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

Can we stop trying to come up with a reason?

[ShaunC]

The only thing responsible for a "lack of women coders" is that fewer women than men are interested in software development as a career path. So what? I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why this is a problem, why this is something to be concerned about, or why millions of dollars are being thrown around in an attempt to change the situation.

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

[unimacs]

As a person who hires coders, having so few women in the field limits the pool of good candidates. As a parent, I don't want my daughter steered away from a career that might be a rewarding one for her.

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

[jklovanc]

It's that "fewer women than used to, where every other intensely technical field has had the opposite trend"

By lumping all physical sciences together the graph hides a lot of information. Here is a much more detailed graph. Notice that bachelors for females has declined in almost all fields.

It's that People are more likely to pick men for mathematical tests that both genders are proven to do equally well on, even when in the test cases where the specific women are known to outperform the specific men

The bias is attributed to the fact that men brag more. Maybe bragging is seen as a measure of confidence.

It's that sexism is actually cited by women leaving the field

You didn't read the study you quoted. Here is a quote from the abstract;

The evidence points to the existence of a “scar effect” of previous work in the female field, which hinders women's opportunities in the male sector and ends up increasing the likelihood of exit.

The study is about "scars" from work in a female dominated job effecting the next, male dominated, job. It has nothing to do with sexism in the male dominated job.

It's that gender based social norms enforced on children clearly influence their likliehood to enter a sex-typical field

Yet another misinterpretation.

Motivation and self-esteem help girls aim higher in the occupational ladder, which automatically reduces their levels of sex-typicality. For boys, however, self-esteem reduces sex-typicality at all levels of the aspired occupational distribution.

Why do girls need to be motivated but not boys.

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

[DoofusOfDeath]

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

Perhaps, but just about every choice we make is affected by social and political influence.

What am I having for dinner tonight? That's affected by externalities that affect my income (via career choice and and food prices), tastes (what was affordable when I was a kid), and who's doing the cooking (is my wife running errands when dinner needs to be made?).

What clothes did I put on today? That's affected by my personal tastes, but also by the tastes of the buyers at Target a few years ago, and on the economics of trans-oceanic clothes production, and the governmental policies of the U.S., China, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Why am I a programmer? Well, my Dad did electrical engineering, so we spent more time talking about computers than perhaps a lot of families did in the 70's and 80's. It also meant we could afford a Commodore 64 for me to start playing around with. And I was a little socially awkward as well as introverted, so programming in my basement had more appeal compared to socializing in some cases.

If the goal here is some kind of self-realization of every individual, without the influence of external factors, I just don't see how that's going to happen. I don't see any viable way to actually eliminate "unacceptable" influences, especially indirect ones.

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

[Ol Olsoc]

It's a problem because it's clearly fucking systemic, and caused by social factors.

Can you now spout off some more righteous anger about that fact that male veterinarians are rapidly becoming extinct? I'll wait for your answer. Are young men being kept away from the field by social pressure and estrogen fueled sexual harassing female vets? Or is that just the way it needs to be because women are better than men?

Equate the two situations, is your challenge.

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

[0xdeadbeef]

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

you also shouldn't care about us people trying to effect social and political changes.

We're not supposed to care about your deliberate interference, but you're allowed to care about the choices women make, because society got in their heads and made them make the wrong choices?

Normally I don't care. But people like you are not trying to eliminate the sexism (probably because your assertions of it are vastly overstated), but trying to change the nature of the field to make it more friendly to stereotypes about women, without any consideration as to whether these changes will actually improve the field and the skillset of CS graduates.

Read this article about one presumably successful effort.

And let's look at the assumptions these efforts make, and their solutions.

"The first class you take is a weed-out class, and they are shocked by the fact they don't get any women at the end."

CS is too hard for women because, despite growing up with computers, they never learned how to program before. Lighten the intro courses to be less "weed out".

"Know-it-alls in any section are told to cool it so no one is intimidated."

Women are intimidated by knowledge and enthusiasm. Don't show off. It's too... manly.

"Along with changes to the introductory courses, Mudd works hard to keep women interested in the field."

Women need to be pandered to to keep them interested.

"Women and men work through problems in very different ways"

Women's brains are different. But still, ignore those troglodytes who said women are naturally less inclined to be interested in abstract machines.

"They bemoaned middle and high school math teachers who didn't engage or inspire."

More pandering is the solution. Nevermind the boys who never got that encouragement either. (High school CS curriculum was a joke twenty years ago, and it still is.)

Is coddling women going to make them better programmers? Who knows, maybe it will. But don't pretend you aren't coddling them.

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

[phantomfive]

Read this article about one presumably successful effort. [npr.org] And let's look at the assumptions these efforts make, and their solutions.

What bothers me about the article is how little they talk about actually enjoying computer science. They talk about editing Darth Vader's voice, or having all the answers to a quiz be 42, but......what about the actual subject? If you don't enjoy it, maybe you should go to a different field. Because I can tell you, once you've graduated, the real world isn't going to be gamified.

Maybe it's learning style?

[digsbo]

Men started to outpace women at an accelerated rate when the highly personal learning style of "having a pc to play on" became an option. Given that we see more and more of an imbalance in favor of women in group learning environments (college and even moreso in graduate programs), maybe this is just something very obvious, and a good thing for men, as men can excel in solitary study which they can tailor to their own interests and pace. As my wife, a school psychologist said, girls tend to learn better in groups, and don't typically like to work in competitive/solo situations given the choice, whereas boys often do. I'll take the advantage on this one, gladly.

Re:Maybe it's learning style?

[digsbo]

The cause I think is spot on, that males are competitive and in general more solitary (damn that testosterone)

As soon as I read this I thought of the under-recognized phenomenon of dominance within a cloister. Obviously I wasn't going to be dominant in stickball, BMX biking, or gym class; few of the other computer nerds were. To a large extent our need for dominance resulted in conquering territories we were successful in. So for me, being a guy who was cracking copy protection on video games in 1987 made me like the varsity quarterback of the computing circle.

It only makes sense that in a world where available areas to express dominance are already taken, a new subtype forged into the territory available because of the advent of the PC. Women, wired differently, would not value dominance in the new arena in the same way.

Toys vs tools

[paiute]

When computers were viewed as toys, it was acceptable for girls to have them. Once they became tools, however, they were only for boys.

Data may not be valid

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a post about this article somewhere else the other day and someone pointed out that there was a drop in CS majors at the same point for males as well. Possibly due to more varied degrees which involved computers being offered. So there may not have been a real drop in female CS majors at that time, just an overall drop.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[sinij]

Assigning guilt/blame to a group of people based on a characteristic outside of their control tends to do that.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that's part of the problem.

Women frequently don't like being fawned over by unattractive men. Usually when women get "chased off" by nerds it's that very "would kill for more women to be interested in this stuff" attitude that does it.

Re:All the movies had women in business

[ShanghaiBill]

Computing IS anti social!

Not before the 1980s.

You get good at programming by staring at a screen and figuring things out.

In the 1970s, you got good at programming in a big noisy room full of other coders, reading over each others printouts, and then modifying your card deck, before submitting it to the operator at the window to the machine room. Then you sit around and socialize while you wait for your job to run. It was a very social activity.

Then personal computers came along, and all that changed. Coding became an isolated activity that you did in a cubicle, or in a bedroom at 2am. Computer screens were harder for collaboration than paper printouts. Fast compilers left no time for socializing.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[shadowrat]

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.

If you listen to the NPR segment, they have a couple of women who were former compsci majors give accounts of how the men in their classes denigrated them and mocked them for missing some knowledge. I'm not certain it's motivated by a "no girls allowed" attitude. I think there's a broader culture of elitism in compsci that motivates people to try to bolster their own egos by jumping on perceived weaknesses in others.

It's important to note that to focus of the segment was on university compsci courses in the 80s, not women who get employed on professional teams. Generally people are a bit more mature in the workforce (generally). These are 18-22 year old males. They likely were a bit ostracized as nerdy in high school. I think they just get overzealous once they find themselves in a world where athletic prowess is no longer the ultimate display of dominance. they make bad decisions.

They might even be simply showing off. I think i've tried to impress nerd girls the wrong way. Where i thought i was communicating, "hey look at how good i am at this!", i really was saying, "OMG YOU ARE A STUPID GIRL". I certainly wasn't very good at communicating with women in my late teens and early 20s. i'm only marginally better at it 20 years later.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW

[Anonymous Coward]

Am not really sure about this, as a male I've been given shit plenty of times when I screwed up as a student. I even had one of my lecturers give me the 'women are better than men' speech once.

Funnily enough I didn't leave the course/sue him for sexism or demand a feminist blog cover my plight.

Re:All the movies had women in business

[internerdj]

For all the talk about the differences in socialization, I know just as many introverted women as I do men. So the question for me is the problem with associating computing careers with being non-social or is the problem telling women they are broken if they aren't social.

80s movies? Really?

[Opportunist]

So it's also the 80s movies to blame that women are not interested in careers like soldier, spy, pilot, policeman (apology, -woman), archaeologist, exorcist, karate fighter,...

Has anyone ever looked closer at the 80s? The 80s were not a geek decade. The only movie I can remember where geeks were not just the comic foil (ok, even in that one they were) was "Revenge of the nerds". The whole "engineering geeks" were no role model in 80s movies, and even less so in TV series. Whenever they were in some prominent role, they were the little sidekick of the actual hero. Be it Automan's creator Walter, who was mostly a comic sidekick (ok, the show wasn't that memorable, but the special effects were great for its time) or Street Hawk's Norman who was some timid, beancounter-ish scaredy-cat. The geek roles were at best meant to make the hero shine some more.

Actually, the only engineer role I can remember that was allowed to be superior in areas to the hero and be more than a nuisance to him was that of Bonnie in Knight Rider.

A woman.