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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?"
Because of the family obligations that women often end up with (or perhaps value more than men), stability in a career is often a big factor for women. However, globalization has made it a more volatile field. Further, during downturns, new software development tends to slow or halt, further hitting one during recessions.
Table-ized A.I.
"white males aren't the minority"
Actually, in much of the world (US included) males are a minority. Meaning white females most likely make up the largest group in the US and much of the western world.
> 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?
A hint: what happened in March 2000?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
In my CS undergrad, about 30% of my class were women. They were CS majors too, not CIS or MIS, so there used to be a decent amount of interest in a very technical, traditionally male, field. After my first job out of school, I still saw plenty of women, although mainly in IT opts. Plenty of server admins were women. Then they all seemed to disappear! I went back for a Masters in Software Engineering and I had 1 (ONE) woman in all the classes I took. In my new job though, about 30% or the programmers are women, but NONE are native born int he US - almost all the women are from India. All the native born women in my company are either BSAs, PMs, some IT Opts, or managers (My VP is a woman). So, at least for native born US woman, they seem to be leaving the more "hard core" tech jobs into affiliated jobs, but still in the industry, according to what I have seen.
I don't believe that the reason that women don't go into technical fields is because of lack of interest. Actually for hard science you find more women scientists than men. From my experience women are better at discerning unhealthy lifestyles and have better time management. One thing CS isn't is healthy, it's the type of career at an office where even when you're not working you're mind is always constantly going. For a lot of men, this is acceptable, for women, not so much. As for your example of nursing, nurses can leave work at work and go home and relax. Sure I can agree that maybe men and women have different interests but I think the main reason is that it's a lifestyle choice.
So that's obviously the case, but the point of studying the topic is: "why?". It's also important to determine if this is by their own choice or if women are subtly coerced into their disinterest.
I helped out with FIRST LEGO League at Georgia Tech a few years back. FIRST LEGO is a robotics competition for middle-school students using LEGO automation parts to perform various tasks. There were tons of girls participating at all levels, and it was pretty noticeable how different the demographics were between the middle school competitors and the typical college-age engineering students at Gatech. Thus, it's worth asking whether girls seem to lose interest in engineering as they get older, and if so, why?
If it's purely biological (the parts of the brain that determine interests are gender-specific), then so be it. If, however, it's due to upbringing and society's pressures, then it's a topic worth discussing. Indeed, it is probably desirable to change it. Why limit the pool of intellect in a field to men? You're potentially losing 50% of the problem solving skills, assuming men and women are equally capable.
I've taken two classes at a major university so that I can get my degree finally. In the most recent class, the teacher has been downright sexist. Crude jokes that come out badly because of his broken-ass english and a horrible sense of what's proper and what's not. I've only gone to class 4 times this semester... the first two classes, and the two subsequent tests. During each of the first two classes I saw a woman get up and leave the classroom after a horribly sexist joke. It may be that I recognize this because I've been in the workforce for several years and have gone through "sexual harassment training" or whatever, but I doubt it. This guy is creepy, and he's outright lewd.
So yeah, I can imagine that women don't want any part of the field if the people training the next generation of workers are this bad.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
"don't guys check for rings anymore?"
Why bother? With divorce and infidelity so popular these days, who cares about a piece of metal on your finger?
BTW, I'm not the harassing type. My workplace seems mercifully free of that and reasonably well balanced (for a software house). Just my observation on modern society.
A few years ago, I was approached by someone canvassing for support as a candidate for the post of Women's Officer in my student union (there is no Men's Officer). She said 'Women make up 52% of the population, don't you think we should protect this minority?' Needless to say, she didn't get my vote.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In terms of money, that seems to be true.
I've recently read a Groklaw article that mentioned a salary dispute between two lawyers. Both claimed to usually charge $400 per hour. AFAIK even highly sought after IT consultants rarely get away with that kind of fees.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Ask a 7 year old kid what a computer person does, and they will describe someone working with machines, boxes, TVs and gadgets. From an early age, we are lead to think that boys work with machines, aka play with trucks. When kids are in high school and start making initial career choices, this mentality stays with them and therefore only small fraction of women end up doing what they were raised to believe to be a man's profession. This has nothing to do with sexism, glass ceilings or modernization. From day one the whole concept of working with computers just seems like something a boy would do. With that being said, companies are DYING to hire female workers in IT. Hopefully this will help.
How many times must this be said? Biology plays a role, yes, but mostly it's money. Computing, post-graduate science, and engineering just don't compensate people well for the lifestyle sacrifices (long working hours, little exercise) required. Women prefer good pay and healthy lifestyles more where men prefer interesting work more. Thus...
I disagree. There is no shortage of smart girls in computer science. If you look at the top of any year group you will find quite a lot of women. What you won't find is a lot of women in the middle of the group.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm fairly sure there was a dilbert comic on that a while back which I can't find...
As for your point: would that also be a reason why there are so few males going into nursing? Being uncertain whether someone wants to talk to you because they want to be friendly just because or whether it's partly because of your gender must be terrible.
Try picking subjects which your male work colleges have no interest in and talk about them constantly to see how many get bored and stop trying to talk to you, anyone left either has very dull hobbies or is just interested in your tits.
Yeah. Dot-com crash, combined with more general computer familiarity. CS is no longer seen as a lucrative degree, not even to the extent it was before the dot-com boom. And computers are now commonplace, so the field in general has lost some of its apparent exclusivity. Those attracted to CS for money or for exclusive knowledge are not entering the field anymore, leaving the hardcore geeks, who are alas mostly male.
Looking around at the CS students at UNM I see that most ~75% are foreign exchange students. Almost all of them are male. Of the other 25% only a few are female. I think the stats are being skewed by the shear number of foreign exchange students. Also, the number of US born students in CS is dropping.
If by "minority" you mean "underprivileged class", then maybe women still qualify.
All the women in my family would laugh at that statement since they've all graduated from college, rejected multiple job opportunities and then stayed home to raise their children. Also, I know of at least 2 syndicated female columnists that would laugh at that statement, but for very different reasons.
One reason people can't (or at least shouldn't) "just accept" that "they don't think the same and have different interests" is that it is for the most part demonstrably untrue. For evidence, please see Janet S. Hyde's meta-analyses of thousands of sex/gender difference studies. Sometimes you can find mean differences that meet statistical significance, but when you look at the effect sizes, it becomes clear that the differences are too small to have practical significance. The book "Same Difference" by Ros Barnett (and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment) is good, too. I did my master's research on percieved and actual gender differences in infidelity in dating relationships. The bottom line--men cheat a little bit more often than women...but both men and women THINK that men cheat a LOT more than women. My point in bringing this up is that I believe the same phenomenon goes on in a lot of domains. Some small difference may actually be observable between the sexes. But people's (misguided) PERCEPTION is that there are these huge, Mars-vs-Venus differences; that men and women are in non-overlapping distributions. And they're just not. There's plenty of evidence.
One girl to a dozen guys, you're going to get hit on, a LOT
Really? This is about the ratio in my undergrad courses, but that doesn't mean you need to socialise with your peers. Most of the people I knew socially as an undergraduate were English students (now they seem to be linguists or physicists). It's not like you get much of a chance to hit on anyone in lectures, since you're meant to be paying attention to the lecturer, and once you're outside lectures the gender ratio is the same across campus, it isn't tied to your subject.
The "OMFG BOOBS! Let's go talk to them" effect creates a really hostile environment
You know, not every time a guy talks to a girl is a come-on. Generally I would talk to people outside lectures who were standing by themselves looking bored, or who were part of a group already engaging in an interesting conversation. Whether they were male or female didn't really enter into it, but if you want to interpret this as hostility then there's a good chance you might be part of the problem.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Excellent point.
I had a female friend in freshman engineering who fits your description. She followed engineering because that's what her dad did, and also because she was talented in that area. However by sophomore year it was obvious she didn't belong. She was getting good grades, but she had lost interest in engineering and stopped coming to class.
I don't know what she's doing now, but knowing her personality she probably went with Health or possibly Premed, because she was more people-oriented.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Come on people. Look at the stuff in here. I am an engineer who loves what she does (I build robots!) and I have the good fortune to work in Cambridge, Mass, where women engineers are often no big deal... and yet if I knew I was in a room with all of you, thinking that my brain is different and I'm just not meant for this stuff, and if I *am* good/interested in this it's just because I'm "weird" and going against my gender norms... well, I'd hightail it out of here, too.
And in other countries there are many female engineers. My mother worked with a Ukranian woman who thought it odd that engineering was considered a "male" profession here, rather than a female profession as it was back home. Most of the women I do see in engineering are of Asian descent. You don't think, just maybe, that we're doing a crappy job as a culture of encouraging American kids (not just girls, but even boys too) to get excited about and be interested in this stuff?
I don't deny that women think differently from men. But I do question the suggestion that this means women can't or won't do engineering or science. I question why engineering or science can't handle the way women think. It's not a matter of dumbing it down; it's a matter of figuring out how to leverage diverse ways of thinking about a problem. A group of people looking at a problem in different ways is more beneficial than one geek sitting in a cube doing what he thinks is best. A group of men is good. A group of men and women is better.
So, what can those of us who are not creepy jerks do about it? We could step in and say "Hey quit being a creepy jerk," which might make her feel less capable because we're patronizing and protecting her instead of treating her like an adult. Alternatively, we could advise her to go to HR, which isn't always an option and would probably socially alienate her.
Happily, I've never had to deal with this. I just sometimes worry because, being an introverted nerd, I'm a bit socially inept, and sometimes that comes off as being creepy.
When we were in CS classes, we did not consider our male classmates to be scary, and some of them even seemed fairly cool. We'd flirt, and even exchange jokes with them that only a CS major could find to be funny. But we were all about making money. There may be men who are into computers just because it's fun, but women go to college to further their careers, and ever since outsourcing, CS doesn't seem to be the way to do that. If a CS degree becomes likely to result in a high-paying job, the women will come.
You personally might not encourage traditional gender roles, but the culture around you, including friends, relatives and the media, probably does.
That might be true, but we noticed the differences since long before they were old enough to even have a gender identity. How could a child take clues from society about his or her gender roles before even knowing his or her own gender?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
At least when I took CS (a decade ago) at a big middling midwest state school, there were very few US-born females. Classes tended to be about 2/5s US-born males (in-state), 2/5s foreign men (Asia, India, South America), and about 1/5 foreign women. By senior year, US-born females were one-per-class at most.
Is there a general slowdown in foreign attendance? Is there something sending fewer foreign females? Economic slowdown meaning fewer women are get the chance? Foreign universities getting more female-friendly? (I know Korean women who said they'd never get an academic job back home). Are there other degree programs attracting foreign females?
To be fair, she's a whackjob, and one who belongs to the fringe-end of evangelical churches.
Again, I'm not making a judgment on her (or anyone else in the race) on religious grounds, but that's a fair one to make, if you are.
Oddly, I followed the news pretty closely this past election and I've yet to see any single evidence that Palin was a "whackjob", religious or not. Ok, so, lets see what I can find...
Palin A "Whack Job". Ok, some some McCain adviser has a chip on their shoulder because she went off script? Because they think she's a diva? Because she talked about her record, instead of McCain's? Because she exploded on the scene in popularity, causing some excessive gimmicky crap to be produced? Because she said Africa was a country? Because the Republican party spent a recorded $150,000 on her cloths (with unsubstantiated rumors of having spent more)? That her daughter got pregnant, against her best advice?
I'm still looking for some decent evidence of her being this "crazy" person that everyone wants to try to make her out to be. Because none of the above passes the smell test, unless you think Barak Obama also believes America has 57 states. That Palin can control what her "fans" do. And that Hilary hasn't spent $150,000 or more on cloths, either, for a campaign. And that Mrs. Obama can't be criticized for campaigning for her husband but it's 'right' to attack and criticize the daughter of Palin's who's not even involved in the election.
I just can't see anything other than desperate attempts to try and sling mud at someone so new that there's little (real) dirt on her (yet). So, what's all this talk about Whack Job? What could people be so afraid of, except her being a powerful Republican ticket in the future? Have the Democrats no faith in their leaders and principles?
I believe there are two reasons. The first one (already discussed here) is interest. I did not study computer science to get a job -- I did it because I couldn't see myself NOT doing it. I know very few girls who get excited about mechanical things earlier in life (I spent elementary and middle school daydreaming about technology...female daydreams at that age seem to be different). I do not know how to change this.
The second one is more subtle: being really good at anything requires thousands of hours devoted to it with no apparent reward. If what you are devoted to is math or programming, it really helps to be unpopular for at least a period in your life, especially earlier. The same is not true if you are devoted to theater, chemistry, or biology, which you can practice in a more social environment. I think it is easier to be unpopular as teenage boy than it is as a teenage girl.
[this, of course, is a male point of view...I would love to hear the other side]
I tried to switch into a Computer Science double major instead of just my English degree. (English was so boring, I was tired of analysing the sexual inference of a tree shadow across a woman's bed). The Computer Science department was thrilled to have me (I had comp sci experience, could program, etc). BUT, I had to get into this one math course - so off I went to talk to the math department. The math professor I spoke to informed me that he "didn't think girls were good at math" and therefore, he wouldn't let me in. Yes, that was his whole reason - and this was only 10 years ago. I was young, stupid, and didn't take it to the Human Rights Office, instead, I went to the Classics department and spent 3 years learning latin (YAY). I think lots of girls are still discouraged from entering in the sciences - either quietly or overtly. I don't think it's sexual harassment - everyone in university seems to collectively "sexually harass" each other. It's called teasing, and it happens everywhere everyday. I also don't believe it's because CS isn't "social" - there are LOTS of opportunities for social interaction. I later became a systems librarian, so I could use the CS skills I have WITH the sociable aspect. There is a great demand for intermediaries - people who can speak tech and explain things to both sides (techies and non-techies). I suspect it's these small little pockets of "Girls suck at that" professors / administrators / high school teachers who discourage women from pursuing the field.
I have a son who, at 2, would bite his graham cracker into a vaguely gun shape and then shoot you with it. He also has two little toy dinosaurs. The bigger one is named "dinosaur" and the smaller one "lunch". Can you guess their relationship? The girls in the house just don't do this sort of thing. I can't quite quantify what it is they do, but they have personalities that just strike me as distinctly more girl-like, even at very young ages.
Another boy in the household wanted a 'bad-guy-toy' at age 2. He didn't even know what it was, yet, but he knew he wanted one and spent fifteen minutes trying to make his mom understand that it was a gun he was asking for. And he'd been raised on almost no TV, as well (at least to that point). This same boy, now 7, acts like a goofy showoff whenever any new female is in the house (his age or older). When a new male is in the house, he starts playing hitting and tackling games, like he's trying to assert dominance. He clearly has no idea why he's doing what he's doing, or even that he is doing it, but somewhere deep in the prehistoric part of his brain he's attracting mates and asserting dominance. Its cute, in a disturbing sort of way.
In general, I have seen my friends who are women do what they like to do in regards to their career, as evidenced by your friend. Even if it makes less money they're ok with that because they don't expect to be the primary provider.
My friends who are men in the same situation as your friend have more often than not stuck it out even if they didn't enjoy it as much as they'd like. This is because they knew they were good at it and it would make them more money than jobs they might prefer. The bottom line (in more ways than one) is that allows them to be more marketable to females.
An interesting book that talks a lot about all this stuff is The Myth Of Male Power.
If we start marketing CS degree as a stepping stone to interesting careers and not just as a quick route to a cubicle farm somewhere, women will be interested. We need project managers with people skills who understand programming, we need UI designers who are familiar with the underlying technology, we need architects who know how to get management support for good quality initiatives etc.
I do have a CS degree but have always found programming mostly boring. I know how to do it and after graduating have taught myself a couple of new languages, but I'm not a programmer at heart. Thus I don't usually do coding, I do computer and network security.
While few of them are US Citizens, over 50% of our IT department is female. Water cooler conversations are more likely to involve baby pictures than hit points. It helps that the company has generous work-from-home policies, female support in management, and generally doesn't require sleeplessness or caffeine addiction.
If anything, this proves the statistics - our two companies balance out to get a true percentage that's higher than 5% but nowhere near equal.
STRAWMAN ARGUMENT:
I never said women are "only" interested in pink-collar fields... please stop putting words into my mouth I did not say.
It's sarcasm, not a strawman, and I was paraphrasing not just the attitudes of the previous century, but several major court decisions - women were not allowed to tend bar, for instance, due to their innate weaknesses that might damage their constitutions when "shocked" by drunken patrons.
I said that when you peer into the Health & Human Development classes, they are dominated by 80-90% women. And similarly engineering is dominated by 80-90% men. At no time did I use the term "only". It does not apply to either major.
Instead I'd like an answer of why the HHD major only has ~10% men. Are men being suppressed by the female gender?
Yes, clearly the gender with a historical lack of political power is the one suppressing the other. No, really, patriarchy harms both genders by narrowing choice - men are steered away from HHD, just as women are steered away from engineering. Here's a question - which major leads to the career that pays more, on average?
Or is there some other mechanism at work? I suspect it's lack of interest by men in that career; similarly I suspect there's a general lack of interest by women in engineering. Making this observation does NOT make me a misogynist.
No, recognizing gender discrimination just shows that you have your eyes open... Saying "why can't people just accept it" makes you a misogynist.
As a woman who regularly reads science mags (and slashdot), I can tell you that when science talk makes me yawn, it's the guy, not the subject. I was raised by a single father who was an engineer, so our dinner conversations were frequently tech-heavy and geek-intensive, giving me a much higher level of tolerance than most people, male or female. But when someone is griping, not speaking about their interests, I glaze over.
Completely anecdotal: my wife has a CS degree. And she still doesn't care as much about the electronics and such as I do. I can't get her excited about upgrading the media center PC (damnit). She is a good programmer, but that's all the further interest she has in it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
I'm English, not American and I've had surreal conversations with Americans who have never left their country and who claim that their country is worse than China for human rights for example. Or is solely responsible for all of the worlds problems, particularly those in the Middle East. In a sense it's a sort of inverted nationalism. Nationalists think their country is always right. Most people can see that this is not the case and start to question their countries actions which is healthy. A small but irritatingly vocal minority end up believing their country is always wrong. Blame America First is not an unfair label for these people.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
...behavior such as men choosing engineering over teaching and vice versa is demonstrably *not* because of biological differences.
Please demonstrate.
I am skeptical and would honestly love to see any data.
There is a very simple reason to this:
In the United State outsourcing has diven many people out of the Computer Science area. The developing nations where many of those outsourced jobs have gone still have women in many ways as second class citizen.
Enrollment has tanked in the US for an industry that is consistently being driven over seas to nations where women have a considerably more up-hill battle for quality educational opportunities.
It's that simple.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I remember back when my son was about 5. He was watching TV one day when he got up and asked me, "Daddy why are there no commercials about boys"? I asked him what he ment and his reply was "There are lots of comercials about girls being whatever they want and being happy about how they look but none for boys.". After thinking about it for a while I realised that he was right.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
There is real sociological research that overwhelmingly shows that this happens universally within two generations. Even the most stalwartly entrepreneurial immigrants who reproduce end up with grandchildren who want it all, want it now, and don't believe that they should have to work for it.
Unfortunately, I don't see any rigorous research on the topic at hand. The anecdotal evidence of mostly male CS (and math) students has statistics to back it up, but no cause and effect beyond the shared belief that guys like Math and girls like English.
I'm personally way more language-oriented, but when it came time to choose what to study, computers seemed obvious. I had to enforce discipline to stay on the math, but programming and systems studies were just plain fun.
I was, and still am, just very curious about it. I like knowing exactly what computers are doing, and I often reconfirm my knowledge because it's still miraculous to me. I can see the parallels in other systems, e.g., biological, social, etc., but it's computing that motivates me to continue to learn.
I don't know any women who feel this way, although I do know of a few. I think it's the way we're wired, starting with the prenatal testosterone bath that males get in our twenty-sixth week of development and reinforced by social mores.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
Untrue. I have one child of each gender. Each with complete access to a full range of toys from dolls to trucks to lego bricks.
Each has naturally gravitated towards stereotype gender roles. Even though we've gone out of our way to keep everything in their lives as gender-neutral as possible.
Even with access to all the same toys, games, and movies.
It's not what I expected.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
I think it would be wonderful to teach the biblical theory: flat earth sitting on a firmament; with the sun planets and stars under a dome of water, .... and slowly work through why these ideas were rejected.
I had a teacher who actually did precisely that over the course of a school year in junior high; used the changes in scientific understanding to illustrate the importance of challenging things and continually questioning accepted belief. Basically, the entire gist of his class was the importance of looking at the world around you and asking 'why' rather than blindly accepting what others tell you.
He got in some trouble for not sticking blindly to a textbook, unsurprisingly. But I like to think all of his students learned a lot more from him than we did from many of our other science teachers. Instead of learning rote scientific theory, we learned to question and investigate for ourselves.
--Rachel
That might be true, but we noticed the differences since long before they were old enough to even have a gender identity. How could a child take clues from society about his or her gender roles before even knowing his or her own gender?
Unless you dress your kid in earth tones and name them "Pat", society at large knows if they are a boy or a girl and treats them "appropriately". If the relatives always give your kid pink things, chances are the kid will be predisposed towards wearing pink. No self-knowledge required on your offspring's part. People treat little kids differently based on whether they are a boy or a girl, regardless of what you as a parent want (or even what the kid wants).
In the end, you do what you can to give your kids the tools to break free from gender stereotypes, but it really is up to them.
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
Can you understand how a vehicle designed and built by people can fly even though people can't?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I honestly believe that only now people are truly understanding what CS is all about.
I remember during my first day in college we were asked about why we choose CS and what was our previous experience. Several people (including men) said that they have picked CS because they like surfing the web, chatting or playing video games. Many of them believed that the work of a CS graduate is about picking colors for a webpage or drawing textures for a game character.
I remember asking a female friend about the classes and she said "it's nice, except for all that math and programming".
Don't take me wrong I already worked with very skilled and talented female developers. But I do believe that woman generally prefer other areas instead of CS
No, there are commercials about boys. For instance, this one, where the boy is advertised as a future wife-beater.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
But in most cases, the difference is being caused by negative pressure. Efforts to improve the working environment for women result in a better environment for everyone, and a higher percentage of women in the field. Not everything has to be 50-50, but if you're many sigma away from 50-50, and/or there's a leakier pipeline for women than for men, it's worth looking at why that is. Computer programming isn't a task that requires vast quantities of upper body strength (the biggest biological difference between men and women). Aren't you ever worried that you're missing out on half of the available talent?
Where the hell have you been for the last 30 years? We've been there, tried that, it doesn't work. I grew up in the sissified 80's, and I thought it was OK for boys to cry, until I hit teenage and found out that *girls* don't think it's ok for boys to cry. I toughened the hell up in a hurry when I figured out I'd been lied to by every grown-up I'd ever come in contact with for the past 15 years. You can't seriously think we're not already a wimpy enough country.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
What's gotten big since the 80's? MEDICAL SHOWS.
You've got ER,House, hell even Becker and Frasier are doctors. Blah blah blah. Alot of these girls grew up watching George Clooney save lives and swoon babes.
Can you think of any TV shows that 'glorify' the Computer scientist quite the same way? Nope.
Back in the 80s we had all those cool cyberpunk movies. Bladerunner, Hackers, War Games. Computers were seen as arcane and mysterious. Now they're common place. The average PC guy people know of is the dude at best buy- pretty much a glorified mechanic. That really isn't a stigma anyone wants attached to them. I mean, seriously, would you want to work at the places shown on "Chuck" and "40 Year Old Virgin"?
The CS field is highly competetive and we haven't gotten a good rap since 2000. Enrollment rates are dropping period- maybe the girls are just the first to go.
I'm 27 years old (born in 1981). I have never known a time when it was okay to air a commercial where the woman was the incompetent party who was rescued by a man -- it's always the man who is the bumbling idiot.
This probably seems astonishing to people older than me who remember a time when it was the exact opposite. It's probably those people who are creating these commercials :)
Lawyers have an organization that made it illegal to practice law unless you are in the club, which they control. IT consultants have no such organization.
Thanks for the honest evaluation, Stonewolf. As a younger software engineeer (31, been doing this for about 8 years) I do appreciate a candid look at the future.
You implied that your wife seemed to be doing well with an ME degree yet you pushed your kids into non-technical fields. Might I ask what those are? I honestly can't think of a non-technical field that wouldn't be much more prone to market forces than even CS.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
See, this made me laugh. I've been programming since I was a girl, but for some damn reason, I find remote controls completely terrifying. I once remarked to a guy, "I could write the embedded microcontroller code that runs that little box over there, but the remote control is beyond me."
I think maybe it's all those freaky buttons. I don't know what all the symbols and acronyms are. And the guy -- he's always got, like, eight of the things, for different devices. So, he's in the other room, and he's all, "Hey, could you turn down the volume? I'm trying to make a phone call." And you're like, "AAAAGH, there are eight controllers!" And he's like, "It's the SONY!" And you go digging through the pile of controllers, and find the Sony, and frantically look for the volume adjuster, but instead, it's got some unconventional knob thing. You turn it, and the volume seems to go down, but when you set it back down in the pile of controllers, it bumps some mysterious button on another controller that gets the TV into some state where it's not actually showing TV anymore. And he's all, "Hey, why'd you turn off the TV?" And you're like, "I didn't turn the TV off! I... I, uh, bumped something! I don't know! The TV said something about DVD VCR DISH CABLE ANTENNA TV1 TV2 MOOSEHEAD ORBITAL-MIND-CONTROL-LASERS..." And he's all, "Why were you messing with THAT controller?" Then, he tells you to get the Toshiba or the Samsung, or some other controller, and hit a button with some unfamiliar acronym that you can't find anywhere on the damn thing. Yeah. I hate the things.
As for my media center PC, I mostly used it to get out of buying a bunch of that equipment you'd normally need extra remotes for. Also, playing computer games on a 52" LCD is so delicious that I almost don't care about ever doing anything else with it, anyway. :-)
In many Asian societies, ones which could quite reasonably be considered more sexist than US and European society, there is a much higher proportion of women in computer science and related fields. Even some European countries have a considerably higher ratio than the Anglo-Saxon countries in my experience. Certainly the few women who I have encountered have been very capable, in contrast to many of the males working in software, and has led me to believe that there is a self-selection process going on, whereby only the top few percent of women are determined enough to make it through whatever it is that keeps women out of computer science in droves.
I think a big way of the whole "America,Fuck yeah" has to do with the way a LOT of the new immigrants are acting. I know I'll be modded to death here,but screw it,I'm calling it as I see it. You see,growing up I was surrounded by immigrants. Less than 50 miles from an Air Force base,and with plenty of migrant workers,we all grew up surrounded by folks from many other cultures and many different races,and that is how they were treated here,as just some more folks.
In fact we used to all laugh when the carny workers would look on in shock as the little Latino and black kids would buy up the rebel flag stuff right along with the white boys. My buddy Eric would laugh at them while he bought his annual rebel flag muscle shirt and say "Hell,we are all just good old hillbilly trash around here!" Needless to say it shocked those Yankees seeing a huge muscled up black teen hanging out with white and Latino boys and wearing a rebel muscle shirt. But that was just the way it was. it didn't matter your origin or skin color,you was just another kid on the block.
Lately,in the past 3 years or so,a new wave of immigrants have moved in. Primarily Mexican,they act NOTHING like any group that has come before. They make it quite clear they don't want nothing to do with YOU,that YOU are nothing like them. They don't want to be friends,don't want their kids anywhere near yours,don't want to learn the language and sure as hell don't want you speaking theirs. They stick to themselves in their own neighborhood,and with the exception of work,which they try to do with as little contact with anyone other than their own,they go out of their way to make sure you know they want NOTHING to do with you. Their attitude is so bad I keep epecting to see "Yankee go home!" painted on the walls. Only problem is I AM home.
It is these new immigrants,these "stay away from the dirty gringo" types,that are frankly stirring up a lot of nationalistic sentiment, at least around here. And I have talked to friends all over the south and west who speak of the same thing. They speak of how any attempts to be friendly and courteous are met with dirty looks and a "fuck you" attitude. And frankly this is not good. This is how hatred starts. And frankly I don't see how we can fix it,since it is THEIR attitude,and not those around them that is causing this contempt. So mod me down if you like,but I think this thing is going to get a WHOLE lot nastier as the economy goes in the crapper. Because nobody likes feeling like an unwanted visitor in their own town,and nobody likes having every attempt at friendship met with sneers and gringo remarks. And that is what I am seeing more and more every day.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.