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Why the Widening Gender Gap In Computer Science?
ruheling writes "From yesterday's New York Times: ' What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?' In many US universities, over the past decade, there has been deliberate effort to integrate and encourage women and girls to get more involved in the 'hard' sciences, engineering, and math. However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going on here, folks?"
For some reason its hard to accept that a lot of women simply aren't interested in studying CS, engineering, or hard science.
Its a similar problem to something like Nursing, in the other direction. At my graduation, the CS group sat right behind the nursing group. There's lots of comments at how the CS group was 80% male. There were no comments at how the nursing group was 97% female.
At some point, the reality has to set in that women on average simply aren't interested, and all the incentives in the world won't change that.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Why do they pick and choose industries to focus on. No-one raises a stink about shortage of female garbage collectors.
And I haven't heard a big push to increase males in areas dominated my women, e.g. elementary education.
Has anyone ever once argued that maybe--just maybe--I really really like computers?
What's the ratio in nursing? 20 females:1 male? So here's your solution: take all the entry level students from these two professions and even them out regardless of what the individual wants to do. See how happy you make everybody.
Or better yet, unfairly weight the minority sex in each of those classes, that's fair because I definitely was given a detailed account of the outside world while I was in my mother's womb and then filled out a scantron card for what I wanted to be--a white male in the United States with no heritage whatsoever.
Last I checked, they comprised about 51% of the population....
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The smart girls are going to med school or veterinary medicine. They see the creepy geek guys leering at them like they've never seen a live female before and figure if they're going to need to deal with some horse's butt, they might as well go to vet school.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Seriously, why does every career or activity have to have an exact 50-50 mix of males and females? Last time I checked, the hormonal balance in men and women were quite a bit different and each sex has a general preference to what interests them. The examples of teachers, nurses, and garbage collectors are excellent examples. The two sexes are different. Why do so many people have a hard time accepting that?
well... yes. Sexual harassment is a huge issue for female students/workers. One girl to a dozen guys, you're going to get hit on, a LOT. Even after I got married, I still got chatted up left and right (don't guys check for rings anymore?) and I really don't like it. It feels like the only reason half my co-workers talk to me is because I'm the only one with tits in the place... not because I'm smart, not because I can code with the best of them, not because I'm funny, or cheerful or anything else.
The "OMFG BOOBS! Let's go talk to them" effect creates a really hostile environment, which causes many of us to change majors/jobs... which makes women even more rare, which makes the next set of boobs even more rare... vicious cycle.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
I think nationalism is something that has a stronger appeal to people than geekdom. "American" has turned into a somewhat creepy religion.
The OP echoed my own thoughts (geeks scaring off the girls), but the "real" reason is because women are cool and computer science is not. ;-) They simply aren't attracted to that type of work. And there's nothing wrong with that.
You ever wander past the Health & Human Development part of your college?
It's like an engineering class in reverse - 40 women; 2 guys. (I knew I picked the wrong major.) Men and women are not that same. Men migrate towards "things" and women migrate towards "humans", each dominating their respective engineering & health majors. They don't think the same and they have different interests. Why can't people just accept that?
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
If it was last night when I had mod points, I'd give you +1 insightful. When did "American" become a lifestyle rather than a place of birth?
well... yes. Sexual harassment is a huge issue for female students/workers. One girl to a dozen guys, you're going to get hit on, a LOT. Even after I got married, I still got chatted up left and right (don't guys check for rings anymore?) and I really don't like it. It feels like the only reason half my co-workers talk to me is because I'm the only one with tits in the place... not because I'm smart, not because I can code with the best of them, not because I'm funny, or cheerful or anything else.
Now, I'm not saying all those guys weren't flirting, but were all of them? I've sat and chatted with just about everyone in any of my smaller classes. I know that I'm going to work with them at some point during the year, so why not get to know them. The sooner I can pick out who is going to flake out, and who's code is superior, the better I can plan for the final projects.
As the great philosopher Barbie once said, "Math is hard!"
No, but seriously, before my karma is ruined, it's all a matter of differing interests. When I got into computers, they were still a seriously nerdcore hobby. It was rare to even encounter another girl at school who had a computer at home, even less likely for her to know how to use it. My sister looked at my computering, laughed, and went back to her interests.
Kind of without me realizing it, computers became a bigger and bigger thing in the lives of non-geeks. The internet is what really did it. When my sister finally asked me to help her find a computer, this was a watershed moment. And the social aspects made possible by the internet was what really sucked her in. I enjoyed the bulletin boards in my pre-internet days but IRC and ICQ were the killer apps that really sucked her in, that and the web in general. And more and more of her friends ended up having computers, and the social elements online weren't about computers but were simply facilitated by computers. == This, I think, is key. She has become as big of a computer geek as me now but she's using it as a tool, not as an end unto itself. She uses Photoshop and Illustrator for her art, uses different programs as a designer at her job, does her personal writing on there, keeps up with friends, etc. But it's not just geeking out on computers for the sake of geeking out. She's not installing all sorts of upgrades for games, she sticks with consoles for that sort of thing.
Since Slashdot is all about car analogies, I'd say most women are using computers the way they use a car, as a tool that they find very useful but they don't care about what's going on under the hood. Getting into CS is like becoming a gearhead. Most car users, male or female, aren't really gearheads. And from the stats I'm hearing from people I know in academia, Americans as a whole, male and female, aren't really into the hard sciences. There's just no money there.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
And trying to force it is only going to hurt people.
It's getting to the point that if girls are particularly capable of doing math/science they get pushed to even if they don't want to in the name of equality.
For gods sake let people choose for themselves even if they don't make the choices you think they should!
When did "American" become a lifestyle rather than a place of birth?
When people decided that culture was a sacrosanct, frozen set of behavior rather than an adaptation to environmental forces. Of course the overwhelming nostalgia hasn't helped that problem either.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
What I don't understand is why these anti-sexist persons are sooooo concerned about lack of women in science. Why do I not hear anybody crying out, "There are only 2 men for every 40 women in the Health & Human Development Major!" I guess we men don't matter. How sexist. ;-)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Sexual harassment is a huge issue for female students/workers. One girl to a dozen guys, you're going to get hit on, a LOT.
Getting chatted up and being sexually harassed are not even remotely the same thing.
You don't get paid based on how much you or anyone else thinks you deserve. You get paid based on what salary you can command, which is regulated by supply and demand.
It's not an outrage at all that one kind of job doesn't get the same salary as another. If you want more money do something more valuable, which will be something there is a lower supply and/or a higher demand for.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
So an American should at the same time both understand that hanging on to his culture is wrong and allow immigrants to bring their culture with them. Am I getting that right?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
No - what earned liberals the label the "Blame America First Crowd" was them making an honest attempt at understanding why we were attacked on Sept 11, 2001 without excluding all possibility that it might have been in response to actions we had taken in the past.
Your pointless sarcasm aside GP as a point that a certain portion of the population has lost all perspective and worships the country like a god instead of being good citizens and stewards of the country and realizing that it can and does have laws that we should strive to correct to make it an even better country. They've lost the ability to realize that something can be both good and flawed.
There are two forms of love - that of a child to a parent, and that of two adults. With a child to a parent they cannot see the flaws and when the flaws in their parent are pointed out they become irrational and lash out. In adult love they see each others flaws and accept them and work to help the other solve their flaws.
That certain part of the population I talked about before loves America like a child loves a parent. Their lashing out is the source of the label "The Blame America First Crowd" because the other group, the mature one that recognizes and tries to correct flaws, was making an honest attempt at understanding what happened to try to prevent it from happening again.
I would also advise you take a look at your reaction and evaluate it in the light of this assessment.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
So nearly all species in the animal kingdom have inherent behavioral differences between males and females - except humans? You really believe that?
You know, just because men and women are different doesn't mean they can't have the same rights. You don't have to be so petrified at the thought of differences between the sexes.
You don't get paid based on how much you or anyone else thinks you deserve. You get paid based on what salary you can command, which is regulated by supply and demand.
I don't think that they were saying that it's an outrage that HR workers don't make as much money as other professions. The outrage comes from the overall male vs female income, which female-dominated relatively-low-income professions like HR skews, and thus gives an inaccurate picture.
However even if I misinterpret the sentence starting with the word "outrage", one thing I'm sure I comprehend, and that they're correct on: The reason nobody gives a rat's ass about gender equality in those jobs is because nobody is envious of those job's salaries. Nobody cares about the gender gap in day laborers even though it's huge. If CS was a low-paying job, nobody would care about the gender gap in CS.
The enemies of Democracy are
So an American should at the same time both understand that hanging on to his culture is wrong and allow immigrants to bring their culture with them. Am I getting that right?
Yes. Same way you should both understand that believing the Earth is flat is stupid and allow flat-earthers to voice their opinion anywhere they please.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.