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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?"
"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
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.
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