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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.
... more about systems than people and women are more interested in people than systems.
kinda like, never was.
The marketeers turned me into a newt.*
Really just how many times do you need to go around the block before it becomes impossible to see this as anything but what it is someone's attempt to push an agenda. Gee women coders are now the victim and have to be made right. I guarantee that if you look at any profession you can see groups that are under and over represented, this isn't a social problem it's statistics and thank god that everyone is not exactly the same.
*I got better which is why i can post this.
You must find putting everyone in your boxes pretty easy.
That sounds about right. Why would you bet your career on something that is increasingly being viewed as a blue-collar profession?
Again. We have people who assume a conclusion and attempt to work their way back to a "proof" from there.
Just ask them, already?
1. Did you consider a career with computers?
2. Why or why not?
3. What would make you change your decision?
4. To the inquirer. Answers such as "Math is hard" or "the guys are bullies" are NOT objective truths, but personal perceptions and, as such, need to be further reinforced by actual concrete instances. And, in fact, if there is the perception that "math is hard" or "the guys are bullies" without objective proff, then additional research needs to be made. Locate the source of these perceptions, address any actual problems found, work to correct any mis-conceptions.
Lay off the "because Men are Jerks", already. That's not very objective either, and it's just as much a case of bullying, even though it flows in the opposite direction.
Ideological fights solve no problems.
If girls want to sign up for CS, then fine. If they don't, then fine. Stop it with the sexist nightmare shit.
As a middle-aged white male that's been in I.T. my whole life, having dealt with the globalization of I.T. services, not to mention the wage-supression of our industry being settled within the court system, lately there's seems to be a new threat. People like me are actively discriminated against, in favor of women and minorities. I haven't knowingly experienced it first-hand, but it is impossible to tell. I read HR text all the time explaining how women and minorities are preferred candidates and are encouraged to apply, when I apply for a job.
When was the last time you heard of 'affirmative action', and was it on one of the news talk shows recently? Frankly, I advise youngsters I come across to steer clear of I.T. and to find a job in another industry. One that doesn't eat its own.
Incidentally, "Because only an idiot would invest a lot of money and effort into getting trained for a job that's going offshore to the cheapest bidder" is no less a personal perception than "because IT is loaded with pigs". But it, too, deserves a scientific analysis, not just blind assumptions.
In particular, is such a viewpoint actually more common in women than men, and in proportion to the percentages of men and women seeking IT careers? If so, a hypothesis may be formed AND TESTED. If not, other factors should be considered until something is found that fits. Not by asking loaded questions or "push polls", but by sampling data in ways designed as much as possible to eliminate bias both oh the parts of the interviewer and interviewees.
And, should it prove demonstrable that women are simply less idiot enough to pursue careers in fields where the long-term prospects aren't appealing, we may just have to accept the fact that women may simply be inclined to be more pragmatic. Because men and women aren't the same, regardless of what some people would assert. Any more than that they're the same except when men are inferior. They're simply different, and the differences vary from person to person and are only similar in statistical masses.
Now we're not just sexist pigs, but we are also in an unstable industry and women will avoid us like the plague. Actually I don't find this stuff as insulting as the "anyone can code" meme. Maybe we should all wear suits so that people take us seriously, like lawyers. Actually, that might be the real reason women don't get involved. Their parents don't take the profession seriously, so they steer their smart daughters away from it.
Comparison of the demographics of undergrad CS majors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and 2014.
Consider the possibility that women just aren't interested. Don't apply your feel-good agendas to it and expect it to be magically transformed.
Has anyone, you know, *asked* women why they don't go into CS?
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
My #1 complaint about that BS article every time I see it pop up is this: there is a few false assumptions in it. Firstly, "Computer Science" isn't the ONLY school route to teach computer programming. It is also offered under the label of "Information Technology", or as elective classes under other fields such as "Network Administration" or "Database Administration" - And the other assumption is that SCHOOLING is the only way to learn things. Pretty sure just about everyone here on Slashdot can easily agree that they've learned a hell of a lot more tech either on the job or on their own than they could have ever imagined learning in a classroom environment.
Woman are more rational than men, and don't want to go into CS because it might be a bad job market. So fields like psychology and art history, which have more than enough women, must have amazing job prospects, right? Anyone who thinks about it for two seconds can see that the problem is not that simple.
I work in an environment where most of IT is outsourced to India-based corporation. My casual observation is that there are many more young females from India in our IT group than Anglo-Americans. I've also noted the same with computer courses - that there are many more Asian women (South Asian and East Asian) relative to their male counterparts than there are Anglo Americans.
I suspect that Asian societies do not view computer work as primarily male-oriented work, and that talented women are encouraged to work in the field.
Among the Anglo-Americans, many of the IT focused women are in their 50's and 60's, having entered the field when mainframes were predominant and hence when computing was viewed as less of a male domain.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Offshoring is a HUGE consideration for women in tech. It has nothing todo with WESTERN cultural views of women; it has EVERYTHING to do with how the offshore component interacts with western female workers. Regressing to being patted on the head and told not to worry by offshore colleagues is an enormous setback to western women who have worked insanely hard to earn the respect of their peers. Management that is invested in offshoring just pretends that the problem doesn't exist. This is why I no longer work in tech. I loved the work and the intellectual challenges but couldn't tolerate going back to being treated like a child. Western industry is trashing a tremendous resource with its singleminded focus on offshoring. And the alienation of female tech talent is only the tip of the iceberg.
...why the sudden change started around 1984-85. Did the labor market for CS grads suddenly start its "drastic swings" around that time frame? Or, since we're looking at % of graduates, about four years prior (e.g. 1980-1981)? If not, then I'm not sure how women's (alleged) aversion to "drastic swings" explains the sudden change.
"Oh noes, women are under-represented in science/engineering/politics/business leadership!" "Typical oppressive old boys' club glass ceiling keeping women down!"
Has anyone ever seen a feminist petition for more women to do construction jobs, cleaning jobs, heavy industrial trades etc? ... ... ...
Yeah, that's what I thought. Cherry picking 'gender equality' when it suits them.
P.S: Has Slashdot degenerated into a cesspool of women's rights activists? This is a tech blog/forum, so behave like a proper one.
If you were trying to discourage girls from trying to program computers, you'd be hard-pressed to top Apple's famous Ellen Feis 'Switch' ad (2002 Slashdot discussion). Btw, by introducing 'The Computer for The Rest of Us' in 1984 without a viable hobbyist programming language, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates no doubt helped discourage both girls and boys from studying CS, even if BillG is trying to make amends now.
Wrong.
Did you read the fucking article? The female enrollment in CS never changed, what happened is that male interest skyrocketed.
Why? What happened is that the personal computing market had finally reached a good enough saturation point in the previous 8-9 years since the introduction of the Altair. Suddenly, there were young men, many of whom had been social outcasts, who had been programming since their teenage yeas on their parent's computers. These self-taught programmers could run circles around the college CS graduates of the time who had only been programming for 4 years, usually on outdated mainframes. This new crop of programmers had practical experience already with the consumer market devices of the time and could hit the ground running.
To this day, you won't see most teenage girls sitting quietly and learning how to program to get a leg up above the rest. They're too busy popping birth control and twerking to MTV. Speaking of which, MTV launched in 1981 and became mainstream in 1984. Maybe that should be the target of your angst.
That is all this study confirms. Because men are willing to get into things that might not be the best financial move. If women only go into it if there is a lot of money then they're showing up for the money... not the coding.
This confirms what has been established many times already. Men and women get job satisfaction out of different things.
There are jobs women will go into that don't pay as well as other options because they find them personally rewarding.
Men are the same way. But they find different things rewarding.
Shocker... humans are sexually dimorphic. Any biologist or anthropologist or medical professional could tell you this in a heartbeat.
The gender studies academics have their heads so far up their own asses on so many issues. We're sexually dimorphic. Get over it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...was that absolutely CS is like many professions a labor of love, you follow what interests you.
And 100% of the girls in high school - even the ones that were brilliant in science and math - had far, far better things to do with their spare time than to fuck around with a computer in mom's basement or dad's attic.
-Styopa
The perception about math is kind of irrelevant, IMO. In two decades of programming, I can count the number of times I've used math above the seventh grade level on one hand, in unary. Yes, there's CS work that involves math, but most of the people doing that work are scientists who also know how to write code, rather than coders who also know complex math. So if that's someone's excuse for not getting into computer programming, the misconceptions run much deeper than whether math is hard....
What programming does require is a high degree of abstract thinking. Folks who do well in algebra are likely to have no trouble with programming. Mind you, there's a big difference between solving for a variable and assigning a value to one, but at its core, the notion of a name that represents a value is still the same. And that abstract thinking ability becomes critical when you're architecting a piece of software, imagining how the parts are going to fit together before any of them exist. The better you are at thinking abstractly, the better you'll do at programming, from the lowest code monkey jobs to the highest software architect jobs.
Unfortunately, at least in the United States, IIRC, most tests show a gap in abstract thinking ability between men and women by the time they reach high school. Whether that gap is biological or social in nature is unclear, but as long as that gap in the mean/median of abstract thinking ability exists, you'd expect more men in computer programming than women, because a larger percentage of men will find it easy to learn the core programming concepts, and to then move on to complex architecture work. To achieve a more balanced tech workforce, you have two choices: either take steps to encourage women with strong abstract thinking abilities to choose CS at a higher rate than men with those abilities (a higher percentage of a smaller population) or fix that abstract thinking gap (assuming that it isn't caused by biological differences). All other problems (e.g. "men are jerks") are secondary in importance by comparison to the abstract thinking gap, IMO.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Only it wasn't. Admiral Grace Hopper wasn't doing the "men's work" of commanding a vessel, she was doing the "women's work" of programming, analysis, and such - just like the women in Bletchley Park and similar of the same generation.
If it was considered "men's work" I doubt the Navy would have employed her in that role.
Face it, we work indoors, at keyboards, dealing with what is almost always very simple mathematics, rarely even simple calculus required - it's not so very different is it?
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."
For shit's sake, can we stop with the PC bullshit and finally acknowledge that women and men are different?
Women in general have evolved over thousands of years to have lower tolerance for risk, and the CS labor market is a risky place. That is ALL there is to it.
Looks at decorative towels and wash clothes in bathroom we're not allowed to use taking up prime realestate that would be great for useful things.
Looks at fake flowers sitting on top of storage furniture I access frequently that must be moved before accessing said stored objects and returned.
Looks at useless decorative items that must remain on kitchen counter despite being useless, in the way, and knocked around regularly.
Thinks of how many times I've been asked to hold a purse because it's impractical for the owner to do things, or carry something in my pockets because the objects owner didn't bring their own pockets.
Thinks of how the toilet paper is stored in the closet at the entry of the dwelling because the storage areas in the bathroom are taken care of rarely used beauty products and appliances.
My head is shaved - literally a bar of soap, a stick of deodorant, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor and some shaving gel is all I have for bathroom use in comparison.
I call this quote for the summary into question
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I have seen quite a few hand-wringing and postulative articles about why there are not more women in programming or general IT disciplines, and why the ratios of men to women in CS courses widen so much as they progress.
One thing I have not seen in any of those articles is a report on any attempts to reach out to those girls/women and the boys/men who dropped out of CS courses to switch to other options, about why they chose to switch. It seems such an obvious choice that I am sure it must have been done at some point, except that nobody seems to want to mention the results.
Everyone is entitled to equal opportunity, but absolutely no one is guaranteed equality in outcome.
So long as the CS field is accessible to everyone - that's all that matters. If a group of people decide that CS work is not for them - that's OK. That is how markets work.
We should stop wringing our hands about things we cannot control and start focusing our efforts on real problems.
If it is true, is the over- riding reason that gender imbalance is due to men doing things that discourage women from entering those professions?
The "reasons" we hear, that we stopped advertising to women, therefore discouraging them, must mean that we got what we wanted in computer programming, shy and socially awkward males.
If the "reasons" are that these males are sexist pigs and they harass women, of which the "dongle" incident is the biggest example, how do we reconcile the two?
Even if we don't reconcile it, the reasons start to sound more like excuses than verifiable actual causes.
Moreover, why is it possible to discourage women so easily? I can only say as a sample of one, that I have worked around some disagreeable women, yet they have no more influenced my career choice than the wonderful women I have worked with. I just accept it as different people being different, and no mean person is responsible for my career choices, only me.
The most discouraging aspect of this entire discussion is that once you buy into the premise that women are discouraged by advertising, or by guys making "dongle jokes", you are saying women are inherently weaker than men, because they give up easily, and are influenced away from science and tech careers by advertising. I've heard women in the workplace make many off color jokes, and just figured it's what people do at times. It's just people
Do we really want to say that women don't have the ability to stick to what they want to do, and are turned away by what are actually trivial things?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Your observations are accurate, but your conclusion is completely wrong. All the elements you called out are things that would keep women from staying in a CS position for a long duration. Very little of what you listed would be something that a freshman entering CS would be exposed to or have any knowledge of. If your conclusion is correct, we should see a lot more of female CS grads that drop out of the talent pool in the first five years, and what we are actually seeing is they aren't even entering CS programs.
The problem starts much earlier. Girls start losing interest in STEM topics at a much younger age. There are no positive female role models to show young girls that they can excel at programming and there are plenty of females presented in the media as being interested in 'girl' stuff. Children are highly impressionable, and if they don't see an archetype they probably aren't going to gravitate towards it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!