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Solving the Mystery of Declining Female CS Enrollment
theodp writes After an NPR podcast fingered the marketing of computers to boys as the culprit behind the declining percentages of women in undergraduate CS curricula since 1984 (a theory seconded by Smithsonian mag), some are concluding that NPR got the wrong guy. Calling 'When Women Stopped Coding' quite engaging, but long on Political Correctness and short on real evidence, UC Davis CS Prof Norm Matloff concedes a sexist element, but largely ascribes the gender lopsidedness to economics. "That women are more practical than men, and that the well-publicized drastic swings in the CS labor market are offputting to women more than men," writes Matloff, and "was confirmed by a 2008 survey in the Communications of the ACM" (related charts of U.S. unemployment rates and Federal R&D spending in the '80s). Looking at the raw numbers of female CS grads instead of percentages, suggests there wasn't a sudden and unexpected disappearance of a generation of women coders, but rather a dilution in their percentages as women's growth in undergrad CS ranks was far outpaced by men, including a boom around the time of the dot-com boom/bust.
Since Slashdot is dying they're trying to appeal to the Tumblr crowd. There's a lot of ad money to be made off of fat liberal dykes and pathetic beta males.
Mod parent up (just exhausted all my mod points). I know a lot of people won't like this, but it's true. Not that there's anything wrong w/ either, but it's just that it then translates into ground facts, such as women are more interested in nursing than men are, while men are more interested in cars, planes, computers and all other things (not people) that one can think of.
If you don't agree with the parent, you need to watch this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I have a male twin and was taught by my father, who was an engineer. From my experience, I have come to the same conclusion.
People are heavily influenced by gender. For many women, sticking too closely to gender norms during developmental years will shape her into the kind of person that is unlikely to develop an interest in CS. It's the same reason you see more women (or gay men) than straight men becoming stylists.
Yes, and one of the foremost women in Linux wrote an article about it once: http://www.linuxjournal.com/co...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I am a male and I claim a fairly different nature than thou.
I also claim your notion of predestination is absolute BS.
My observations:
- Women protect their own time more than men in this industry (don't want to do as much overtime, don't want their weekends to vanish, etc) and this leads to a negative management style that penalizes healthy behaviour and thus limits women's progress
- Women take maternity leave and have kids and that hurts prospects in the high-grind world of CS
- There are a lot of poorly emotionally developed males in management roles (not all, by any means, but enough that an 'I like my coders young male and single' comment isn't a surprise out of a manager)
- Women will try to ask for an answer when stumped, guys will try to battle through (taking a long time sometimes) - the best course is usually somewhere in the middle.
- Women don't particularly love to be abused and they are less willing to put up with it from management than men (who are willing to get called some nasty things by their boss most times)
The industry is hard on developers and artists and QA people. It burns them out, treating them like disposable resources. Women are smart enough to recognize this and fewer of them want to enter this. Guys are still 'hey, neat tech!' and 'I get to code a video game/drive the space shuttle/build smartbombs/code networked scrabble/etc'. So they still throw themselves into the grinder more willingly.
Guys also respond more to challenge and to hostile bosses (that's likely deep in our genes) by trying to outperform. That same climate I believe makes a lot of women just want to leave.
So in summary, it can be a hard field on people and it is managed in ways that drive women from the field.
My cred: 18 years in software development in a lot of companies (custom software contractor much of the time in and out of companies of all sizes).
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
You're right, it does come when people confuse cause and effect.
Equal opportunity does not mean equal results.