Slashdot Mirror


Tech's Gender and Race Gap Starts In High School

An anonymous reader writes "Diversifying the tech industry is a prominent topic these days, with much analysis being done on colleges and companies that employ software engineers. But exam data shows the gap is created much earlier — it's almost overwhelming even before kids get out of high school. From the article: 'Ericson's analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the exam were women. Eight percent were Hispanic, and four percent were African-American. In contrast, Latinos make up 22 percent of the school-age population in the U.S.; African-Americans make up 14 percent. (I don't need to tell you that women make up about half.) There are some states where not a single member of one of these groups took the test last year. No women in Mississippi or Montana took it. Seven states had no Hispanic students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota. And 10 states had no Black students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Utah. In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"

5 of 489 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Actually it starts at conception by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Informative

    A lot of the young men that dropped out of college didn't risk everything since the college they dropped out of was Harvard.

  2. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. We know that the number one creator of empathy in children is time with their father.

    How do we know that?

    Since you asked, here's a citation backing up the GP's assertion: A Qualitative Analysis of the Parental Influence on Psychoemotional Empathy Generation in Juvenile Female Homo Sapiens Sapiens

  3. What test? by clickety6 · · Score: 4, Informative

    exam data shows...

    18 percent of the students who took the exam ...

    some states where not a single member of one of these groups took the test last year ...

    etc., etc. if you're wondering what the hell test is being talked about, you'll need to check the actual article to find it's the Advanced Placement computer science exam.

    --
    ----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
  4. Re:This is the AP Comp Sci exam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tech is the career field that is most likely to take you from loser to Millionaire before your 30th birthday.

    If by "loser", you mean "a wealthy white upper-middle-class upbringing, where mommy and daddy paid for everything", then sure.

  5. Re:This is the AP Comp Sci exam by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Informative

    And studies like this one prove you false. Women don't avoid IT because they've been in the field and find it troublesome (the people, not the work). The "trouble" starts much earlier. They don't go into IT, and stop considering it, long before they are aware of what the working environment will be. That points to something other than "sexism in the workplace" as a much larger factor.

    Your irrelevant rant only masks the problem, and is counter-productive to real progress. That makes you part of the problem, not the solution.