NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders

gollum123 writes: Back in the day, computer science was as legitimate a career path for women as medicine, law, or science. But in 1984, the number of women majoring in computing-related subjects began to fall, and the percentage of women is now significantly lower in CS than in those other fields. NPR's Planet Money sought to answer a simple question: Why? According to the show's experts, computers were advertised as a "boy's toy." This, combined with early '80s geek culture staples like the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, as well as movies like War Games and Weird Science, conspired to instill the perception that computers were primarily for men.

Comments

All the movies had women in business

[WillAffleckUW]

As I recall, it was more that, in movies and TV, women found romance working in business, and rarely in computing.

Computing meant anti-social. Business meant meeting attractive men in business suits with lots of money and power.

Geeks only had time travel in bad looking vans.

Re:All the movies had women in business

[xtal]

Computing IS anti social!

You get good at programming by staring at a screen and figuring things out. For thousands, and thousands, and thousands of hours. There is no getting around that fact.

The more complicated it gets, the more "anti social" it is. What does that mean anyway? Do we all need to sit around and code by committee?

Re:All the movies had women in business

[phantomfive]

Computing IS anti social!

You have no idea how much I wish that were true. For me, it would be a perk.

Instead, I spend plenty of time in meetings, coordinating with fellow programmers, working through issues like their code sucks (and for some reason I can't figure out, they think my code sucks), strange emotional attachments they feel towards Visual Studio (even though it costs over $10000 for the full version). And that's only fellow programmers......figuring out what customers, management, vendors all want is another issue (and it's important).

I just want to sit down, get my job done. Let me program. Instead I end up talking to a bunch of people.

Re:All the movies had women in business

[Aighearach]

Actually you underscore the lack of socialization during programming. Your attempted counter example shows your social meter is differently calibrated than average people. You accept a very tiny bit of edge dialogue as a replacement for continued socialization all day in typical office jobs.

The loner might not be a hermit in the mountains, it doesn't change that the job is primarily solitary, even when coordinating with a large team.

Re:Maybe it's learning style?

[greywire]

If we're looking for a reason, I think this is the best one I've heard so far.

The thing about the media being the cause I think is wrong, that was just an effect.

The cause I think is spot on, that males are competitive and in general more solitary (damn that testosterone), and females are more apt to be concerned with social aspects. In the late 70's and 80s computers became much more accessible to those competitive loners (nerd stereotyping here).

Which is to say, its not that females can't do it, or that males are better at it (insert whatever you want for it), its just that they are quite possibly just not interested as much. Before the advent of Personal Computers, computing was mostly prevalent in an academic setting, which is more social..

Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason?

[pla]

These aren't just whatever, "it's just people making choices". It's clearly social and political influence.

We "clearly socially and politically influence" people to hold down a job, not smoke, refrain from promiscuous sexual behavior, and a wide variety of other behaviors.

And yet - We all still have the right to live under a bridge, smoke, fuck anything that moves, yadda yadda yadda.

When women want to go into tech and can't, we have a problem. When women don't want to go into tech... Hey, start your own marketing campaign like Google has done, but lose the guilt-tripping SJW faux indignation BS.

Thanks.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[NotDrWho]

It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.

I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.

Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason?

[ray-auch]

It is because women are smarter than men, and are making more informed career choices.

Back in the days of punched cards and computers the size of a whole data centre now, and memory that didn't got away when the power went off (yeah, I know, that one's come around again now), programming was a 9-5 family friendly (as much as any job was) day job. Programmers and operators were often women (my mother was one), if not mostly women - seriously, just do a google images search for "mainframe operator 1960s" (just for one example), those images reflect the number of women working with computers that you'll see in printed material from that era too.

Somewhere around the 80's - 90's with the personal computer revolution, and gaming, and continuing with the dotcom boom, programming turned into an aggressive deadline-driven first-to-market ship-it-yesterday career, with a long-hours work-till-it's-done culture that spread from startups out to entire parts of the industry (see gaming...). And the women stopped coming.

To pick a couple of other industries / careers I have some (UK based) knowledge of: in roughly the same time scale, in medical and veterinary, professionals went from being on-call all-hours (junior doctors infamously worked a standard 120hr week) to having out-of-hours contracted out and on-call hours counted into the limits under EU working time directive. Every programming job I've had has required me to opt out of the working time directive, but doctors don't. Now take a guess on two professional careers in the UK which are (or soon will be) majority female... medical (doctors) and veterinary. That is where all the smart women went, and if you want to know why just look at the culture changes in those professions and in programming.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[NotDrWho]

Well, that's unfortunate. Because, try as I might, I've yet to find a way to make my team more attractive. I guess I could hire some male models, but they generally make pretty shitty coders.

Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason?

[alexander_686]

Let's extend your argument and look at doctors. What if we cut the number of admissions to medical colleges by 1/2? By reducing the number of doctors we could boost the wages of all doctors! Wouldn’t' that be great? Would that not make our future brighter?

Probably not.

You are talking the same position as the old guild members, fighting to keep their privileged position as more productive factories raise productivity and living standards for everybody. I mean it is great that you beat everybody else in the great land rush, but I don't think you should close the gate behind you. I am not even sure you can as I look at India, China, etc. Give them 25 years. Don't focus on short term gain but on long term greed. You will benefit more from vibrant economy than a stagnant one.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[NotDrWho]

I'm sorry, but wtf is your point? Are you saying that we should be hostile to women instead of nice, or nice instead of hostile, or that we should completely ignore them?

You say that men who are mean to women chase them off. Then you say men who are nice to women chase them off. And I'm pretty sure you would say that men ignoring women would chase them off. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SUGGEST?