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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?"
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.
"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
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.
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
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.
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
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]
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.
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
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
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'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 :)
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.