school.

Women are more sensitive to guys

[ackthpt]

The smell impending doom of the tech job market and flee to other fields.

You can tell, you know. You can tell because they don't have caved in foreheads from beating them on the wall everytime someone takes a techy for granted.

"hey, I know it's 10 minutes before 5 and it's a friday before christmas, but could you do this urgent pile of work while the rest of us bugger off to our last minute shopping and holiday parties? i knew i could count on you. there'll be a little something extra in your pay packet this month (a candy cane)"

CS-related fields booming

[datawar]

There's still plenty of girls graduating in fields around computer science: communication majors going into human-computer interaction, science & technology studies majors studying the social impact of computing, etc. Information science and other "not-just-techie" graduate fields around the country are around 50/50 by gender. These girls may not care about programming the "best" distributed computing platform ever, but you can be sure they know more about what one means in society than the majority of techies.

MRS Degree

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So they are more likely to be dissuaded from pursuing computer science if they are exposed to an unpleasant environment, bad teaching, and negative stereotypes like the image of the male hacker.'

I don't know if the number is statistically significant, but from my own anecdotal experience I know a number of women who went into CS because of the gender difference and because they were more interested in finding a financially stable husband than in learning about computer science. I know several women who became engaged and/or married and then switched degrees or dropped out. I imagine the same is true, in reverse, for certain fields dominated by women. I know at least one guy who joined the cheerleading squad to meet women.

It's not just schools...

[vontrotsky]

Open source software is even more heavily male dominated than academia. The Debian women project has some ideas about why this might be and how to fix it. (http://women.alioth.debian.org/faqs/)

Or maybe...

[Arthur B.]

... we could accept that men and women are different in nature, very different and that men perform better on technical skills than women, period. It's called specialization, it goes back to the beginning of life and there's nothing sexist to it. The social pressure justification seems a little far fetched, for the sake of correctness. Women perform much better than men in a wide variety of intellectual activities, I'm not implying any kind of superiority, I am just saying the obvious. P.S. Counter-example are pointless because this is of course a general trend and applies on average.

Re:Or maybe...

[datawar]

It's both sexist and constraining to what it means to be a "computer scientist". You can't just break CS down to "manly" and "girly" parts because it is huge field with an incredible variety of things you can do. You don't even have to know how to program to be in a CS program (thought it's uncommon) -- you can be a theorist. Or you can be Anyway, there's so much to computer science that's it's just ridiculous to think it's something "masculine" or "feminine".

would be interesting to compare to other measures

[buddyglass]

I'm curious to know whether the gap in CS degrees awarded mirrors the gap in mathematics performance at the high school level. Or, for a more direct comparison, the number of passing grades on the Computer Science Advanced Placement Exam per year awarded to men vs. women. Poor teaching and other college-related factors may be a contributing cause, but I think the bulk of the gender gap is manifested way earlier than the university level.

Respect

[mister_llah]

Well, first let me say that I feel lucky, at my university, there is about a 10% female population in my CSCI classes.

Now, that being said, I have seen most women being viewed as technically inept. I have a friend who is working towards her masters in computer science who complained, quite frequently, that her classmates (entirely male) were not taking her seriously.

Could it be that our own geeky superiority complexes are keeping us from having the joy of female company? Something to think about before you suggest that a girl can't code.

Negative stereotypes

[Cutterex]

"...negative stereotypes like the image of the male hacker."

It must be the popularization in the mass media of conversations like:

• The Trinity? Who cracked the IRS d-base?
• That was a long time ago.
• Jesus...
• What?
• I just thought... you were a guy.
• Most guys do.

MMmppphhh

[NitsujTPU]

Not to sound like a jerk, but lets throw it down like this.

I'm a fairly successful person (so far), in computer science.

People graduating from my current institution can expect to make about $70k a year with a Masters. A high number of people in engineering here leave to do something other than engineering, when they discover that they will be paid more in other fields (a friend of mine who is becoming a banker will start at $120K/year.

So, while there is a gender gap, one has to ask if telling women to go into computer science will be at all good for their careers. Certainly a certain percentage of all people would like to go into computer science, out of a genuine love for the field. I fall into this group. I hope that all women who fall into this group, do so. I would advocate, however, that we stop trying to push our kids into this field out of a perception that it will somehow make them successful.

Lets break down the facts. Even in the dot-com boom, the jobs that paid the most did not require degrees in computer science. It doesn't take a thick book of credentials to become a web hacker. Go to a web shop, and ask the people working there what their credentials are.

Now, go to any business, and ask their IT people what their credentials are.

There are a lot more of those people, and they only get paid marginally less than programmers. The programmers are in a very very tough job market, so mostly only good ones get jobs programming anywhere (though, there are notable exceptions, of course), and they're overqualified for networking.

As a programmer, without a masters, I made $40k a year. Does it sound like your daughter couldn't make more with a degree in marketing or accounting?

Now that we've got that one solved, you have to ask if pushing kids into the field is a good idea. Only a few of them actually like it, to the rest, even a bachelors is a hellish workload in a field that they dislike. Go ask your marketing student how many all nighters they pull a week. In the atrium here, students write things like "Why don't they let me sleep!!" on the whiteboards... and those are the undergrads, us grads are off in our offices or labs.

So, fine... perhaps we need to make sure that the women who want to be here get here. I am a hearty, strong advocate of THAT, but before you send your daughter off to some brainwashing session that says that she needs to become an engineer, remember that it's a person with an MBA who will be her boss, not someone with a degree in engineering.

Re:MMmppphhh

[Scoth]

It's funny you mention this. When I was growing up in the 80's I was always into computers, and people would go on about how rich I'd be as a programmer. Now here I am on the cusp of figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life and programming isn't quite the glamorous setup it was made out to be. I often wonder if jobs like programming were originally expected to become/stay something of an elite job, but ended up being something everyone and his brother dabbles in. As it ended up I enjoyed the hardware/networking side far more than programming, but I still get sympathetic responses to mentioning what I like now.

Ah well, so goes life I suppose :)

So what?

[cmorriss]

This is ridiculous. Yes, 75% of people in computer science are men. So what? What percentage of teachers are women? What percentage or care takers are women? I don't hear people screaming of a gender gap in those or other professions where men are less inclined to have careers.

Let's face it. Women are different and in general not as interested in the science of computers. Note, that I'm not talking about all women, but simply a greater percentage than men. It's reality. Let it go instead of forcing some women into a field in which they're not comfortable just so we can feel better about some meaningless percentages.

Thoughts of a guy on seeing a girl in his CS class

[xIcemanx]

public cells woo(Girl g) {

if (g.hotness > -10) {
  while (true) {
    hair.smooth();
    lysol.spray(armpits);
    mouth.stammer();
    mouth.tellJoke(lameBinaryJoke);
    if (g.noticesYou()) {
      return semen;
    }
  }
}
   

Women out of the kitchen and into the lab

[mclaincausey]

Caveat: the following comes with a massive grain of salt, as it is speculation and generalization:

I was thinking about the dearth of women in science just the other day. I think, as has already been concluded and probably supported, that the difference stems at least in part from the fact that women from a very early age are treated differently. This treatment includes not just how they are treated in the classroom, it also includes what is expected of them. Boys get mechanical toys, erector sets, legos, and other toys that encourage engineering and scientific tendencies. Girls get dolls and other toys that encourage maternal and domestic tendencies. It could certainly be looked at as a chicken-and-egg argument, but perhaps we could start to remedy this phenomenon by encouraging women to build and experiment at a younger age.

It's also evident that girls and boys emulate the people around them, so a more stimulating, interactive and intellectual environment at home could be a boon for either gender.

Re:Women out of the kitchen and into the lab

[cavemanf16]

I know you asked us to take your comment with a big grain of salt, so here's my salt:

Why is it that so many people assume kids are just little dumb animals running around all the time? (Granted, some of them with dumb animal-acting parents also tend to run around ACTING like a dumb animal... but that's a different topic.)

Children, even the very very young ones of 2.5yrs old and just barely speaking coherent sentences are just extremely inexperienced humans. Sometimes they will AMAZE you with their grasp of what you consider to be very tough social construct topics... like racism, addiction, anger, war, etc. Why is that? Because they are JUST INEXPERIENCED PEOPLE. Sometimes their comments about such things are cute or funny because they misinterpret what an adult said and used that as the basis for the incorrect reasoning of their comment, but sometimes they have just enough information to logically conclude some really profound stuff. Yes, ones environment can certainly shape experiences in ones life, but it doesn't dictate who we are as people entirely.

My point is that little boys like to play with toy tractors, and Lego's, and play sports, and blow stuff up because they just find that fun. Little girls like to dress up their Barbies, and play house, and cook with their moms because they just find THAT stuff to be fun. I have seen two children, one a boy, and one a girl from the same family and similar in age that will behave VERY differently about certain things. The girl will get upset about a grass stain on her dress and want her mom to wash it ASAP, while the boy is too busy running around kicking and throwing balls and getting muddy to even obey his mom when she wants him to come back to her to get some of the dirt brushed off of him. The girl is interested in talking and being "made over" about how pretty she looks in her new outfit, while the boy is interested in having you play "catch" with him. This all comes from observing children UNDER THE AGE OF 5! (and from multiple families with young kids)

Girls and boys are different! OMG, what a revelation! And each of us is unique, so sometimes guys will want to be in fashion design, and sometimes girls will want to be demolition engineers. Who cares?! We should be more happy when we're more unique than most people in our "profession" or "position in life" and don't want to follow the herd, but instead we think there should just always be 50/50 equality in everything. (But guess what? That doesn't even happen physically in nature since the mix of men to women is 49/51 or something like that.)

Just trying to provide some perspective on environment dictating who we become.

Dude. Women don't like being treated as objects.

[MondoMor]

They much prefer a procedural approach.

Negative Stereotype!?

[Eli Gottlieb]

Excuse me, but when did the male hacker become a negative stereotype? Someone's confusing Slashdot's nerds for ESR's hackers, at great expense to available females everywhere.

A Bigger Tragedy

[nate nice]

Is that there is a decline in men enrolling in Women's Studies degrees.

The point is, often girls like certain thing and boys like certain things. It has nothing to do with a social standard or any other kind of garbage these people make up to get grants. It has to do with the same reason more men are found roaming around best buy looking at electronics than girls.

Why do we constantly have this mission from some groups to force 50-50 on everything? Why is it that we have to take natural patterns out and force things on people. So now what, if a girl wants to study CS they make it free to encourage more girls to do it? Who cares who studies it! Race and sex don't matter!

On these same grounds have you seen any studies advocating to get more boys in school? The numbers are going way down for males while females continues to rise. Why don't we see a coalition focused on getting boys into colleges. Especially white boys who are showing the sharpest decline in enrollment?

Sure I'm going overboard here but my point is this: It's not a *problem* that fewer girls are going into CS. It's a fact. And that's all it is. They make guesses as to why and this is fine but do not try and manipulate things and make them unfair for everyone else to strike some unnatural balance. To me, it's irrelevant if fewer girls are going into engineering and CS programs.

Re:A Bigger Tragedy

[ciggieposeur]

Who cares who studies it! Race and sex don't matter! ...
To me, it's irrelevant if fewer girls are going into engineering and CS programs.

In Meritopia where you think you live, race, gender, orientation, and ethnicity don't matter. Here on planet Earth, they do matter for the simple reason that as human beings we participate in human society and the time spent at work accounts for about 25-40% of our lives. I for one do not want that time spent in some Bizarroland where otherwise intelligent engineering types insist that the Way It Is Now really is the Way It Was Always Meant To Be. Talk about irony.

Here is one of many problems with increasing gender/race/etc. gaps in professions: it leads to stagnant work environments that undermine any semblance of merit-based promotions. Everyone in the company suffers when every manager thinks and acts the same and mentors/promotes only those people who are the physical reflection of their younger selves. This particular problem is real and easily measured: what percentage of non-white, non-male, non-straight, etc. people that graduate in profession X manage to reach the higher rungs, and how quickly do they do so compared to their white/male/straight/etc. peers?

Most of these kinds of problems have an insidious aspect that makes them hard to deal with: they can exist and have dramatic effect even when all decisions look fine at the local level. This is how person A (white, male, ME) can get a 20% salary increase in 36 months yet person B (black, male, a good friend of mine) can get only a 10% increase and be told "you need to do better" -- for work of equal difficulty and similar levels of success. I needed to do better too, but for "some reason" my manager didn't see that as a reason to withhold financial incentive. My friend later discovered that almost every black person in the facility faced similar issues year in year out. This despite the annual "diversity awareness" drives, and this was also a (ahem) Fortune-10 multi-national that we all recognize.

Since this is Slashdot, let me go further with a programming analogy:

You are responsible for maintaining an end-user application that runs on your customers' servers. Your customers insist that on many of their deployments the product is slower than it should be, sometimes unusably so. Your response is that you've never seen a problem in your development sandbox and back that up with data from several excellent profilers and debuggers. It must be PEBKAC, and management should trust you because you have a CS degree. Customers continue to complain, so someone with a Human Factors degree is brought in to examine the product. Instead of trying it out on their own development sandbox, they monitor the application directly on the customers' boxes. They sit back and watch the customers as they actually use the product, and they write a report detailing the procedures the customers are following and the actual outcomes. With this data they show that the customers are indeed seeing the problems. You immediately follow the procedures, but to your surprise you get the acceptable speedy behavior on your development box.

What do you do now? Do you argue that the outcomes didn't actually occur, that the code can't possibly do what it is in fact doing? Or do you look somewhere new? If you are familiar with the "mysterious bug that only appears for customers" then you know how easy it is for trivial, invisibile things to have large consequences later on.

Talking about society issues from an analytical perspective is often like being the developer who thinks every problem can be isolated and solved with good profiler/debugger. The problem itself is the way we think about the problem, and if we can't directly experience life outside our own upbringing (whatever that may be) then we have to take on a measure of faith what other people say. If women enrolled in CS programs say that they experience gender bias, and that it involves a lot of direct but non-verbal signals, then we have to accept that as fact and try to deal with it.

A female perspective

[Hannah E. Davis]

One thing that I'd like to know is why there seem to be quite strong racial elements to the gender gap as well. I'm in Computer Science at UBC, and there are a lot of girls in my classes... but at least 90% of them are Chinese. It seems that among the Asian students, there's barely any gender gap, but female students of other races (eg. myself -- a white girl of British descent) are much more rare.

The reason I'm asking this is that the Chinese (and the inhabitants of at least a few of the other East Asian countries) seem to have figured out something that us Westerners haven't. The only explanation that I can think of is that the Chinese (at least appear to) obsess less over what gender dominates what field.

I don't know about other girls, but I get kinda irritated when people, be they men or women, exclaim "Good for you!" or "You go girl!" when I mention my major, as if I'm overcoming some incredible hardship by just -- get this -- interacting to guys and *gasp* doing my coursework without female encouragement!

I also get sick of people going on and on about how comp sci is desperately lacking in women and it's masculine and discrimination is rampant and hard for girls to get into and blah blah blah... and then they wonder why the hell girls are being driven away from the subject "despite" all that advertising. I mean, seriously: do you think you could get more men into nursing by saying something like "Nursing: not just for girls anymore! Not girly at all! You won't be laughed at for doing it! Trust us!"? So why does anyone think that strategy would work on women?

Oh, and incidentally, as a 3rd year student, I have never been harassed, excluded or otherwise treated in a negative manner based on my gender. I have never felt that I was intruding into any kind of boys-only club, and I have never found myself wishing that I had more female friends to talk to. Oh, and my grades are pretty decent too (with the notable exception of math, but I've always been weak in that area).

Re:A female perspective

[NitsujTPU]

You rock.

I think that the a big element of this is the era that we're from is a different era (I'm a male grad student at the moment).

One of my advisors that I have been fortuate to work quite closely with feels that women arediscriminated against. I have to wonder how much of the difference, however, is the difference in experience between our generation and her generation (not quite 20 years difference).

Re:A female perspective

[HungWeiLo]

There are definitely racial elements to this. In most Asian cultures, education is of foremost importance. For many people (speaking from the Chinese perspective, but this also definitely applies to almost all other Asian cultures), majoring in a "slacker" major simply is not an option from the parents' perspective (art, music performance, history). The only accepted areas of study are the ones that have been proven to provide both financial stability and prestige (doctor, engineer, etc.) Of course, this effect is compounded by the fact that many first-generation immigrants are intimidated by language and cultural barriers, and professions like engineering (a decent living where possibly only minimal language skills are needed) are especially attractive. Of course, this is starting to change as more Asians are more assimilated into American and Canadian societies, there is a shifting trend of Asians participating in "less traditional" fields like law and politics (and music performance) as something to do for a living. I myself almost started at Julliard for music performance until I got sick of the competitive bullshit and went for engineering instead.

Re:A female perspective

[lrucker]

I'm female. I started college in 1983, and I never noticed any gender bias.

Re:A female perspective

[enos]

Just a random thought, but I wonder how much that has to do with communism. In the eastern european countries at least, the gender gaps were much smaller just because the communists did make things a lot more equal (everyone suffers equally, blah blah blah). The majority of the doctors I went to as a kid in Poland were women. Lots and lots of women scientists.

Re:A female perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great comment. I'm a Chinese guy, but US citizen now. All my cousins (all female) are still in China though. The way I look at it, it's a cultural thing. There is a HUGE difference in the fundamental career outlooks of Chinese people and Americans. The fact is, CS (and science / tech in general) doesn't get any respect in the US. I'm a CS major, graduating 2006. I've got a job offer for 85k next year. I'm not doing too bad for myself. But whatever your position is, as a CS person, you are socially classified as a geek. At my school, University of Virginia, being a rich frat boy and having a future in investment banking or law gets you a lot further status-wise even though you may not necessarily be paid more. It's just the way Western societies have been largely static for centuries now--people idolize artists, entertainers, businessmen. Rapid technological progress and the careers associated with it is a new phenomenon, and the Western mind hasn't really adjusted to that yet as far as I can tell. So CS people are relegated to nerd status.

The difference in China is that as a new society (not in the sense that China is new, but in that the current Chinese society is the result of extreme social revolution) -- Chinese people are very much in tune with what is practical for getting ahead, both as a country and individually. There is a combination of old Confucian elements and government direction stemming from revolutionary ideology here. In China, there is no such thing as a 'nerd.' There can't be, because science and technology is considered the career path of choice, much like law school is in the states. In China, it's in fact the 'arts' majors who are looked down on.

Look at where the politicians from the US and China come from. American politicians are mostly law school graduates who studied history or english or god knows what in undergrad. The top leaders of the communist party in China are almost all engineering graduates.

So basically yes, the parent is right-on. Chinese girls are in fact much more inclined to study science and tech because that's what's expected of them. And in my opinion, if this trend continues, we will see the consequences a few decades down the line in the form of a growing East-West technology gap. A society which respects litigation and playing the stock market more than science and technology won't stay ahead too long.

Re:A female perspective

[Quantum Skyline]

I'm curious...what do you think about the attempts (in Ontario at least, I can't say for BC) to make engineering look more attractive to women?

For example, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers has the Go Eng Girl program that is supposed to reach out to girls in grades 7 - 10. One of the big things they want to do is lower math and science requirements because most women don't seem to like math and science (not my words, don't flame). Girls can then swap out a course they don't like for another, more 'softer' course when applying for university.

In my experience (I'm a guy), every girl I've talked to who's applying to university doesn't want to go into engineering. They'd rather save the world by going into life science or take hybrid programs like biomedical computing.

Re:A female perspective

[Hannah E. Davis]

I'd rather see programs that reach out to kids in general, not just girls. Maybe I'm just weird, but the only time that I feel discriminated against is when somebody assumes that just because I have a vagina, I need some kind of special treatment and I can't possibly succeed on my own. It's like... "Oh, you're just a girl. Don't worry, I understand that you can't do that hard math! Here, you can do an easy course instead!"

My highschool actually tried to set up an all-girls programming class one year. I doubt any girls signed up. The whole concept was incredibly sexist and smacked of segregation -- the implication was that us poor stupid little girls just couldn't handle having big smart intimidating boys around, and that we needed extra time and attention if we were ever to learn the terribly difficult concepts involved in programming "Hello World" in Pascal.

If people want to reach out to girls, they need to reach out to boys too. You can't teach people about equality by treating either gender as if it needs special attention.

Oh, and incidentally, I do hate math, I just don't think it would be fair for the powers that be to allow me to do softer courses because of my gender. I'd rather suffer through calculus, possibly even failing it (which is quite likely given how unprepared I am for my final tomorrow morning), than do a bird course and graduate with a degree that is somehow less valid than that of a male student.

Re:A female perspective

[Monkelectric]

In the most base terms programming is applied mathmatics, however, the best programmers aren't great at math because programming is a *LINGUISTIC* exercise. People who can think structurally and algorithmically while still being creative are the ones who really go on to be the best programmers.

So anyways, survive calculus somehow and you'll probably go on to be a great programmer. If you aced calculus Id tell you to look for another profession.

Re:A female perspective

[matthaak]

It's just the way Western societies have been largely static for centuries now... Rapid technological progress and the careers associated with it is a new phenomenon, and the Western mind hasn't really adjusted...

China may be advancing on the US, but only economically, and not because it is somehow more willing to embrace science and technology. Even if science and technology were the issue, how exactly can one look at the last few centuries of Western scientific progress and changes in daily life and say that it has been "largely static"?!

Chinese people are very much in tune with what is practical for getting ahead, both as a country and individually... A society which respects litigation and playing the stock market more than science and technology won't stay ahead too long.

I agree the Chinese may be more practical about getting ahead and that this could be the reason China is advancing its economy as it is. But Americans have their reasons for being impractical. We so deeply cherish our legal system and stock markets because these institutions preserve and promote individual rights and freedoms, which we see as more important than anything else.

The Chinese conception of individuality - rooted partly in Confucianism, as you noted - does not place the same premium on personal rights and freedoms as the Cartesian conception. An interesting argument could even be made that the Confucian conception may prove in a global economy to be the more practical of the two. And an even more interesting argument could be made that the Confucian conception is inherently more gender-neutral than the Cartesian.

These issues have nothing to with decade-long trends in science and technology, though. They are fundamental values that will differentiate our great societies for many centuries to come.

Re:A female perspective

[aeoo]

I'm of Russian descent (culturally), and I have to tell you, right on! :) Great comment there. When I was in the USSR (which no longer exists as such), there was no concept of a "nerd" at all. It was a wildly different thing for me to learn about "nerdiness" here in USA. In fact, I still don't associate mentally myself with nerds, although some people probably think I am (and I don't mind it either, although I don't encourage it). The whole "nerd" stereotype is really really lame, if you ask me, and it exists solely in USA, as far as I know. Where I came from often what would be called a "jock" and a "nerd" here would very OFTEN be the same person. It would be quite common that the person is doing very well athletically AND intellecitually, and there was no stigma against either. In other words, athletes were not automatically considered dumn and smart people were not automatically considered weak.

Re:A female perspective

[808140]

Everything you say is true, but I'm not sure that I agree that it's productive on a social level. The argument you're making against attempts to be more inclusive of women in CS or wherever are essentially the same arguments that people make against affirmative action -- and they make good points.

However, just as with affirmative action, there are clearly pros as well as cons. Some other posters have noted that "there are lots of girls in my CS classes, they're just all Chinese" and similar comments. Now, I live in China, and lots and lots of girls here are CS majors. Quality-wise, they vary just about as much as the male population does, which shouldn't surprise anyone, because as you yourself noted, possession of a vagina doesn't mean you're any better or worse at math & CS then possessors of a penis are. Some people who obviously don't spend much time around Chinese have suggested that perhaps it's because the Chinese aren't as patriarchal -- but it's very much a male-oriented society. So what gives? Why is CS an "acceptable" and even "popular" field for women in China?

I think there are two issues here. One is that during the Communist period, equality for women was one of the big pushes in this country (and I'm sure this is equally true in the former Soviet Bloc). The result is that while a tremendous gender bias still remains, respect for women (at least on a superficial level) is much more ingrained, and there is generally much less chauvinist posturing. Now you are strong and thick skinned, but discrimination and bullying weighs in on most people, and even if nothing is overtly said -- look at how incredibly sexist much of Slashdot is. I think this is one issue -- a pervasive and open lack of respect for women in these fields (and elsewhere) undeniably exists in the west.

A second reason is that in the US at least, intelligence is not looked upon very highly. My sister scored 1550 on her SATs and lied about her scores to her friends. This sort of behaviour is sadly all too common, and is not at all limited to women -- the vast majority of "geeks", regardless of gender, suffered social ostracization during their pubescent years. There is a large amount of evidence that girls in the west are more susceptible to peer pressure on average than boys (probably also a result of the expectation that women be submissive). This in itself is enough of a problem, but it's clear to me that at the root of this the social stigma on intelligence is really to blame. Lots of smart kids in the US avoid particular courses of study because of the social stigma attached to them. Let's face it, there's not a dearth of normal, well socialized guys in CS courses either.

In China, though (and I understand in Russia as well) people who are good at math and science, regardless of gender, are looked up to by their peers -- to be good in these courses means that you are intelligent and intelligence is valued. It's funny because in my experience, culturally at least, Chinese men (from China) are more threatened by intelligent women than even western men are, but despite this, an overwhelming cultural and social devotion to intelligence produces an incentives mechanism that encourages everyone to get involved in "difficult" courses. This includes women.

I don't think there's any point in denying that having more women involved in CS would be a good thing, if only to help socialize the males -- many guys on Slashdot are nice people who mean well, but it's clear that they don't spend a lot of time around women and often make incredibly insensitive comments that pigeonhole women into exactly the stereotype that would have people like yourself getting your nails done 24/7 and constantly saying things like "Like, oh my god! I like totally want to get that new dress at <whereever>!"

Do you like that stereotype?

I know a lot of geek girls, and many of them begin to build an alternate identity for themselves where they begin thinking of themselves

Re:A female perspective

[alienmole]

We need more smart people, be they men, women or something in between, and it doesn't really matter to me how they dress or act as long as they're willing to do their best.

That makes sense, but it's not what this sort of social policy is aimed at. You're objecting from the perspective of an individual, intellectually gifted woman, that you don't like being tagged as needing special attention because of your gender. And of course you don't need that attention, because you're unusually smart. But not everyone who does the equivalent of a bachelor's in CS is that smart, and social policy aimed at leveling the playing field for women in CS and other technical fields isn't aimed at "smart people" other than the average college level, bachelor's (sic) degree students.

You mentioned in an earlier post the implication that "poor stupid little girls just couldn't handle having big smart intimidating boys around" -- but that's exactly what research seems to have shown, in general: that most women (at least women raised in the U.S.) will avoid situations in which they have to compete with "intimidating boys". You just happen to be an exception. In this context, reaching out equally to boys and girls misses the point -- if the boys naturally create an environment that's unattractive to girls, you have to do something to even the playing field if you want anything to change.

Those airheads you're concerned about are a product of an imbalanced system, and change has to start somewhere. Of course, I'm not claiming that every affirmative action measure taken in favor of women is perfectly optimal, but I do think you should recognize that actions being taken to address pervasive influences that affect women's life choices don't necessarily have to make sense in your individual case, but can still make sense for society as a whole.

The problem is earlier not later in life.

[Joffy]

I once told my female boss, "besides you, there are no women in IT, and you yourself don't even have an IT related degree, you just kinda fell into your 'manager of IT people' position." She got really mad. I now work with all female techs. (I'm glad I lost that argument!!) But they don't even read slashdot!!! Computers are work, not a hobby! They don't have cleverly named computers laying around like Ol' Sparky. Sure they can build their own computer. But they don't have the same passion for it/IT. Sure I know girls that play video games and build their own computer, but usually thats where it stops. You don't see that deeper, I just want to know how it works, kinda interest. I mean you can raise a kid around a mechanic, and he will usually really like cars. He won't say his dad made him like cars. I think the way we raise girls makes them less interested, and thats the main problem. If we raised females a little differently, (could already be in the works, takes 18 years for a girl to make it to collge obviously) they may actually care enough about C.S. to persue a career in it. I think the days of no girls allowed are over, and I've seen a ton of guys jump the CS ship for a less math intensive IT degree. Raise a girl to love math and don't make her feel she can only be a math teacher, and watch what happens.

American cultural thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience, even the 17% figure quoted is an exaggeration. Particularly at the graduate level -- my estimate would be that about 5% of MS/PhD candidates in Engineering and Computer Science are women. Out of this 5%, about 90% are Indian or Chinese/Asian women. So American women comprise such a miniscule percentage as to be practically invisible. The only reason they even appear to have some presence in academia is due to quotas.

All this leads me to question whether the American "culture" suppresses technical aptitude and ambitions of their women. My conversations with a American female faculty member (at a prestigious Engineering institution) appears to confirm this. She claimed that all through her life, her peers, parents, and even professors told her openly about the futility of being a woman in engineeing.

Not Just Computer Science

[iamlucky13]

Since this is Slashdot, the bias is to be expected and I'm not bothered by it, but I want to point out that the gender gap exists beyond just CS majors. Look at electrical, civil, and mechanical engineering graduate statistics, too. I don't have any references, but it's easy to tell just from looking at my graduating class, which was about 80 percent male. And, of course, it's not just my school either. Attendence at ASME and SAE student and professional events is overwhelmingly male, too. And it shows at my job. There's probably about 30 people on my floor, including only 5 women, who I believe are mostly technical writers rather than engineers.

We are told that this is a problem, and to some extent, I agree. Sexual harassment or gender bias is obviously out of line, and we should not be creating an environment such that our coworkers feel uncomfortable, but some work guys simply tend to be more interested in. If a woman is more interested in the workings of the human body than how to program computers or (in my case) build forklifts, let her go study biology, chemistry, or nursing (majors which seem to have as many or more women than men). We don't need to BS people into thinking they'll like spending 8 hours a day debugging code or playing with hydraulic oil, just so the statistics impress Oprah or Hillary Clinton. Some women will like CS or engineering, some won't.

Of course, there is the question of why women often don't want to do the same things as guys, and any implication that women are fundamentally different from men different in their interests or the way they think will inevitably be called sexist by someone. Some times I get the impression that the thoughts of the politically correct mafia can be summed up as, "We have to have equality, and by golly, we're gonna get it even if the only way is to make everyone equally miserable."

You know...

[Pantero Blanco]

If someone avoids the field for idiotic and childish reasons likes the ones other posters are suggesting, the field doesn't need them. CS doesn't need people who are in it primarily for money instead of for the love of what they do, or who'll back off of it because "their coworkers are weird".

One poster in a previous story about this said that a female friend had told him she wouldn't take CS classes because "the room smelled bad". Do you really think she was interested and would've made a contribution to science if something that little could push her away?

Re:you guys act like...

[Cyphertube]

Honestly, I find CS to be ridiculously boring, which is why I wasn't intrigued by it, why my wife wasn't intrigued by it, or frankly anybody I know. (Even those I know with CS degrees didn't find it too fascinating.)

It's a good point there are a lot more things than simply being a code monkey. (Which is what most CS majors I've met end up doing.) Most people I've met with degrees in information science have been women. Engineering seems to be male heavy, and the most successful UI designers I've known were women.

Why not look at other incredibly boring number-crunching degrees? Economics, accounting, etc.? I would even expect them to have higher percentages of women graduates, since those jobs actually can have some real interaction with people, even as interns.

The sad fact is that most CS students who aren't double-majoring tend to be antisocial, which real difficulties dealing with people. Given that women tend to be more social, and that they tend to be more women at colleges these days, it really points out how awful the career field is presented in the long run.

(Were I ever to take a pure coding job, I think I'd have to kill myself.)

Two thoughts

[duffbeer703]

1. Americans don't take CS courses anyhow, and the asians and eastern europeans who do tend to come from male-dominated societies.

2. CS degrees are less and less relevant to working in an IT environment or even as a developer. Most IT tasks and many programming tasks don't require the rigorous education in mathmatics that a CS degree gives you.

Personally, I feel that CS enrollment problems says more about the relevance of the degree than anything else.

I met my first one yesterday

[ServerIrv]

Yesterday I was at a coffee house with some people from my church, and I met my first female CS major. I'm part of a church of around 13000 people, and she was the first one I had ever met from my church. I've been a member of this church for the past 6 years. When I asked her what she did, and she told me she was a CS major and a developer, I was caught completely off guard. I wasn't expecting CS at all. We of course talked about the gender gap, and how it can be tough for females in the CS field. Sarah, if you read Slashdot, you rock.

Mod parent insightful

[lrucker]

Maybe my experience wasn't typical, but I'm female and I never got any sense that I wasn't wanted in CS.

Re:Mod parent insightful

[TheLink]

Personally I think people are making a big fuss over the wrong thing. If someone is really interested in something they won't get discouraged that easily.

I'm not in the US, but from what I hear it seems that in the US, it's common for male geeks/nerds to get discriminated against in high school (even physical abuse). But they still go do geeky stuff anyway.

Still, if this is true, it's not a good culture to have. Over here if you're a member of the chess club, or computer club it's not something you'd need to hide from anyone. People who do well in exams/tests don't get picked on negatively etc.

Avoiding a "loser" culture is important, since nowadays one has to be competitive with the rest of the world. Not just the rest of the class.

Nowadays the barriers of entry to the IT world are much lower. Computers and internet connections are much cheaper nowadays. Even if you don't have a formal CS or IT degree, if you're good enough you can prove it. I doubt most developers in the OSS projects care whether you're male or female.

But similarly that means a programming or CS-related job is easier to send to another country than a nursing job.

So it may be a smart move by girls to avoid Computer Science!

Chauvinist response -- but maybe true

[dada21]

Here's a response that'll tickle the feminists. Babies make IT a bad business for women.

I own an IT company. We've hired women in the past. We've tried to get younger females with good brains to get into the computer science market and attend colleges and programs. Yet we've seen a very high quitting percentage over the past 10 years, and so have almost all of my competitors (who I'll get beers with).

The number one reason why women have left my industry has been child-rearing. If you're a guy, try leaving the business for a year or two, and see how competitive you are when you get back.

Many women I know today (younger ones, 18-25) seem to actually be thinking of babies, whereas when I was 18-25, most of my gal pals were thinking of becoming lawyers, doctors and, yes, even engineers. Maybe society is feeling a change back to the "old bad ways" of women raising kids and men working. I'm not saying this is the best or the worst way to live, but I don't have kids so it doesn't affect me, really.

Expect to see fewer women in the market place for a decade, either way -- in IT our in other industries.

women write 28% of software, but use 50% of it

[cristij]

I agree that more women should go into programming, but not because the current situation is unfair towards them. I think that personal preference and ability contribute more to the current situation than stereotypes or discrimination. However, I think design of software packages may suffer from the lack of input from women. I think that men and women interact differently with a computer. Currently since most of the coding is done by men, interfaces and features are probably written for a male user and women's productivity suffers when using those programs. A woman's touch to interface design could do a lot in making the program better usable by other women.

What is essentialism?

[Inoshiro]

Essentialism is saying women aren't as good at math, or that all black men have big penises.

Essentialism is still a lie. I don't know why intelligent people can let themselves be deluded into thinking it's true. Shame on you and shame on the moderator who gave your talk a mod point.

"Essentialism and society

Essentialist positions on gender, race, and characteristics, consider these to be fixed traits while not allowing for variation in the group or individual. Contemporary proponents of identity politics including feminism, equality for gay people, and anti-racist activists generally take constructionist viewpoints. However, these proponents have taken various positions including essentialist ones. Prejudices such as racism, sexism and anti-gay bias may be based on an essentialist view, such as the view that all people of a particular race inherently possess a particular negative characteristic."

Read more at Wikipedia.

Do you honestly think that women are bad at math because they were built that way, or is it because of years of gender stereotyping, starting with what colour clothes the parents put on the baby right after birth?

Essentialism is the lie that African Americans are born dumber than whites because they have a lower IQ, rather than looking at the distribution of income and social equality that those people have (Bill Cosby may be rich, but most black folk are still way below the poverty line; in Canada, replace African American with Native to get the same effect).

"In feminism, Yashar Keramati understands that essentialism constitutes that women have pre-determined characteristics. This goes beyond simple body parts, those being the vagina and the penis. Rather, this means that women are born 'emotional,' 'inferior,' 'irrational' and so on. Therefore, essentialism could circulate false information about women which results in lowering their status. Though this necessarily depends upon the value judgements a society adheres to. It also depends upon the supposition that these qualities are negative and don't possess the ability to be sublimated -- just like the lower qualities in the male sex. Essentialism can also be taken to an extreme by characterizing different races in such a way -- though it is true that every school of thought is subject to distortion."

Essentialism is what Hitler used as justification for putting Jews and Gays and other undesirables into furnaces. To say you support this point of view is carte blanche for a return to eugenics and all the other madness that implies.

Re:What is essentialism?

[Arthur B.]

The point is not here. The absence of women in CS and analytical fields it a fact. If you don't agree on that stop reading. I am offering the most simple explanation. I fully realize it might not be the only explanation, and it being simple does not make it true, but at least it is still a good theory -it's easily refutable -it provides a good explanation of the observed phenomena -it doesn't contradict other verified theories

Re:Thoughts of a guy on seeing a girl in his CS cl

[andyatkinson]

I think you should double check your order of evaluation. You have the hair-slicking and armpit-detoxing before the girl notices you. Now don't get me wrong, there are Computer Science kids that talk to themselves, mumbling something about WoW, big O notation, or whatever, but most would wait until g.noticesYou() is true before entering the loop. Hopefully most would know when to break the loop, but that is another story.

Another relevant comment in a geek trade rag ...

[SABME]

The most recent issue of the IEEE newsletter ran a story about the gender gap in engineering schools, and I thought the writer hit the nail on the head with this observation (paraphrased from my memory of the original):

Besides the social stigma, why should a female seek to start a program of intense and difficult study to be rewarded with a career that offers long hours, stressful situations, and uncertain prospects for steady employment?

17% seems high...

[AmazingRuss]

...I had to mentor a couple freshmen for a Computer Engineering course...the class had about 200 guys in it, and one girl...who was also the only black person in the room.

All through my college career, there have never been more than 1 or 2 females, if any, in any of my tech classes, which have between 20-30 students.

One of my professors was always encouraging us to take something in the Agriculture department...he said the hog butchery class he was taking was FULL of chicks. That mental image makes me contemplate a lifetime of celibacy.

Re:Unpleasant environment

[pen_named]

I disagree, actually. I'm new to the official declaration of a CS major, but I've been lurking on the edges of techie-hood for quite some time. I remember walking into my first 2600 meeting in Dallas, TX, and the following hacker party... and I couldn't get the guys to talk to me. It was ridiculous. Yes, I didn't know as much as they did, but I was absolutely dying to learn. While I am most willing to entertain the possibility that this is not a boys club everywhere, in many places, it is.

I am fortunate that the head of the CS department at my university is an extraordinarily boisterous lady. The entry level courses are taught with the specific intention of recruiting new majors. (In my second or third week or class I walked up to my professor (who is also the head of the department) to ask a question, and she didn't ask me if I was a CS major. She simply told me that I was. As though this was obvious and I should stop pussy-footing around with this undeclared major business).

One of my programmer friends is a transsexual, and she was wondering aloud to me the other day if some of her position and esteem as a programmer are leftover benefits from having been male. (In which case, she ought exploit them for all they're worth.)

By and large, the CS majors in my classes have been wonderful, welcoming and helpful. The CS people I have met in the world at large do not have nearly so pleasant a distinction in my mind.

The head of the CS department pointed out to me that it was part of the geek meritocracy--the guys won't talk to you until you prove yourself, and then you won't be able to get them to go away.

Re:Why most geeks are male

[Kris_B_04]

I've been programming since high school (86-87).
I am
1. Not overweight. (120 pounds)
2. Not ugly. http://www.heartlandsi.com/HeartlandServices/IT.as px (yes, the only girl here though)
3. Not bi or lesbian (although the way men are, I have certainly considered going the other way, especially after dumping my last boyfriend -- in October)
4. Definitely not transgendered

Okay, so, am I a geek then? I call myself a geek cuz I would prefer to be in front of a computer than at some party somewhere. I do okay in social situations, but I do not enjoy them.

Yeah, I was not popular in school, but I didn't turn to computers, I turned to books. Computers weren't available to me until the middle 80's and even then, my favorite escape was a good fantasy Sci/Fi book. (aha! Another Geeky thing! I suppose I shouldn't mention that I never missed a Doctor Who episode while I was young?)

A few years ago, I just finished updating myself by getting a a second degree from Devry Online. There were a LOT of females in the online environment. There were at least 5 in every class and most classes had about 10 people.

I love my job. I love programming.

It's really sad that we females have to be stuck into a stereo type just to be good at something that is normally reserved for Geeks. In fact, I would have to say that I have met few "Geeks" as defined by Caspian, I have met many handsome, interesting, fun and exciting men who are in the computer field.

So, you don't want anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Why? Do you feel the need to justify yourself and your loneliness and don't want anyone to argue with you? What makes you the expert on the females in this field? Just because you don't happen to be someplace that is open to hiring females and to giving them a chance in what is still considered "a non-traditional" field for females?

I am not a feminist. I just happen to be happy what I'm doing. Programming. I did not go into this field because there are so few women. I did it because I enjoy it. I was always really good at it and loved the challenges that came from something that changes nearly every day.

I'm me, and I resent this and many of the other comments within this discussion.

Thanks for listening,
Kris (That girl in IT)

PS
I just gave up my moderation of this discussion to post this.

the obvious...

[CAIMLAS]

Not to point out the obvious, but the obvious in our world is sometimes overlooked for politically motivated reasons these days.

The obvious conclusion is that there are less women in CS these days because the benefits are less than the penalty. In other words, the main reason there were more women in IT during the dotcom boom was because there was less competition amongst employees (in a mathematics-dominated field), and the field was seen as immediately beneficial and growing. Anyone with a modicum of technical or mathematic ability got into IT/CS because even those that were not the "best and brightest" in mathematics could get jobs in the field. (This is further illustrated by the supposed sallary gap between men and women in technical/CS fields: quite simply, the women pick the jobs that are less technically challenging, and thus pay less.)

Women, being the sensical (and sensual! but that's something else entirely) creatures that they are when it comes to something as unemotional as picking a career, saw the obviousness of the situation: unless they really liked mathematics, there was little incentive to go into CS.

There's also very little "staying power" in the skills acquired with a CS degree (theory aside - most employers don't seem to give a damn about anything but acronyms anyway), and for many women who were intent on getting married while they are still able to have children fairly comfortably, the payoff of a CS/IT degree was further decreased: you can't really jump back into the field after having and raising kids like you can into something that's less skill-based and more theory-based, like business or management.

Anyway, flame on. FWIW, I'm a guy who happens to be not so mathematically inclined, and I've changed my degree from CS for this very reason as well (the technical ability reason, not the childbirth reason).

Even self-hating geeks will get pussy someday

[mathmathrevolution]

Man, there sure are a lot of self-hating Geeks on Slashdot. Anytime the subject of "that other 50% of the population" comes up, there's invariably +5 modded comments about how pathetic all the Geeks are. If you guys spent the time you spend on slashdot beefing up your skills with women and exercising, you'd probably find some chick. Fact of the matter is: women over the age of 25, are desperate for intelligent, nice, financially stable men. Younger than that, women are still looking for traditional masculine stereotypes. If you're young, you may need to hold out for a little while. Sorry. In the mean time, you can 'comfort' yourself with the fact that men are declining in every subject other than computer science. This is leading to an over educated female population. And when these women move from college girls to yuppies, they're going to realize they want somebody more intelligent, less volatile, and more succesful. And when they don't find any of those guys, they're going to settle for you.

Stop obsessing.

[tnk1]

Everytime I see a story like this, the question is answered before the end of the article.

Why aren't there more women in CS? Because they don't want to be in it. The question we may want to be asking ourselves is why we obsess about it. Yes, I know that we're all look for some way we can look "inward" and try and correct our "gender bias". That MUST be the only reason women don't want to be in this business. Just like I don't want to be a nurse because it's a "female" job. It has zero to do with low pay, long hours and changing bedpans. Nope. Not at all.

The reason for women not being in CS is because of the pay, hours, and the social issues. It is, perhaps, possible that we could change the social issues by some introspection, but the question is: why bother? If we're doing it to gain a "female perspective" on programming, then the fact is that any benefit from that is going to be found and cause a change by itself. A change, I might add that would have little or none of the downside of being an "affirmative action" situation. Which is to say people with talent being looked down upon, and people with no talent looking for an easy ride. If there is a benefit to having women in CS because they are women, then someone is going to realize it and capitalize on it and when they are successful, others will follow suit or be left behind.

If there are active harassment situations and artificial barriers to females who actually really like programming and want to be CS people, then that needs to be dealt with. But if we just want females because we think it's a good idea, then perhaps it isn't such a grand idea, especially if you have to prod females towards it with juicy incentives unrelated to a natural interest for CS. Never develop a program based on a nebulous concept about what has value without being able to demonstrate that value.

Re:Sadly this is not the most inviting of professi

[tuxette]

In a tight job market interviewers can get away with grueling interviews. These interviews are not pleasant for anyone, but may be particularly unpleasant for women, who face hours of being grilled by interviewers who are likely to be entirely male.

So?

My personal experiences with interviewing is that women can be just as evil, if not more evil, than men, in interview situations. As for interviews where you have to take tests, write code, solve problems - so what? Why shouldn't a company be allowed to ask an applicant to prove what they claim to be able to do? I thought that kind of thing was expected in this day and age...

If obnoxious interviewers are such a career barrier, then you probably have no business having a career in the first place. And you know what? Sometimes the answer they are looking for is "now you're out of line, you asshat!"

Re:Why most geeks are male

[Kris_B_04]

My job definition is programmer.

I LOVE Macs and plan on owning one again soon...
I also am dying to learn Linux...
sadly, though, I am one of those "underpaid" programmers. We are a small company though...

And my IT manager is a geek. He used to be just a network admin who happened to be at the right place at the right time. He is a good person, though, and I really enjoy working with him.

Exciting, well, depends on what excites you, I suppose. Learning new stuff, finding new exciting programming tools, that excites me. :) I can find a lot of people in the programming / IT world that still knows more than me, and I love learning new stuff!

As for well-adjusted, you are right, few IT people like Social Situations. The rest of our company don't understand us and we are all classified as "Weird", I just happen to be a weird female. I was a novelty at first, but now I'm weird just like everyone else. *grin*

Kris

boys vs girls

[Starbreeze]

These types of articles only seem to fuel the boys vs girls attitude here.

I'm the only white chick on this whole floor in anything remotely technology related. I was the only girl at all in my 2000 graduating class to get a Bachelors of Science in CS or CIS. So what? Yes, some men get defensive about my presence, others couldn't give a rats ass what gender I am as long as I make shit work. That's life. I guess you just accept it, adapt, and try to grow a thicker skin.

Unlocking the Clubhouse

[Anitra]

I urge anyone reading this thread to buy and read Unlocking the Clubhouse, which containes analysis of a study done through several hundred interviews with Carnegie-Mellon CS undergrads.

Lots of women drop out of CS because they feel like they need to be "perfect" to compete with the guys - even if they're already getting better scores than the guys. Most women in CS also don't have the same background with computers coming in to college that their male counterparts do. They probably had access to a computer, but most male CS majors already had their own PC for years before starting college.

The "socialization" (if you can call it that) in the CS world also discourages women. Even if they're not being drooled on or ignored by the guys, they're often looked down on, as if they were stupid. (Because every guy knows that having a vagina means you can't understand electronics.) They also feel that they have to be geeks and talk about nothing but computers - they see that kind of passion in the guys and figure that they have to be just as single-minded if they're going to succeed. Some simply give up and slip back into the "expected" role of women: "I don't understand these 'computer' things, they're so complicated. Can you help me?"

When I read this book, I kept saying, "That's me! I thought I was the only one!" In talking to the (few) other female CS majors I knew, I found that they felt the same way.

In a perfect world, I imagine that there would still be more men than women in CS, but it would be a much closer gap (maybe 60/40 or so). I don't pretend that this field is interesting to everyone, but there are so many girls out there who would love to try it if they could do it without becoming a "nerd". It's not that the field intentionally pushes women out, it's just that they're wired differently, and express their interest in computers differently; and because there are so many men in the field, these views are in the minority.

Re:Unlocking the Clubhouse

[Kris_B_04]

You sound awfully bitter...

I don't feel the same, and I've been programming off and on since 86-87. I am now a full-time programmer and loving it!

I took classes to update my knowledge base a couple years ago, through Devry Online and many times at least half of the classes were females!

There is hope!! :) Maybe the online world will make a difference!!

Kris
(That girl in IT)

Another girl geek over here

[BethanyBoo]

While I'm not a computer science student, I am majoring in Information Systems which faces the same gender gap. I'm actually in a scholarship program called Center for Women and Information Technology. I can definitely see why there's a gender gap. I'm doubted ALL the time by guys who think they're geekier/better programmers/whatever. I'm often the ONLY girl or one of very few in my classes. I can see how that could be intimidating for some people, however for me, it's just more incentive to kick ass in my classes.

Re:Unpleasant environment

[sillypixie]

My experience while getting my degree was that first and second year girls were descended upon by third & fourth year geeks looking for dates and willing to do assignments for a girl would would go out with them. None of those girls graduated from the program I was in - they all flunked out on the tests because they didn't understand the material.

I see equal opportunity blame in that situation -- a lack of intellectual pride both on the part of the girls and the guys.

I have also had to endure the insanity of having a really smart guy ask if you want to be his partner for the year in a class, only to have him show up at the first meeting with a finished assignment and a picnic basket containing a romantic dinner. It is a really difficult situation to deal with. On the one hand, the guy has made a nice and very sincere effort to please you. Unfortunately, that doesn't measure much against the facts that (a) he never actually asked you out, so you didn't get a chance to understand what kind of 'partnership' he was really hoping for, (b) he obviously didn't then and never did think you were capable of doing the assignment, (c) he assumed that you were the type of person who would gladly get out of work, and (d) he didn't mind that fact, as long as you went out with him. And he wondered why I wasn't bursting with admiration at his display of programming prowess.

Did you really see a lot of girls brazenly manipulating their way through a computer degree? It's hard for me to imagine. The women I graduated with knew their stuff, and would gladly prove it when challenged.

Pix

Re:Why most geeks are male

[Kris_B_04]

LOL
But why did you post as an Anonymous Coward?

Common sense is right here in front of you

[Chris Burke]

That's your common sense theory?

My "common-sense" theory is based on reading the comments by male CS students/professionals in this thread, the number saying women don't want to be in computers, that gender differences mean women won't be as good in computers, that the gender gap is natural like evolution, and of course it has nothing to do with men discouraging women from entering computer fields.

So right here on the pages of /., we have both 1) CS males denying the theory of causation in the article and 2) doing exactly what the article says.

What does common sense say about that? "Of course women aren't being discouraged from the field of CS by men, just that I as a male in CS think women can't do the job as well and don't want to do the job -- of course it's just their own choice when they drop out".

My real experience is that the number of women in introductory classes started high, and halved every semester until you were lucky if there was one women, even more lucky two, in a graduate course. From working with and grading the papers of these student or meeting them in office hours, I saw every bit of evidence I need to see that women are just as capable and just as motivated to study CS as men. No, I can't look into their heads and know why they left the program, but certainly a few have told me flat out that they are discouraged by the lack of role models. Which pisses me off, because I know we've lost some excellent minds.

As far as every other profession -- they have had exactly this problem! Women in medicine? Today a woman doctor isn't unusual at all, but it certainly was thirty years ago! Women had to break into the field and prove their worthiness to be a doctor instead of a nurse. Once there were prominent women doctors, and women teaching in medical schools, and the stereotypes that discouraged women were torn down, then yes you started to see more women join.

It has always been this way, whenever a new group starts to compete for jobs with the established. Whether that was European immigrants, freed slaves, or women after WWII, those who had previously had exclusive rights to some field believed they were entitled to those fields and the others would be inherently inferior, and only after time and great effort were these situations changed.

Common sense says that CS and IT and engineering are no different than any other field, and the stubborn refusal of men to accept women is both the cause of the continuing discrepancy, and a dinosaur of the last century.

Rational Choice

[Ancil]

Here come a thousand theories regarding which external factors are driving women away from careers in computer science, physics, biochemistry, and similar "slide-rule jobs".

Allow me to submit one explanation which is based on economics rather than blind emotion:

Women are less likely to pursue a career in Computer Science because of rational self-interest, and not due to external factors.

That being the case, there is no "fix" needed, because nothing is "broken". To the extent that we are already encouraging women to enter the "hard" sciences through preferences and affirmative action, we are doing those women a disservice.

The elephant standing in the corner which no on wants to mention is childbirth. Women are far more likely than men to desire an extended leave of absence from their field -- think five or ten years.

Let's try to list some careers which you can set aside for the better part of a decade, then re-enter without too much trouble and without taking a huge hit in earnings. Here are a few off the top of my head: teacher, nurse, receptionist, administrative assistant.

How about some careers where the techonology moves so fast that taking five or ten years off means you basically have to start over at square one: computer programmer, electrical engineer, CEO, neurosurgeon.

Anyone noticing a pattern here? Feminists talk a lot about giving women "choices", but wow do they ever get upset when those women make choices they don't like! In that whole four-page article, not once was it suggested that perhaps Computer Science is not actually a college major which fits with many womens' long-term goals. Goals which include childrearing and taking an extended leave of absence from their career.

The problem BEGINS in High School!

[ClickOnThis]

Personally I think people are making a big fuss over the wrong thing. If someone is really interested in something they won't get discouraged that easily.

Part of the experience of a high-school education is discovering what interests you. That can't happen if you're discouraged from even looking. And I think that young women may be discouraged from doing so in many ways.

I'm not in the US, but from what I hear it seems that in the US, it's common for male geeks/nerds to get discriminated against in high school (even physical abuse). But they still go do geeky stuff anyway.

Hmm. Perhaps because a boy geek is perceived as a mildly eccentric target for ridicule, whereas a girl geek is an anathema to her peers at that age. Or maybe a boy's rising levels of testosterone make him feel better than a girl would about doing stuff alone.

The real tragedy here is that many crucial career choices can be made at this age, including ones that determine whether a student can pursue a career in mathematical or physical fields or not. For example, the perception that mathematics is a "boy's" subject can discourage girls from continuing to study it in high school. And that closes many career doors. Probably forever.

(I have heard that this perception does not exist in some parts of the world. For example, in Iceland: at the risk of grossly over-simplifying the picture, mathematics is actually perceived as a "girl's" subject, whereas the boys want to finish high school so they can go out and help their fathers on the fishing boats.)

I think the solution is to debunk the perceptions that young people can have about these fields, to warn them about "closing doors" to their future, and to encourage them to discover their aptitudes, whatever they may be.

Maybe more CS majors should bathe

[VaderPi]

My wife would sometimes wait for me outside of some of my CS classes, and she said that the odor coming off of some of the students that went by, as they left the class, was repulsive. It has been her guess all along that poor hygiene among the male CS majors is a strong contributor to the low percentage of women in the program. Apparently, women are more sensitive to such things.

I never really noticed the body odor, but I wonder what that says about me. At least my wife has never complained about my body odor.

Lots of reasons why this is...

[Ismene]

Of course none of us are shocked at this. I think part of the reason why there are less girls in IT is they are actively discouraged from going into this field. I can hear all the naysayers: "Not in this day and age, by golly." Yes, in this day and age. By school, by family, and by society in general.

I am female, and I have been on a computer since I was a wee one. Worked my way through BBSes, the scary USENET world, and coding (my father started me off on BASIC when I was in grade 3). Now - one would think I would have ended up a compsci major. Well no. For various reasons, I started off as a science major - which made me unhappy so I tried to switch over to CompSci. The Compsci department was fine with that- they would let me in, BUT I had to get approval for one math course (because I didn't have the prereq). Happily, I went off to the math department and was told by the head of the Math Department at an unamed university that "girls were not good at math", and therefore, he wouldn't let me in. So, I ended up in the humanities.

I was lucky, I managed to keep up my skills on the side and eventually got a job as a systems librarian. But, I wonder how many girls gave up.

I also find that families aren't friendly to women learning technology - often giving boys the techy toys and encouraging them to learn, whereas girls are told that's not feminine (in more than verbal words). Luckily, my dad only had girls, and so I got a very nice well-rounded education. (That means, I can be a sysadmin, check my own oil, AND know which lipstick goes with my wine-coloured top). ;-)

Re:Why most geeks are male

[Kris_B_04]

Oh dear.
I checked, and the web page stats says the IT Page has been hit over 800 times since I posted that note...

That's more hits than we have had in one year...

*sigh*

Re:Why most geeks are male

[yet another coward]

I am not a feminist. I just happen to be happy what I'm doing. Programming. I did not go into this field because there are so few women. I did it because I enjoy it. I was always really good at it and loved the challenges that came from something that changes nearly every day.

Feminism is now often placed in opposition to liberty for women. I think I understand why you did it, but the cultural phenomenon is strange. It is unfortunate that many women who desire freedom and successfully pursue their goals dissociate themselves from feminism.

What a load of sexist tosh.

[jotaeleemeese]

Women since time immemorial have been first stopped, later discouraged and ridiculed to pursue any interests on their own, but specially any technical knowledge.

I have seen it all my life, males that are patronizing, sexiest, and frankly hostile in occassions to any women on their little male preserve. I had a boss that thought he could close deals with female clients by "pleasing" them as he used to put it. I knew of another guy that would send females to the worst hotels in economy class while all the boys were travelling business class and staying in 5 star hotels.

And that is for starters only, in most companies where policies are not in place to ensure there is no discrimination against women, women doing the same job will earn less and the real differences between sexes, like the little detail of women being the ones that give birth, in some places can be punished with summary dismissal.

There is absolutely no physical difference that would explain why women do not pursue technical carriers. In many countries they are better at science and maths until around 12 or 13 years old and then something happens, it is like if society notices that they are starting to become fully grown women and in that moment the door is shut close and any attempt to solve an equation or write a computer program is met with derision.

The first programmers were women, and they served with distinction, probing that in a virgin field where there were no misnconceptions, they could excell as anybody.

It is the macho attitude justyfing things based on hypotetical "natural differences" (that normally, oh coincidence, put women in positions of disadvantage or servitude) what stop women's progress, not any "differences" as you put it.

Re:Why most geeks are male

[Prune]

Allright, I'll be modded down for the following but I don't care, even if I have no karma to spare...

Sigh... You express disdain to being stuck in a stereotype, yet you post a link to your photo, which virtually no guy but vain Adonis himself would do. Though on the surface it was intended to support your argument, it really comes dangerously close to compliment fishing -- a successful exercise at that, given the responses you've gotten. The problem I'm concerned with overuse of political correctness instead of common sense. The fact is that overall, there are significant neurological (and thus psychological) differences between the sexes. There are two separate issues which, for some reason, seem to blur in the eyes of PC do-gooders. One is the individual: obviously an individual should not be stereotyped but looked at based on his or her talents/skills/abilities. But when looking at populations or groups it's a different matter, as statistics come into play. PC-prone people assume differences in, for example, enrollment in various disciplines are due to purely social factors. In fact, there's no scientific evidence to suggest this. When making decisions based on statistics on groups, it is inappropriate to discount potential biological differences; otherwise, wrong desisions are made. This goes beyond the issue of sexes.

There's a great analogy to this in the case of race and affirmative action in the US. Most politicians and laymen seem to believe the PC-correct Lewontin argument that intra-racial variation is much greater than inter-racial variation, thus race is not a valid taxonomic construct. This is in fact scientifically incorrect (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin's_Fallacy for a summary and link to the relevant research) because Lewontin only looked variations of individual genotypes/phenotypes, whereas cluster analysis reveals these aren't independent variables. Most scientist, however, are careful in choosing their words when discussing such issues with the public due to worry of bein politically incorrect. I'm not aware of research that applies this type of statistical analysis to the sexes instead of races, but I have no doubt that the general principle will remain the same and distinct clusters will emerge from the statistics, as was the case with races.

In closing, let me seal my reputation as a sexist and get modded down by giving you a rating of 7 for looks. It may not be a compliment, but at least it is honest.

You mean, "Who needs girls in CS?"

[raehl]

This is a non-problem. I put this in the same category as "Why arn't there any black people in northern michigan?" Is it because Northern Michigan hates black people? Of course not - it's because black people don't want to go there! There's no jobs, and it's freaking cold!

The question not being asked here is, why would you want to get a CS degree? CS doesn't exist in a vacuum - computers are tools to solve other problems. If you're a woman, and you are smart enough to use computers, why not major in biology, and use computers to solve biology problems? Or major in chemistry, and use computers to solve chemistry problems? Or major in any of several engineering fields? You don't need to know how operating systems or cache management or machine code works to write useful programs.

Women don't participate in CS because women don't want to. Men major in CS because:

1) They think it will make them lots of money
2) They REALLY REALLY REALLY like computers.
3) They are social idiots and CS ain't a bad career for people who don't like people.

Maybe, just maybe, girls don't major in CS because they have other things they'd rather major in, that better match their interests and talents, both intelletual AND social?

I've met several women who are proficient at computers. Only one of them majored in computing - the rest all majored in something else, whether it be chemistry, biology, technical writing, or graphics design. They didn't pass on CS or drop out of CS because of bias, they did so because of better options for them. Of the women I knew who dropped out of CS, they dropped out either because they were dumb (the same as all the guys who drop out of CS), or because they were BORED OUT OF THEIR SKULLS. They took a chem or bio or english elective and liked that better. About half-and-half. Contrast that with many of the men in CS - how many of them even have the option of doing something else? There are many, many men in CS who are in CS because they have no idea what else they can do, because they were socially stunted, and instead of being pushed to do girly things, were allowed to spend those career-forming high school years staring at their monitor and occasionally watching Star Trek.

Re:We don't give rights. Women have them.

[theStorminMormon]

1. The idea the women never need men to give them rights because they already have them is silly. If women already have their rights, no changes need to be made. But the genuine "I can vote if I want to" vs. the hypothetical "I am equal to males inalienably" requires those in political power to change the system. Thus in extremely patriarchal societies (Taliban) it does require either outside force (male or female) or changes in the male-dominated ruling class to level the playing field. This isn't sexist, it's real life. It's not as though women could vote to give themselves the right to vote - this was a bill voted on in Congress by men.

2. If we already have all those rights inalienably - why are you bothering to debate? Doesn't this imply that nothing needs to be changed? You're contradicting yourself because you fail to distinguish between theory and reality.

3. Your physiological arguments are all essentially meaningless unless we're talking about a "rib-having contest" or a "chromosome-having contest" (e.g., a woman as tall and as conditioned as Bryant or O'neal could go dunk for dunk in the NBA, pitting lithe track stars against line-backers is ludicrous, wouldn't you pit similarly sized and conditioned female linebackers against male linebackers?

What world do you live in? Do you think that gender is just some binary on/off switch? Like people are born and the only difference is an X or a Y chromosome? As if that's just some label that has no further implications other than "this one is called 'girl', this one is called 'boy'"? There are evolutionary differences between males and females because they are specialized for different tasks. Your point about a girl as tall as Bryant or O'neal is ludicrous and only shows how far removed you are from reality. In the first place there aren't that many women who have the height of Bryant or O'Neal. Otherwise the WNBA would be full of them. This isn't rocket science, dude, just watch ESPN. Women ARE shorter than men on average. In the second place you're flat out WRONG to say that if you got a woman of that height you could train her to be just as athletic. Seriously dude, what planet do you live on? Women have less body muscle and can not put on as much muscle as men no matter how you train them. The only way for a woman to compete with a man of the same height is through serious use of steroids and large doses of testosterone.

And you know what - even that wouldn't be enough. Women have wider hips. If you take a man and a woman of the same height and some muscle mass the man will STILL run faster because his skeletal structure is better optimized for it.

That was the whole point of the NBA linebacker vs. woman track star analogy. Women can't achieve that body type. Sure, maybe a very small proportion could. But you've got enough men who are huge, muscular and relatively fast to fill professional and college rosters in hundreds, if not thousands of teams across the country.

I know this is offensive to your politics and that what I'm saying isn't politically correct, but that's just a measure of how ridiculous the equal rights movement is. If you want to try and override the influence of millions of years of evolution and get women and men to have no physiological differences that's one thing. But to pretend that they don't exist is just plain stupid. I'm sorry to rain on your parade, but this emperor's got no clothes on.

4. I think your examples of women being different problem-solvers is a pretty good argument for why they need to be in all fields of science and not the ones "we give them the right" to be in.

This point makes no sense. We both claim to believe it's sexist to think that we need to "give them the right" to be in one career or another. The difference is that I follow through with this logic. I assume that women are intelligent, rationale, self-determining creatures. I assume that, unless I'm shown evidence otherwise, if a woman doesn't want to