Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science

Posted by timothy on from the how-you-slice-and-dice-the-factors dept.

theodp (442580) writes "Over at the Communications of the ACM, a new article — Computing's Narrow Focus May Hinder Women's Participation — suggests that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should shoulder some of the blame for the dearth of women at Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and other tech companies. From the article: "Valerie Barr, chair of ACM's Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W), believes the retreat [of women from CS programs] was caused partly by the growth of personal computers. 'The students who graduated in 1984 were the last group to start college before there was personal computing. So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world. After personal computers, that wasn't true any more.'" So, does TIME's 1982 Machine of the Year deserve the bad rap? By the way, the ACM's Annual Report discusses its participation in an alliance which has helped convince Congress that there ought to be a federal law making CS a "core subject" for girls and boys: "Under the guidance of the Education Policy Committee, ACM continued its efforts to reshape the U.S. education system to see real computer science exist and count as a core graduation credit in U.S. high schools. Working with the CSTA, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, NSF, Microsoft, and Google, ACM helped launch a new public/private partnership under the leadership of Code.org to strengthen high school level computing courses, improve teacher training, engage states in bringing computer science into their core curriculum guidelines, and encourage more explicit federal recognition of computer science as a key discipline in STEM discussions.""

34 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. Do they? by rbarreira · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "With computing, the social element isn't always evident. They ask, 'how am I going to make a difference in the world with a computer science degree?'"

    I've never heard someone saying a sentence like this in high school (girls or boys). Anyone?

    --

    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    1. Re:Do they? by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Babies happen.

      Many women who become moms stay at home on hiatus before returning to work. IT is a fast moving target, so being left behind for a short while is enough to make it too troublesome to return to the same career. Some will chose an entirely different job that better suits their work/family life. Another percentage of those moms stay at home as a "stay at home mother"; which BTW is a full-time job in of itself with bread winning father providing the financials.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:Do they? by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would say that is more a problem of perception in HR and hiring managers than reality. If you've seen one silver bullet that willd solve all our problems, you've seen them all.

      Sure, things do change in just a few years, but it's not that hard to catch up given you needn't bother with the flash in the pan stuff that already went away again.

      C is still C, Java is Java. Python is more popular, Perl a bit less. Java is the new COBOL. It's not like taking a few years off to stay at home until a child is school age is spent in total isolation. Most of the tech news is on the web anyway.

    3. Re:Do they? by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You do realize that women don't just go to work one day and go into labor, right? There's generally ample warning.

      Depending on the length of the sabbatical and her employer, she might join a different team or department, or perhaps go to work elsewhere. But there's no reason to leave the profession.

  2. So... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So women stopped studying computer science because they didn't have to anymore? That certainly sounds like a crime against humanity.

  3. why can the world by ganjadude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    simply not accept that men and women are different, and like different things? this is getting really creepy how obsessed some people are these days with other peoples lives.

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    1. Re:why can the world by toejam13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But why do they like different career paths? Is it that there is a biological difference that guides men and women to different career choices, or is there some social prodding that causes men and women to self regulate?

      On the flip side, there have been few articles that talk about why men often avoid female dominated jobs such as primary school teaching, nursing, housekeeping, secretarial / office management, social working, accounting and the like. Often, it turns out to be self-regulating. Remember the movie Meet the Fockers and how Ben Stiller's character was given so much crap for being a male nurse? Yet male nurses are in high demand because they can lift heavier patients and better restrain unruly patients.

    2. Re:why can the world by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      why do we need to care why the differences are there? cant we just accept that there are difference and stop trying to "fix" the non problem?

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    3. Re:why can the world by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But why do they like different career paths?

      I'm going to posit that women are smarter about accepting abusive work conditions than men are. 90-hour weeks where you sleep at your desk and get free Mountain Dew and a game of pinball in a few times during a death march is an abusive situation.

      What I really don't get is why some women want so badly to put other women in these situations when they're already winning. I guess what we need is more women entrepreneurs, to run companies sanely. Or men to grow a pair and tell their masters to kiss off so that tech work environments can become places where women would feel welcome.

      Yeah, smoke on that one - when you work unpaid overtime you're being hostile towards women.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re:why can the world by Zynder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why should he shut up? I hate going to my job but it pays so damned good. For every one of your type, there are 10 of us. I mean I wanted to be a goddamned astronaut but it just didn't work out that way so now we do what we must to get by. You should applaud people like me and Bill. You aren't paying us to sit at home and mooch off of the system. Instead we go to a job we might hate but it beats scrubbing your toilets for $20/wk.

    5. Re:why can the world by toejam13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If there is a social cause, then society can work to undo it. If it is a biological cause, then we can stop wasting time and effort thinking it is a social cause.

      Had my mom been born a decade later or in a more progressive area, she probably would have pursued a career as a chemist. But my grandmother wouldn't allow it and many of her peers discouraged her. She became a nurse instead. She still has some regret over the decision decades later.

      In her case, she wasn't so meek as to dismiss being a chemist from the start. She actually stuck her neck out only to be swatted down. But I bet that many women of her era would have convinced themselves that being a chemist was a foolish notion and wouldn't have pursued it at all. That's social self-regulation. That should be eliminated.

    6. Re:why can the world by poity · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Perhaps women have the luxury and privilege of not losing attractiveness when working low-paying jobs. Perhaps men are the victims of a society that forces them to over-work and be over-competitive because women ultimately select whose genes are passed on and whose are not. Perhaps this competitiveness is why men will take on more hard jobs, fight for more raises, and suffer the abuses.

      Is female materialism driving men into high wage jobs? Maybe there should be a federal law to address this...

      --
      your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
    7. Re:why can the world by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If there is a social cause, then society can work to undo it. If it is a biological cause, then we can stop wasting time and effort thinking it is a social cause.

      First of all, we also need to consider the possibility that it could be BOTH. I.e., that certain gender stereotypes have some relationship to biological facts, and thus gender stereotypes end up having other effects which are not necessarily biological (but may be partly rooted in them).

      The reason I bring this up is because it makes an interesting conundrum for these sorts of arguments. If something is entirely biological, there's supposedly no sense fighting it. (Of course, not all women are exactly the same, and some may have those "natural" biological elements emphasized to more or less degree in their talents and personalities.) But if something is entirely social, it's perceived as a gross injustice.

      But what if we combine these? For example, someone earlier in this thread brought up the biological fact that women bear children and thus may need to take significant time off of work to have a kid and especially in the first year or two do things that only women can do (particularly nursing). If a woman wants to have more than one child, that can easily add up to 5-10 years of absence from the job force. In a fast-paced field, it may be difficult for women to then hop immediately back in to the job force with skills that are already starting to be outdated.

      So, the issue here is not entirely biological (women could choose to forego children or dump their kid into daycare when he/she is a couple months old or women could actively try to keep up their skills even while not working full-time), but it's not entirely social either (men don't have the same hormones driving them to have children or nurse or be with infants). Yet we're still stuck with the problematic effects -- women will often get behind in their jobs or have trouble keeping up or returning to the workforce. We can't just blame it on biology, but it seems impossible to completely eliminate social issues that arise either.

      But I bet that many women of her era would have convinced themselves that being a chemist was a foolish notion and wouldn't have pursued it at all. That's social self-regulation. That should be eliminated.

      Obviously we need to eliminate actual ignorant prejudice. But the problems are often a lot more subtle than that these days. I know a lot of professional women who "came up through the ranks" in the 1970s, and they have horrific stories to tell about the kinds of indignities women suffered in the workforce back then. Let's not forget all the amazing progress we've made in a few decades... it's important to keep that in perspective.

      Nowadays, we're mostly confronting those harder problems I mentioned earlier, like how to figure out a way to be "fair" in a workplace (and all the related decisions like salary, promotion, etc.) where one gender is more likely than the other to disappear from their career for 5-10 years at a time.

      And we also have to deal with cases where "social self-regulation" actually does serve some important purpose. Sure, is it biologically possible for a woman to have a child and dump the infant in daycare almost immediately to be fed with formula? Yes, obviously. And lots of women do it because they have to.

      But aren't there also psychological and perhaps social benefits to allowing women to choose to stay home and take care of a small child as they are biologically programmed to do? Moreover, aren't there also social benefits to having communities where children are raised by some parent (male or female) who can spend more time with them, rather than getting kids out of the home as quickly as possible and into large groups of kids often taken care of by people paid minimum wage? (Of course, some might argue the reverse -- that many parents are bad parents, and daycare may be helpful to the kids. Perhaps that's true

  4. CS Core Curriculum? by Langalf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please, please, teach them something besides how to code in Java. A little theory would be nice. Some basic understanding of what a computer actually does with that code they type in. Some idea of how algorithms are turned into programs. Please?

  5. In 1984... by Gavin+Scott · · Score: 3, Informative

    "So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."

    These weren't even things in 1984.

    Computers were not so pervasive that you were missing out on much if you didn't know anything about them.

    G.

  6. Know what that sounds like? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It sounds like some jocks complaining that they didn't wanna hang with the uncool geek crowd and now they're relegated to polishing the cars of those eggheads.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. What about nursing?? by Cutting_Crew · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How come there aren't any people complaining that there are VASTLY more women in nursing than men. Surely we need to make sure that core nursing classes are a core subject for both men and women right?

    1. Re:What about nursing?? by Guppy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because women who want go into medicine end up nurses instead of doctors. This is the result of stereotypes, peer pressure and a largely male establishment.

      In 2011-2012, women represented 47.0% of entering students entering medical school, and it's been hovering at just below half (around 47-49%) for the past decade. This value has also been approximately proportional to the gender mix of applicants, which was 47.3% female in 2011-2012.

      Source: https://www.aamc.org/download/...

  8. Re:The problem, as always... by Smallpond · · Score: 5, Funny

    We can't even solve the problem of Unicode on /.

  9. Here's a thought, lets ask actual women by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yknow, like Susan "HedgeMage" Sons? She certainly had some choice words about this entire tempest in a teacup.

    Also it's worth pointing out that computer science degrees are something like 10% of all degrees conferred in the US, and women utterly *dominate* every single aspect of education from K12 through college, even earning nearly 2/3rds of all bachelors degrees. I would think the fact men are barely over 1/3rd of college graduates in the first place is a bit of a bigger problem than what major women choose.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  10. Re:"Computing's Narrow Focus"? by russotto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Computing's Narrow Focus"? Get a degree in petroleum geology or structural engineering if you want a narrow focus. Or pick the wrong field in biology. I know a woman who got a PhD in an area of microbiology that turned out to be a dead end. She ended up managing a coffee shop.

    It's certainly true that my not-far-post-1984 CS degree was focused pretty much on computing itself; computer architecture, automata, algorithmic complexity, database internals. Not so much on applications; the article suggests that pre-1984 there was more focus on what you can do with computers. I'm not so sure this particular explanation holds up, because the drop in women in CS is mirrored by a drop in women in business computing, which by definition remained focused on applications.

    To throw out my own hypothesis, the PC revolution also caused a huge increase in the number of prospective majors in the field. Overwhelmed departments responded with "weed-out" classes and restrictive admissions policies; this may have had a disparate impact on women.

  11. Let me get this straight by poity · · Score: 3, Funny

    So, basically, because personal computers made CS more accessible, and men took advantage of this access in greater numbers than women which resulted in the imbalance we see today, it is therefore the fault of personal computers that this imbalance exists.

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  12. We don't know by Livius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the biggest problem is that people aren't willing to just admit we don't now why computer science has the male-female imbalance that it does.

    There are differences between men and women in terms of temperament and aptitudes, but those differences are small and don't seem to explain it.

    There are aspects of the culture in computer science that are inconvenient for parents, and usually wives expect husbands to make compromises (which not all men and not all women are happy about). That doesn't seem enough to explain it either.

    There is certainly no lack of encouragement and support for women in the profession, so it's not that any of that is lacking.

    We don't know, and that means we don't know what the solution is, or even if there is a problem in need of a solution.

  13. Re:The problem, as always... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    It wouldn't be hard to solve, but given the current state of affairs: no dice.

  14. Re:The problem, as always... by Sperbels · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Same. My lack of self confidence is what caused me to spent all my time with my c-64 instead of people.

  15. PC is most important tool since the printing press by Glasswire · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... how can you argue that at all, let alone suggest it has a gender bias?

  16. Re:The problem, as always... by knightghost · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As usual, the ACM totters between cluelessness and a corporate stooge.

    CS population is a social issue. To be blunt, the USA views STEM as low class. "nerd" and "geek" are 4 letter slurs coming from most people.

    Women are taught to be more in tune with social issues so shy away. Later on, 75% of STEM graduates leave the field.

    It's worse in Canada and some European countries. After working several years there, I'll never willingly go back. If you're in tech then you're an untouchable lower social rung.

  17. Re:The problem, as always... by jez9999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Boys fall in love with computers as machines; girls see them as tools to do something else," said Barbara Ericson, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who tracks the AP exam.

    What does this have to do with self-confidence? This is women approaching computers from a different perspective (on average).

    "Then girls think, Ãfmaybe I don't belong because I don't love them like the boys do.Ãf(TM)"

    And they'd be right. Why do they belong at a company passionate about technology if they aren't passionate about technology? They don't belong there any more than I belong in a doctor's surgery as anything but a patient - I'm not passionate about healthcare and didn't take exams to become a qualified doctor.

    --
    == Jez ==
    Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  18. Re:The problem, as always is ignorant commenters by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem isn't as obvious as you made it. No quote in the article, including yours, points to self confidence as the problem. The one that comes closest is the second half of your quote.

    But that's pointing towards realizing a fairly obvious difference and responding appropriately. Should they overcompensate and think that they belong despite evidence otherwise? Is that how this should work? Ignoring evidence? I'm not sure how else you could interpret that.

    This is the first explanation I've seen that really makes sense - that women focus on "what it can do for me" and men focus on "what I can make it do". As men tend to design courses, and that develops into the curriculum, and then to an entire program, computer science is focused on the manly perspective.

    The other quote :

    Girls who have strong math skills tend to have higher verbal skills than boys who are strong in math, which opens up new avenues to follow, like the social sciences

    I'm not sure how that is backed up by real information, but it certainly makes a certain bit of logic. Women in general do have higher verbal skills (ignoring the applicability to real life of such research). An average woman with strong math would still have a verbal edge. Self confidence plays no part in this one.

    The post-PC specialization idea makes a certain amount of sense - women got a CS degree to get further in a chosen career, not to do CS stuff. And now that they can learn on a PC instead of a classroom, there's no need for the CS degree. This has nothing to do with self confidence.

    The data near the bottom seems to bear out this concept, and it has nothing to do with self confidence. So no, Anonymous Wrong Person, it has nothing to do with self confidence unless you want to drag out something that 1) has been debunked 2) is ten years old or 3) didn't look at environmental causes.

  19. Re:WTF by Stumbles · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Asshats indeed. They are equally offended because they don't have the wherewithal to enter a field unless they are given special consideration and handled with kit gloves.

    --
    My karma is not a Chameleon.
  20. Re:The problem, as always... by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The 'CS population is a "women aren't fucking interested" issue' Stop trying to make it out to be more than it is. Stop trying to make it 'equal'.

    People are different.

    Genders are different, if you don't realize that, you need to take sex ed over again.

    Races are different, if you don't realize that, take a look at distribution of races in sports (All of them from chess to basketball).

    Certain groups of people have certain attributes in GENERAL that make them prefer, not prefer, or have some general level of skill above or below the 'average'.

    NOTHING YOU DO IS GOING TO CHANGE THAT SHORT OF GENETIC ENGINEERING.

    Stop trying to turn it into a fucking social issue, its a god damn evolution issue. WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.

    That doesn't mean any particular person of a race or gender CAN'T do something or MUST do something, it just means they are predisposed one way or the other and most people of that particular group will behave in a similar way.

    Most women don't want to spend all day dicking with computers. FULL STOP.

    To be blunt, the USA views STEM as low class.

    ... Really? Since when? What fucked up part of the world do you live in that believes such a silly statement? Who are the 'upper class' then? Blue collar workers perhaps?

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  21. Re:SO WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can't be serious. Of course the answer here is to force them to do something they don't want to do. Because clearly if there's a deficiency in the supply of women in a given field it's clearly because there's something wrong with the men in the field. If we force women to get involved in the field we can put those men in their place.

    The fact that you'd now have men that are unhappy and being underpaid due to the increased competition and have women that are unhappy with a career that they didn't really want is completely beside the point.

  22. Re:The problem, as always... by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 3

    I agree with some, for example, why aren't more men in elementary education? In some cases there is true sexism at play: some people think men who teach little kids are either gay or perverts (and some think those are the same thing...). But for the most part I don't know many men who'd want to do these things.

    To be blunt, the USA views STEM as low class.

    ... Really? Since when? What fucked up part of the world do you live in that believes such a silly statement? Who are the 'upper class' then? Blue collar workers perhaps?

    I think he's right on this one. The US is entirely about idolizing business and management, in spite of how very bad most of our businesses are managed. If you're in STEM, you are always going to be on the bottom rung. You will be paid much less, you will work longer hours, you will not have nearly as much control or options. You're the one that gets axed when the boss makes a mistake, you're the one that has to stay in the office late when the customer wants a new feature, you're the one that has to take the fall when a very public mistake is caught that probably was the result of some bean counter elsewhere.

    Yes, the company comes to a grinding halt if we were to all band together and fight, but that's unlikely. Hell we can't even VOTE together to stop H1B nonsense, never mind do something that might draw attention personally to us.

  23. Re:The problem, as always... by buddyglass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Stop trying to turn it into a fucking social issue, its a god damn evolution issue.

    Then we would expect to see very little variation from country to country in terms of male vs. female interest in STEM careers, right? Is that the case? It may be the case there there are physiological differences between men and women on an aggregate level that give rise to some of the gender disparity, but you're an idiot if you don't think social issues also play a part. For instance, if it's all physiological then why was women's participation in computer science higher in 1984 than it is today?