Slashdot Mirror
Women's Enrollment In Computer Science Correlates Negatively With Net Access
New submitter MoriT sends this excerpt from a post examining the correlation between women's enrollment in computer science programs at college and their access to the internet. "There is currently a responsibility-dodging contest between industry and academia over who is to blame for the declining enrollment of women in Computer Science and declining employment of women in software development. I hear people in industry bemoan the 'empty pipeline,' while academics maintain that women aren't entering their programs because of perceptions of the industry. I have compiled some data that may help resolve the question by highlighting a third factor common to both: access to an Internet-based culture of computing. ... I conclude that in the last 10 years among many Northern European nations, rising Internet access is correlated with falling interest in computer science relative to other professions among women. The group of Mediterranean nations that show a positive correlation should be a fruitful area for future research, but seem outliers from the Northern cohort."
We can't confuse correlation with causation. While this might be a third factor, what other factors may be involved?
Has anyone bothered to ask women directly why they chose not to do Computer Science?
You know, rather than just guessing...
The first hypothesis I propose is that Internet culture supports a belief in a meritocratic environment [9], which has been linked, ironically, to an increase in biased behavior [10] as it provides moral cover for prejudiced beliefs. Encountering overt, covert or benevolent sexism undermines both women’s performance and interest [11]. Even if such beliefs were prevalent in professional spaces before the Internet, as masculine gender performance is common, aggressive and publicly visible in online forums [12] women no longer have to be the target of such behavior themselves before college in order to associate it with the industry and choose an alternative career.
The second hypothesis is that the Internet encourages a sense of belonging [13] to the masculinized culture of software development [14], which alienates many women [15] by causing them to feel excluded from a camaraderie-focused profession [16]. Again, while this culture may have existed before the Internet, women with Internet access are likely to encounter such attitudes earlier and more frequently. To the best of my knowledge, whether the Internet has changed the culture of computing itself, either in America or internationally, is an outstanding question.
TL;DR The internet is dominated by sexist men, which discourages women from getting involved in related fields.
This is a pretty interesting idea, and one that I'm inclined to ascribe some level of truth. I'm not too sure what we can do about it, though, other than continue the push for people to stop being so damned prejudiced.
"There is currently a responsibility-dodging contest between industry and academia over who is to blame for the declining enrollment of women in Computer Science
Women are. Or are we still forwarding the lie that women don't make their own choices, and need to be coddled/cajoled/hand-held into taking jobs in industries they don't care about?
>> who is to blame for the declining enrollment of women in Computer Science
Blame? really? Last time I checked, people have a free choice as to what field they want to work/study in. If women choose not to do CS then its entirely their choice. No one is to blame.
Why is the ratio of men to women in CS even an issue? Its not intrinsically wrong that it mostly attracts men. Can we end this sexist crap please?
There are plenty of professions that have a significant majority of women:
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/07/27/where-women-work/
I don't see any corresponding massive outcry about how to get more men in those fields.
We just need to offer equal education opportunities to both genders and employ people based on merit not gender. Positive discrimination is still discrimination.
If there's a shortage of CS grads for employers to hire then its a supply and demand problem not a gender issue. Employers will just have to suck it up and pay developers what they're worth in the free market. Oh noes! the horror! Who knows, that might even lead to more people choosing to do a CS degree. Problem solved.
...because women and hard logic are such a natural mix.
I'm sorry I'm being mean, but goddamn it, you guys. I'm sick of hearing this same tired bullshit, as though it occurred to no one to actually look the fuck around and see that this defensive attitude toward ignoring the fucking problem and hoping it goes away is making shit worse
You're not being mean, you're being gullible.
First, The lack of focus on diversity
doesn't exist, and should have been your first clue you were swallowing a load. Just look at the extensive and well documented attempts to introduce "diversity". The idea that there is ANY lack of focus on diversity is quite frankly, ridiculous.
Second you cite "negative experiences" as though it were lynching and sexual harassment, and not "long hours, tedious work, and a lack of social opportunities".
In short, you bought a line.
I can't say I understand exactly why this is so,
No, but we can rule out certain things:
http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2009b/090804OhlandEngineering.html
Is the problem cultural? Maybe, but what the heck are engineering schools or companies supposed to do about the general culture outside of their organizations? If feminists want to address this problem, they should complain about how few mothers and fathers are buying tinker-toys, erector sets, magnets, etc. for their daughters. At least part of the reason I (disclaimer: "cis" male) went into EE as an undergrad was my early exposure to magnets, electric motors, and computers. Maybe little girls should be given toolboxes, wires, batteries, and LEDs to play with instead of Barbie dolls.
Palm trees and 8
if gender equality is so very important then why aren't ... women encouraged to join professions such as 'coal miner' or 'oil rig workers'
Long ago, in an earlier age of feminism, that was considered a worth goal. Feminists worked hard to give women opportunities to work in blue collar jobs -- sanitation, factory work, railroads, mining, etc. Then one day, the libertarians convinced everyone that the only jobs that matter are white collar jobs, and the next generation of feminists fell into the trap of believing that. Suddenly, feminists stopped worry about blue collar work, and started focusing on white collar professions, since as everyone knows, white collar work is the only kind of work people should aspire to. Simultaneously, feminists grew to despise lower class women, because those women did not fall into feminists' idealized vision of the successful, professional (i.e. white collar professional) woman who has "equal access" to joining the 1% (equal to men, which is to say, only an illusion of access).
This century's feminists love the upper middle class, white-collar, middle-management suburban woman. That is all they are worried about. When forced to answer questions about women in blue collar professions, today's feminists base all their answers on the assumption that those women are desperately fighting to get a white collar position (not true).
Palm trees and 8
See, it's jokes like that which get us in trouble.
the libertarians
Wait you really just seriously blamed "the libertarians" for convincing people that "the only jobs that matter are white collar jobs"?
The same libertarians that haven't really mattered politically or culturally until the last year or so?
And you think they talk DOWN blue collar jobs?
Do you even know what a libertarian is? Because your post seems to prove you don't. What is up with this sudden rush to blame everything you don't like in the world on a group of irrelevant politicos? By making claims that are demonstrably false?
This seems likely. I went to college in early 80s and there was a big demand in programming or computer science (not the same things). There was an impression by parents that this was the way to get your kids into a reliable job in a growing field, and that's the most important thing most parents look at. Today it's different; computers are ubiquitous and not as mysterious, and the job market is glutted and full of low level service oriented jobs (IT) that are steadily being outsourced. It's just not the sort of field to encourage your brilliant child to go into anymore.
There are already too many posts asking some variant of "what makes it so bad for women?" or "they have free will, if they're not in the industry it's their own choice." Well i suspect that incidents like this are part of the reason why. I really can't imagine why young women starting to consider their career options might see that and consider staying as far away from the internet professionally as they possibly can.(/sarcasm)
There are also a number of comments about how the women who are in the industry know how to handle the macho bullshit that gets tossed around, implying that it's therefore okay i guess, since some women can put up with it and not all of them are being forced out of the industry. Well of course the women who are still around can handle it, selection bias much? That doesn't mean they should _have_ to handle it though.
You know, every time there's a story about some company, or even most of an entire industry, doing something assholeish to its employees people pop out of the woodwork to say something about how the free market will correct the issue because all the good employees will find work at companies that treat them properly, and the companies abusing their employees will thus inevitable fail. I wonder how much that group overlaps with the group that think women ought to just suck it up when they're treated poorly.
It's funny how when a company/industry/environment treats all their employees badly it's the company that's at fault. This libertarian/republican/conservative viewpoint is that it's up to the employees to fix the problem, but at least the company is still clearly designated as the problem in the equation. But suddenly when the company/industry/environment is specifically targeting women for bad treatment, whether that's intentional or not, and the women choose to go elsewhere, it's not the free market responding to the fault of the company, it's the fault of the women for not being willing to put up with the shit they're dealt.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Pretty much.
Women don't go into IT/CS fields for the same reason that they don't go into, say, Engineering all that often: they don't fit in. Most women are still looking for a career for its socially-expanding capabilities. First and foremost, that means it's going to pay well, and second of all, it's going to allow them to rub shoulders with people they both want to socialize with and who might do some good for their social/personal life in the long term.
Just because many (most) women no longer see college as a marriage prep school to culture them and help them find a wealthy husband does not mean that they are not sating the same underlying desires.
IT/CS fields do not pay well compared to other fields, such as those you can enter with advanced degrees in medicine and law. It is nowhere near as prestigious as either. Their predispositions lead to them picking submissive disciplines, like paralegal and nursing as a result of this (and resulting in the mythical gender wage gap).
IT/CS fields are unforgiving, unrelenting, and unappreciated in society as a whole. They're hard. Why would anyone in their right mind, and who doesn't have an arcane ability for bullshitting people into thinking they're competent, who doesn't have an underlying love for what they're doing, get into this? They don't.
Chalk this one up to women, by and large, being much more socially perceptive than men. Particularly men of the geeky persuasion.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You think CS is bad for sexism - try being a teacher, where you not only have to worry about society judging you, but also potentially lawsuits.
The number of male elementary school teachers is declining exponentially, and a big reason is simply that men are worried (and rightfully so) that they could be subject to a lawsuit or a sex offense charge for any number of routine workplace occurrences.
It is a very sad state of affairs. At least women in CS don't have to worry about being placed on a state sex offender registry because of their career choice.
IT/CS fields are unforgiving, unrelenting, and unappreciated in society as a whole.
Exactly. This is pretty much the combination that guarantees a low turnout of anyone who does not fit a very specific demographic. Women, in general, don't seem to fit that demographic. If it's because of some social ill, it has causes which reach women far before they hit college. Blaming academia or industry, in that case, is simply moronic. If you think women don't enter IT in the same numbers as men, you need to find the underlying problem and address it, but it appears long before industry or academia have a role in shaping the choices of any given woman in question.
If you look at any field that is unforgiving, unrelenting, and unappreciated societally, you are not likely to find it populated by women in proportion to their representation in society at large. Be my guest in trying to fix it if you believe it indicates something is fundamentally broken which causes it, but don't pretend it's caused by colleges or the workplace.
Men take shitty jobs, and the lower the social status of a given man and woman, the shittier the jobs you're likely to find a man doing in relation to what the woman is doing*. Call it sexism, but the genders are biologically different in more respects than which reproductive parts they possess. This will always result in differences in psychology, which in turn causes different generalities when you look at broad sections of both gender. Yes, there are differences which aren't necessarily due strictly to biology, but not every difference can be boiled down to "zomg society is oppressing group X!"
*The one major exception I can think of is at the very bottom rung, and that's subsistence prostitution. That, of course, can likely be laid directly at the feet of supply and demand.
I mean really...what does it matter? There's more men in football too...is this such a bad thing?
There's fields where there are more women than men...is anyone bellyaching about this? If not...why?
I keep seeing this harped on....and I don't know why? Unless there is some mass conspiracy to discriminate letting women into comp sci. programs....I don't see what is wrong. Discrimination would be one thing...and I don't see anyone suggesting that. But lack of interest should be perfectly acceptable. Are we also going to start bitching that there are too many Oriental folks getting into comp sci. math or physics and less Caucasians? More men in coal mines than women? X race females more than another race of females and men?
It is called choice.....what's wrong with that? People are different.
The sexes are different....geez, accept it and lets go on with life.....it just doesn't matter.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Women earn 45.5% of Mathematics degrees in the US. Engineering and Physics are only at around 25%, but they have been trending consistently upward. Computer Science, on the other hand, has declined from 38% to 25%. It is the only field with that dramatic decline.
Maybe women just aren't as likely as men to leave India.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.