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WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes
theodp writes Boys' over-representation in K-12 computer classes has perplexed educators for 30+ years. Now, following on the heels of Code.org's and Google's attempts to change the game with boys-don't-count gender-based CS teacher funding schemes, Washington State lawmakers have introduced House Bill 1813, legislation that requires schools seeking K-12 computer education funding to commit to preventing boys from ruling the computer class roost. Computer science and education grant recipients, HB 1813 explains, "must demonstrate engaged and committed leadership in support of introducing historically underrepresented students [including girls, low-income students, and minority students]" and "demonstrate a plan to engage historically underrepresented students with computer science." Calling it "a bold new bill that we hope more states will follow," corporate and tech billionaire-backed Code.org tweeted its support for the bill.
You could make a perfectly good argument about making a gender-blind program, but that won't be made; instead it'll be ZOMG WOMEN ARE JUST DIFFERENT and WHITE MEN ARE VICTIMS.
Cue the red-pillers.
Forcing demographics is not organic and will never work and currently does not work. Just the same BS about having to have so many women, blacks, latinos in a given role, company, whatever. It's wrong. Let things self adjust. Nature works better without us tampering with how things work organically.
I thought teachers ruled classes. Go figure.
It's about ethics in link aggregation.
Boys and girls are different. Chicks don't dig computers. Period.
Hey, better be careful of what you wish for. A surprisingly large number of liberal causes depend on the principle of equal treatment. If you now have a law where it's OK to be unequal, that might open the door for others.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.
We will truly evolve in our values when we finally return to egalitarianism. When we finally admit that you cannot push people ahead in line because of their race/sex/sexuality without simultaneously pushing someone else back in line because of theirs, we will be truly enlightened.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Why not make a few of the classes a requirement, not an elective.
I suspect you may be able to entice more young women into tech, if you expose them too it more.
If EVERYONE in your grade has to take a few of the basic computer science classes, you may find that more women get interested in the subject. Women who wouldn't, on their own, think to take the class.
Maybe we should also take aim at the plummeting sales of Barbie dolls, and encourage more boys to buy them.
They're going to discourage boys from the programs? I smell a Title IX lawsuit coming on this one.
should not be determined based on the fucking diversity of the participants. This is like complaining that music programs traditionally have under representation of white males - maybe you can threaten theater and music grants if they don't get more alpha jocks to participate...
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
I see an awful lot in here about forcing educators to push students into these classes, but nothing about making these classes attractive to kids who would otherwise skip it.
Great idea. Let's take all the enthusiastic, optimistic, and insightful CS students and throw them out the window, then try to coax and cajole the uninterested into replacing them. I don't see how this plan could possibly fail.
Seriously, guys?
What happened to merit? What happened to "the heart wants what the heart wants"? What happened to free choice?
Why must there be more girls in CS to the point of excluding those *actually* interested in the subject itself? And why is this situation not repeated in welding, or mining? Why don't you want women to make up their own minds on what they want to do?
I see lots of women every day that somehow managed to pick a career and/or interest without anyone having to invest lots of money into convincing or cajoling them, so I'm pretty sure it can be done.
"You code like a girl"
Well said. I'm adding this to my list of useful comments.
-kgj
Seems like offering incentives to take the classes won't help if the people aren't interested in the first place. You've gotta make CS cool and hip. You need Disney starlets who program for real and have a gaggle of friends who all think it's so amazing. You need to equate programming with art, which honestly isn't far from the truth. To be honest though, this is a tough road to follow, since CS already has a strong association with utterly uncool turbo nerds.
I'm not sure how you target the poor inner city youth to get them interested.
I read the internet for the articles.
This feels like rape.
How do you recruit minorities and women into CS?
By teaching them LOGO when they are eight.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wait a minute.. what kind of cruel state still defines our little darlings as being either boy or girl? That's clearly not the type of progressive thinking we should be pushing for. Do they still have separate but equal bathrooms? The horror! Frankly, CS enrollments are the least of the problems in such backward thinking divisive environments. Won't somebody please think of the children?
If you are good at something, your achievements will be labeled as a "privilege" and redistributed to others. I hope you like the society that most of you voted for.
Question: Does creating a new, powerful disincentive for (the wrong kind of) people to achieve help or hurt our chances to have a prosperous society in the future?
The issue is much deeper and can not be legislated away. Equity across gender specific roles is built into the federal Perkins Act and funding is tied to it.
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/sectech/leg/perkins/index.html
(20) NON-TRADITIONAL FIELDS.—The term ‘non-traditional fields’ means occupations or fields of work, including careers in computer science, technology, and other current and emerging high skill occupations, for which individuals from one gender comprise less than 25 percent of the individuals employed in each such occupation or field of work.
(A) CORE INDICATORS OF PERFORMANCE FOR CAREER
AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION STUDENTS AT THE SECONDARY
LEVEL. —Each eligible agency shall identify in the State
plan core indicators of performance for career and technical
education students at the secondary level that are valid
and reliable, and that include, at a minimum, measures
of each of the following:
(vi) Student participation in and completion of
career and technical education programs that lead to
non-traditional fields.
Guess how much difference it makes...None. This is across all fields despite desparate attempts on the part of educators. Nursing, Welding, Construction, etc. tend to lean very heavily male or female.
I find outrageous the male dominance in the plumbing industry, most plumbers are males, and government should push more incentives so women can also succeed in the plumbing industry, i will also support a bill for more heterosexual male hairdressers, feminine sides can't understand my side cut!
Why aren't these people so concerned about the overwhelming majority of teachers and nurses being female?
Isn't this as big of a problem?
Don't we need to do *something* to encourage more men to become nurses? I mean, isn't this so f'ing important that Google needs to get behind it?
Do you have ESP?
Girls are not "underrepresented", in fact I think they are getting to be more over represented in today's society and gets more pathetic attentions instead of actually like caring fo serious issues that are out there like the courruption of hospitals and medical department instead of "gender issues".
It had pretty much screwed over the "white, boy that is a hetrosexual" which their shitty and illogical campaigns for feminism.
Oh well, might have well just leave it to them to die out and society will realise that it is as bad as religion.
Look, if girls don't want to go in that field, they ain't gonna go in it even if you put out those bills.
Can't get much more blatant than that. So you have to PAY to get girls (and some minorities) to even try to program?
That's pretty stupid too.
How is this not sexist?
Why does this line, Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant, seem to fit this?
"We didn't find one till we came to a side road, and off the side of the side
Road was another fifteen-foot cliff, and at the bottom of the cliff was
Another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile was better than
Two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw
Ours down. That's what we did."
That's how our politicians do their work... sort of... only instead of doing the obvious thing ("...throw ours down..."), they "bring that one up...".
So, we're going to actively block the little nerdlings if they happen to have a penis?
This sounds utterly moronic, misguided, and pointless.
Sure, try to get other people involved .. but don't fucking actively stop the boys if you find yourself with no girls or minorities who are interested.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is exactly like Title IX in sports... what happened when schools were required to have an equal number of men and womens' programs, what they ended up with is not an increase in women's programs, but a decrease in the number of men's programs. [1]
The same thing will happen here. Instead of jumping through hoops trying to comply with these new requirements to secure the funding, schools will just shut these programs down altogether.
[1] Shelton, Donald E. (2001). "Equally Bad is Not Good: Allowing Title IX "Compliance" by the Elimination of Men's Collegiate Sports". University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 34 (1). SSRN 1163230.
So what do they do? Pay people to attend the class so they can get funding?
Just as long as the initiative is not unconstitutional such as Affirmative Action and quotas.
This, as many other recent regrettable episodes, is a manifestation of misandry epidemic symptomatic of entrenched matriarchy unwilling to check its privilege. Propagating harmful learned gender stereotypes (boys don’t count) results in a society where disenfranchised young men are disempowered and prevented from reaching fulfillment and happiness.
Sexism.
As a man, I am very pissed off at what my socialist state of Washington is doing with my hard earned tax money.
All grants should be merit based, because some people are "wired" for certain things.
If a boy is good at computers, LET HIM EXCELL!
This can only lead to longterm disaster.
I talked with my sisters about this and they couldn't care less about computer programming, system administration, network administration, etc. It doesn't interest them at all. They have different interest that don't interest me at all such as graphics artist and social worker. These are traditionally gender specific roles, maybe because we gravitate to what intersts us. It would be a huge disservice to exclude boys who are enthusiastic about CS and to force girls who might not want to be there in the first place.
How about they spend extra money on the people who are interested in learning computers and spend less money on people who are not interested in learning computers? This is how marketing works in the real world. They don't market dolls to boys because boys don't like dolls. They market dolls to girls because girls like dolls. They market toy trucks to boys because boys like toy trucks. Take a cue from the business world. For the greatest ROI, spend the money on the people who are interested in your product.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Will there be a bill to address the gender imbalance in the art and craft classes as well?
When will we see equal representation in the fields of construction, military, sanitation, and plumbing? When will we see equality in homeless populations and suicides? When will family courts end their bias? When will we see equal sentencing for equal crime? Where are the grants and scholarships to get more men into teaching and nursing? How are we addressing unequal physical requirements for men and women in police and fire departments? Equal numbers of homeless shelters? Equal response for domestic violence victims? Equal funding for gender studies programs? When will the homicide numbers be made equal? Defend the men and bring crime victimization rates to equivalent standing.
I stand with you feminists! Equality now!
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Stop the madness already! I have no women in my team right now, not because I don't want women in my team (seriously, it would give that female toilet a reason to exist if we had one...) but because there are no female applicants. Zero. None.
It's not any man's fault that few women are interested in computer science. And if this insanity becomes reality, you may rest assured that it will create MORE, not LESS misogyny. Because then, unlike now, I will probably think twice before inviting a woman for an interview, knowing that she got her degree far easier than a man and hence the chance to be a dud being greater.
Seriously. When this bullshit becomes law, schools will carry girls through the courses whether they should pass or not, just to keep the ratio "positive". That's bullshit. If it accomplishes anything, it's that HR weeds out female applicants because there just are too many that were "quota chicks".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your solution is a good one, however, you need a computer "literacy" test first before implementing something like mandatory classes.
One of the prevailing theories on why boys dominate the field is due to the fact that they have had more exposure on their own time (in essence have done "self study" work in the field). When schools finally begin offering classes in computers, it is typically 6th grade and later. At which point, many students who have been exploring the field on their own know significant more advanced skills than ones who are only just being introduced to it for the first time. And in schools that teach for the "majority" of students, they will skip past a lot of the more "basic" things because it is below the average skill set of the majority of the students in the course, with the students who don't have the basics down getting lost and as a result discouraged from the field. The converse is also a problem when the schools try to teach to the students with the lowest skill sets in the course. The ones who know it already get bored, complain, and ridicule the students who don't know how to do it so they can speed up the classwork to get to things that meet their skill level.
The real solution is something that school officials and state legislatures will be likely to want to do. If they truly want to have more equality in computers, they need to start having computer classes in kindergarden/1st grade, with individualized progression for the students (i.e. be able to "test out" of any material being taught). Initial costs to setup a system like this would be expensive, but long-term may be relatively in-expensive. The only way for this to really work would be for a mostly automated coursework up and through programming theory, and object oriented design. Everything being most entirely based on the foundation of "online learning" principals, but on a more individual pacing. Grading would not really happen at all for the majority of the work, simply skill progression in passing and completing projects, modules, and practical exams (i.e. very little memorization of definitions, vocabulary, etc., but actual real world useful skill tests such as being able to create a proper formatted paper/document, creating spreadsheets, setting up and using the computer, basic debugging of computer problems, creating a basic program with input and output, etc., etc...). And because it is all self paced, the students don't become discouraged with both themselves or at the other students who "are slowing them down". But school systems would hate something like this because there is no scoring.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
How about their pull their heads out of political correct land and realize male brains are better at logical computer tasks. Male and female brains process thoughts differently. This is known science! Female brains typically work well with relational thoughts and can piece multiple things together but lack solid focus on solving one individual problem. Male brains compartmentalize thoughts and like to process one thing to completion then move on instead of jumping around quickly to different thoughts, problems, or topics. Males are better at most computer work because of this and that's the end of it. Females don't work with computer science fields because they don't enjoy it and aren't good at it.
can we get some legislation that addresses the overrepresentation of males in other industries, such as construction, coal mining, truck driving, and garbage collection?
On the contrary, helping people to succeed does not necessarily mean that others do not succeed. There are not a finite number of "successes," as you imply is the case
In some theoretical sense, yes - it is beneficial to everyone in a society and the society as a whole if there is some way to help those in need.
No issue there.
Problem is that the case described above is not that.
It is favoritism according to sex, parental income and racial/ethnic status.
Only one of those can be in some way or form a responsibility of the society, and a thing that society should work to amend.
"Amending" someone's racial or gender status is not only wrong on account of such actions treating perfectly normal biological attributes as a disability.
It is favoritism and built-in corruption BECAUSE it treats one's perfectly healthy biological attributes as a disability.
It is exactly the same thing as giving a pass to an athlete on account of his/her biological ability to run after or with a ball.
Or someone getting their doctor friend to diagnose them with a disability which would allow them to park in the handicapped spots.
Also, while there is no such thing as "a finite number of "successes"" - there IS such a thing as a finite number of chairs, computers and teachers per classroom, classrooms per school, classes per day etc.
Again... if resources can be made more available in such a fashion that those who could not get access to those resources DUE TO SCARCITY OF RESOURCES could now get access, without taking away access to said resources from others - no issue there.
I.e. By BUYING more computers and chairs, HIRING more teachers, BUILDING more classrooms, holding more classes... by getting MORE resources.
If it can be done by addressing NON-BIOLOGICAL factors, by widening the doors to the classroom so to speak - GREAT.
If you have to put a gender/race/ethnicity percentage checker on the door to the classroom to get the right amount of each flavor of kids - that's corruption and favoritism.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As a parent of two boys I can't wait to deal with the struggle when they want to follow in their Dad's foot steps but the system pushes them out because they're not the right gender.
If only I had produced the right sex to guarantee equal opportunity.
And lord knows he should know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
As a relatively successful white male (well paid engineer, graduate degree holder, homeowner in San Francisco, top 5% income earner), I see discrimination against women and ethnic/racial minorities all around me.
Try moving out of the SF area BRO and you'll see far less of this worrying behavior.
I've come to realize a big problem for women in tech is the tech dev culture around SF, not the institution of technical environments everywhere - most places I have worked IT jobs have treated women pretty well and had a decent number of them too. This is why there's such a disconnect from the people yelling loudly there's a huge problem in work environments and those kind of surprised at the level of complaints, because they had not seen anything that bad going on...
If you chose to stay there you are acting as an enabled for aberrant behavior.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...but shouldn't that be "I don't support XY-gender-doesn't-count programs?"
/duck
/run
Great idea. Let's fight gender imbalance with intentional discrimination...
I'm so happy I went through school before the PC mania made it borderline illegal to be male. Maybe that distance makes me see more clearly that the reason for these gender imbalances lies as much in the classroom as the reason for elementary school teachers being predominantly female.
If you want to fix a problem of culture and society that leads to gender imbalances in certain professions or fields, you can't do it without looking at culture and society. You've got a problem in your database and you're fixing the webserver, so to speak.
And, frankly speaking, if girls simply don't like computing as much as boys do, then WTF is wrong with that? As long as teachers are not actively running around telling girls to stay away from the computer room, maybe the problem isn't in the school, and maybe it's not even a problem at all?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Is it clear bias in computer gender?
:(
or
Is it clear need for cheap programmers even if its a lot of hard work and they wont enjoy it?
or
Or perhaps if a girl wants into computers she just has to want into computer class and try?
or
Are we keeping minorities from getting into computer class? clearly this is the issue, right?
or
What are we solving here other than creating more programmers, that will have insecure jobs as they are ready to be replaced with foreign workers who will always work cheaper because they are more desperate than an American?
---
Sigh, code.org showed such potential, but I think I forgot who funded it.
Not enough females in IT, yet the male dominance in the sanitation worker and ditch digging segments of the workforce is just right.
This.
Liberals are for equal opportunity and choice. Until the woman "chooses" to be a house wife or not take a computer class.
Liberals are for free speech. As long as that speech isn't outside of the authorized thought processes and isn't Christian.
Liberals are for freedom. Unless it's the freedom to do non-liberal stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone want to see the sports teams all forced to hold to proportional racial and gender statistics?
Let people do what they want to do. Some people don't even like computers. Why force them.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
These "equality" pushes always mean lowering the bar and suppressing those with actual ability.
lol class distinctions are at the core of conservatives?
The entire liberal movement has been about class/race/us.vs.them warfare.
Black lives matter (black criminals are hailed as heroes and cops are condemned as racist... truth be damned.)
Then it's all about the 99% vs the 1%. Take from the rich and give to the poor. Take from the Evil Corporations and give to the Poor Wretched Undocumented workers.
It's all about the Koch brothers donating money... never mind the billionaires give more money to the Democrats.
I think you have your talking notes backwards. Or your head is wedged firmly up your arse.
Regardless of actualities or intent, this will boil down to a numbers game. They always do. "Our numbers indicate that [demographic X] is underrepresented in [activity/class/field Y]". The easiest way to satisfy that statement is to institute quotas. Spoken or unspoken, quotas will be instituted.
What ensues is that more qualified/interested/capable people not included in [demographic X] are categorically excluded from [activity/class/field Y] to benefit of members of [demographic X], regardless of their qualifications/interest/capabilities. Those not included in [demographic X], but potentially excluded from [activity/class/field Y] due to the quota will blame their exclusion solely on that fact. Others not included in [demographic X], but not excluded from [activity/class/field Y] may harbor scorn for included members of [demographic X] as not having earned their position, whether this is the case or not. Additionally, members of [demographic X] who attained their position because of the quota often find themselves overwhelmed requirements and expectations of [activity/class/field Y]. This leads to general unfavorable internal and external esteem/respect/social atmospheres for members of [demographic X], generally leading to lower success rates, perhaps even lower than if no intervention had occurred.
"After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.
- Spock
Given the tech companies backing this sort of thing, the closest conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this is a play by the tech giants to get more females into IT so they can hire them and pay them less to cut costs.
what are they going to do, stop men from studying CS? Force women to take the CS course, and turn it into another boring, useless obligate?, (a course that's mandated, but pointless for the majority of the people forced to take it). The only thing that has a small chance of working is bribing women into taking CS.
When will people learn that measures like this promote discrimination.
As soon as you force schools to have more girls in the classes, one of two things will happen: (1) They will forbid interested boys from taking the classes, or (2) they will put uninterested girls into the classes, which will screw up the classes for those who really do want to learn.
Reminds me of the (entirely unofficial, but entirely real) quota systems I have seen in certain schools and companies. Because some women were admitted/hired despite being unqualified, all women in the program were regarded with suspicion. This was utterly unfair to those women who were, in fact, qualified. It encourages discrimination, because everyone assumes that all girls/women are there due to the quota rather than their personal capabilities.
The right approach: Encourage anyone interested to take the classes; ensure that the instructors and administrators are not discouraging anyone because of their gender.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This "we" you talk of is actually rather isolated to two specific communities: the Ruby community, and the JavaScript community.
This isn't surprising, obviously. Those communities are generally made up mostly of males (as in one or two females for every few hundred males), many of whom are still teenagers. Even the older ones among them still often have a mentality and maturity on par with teenagers.
I'm not certain why this is, but the members of those communities often have a dislike, if not an outright hatred, for women. Maybe it's due to mother-son issues when they were young. Maybe it's due to latent homosexuality. Maybe it's due to peer pressure. Maybe it's from watching too many deviant Japanese cartoons. Maybe it's just due to immaturity.
Whenever a controversy comes up involving sexism, it pretty much always involves people from the Ruby and/or JavaScript communities.
The communities surrounding just about every other programming language, from C to C++ to Java to C# to VB.NET to Haskell to Fortran to COBOL to Python to Tcl to Scheme to Lisp to PL/1 to Smalltalk, tend to be made up of much more mature individuals with better judgment and a lack of hostility toward women. These are also far more diverse communities, where the number of males and females involved are much more balanced. The issue of sexism is pretty much non-existent within these communities, and this has been true for decades now when it comes to some of the programming languages (see the role of Rear Admiral Hopper within the development of COBOL, for example).
Please don't blame everyone for problems that are very isolated to the Ruby and JavaScript communities.
by hatchet, axe, and saw.
Most people find CS boring. It's optional. They don't take it. For many people if mathematics was optional they wouldn't take it. You can't address this issue without making classes such as these mandatory instead of electives.
What liberals and feminists still do not get, after all these years, is sexism is sexism.
If you include, or exclude, somebody on the basis of their sex, it is sexism. Period.
Note to government officials: Scientific studies have shown that boys and girls are different. Drafting legislation that says they're not is asinine and just plain stupid!
Huh? If they are really talented, they are going to succeed regardless of where the bar is.
That is utterly, horrifically wrong.
What actually happens is that being bored, they don't do at all well in school, or later. Talent does not guarantee success, if nothing you do indicates to others you are talented they will not hire you.
This is called, wasting the potential of a human life and it happens all the time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How will this actually solve anything? Will schools be able to suddenly make girls interested in CS? Or will they start bribing girls (or their parents) into filling seats? Any way I look at it, girls will still not care, while boys risk getting an inferior education due to lesser funding. I honestly don't see any positive outcome here. Wouldn't this money be better-spent on propaganda to show little girls that it's ok to be CS engineers, and that if they put their mind to it, then not even those evil nasty boys can stop them? Maybe fund a new cartoon called Dora the Code Explorer?
Don't like alpha-males eh palsy? Gonna make gurls goouy ?? Mybad & tufftit! The fagotty smell of Seattle statist, nancyboi DemoRats is well known. What's next after trashing the best-of-the-rest -- blind-the-farsighted & cripple the swift ??? It's back to the Seattle bath=house for you and Belltown blo-jobs all-around.
I learned LOGO in 1st grade (6 years of age). This was in the 80's.
and granted my brain is a little fuzzy right now, but the bill specifically is about grants and scholarships and not seats in a classroom correct?
But, I digress. I eagerly await similar bills to end "boys' dominance" in fields like garbage disposal, oil rig maintenance, construction and homelessness.
Sexism, even with the stated goal of equalising a perceived imbalance, is still sexism. It is the same way with racism. Mandating discrimination, no matter how lofty their goals, breeds resentment. Using statements referring to "historically under-represented students" simply hides the intent.
They need to be very careful to encourage those who are 'historically under-represented' while not marginalising those who are 'historically over-represented'. It is not a kid's fault if they are born male or female, and neither gender should have a lesser education because of it.
Mandating changes to K12 funding rules is, unfortunately, not going to change society's pressures as a whole.
a lot of low paying, back breaking, labor jobs are 99% men and nobody cares enough to get women to take those jobs.
Bring in the blue collar jobs in IT, suddenly they want equality because those are better paying jobs that don't need a lot of physical back breaking labor.
Females just don't seem to have an interest in IT, only 18% people taking IT classes are female. Both males and females get bullied because they do well in math and science but somehow the females get discouraged from it and move on to something else. Males get bullied too but don't get discouraged from it. Maybe cracking down on bullying will make more females take up IT classes because bullies call females who take IT as not feminine.
Minorities, it is basically a poverty problem, they cannot afford tuition and college to earn the IT degree. They cannot afford the home computer to learn on, and they might be in a financial situation because their father left them or went into prison. You'd have to get a fund to get them home computers and low cost Internet and then scholarships for IT degrees.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
making these classes attractive to kids
That's why they are putting more girls in the classes: to attract more nerds, duh.
Actually, liberals tend to be for equal *opportunities*. Outcomes are largely a combination of opportunity, perseverance, talent.
Liberals simply acknowledge that as it stands, society does *not* provide equal opportunity, and attempt to rectify that shortcoming.
The irony about the current demographic state of affairs in the computer industry is that many (maybe even *most*) of the original computer programmers were *women*. They were largely pushed out of the industry and back into the home when the men returned from the war.
This is not about repressing the white male and elevating women, minority, and low income. It's seeking to incentivize educators to reach beyond what is easy to get in the classroom and see if they can get others into CS.
You are naive if you think this won't devolve into some kind of de facto quota system.
"Red pill" from the Matrix movies. Likely referring to someone that knows the truth, as opposed to someone that lives in the own illusion apart from the real world.
I don't really agree. We have to be careful of the distinction between girls as a societal norm versus girls as a gender/sex of humanity.
Girls as a gender of humanity are just as capable as boys to do computers and related work (logic-based, math-based stuff like science or engineering). And there are girls that do fantastic at these things. Not all girls are engineers, just like not all boys are, and that's ok, but everyone is just as capable in principle.
Girls as a societal norm, however, are taught that these things are not girly, and therefore most girls display little interest for fear of being "weird" and "masculine". This IS a problem that we need to look at correcting. This comes from how we display gender norms in society -- how parents raise their kids, how TV shows display characters, what your teachers gently infer in their lessons, and all manner of places. This makes it hard to correct, but it can be done over time with effort.
I think these programs have their hearts in the right places, but just shoving code in front of girls' faces isn't going to make them want to do it. What we need are good female role models that come out and say "It's ok to code, if you want to, and still be feminine and sexy", and time to allow those young minds to grow up and teach their daughters that its ok -- before you know it, in a few generations, no one will think it odd. But, it takes time to get there; without a good plan, these programs may do more damage than help by turning people off to complicated subject.
"La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Anatole France, 1894
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Tech/IT is the most beta heavy career field in the world. Women are biologically driven to seek out Alpha dick for breeding purposes and they do this by going to where the alphas are. That is why cheerleaders exist. That is why secretaries exist (few tech nerds have secretaries at all, it's mostly lawyers, politicians, businessmen etc.). That is why nurses exist (chasing doctor alpha dick). That is why interns exist in politics and business (i.e. Monica Lewinsky).
The short/fat/bald/shy betas in IT are the least desirable men on the planet and women simply want nothing to do with them. There are more alphas working in fast food than at Microsoft or Google.
Truth. Deal with it.
The female "heart" wants Alpha cock. They can't find it sitting in dark, windowless rooms with a bunch of short/fat/bald/shy betas. Hence why females will always avoid the IT field.
Still waiting for the moral outrage over male 'dominance' of the waste disposal field. Or logging. Or death by job in general.
Truly, the tech companies, banksters and such have long since killed that goose's egg: with the massive offshoring of tech jobs and importing of foreign visa scab workers to take the place of American workers, this entire topic is completely specious.
Women I've worked with in IT:
1. moronic black chicks that were utterly incompetent and just collecting high end welfare (this is what you want to bring to the private sector, quotas)
2. bull dyke lesbians
3. Other aged, childless crones, some of which date much younger men
4. fat nerdy white chick that was actually competent but had baby rabies and then found out she couldn't get pregnant for some reason and ballooned up to the size of a land whale
5. Oh yea, the land whales.
So basically every women I've worked with in IT has been obviously mentally ill other than the moronic black chicks that were 100% incompetent. The only exceptions are the political appointees that were never actually technically competent at any point in their lives but basically went to the right college, majored in political science or whatever, and sucked the right dicks to get a GS-15 or SES position handed to them.
I think it was Thomas Sowell who said something like this: Washington has a mostly black population, but proportionally, few blacks use the city's airport. Are we going to force black people to go on plane trips now?
. . . then the same EXACT argument applies to wealth distribution, which means all wealth must be also equally redistributed --- except the minions of the super-rich are the ones pushing all these "divide and conquer" programs, forever successful in what they do --- the very same ones behind the offshoring of as many American tech jobs as possible!
Being a white man in America just got EVEN WORSE. Bad! Bad whitey! How dare you smart little crackers try to make others look bad with your big ass brains and KOMPUTAHS!?
America is a sewer of anti-white male propaganda, discrimination, and vitriol.
Bullshit. I am a hard-core liberal and I don't share any of those views. In fact, they sound more left-wing than liberal.
We are bombarded every single day that women in America lead men in both undergrad and graduate degrees now (never mind that they are all in the "subject" of Communications) --- so what is with this program???????
Are you trying to say that girls are genetically predisposed to be uninterested in CS? That doesn't seem right...
Why does it not seem right? It's what has happened for decades, despite MANY efforts to the contrary. We know there are very real genetic differences between men and women.
Homosexuality is not a choice either, why should the inclination to enjoy programming be any different?
What if it *is* right? What if it is as simple as on average, most women simply do not like the work? Would you hen be inclined to star manipulating children's DNA?
Posting AC because speaking truth to power is dangerous work.
Excellent comment, ZH, but we both know why those won't be forthcoming!
Quite possibly, yes. But a regular person: a) may not have had the means to block off the path in the first place (I'm not sure what was involved), and b) probably wouldn't have been able to take it to court, with all the time off work and possible consultation with lawyers that it presumably entailed.
From the text of the bill:
(b) The computer science frontiers grant is intended to support
2 innovative ways to introduce and engage students from historically
3 underrepresented groups, including girls, low-income students, and
4 minority students, to computer science and inspire them to enter
5 computer science careers.
Does anyone see a "must" in there, as quoted in the summary?
There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.
Three words: Reality Distortion Field.
The white male geek starts his career from an extraordinarily privileged position.
The median household income in the US is $52,000.
College graduates in the class of 2015 with bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering can expect an average starting salary of $57,000. Computer engineering graduates are close behind, with average salaries of $56,600. Next come mechanical engineering graduates with starting salaries of $56,000.
Software design $54,000
Computer programming $54,000
Computer science $52,000
The College Degrees With The Highest Starting Salaries in 2015
Nowadays the most important thing to focus on is obviously your reproductive organs.
Excellent quote; thank you.
I am reminded of a passage from A Tale of Two Cities, where Monsieur runs down and kills a young boy:
A Tale of Two Cities
-kgj
Here's the reality.
Men and women are different. They *come out* different. How many of you parents out there have noticed that their little girls usually play with dolls while boys play with trucks, despite your best efforts to equalize?
You're fighting human programming. Testosterone does things to the human nervous system that make it act in certain ways, like enhancing spatial reasoning, agression, and so on.
You can try and jimmy social structures all you want. You won't change this, unless and until you get to genetic and/or neurological programming at a level we haven't achieved yet.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The biggest problem I have with it is the choice the phrase "traditionally under-represented."
If it was addressing present under-representation, than I would have far less concern.
The biggest problem with this bill is the use of the term "traditionally under-represented."
"Traditionally under-represented" is still being used to justify numerous scholarship that are exclusively available to female college students. This despite the fact that since 1980 women have formed a larger percentage of post-secondary students than men. So for over 34 years, girls and women have lived in a world where attending college was more likely for them then the boys and men they knew. The US high school graduates of 2015 have never lived in a world where more US men went to college than US women. Even the mothers of the young women entering college today most likely have little memory of a US where men outnumbered women in college. Yet we still feel the need to have set-asides for these young women.
Certain fields of study may have uneven enrolled ratios, but I do not see set-asides for men to enter the fields where they are traditionally or presently under-represented.
Let us have equal opportunity for all.
Seriously? Is there ANY chance this won't lead to discrimination against little white boys that like computers? Will there be similar 'wonderful' legislation passed to address the gender disparity in, say, home economics or wood shop? What about dance classes? Auto shop? Will girls be forced to enroll in computer classes or will boys be prevented from disproportionately enrolling in the class?
Hate that word, "incentivize" which translates to bribery and thievery to us non-Wall Street types. You said ...now it's time to make an effort to tap into another pool of resources to help fulfill/solve the stated problem...
Problem with that is this is the region which leads in offshoring jobs. Plenty of workers. . . remember, it was Micro$oft, on 9/12/01, which took advantage of the horrendous attack on America to have an unscheduled layoff of 1,000 local workers!
What about the scenario you have painted indicates that men cannot be oppressed? If it doesn't, then why the parenthetical comment? If you think MRAs think ONLY MEN are *truly* oppressed, then I guess youre one of those man-hating feminists that want all men removed from society with culling as soon as technology stops men being required to produce children.
It's just as valid and true a claim as your "MRA's think ONLY MEN are truly oppressed" bollocks.
You forgot the prison system (on both sides of the bars).
There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.
Oh, come on! Cry me a river.
Look at any movie in the west - the hero is a white heterosexual man 99% of the time. Look at most any culture and men are heroes and lead in every important aspect of society, super-models aside. Of course, in all these cultures there are also more dropouts on the male side, but that's how evolution wired the sexes as we know today.
Women get aided in MINT, come out of school an avarage of 2 or more gradelevels better than boys (every since) and yet it's still men who get the higher salary and end up in boss positions.
Why?
Because we (men), evolution and our culture wired us to not give a shit about grades and some dumb-ass teacher! Because we know better, don't we? But we *are* wired to seriously give a shit how much we get for our work. Especially so if we want to impress the ladies. A man is way likely would rather be a bum or at least a dropout than work under circumstances he considers below him. I know I am. He is also way more likely to grab a Kalashnikow and take what he thinks he deserves when pushed far enough. Examples all around. All the time.
Get it into your head: The most successful men don't even need a degree. It's white male college dropouts who've built the most powerful companies in the world.
Women end up having to weigh their desire to habe children against optimised career moves. In a classic society they are way less likely to completely drop out of society and also way less likely to rise to the top.
In my opinion any law that tries to curb those tendencies of gender inequality is welcome. That some of them are debatable, mostly because they are as ineffective as they are unfair, is obivous. But your statement is a blatant over-simpification and, to be honest, a tad whiney. If I may say so.
Get a grip, grow a pair and find a cute lady to have some awesome sex with - you sound like you could use some.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Wait, once again our education system is going to punish success and reward failure? What could possibly go wrong? We're sure to turn into an elite education systems now.
Let me see if I can help...
What BlueFoxlucid is saying is that perhaps the efforts to attract more female students lower quality students (who happen to be female) will also be encouraged to join therefore flooding the market with passionless female graduates who will in turn reinforce a stereotype of poor performance and in turn prevent passionate females from gaining a foothold and creating success stories that encourage other girls to start down the path.
I agree that "people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers" is provocative in itself but in context it should be read as "people will learn, incorrectly so, that women are directly inferior as engineers".
That is what people are trying to say to you.
Boys have an inherent fascination with the concept of using symbol manipulation to change the functionality of physical machinery. By changing how machines work by typing words and code. Boys are absolutely obsessed with the concept that you can create machines that do what you tell them to do by changing mere symbols (which is what source code is). It is a way of creating life from dead objects by using 'magic' symbols. Religions are based on this. Programming is a type of religion. Boys are very much into this.
Girls, on the other hand, are absolutely fascinated by their ability to create actual living, thinking, unique human beings with their own bodies. They don't need magic symbol manipulation to create artificial life from physical objects. Their bodies create life from their interactions with other life. The lives that girls create can't be controlled like the robots or machinery that boys create, but their human-life creations are infinitely more complicated than what the boys can do.
This is the basic primal fundamental reason why boys are much more attracted to computers and science. Boys spend their lives and careers trying to gain and master the life-creating abilities that girls are endowed with at birth.
I am sympathetic to the argument that men enjoy computers more than women do, and that we should not expect 50/50 equality in tech. At the same time, many people posting in this thread seem to assume that sexism is simply a thing of the past and that it’s just as easy for a girl to go into a STEM field as it is a boy. The evidence does not support this claim.
Here’s a good quote from http://www.wired.com/2014/12/mit-scientists-on-women-in-stem/ on this topic along with links to support these claims:
“People treat girls and boys differently from an early age, giving them different feedback and expectations. There is strong evidence that American culture discourages even girls who demonstrate exceptional talent from pursuing STEM disciplines. For those few young women who continue to study science or engineering in college, there is still a good chance that they will leave afterward. There has recently been much discussion about how tech culture causes women to leave “in droves;” the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon of females choosing to stop pursuing careers in STEM is a well-known problem.”
First: Yes this is anecdotal, but it is my own experience with 'diversity' in the academic environment. It may not happen all the time or everywhere, but I don't believe it is uncommon either.
The summer before my senior year in college I acted as the boy's counselor for a career "summer camp" sponsored by the State of Michigan, aimed at high-school students. There were many different topics offered, but my school (U of M-Dearborn) was providing an engineering focused camp. As a counselor, I was involved in the selection process, which was run by the engineering admissions office. There were many more applicants than we had openings for students (approximately 30 openings), and the state had mandated a diversity goal (including geographic diversity). The result was a process that went like this:
1. Sort the applications. Place all white male applicants in pile 'B', retaining all female and non-white male applications in pile 'A.' (Actually, the gender sorting was retained.)
2. Review female applications and select the best to fill 50% of the openings.
3. Review non-white male applications and select the best to fill the remaining openings.
4. Plot geographic location of selected applicants' hometowns on the state map. Notice that no applications were selected from the Upper Peninsula. (U.P.)
5. Look for U.P. applicants in the A pile. Finding none, go get the 'B' pile (white males) and search for U.P. residents. (two found)
6. Replace bottom two selected males with the two U.P. residents.
7. Congratulate the team that they have done a wonderful job at promoting diversity.
I do not have a poker face and my disgust must have shown, because the Associate Dean of engineering approached me afterward and said "See, we got some white males in the end." What she didn't seem to understand was that what disturbed me wasn't the outcome (which was bad enough), but that if you were a white male applicant, your application wasn't even considered (except for the two Yoopers*, and they wouldn't have been if there had been any in the 'A' pile). Given the topic today, I suppose I should have been happy that they accepted any male applications at all.
*For those who don't know: Yooper = someone who hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U - per). Conversely, the Yoopers call those of us from the Lower Peninsula "Trolls", because we live "below the bridge." (the Mackinac bridge which connects the two)
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
What are we accomplishing here?
OK, long ago for people, but the majority of programmers used to be women. They started this field : http://womensenews.org/story/b.... It was considered clerical work at the time. When it was recognized as pretty substantial work, companies turned to universities for recruiting and male graduates were far more prevalent at the time and the graduates quickly dominated the field.
My wife was told by her guidance councilor that she shouldn't be a programmer because she'd just be typing stuff in and working with dusty old tape. My mom was steered away from engineering, so she got an RN instead. The dominance of boys over girls in this field was culturally manufactured. What else would one expect from a culture that teaches girls the importance of being pretty, their parents giving praise when they are pretty, and boys being praised for being strong or smart?
There is nothing intrinsic in boys or girls that makes them good or bad at computer science and programming. People will cling to the myth that they have some rare super ability in their brain to do programming; it gives someone a sense of self worth which is important for people to have. What you need is a reasonable memory and time to practice. Can everyone do it? No, but the bar is not sky high; the majority could pass it.
What I'd like to know is: why do we have such a lack of female pro-football players?
How about coal miners?
Heavy equipment operators?
In other words, why is CS such a big deal?
So. I am a woman who writes code. And, at the end of the day, I give two shits if the people coding around me have dicks, vaginas, or something in between.
I do care, however, that if you see me coding, you make assumptions that I am worse than my male counterparts.
I do care that my opinion sometimes may be listened to less (or more) based on my gender and not my accomplishments.
I do care when I feel my promotions may be looked aside for a less deserving male counterpart. But those are not relevant to this article.
What is relevant is this:
It didn't start because someone made me go into computers. It did help that my family had no boys when I was growing up and my dad gave me legos, computers, laptops, and none of the usual "girl-stuff." By the time I was given barbie dolls by the fist person who would assume I must like barbie dolls, I thought they were building blocks too. I thought all toys were for building and I loved building.
So maybe it's true that girls will initially choose dolls over cars and trucks, but I never really had that choice, I know I didn't (or wouldn't as a kid)- but I also can't speak for every girl. In fact, no one can speak for every girl or every boy. But I do know I chose to create, maybe because no one gave me soft girl toys from day one. I am a builder, I am a creator. And I don't want any rule to undermine me for what I am by thinking I got here because I have anything but love for being a builder, writing software, and making things happen.
Please don't belittle me or my accomplishments by making people think I got here any other way than by loving to create things.
If it is out goal to engineer and manipulate all aspects of society, we might as well own it. Let's commit to it. For every 5 male programmers, let's kill 4. We want 4 less of them anyways, so instead of beating around the bush lets go the most convenient route and achieve the objective end. Roles will be filled at some point by other demographics out of necessity.
We could systematically solve every issue of we just make our objective clear and commit to it. For every poor demographic, we can extinguish an entire wealthy bloodline and distribute their wealth to aforementioned poor demographic group and repeat this process until all are equal.
Eventually humanity at large will learn and adapt to the process. People will evolve. They will stop pursuing things they are passionate about but will fill the need which society deems most necessary and appropriate for them to fill. Independent thought and action is the thorn, and to achieve the desired end it must be removed.
We are the future.
What is a WA bill?
Without doubt, there is now some kind of liberal conspiracy to bring affirmative action into high-tech education and workplace. Now that they have mostly won the same sex marriage battle, it seems like this is now the top item on the agenda, considering we're seeing news articles on this issue nearly every other day, like this is this the top problem hindering our progress towards some kind of a utopian Star Trek society.
Enough is enough: NO ONE IS KEEPING GIRLS OUT OF CS CLASSES; they're - for the most part - not interested in it.
Will anyone "take aim" at girls' dominance in Nursing, Elementary school teaching, or Modeling?
Damn, I'm tired of seeing this every other week.
It's been exactly two weeks since Slashdot discussed one of several studies that conclude that groups with more women perform better than groups with fewer. Already, readers here seem to have largely forgotten that. It should be pretty obvious why there's a demand to recruit more women into the industry.
>Boys' over-representation in K-12 computer classes has perplexed educators for 30+ years.
We haven't been "perplexed" for "30+ years" at this problem. We understand the problem, we know the solutions, but in these 30+ years they have not been implemented.
We don't need calls for "more women in CS". We need to eliminate sexism against women _already_ in CS, and this is not being addressed.
you must be confusing the traditional "liberal" with that of the modern "liberal"
classical liberals are today called libertarians because the left hijacked the term liberal (and the right made it a bad word)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
think that men are definitely the authorities on why women aren't in CS and should not be encouraged to enter CS. Their suitability for the task is underscored by around 98% of the preceding posts amounting to "We have nothing against more women entering CS, but for some reason the stupid incompetent bitches don't want to have anything to do with us."
You jest, but I once read that at least one European country seeks to hire women as prison guards in the hopes that it will make it easier to transition to life outside prison. I'm too lazy to look it up.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Yes, let us punish those boys for demonstrating ability and interest.
How about we point the finger at the parents who are so afraid that their "little Barbies" might not be social "winners".
Yuck
Still nothing to tackle the unbelievable dominance that girls have in other areas such as languages.
One would assume they'll also do this for the football team.
Tumblr is this way, you SJW fuck.
As I write this there is, across the room from me, an 8 year old girl happily coding away in JavaScript, so don't get me wrong I support females in IT. I just don't think you can trust your kid's education to other people when they think they can justify any form of "positive discrimination". The day any of my students drop below average is the day I'll start listening to the sort of fools who think diversity in professions is about not having a diversity in the types of people who do better in different professions.
If there is one key thing I have learned from teaching my little tribe it is that many things are innate and you are wise to find what a child likes to do and does well then give them all the support to grow those set of abilities rather than trying to turn every child into a clone of some idealised perfect student that does not exist.
If your wife and mother could be "steered away" by a conversation with a guidance counselor, etc, THEN THEY WEREN'T SERIOUS ABOUT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
make CS a mandatory graduation requirement. Then ALL the girls and ALL the boys will have to do it, like math.
Nullius in verba
No matter what spin a politician puts on it, isn't discrimination still discrimination?
A CS class is a meritocracy. You can either do the work or you cannot. There is no way to force representation of various groups of people including females and minorities to what we out of our hats think it should be. The effort to make it so is braindead.
The last time I recall a female in a high level development position that had a role in making a video game of a highly publicized manner, we got Daikatana as a result.
If there were no female applicants for your team, either your HR department isn't doing a good job of advertising the job to women, or else your team is doing a lousy job of looking like somewhere a women would feel comfortable working.
My company's not perfect, but they're a lot better at it than that - losing a big lawsuit 40 years ago got their attention. My current department doesn't have a lot of women in it; my previous department had women as more than half of the managers (varied over the years, as we kept reorganizing), and so did the sales department we did tech consulting for. The last time my group hired a contractor through the HR department, probably 1/3 of the applicants were women (the one we really wanted to hire had found a better job before HR got us her resume, sigh. We hired a guy who didn't work out, then hired an old friend who'd contracted with us years before and was willing to come back again.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
would be rolling her eyes right now...surprised there's nothing about this in her books...
I have interviewed and hired many engineers over a 35 year career with a "very large computer company". Here's my opinion on the subject. Lately, there has been a big push in the media to have "diversity" in the technology fields. Jesse Jackson is involved in it so one can assume reverse discrimination. Now political nutjobs have entered the fray. The bottom line is that there are NO barriers in colleges that discriminate against anyone taking technology subjects. It's just that they tend to be difficult. Many don't wish to take difficult courses. Many don't like solitary endeavors and prefer socially-related positions. Mandating the outcome without proper education and training is simply ridiculous. However, our wonderful "media" ignores these facts. It's like mandating the same in a football team, ignoring capability. If someone is truly interested in pursuing a technical field, then all they have to do is well, pursue it. It's out there and if one wishes to train in the area, they will obtain employment in the field if they know what they are doing. I took science subjects in school because I was truly interested in science. Forcing someone to hire me in to a scientific position if I had no or insufficient training in the subject would be stupid. Forcing an incompetent in the field will only undermine their cause. When I interview a college graduates for an engineering position, I asked the same questions of all candidates, regardless of whether or not they had boobs or if their skin color was whatever color. In the end, we hired the best person. In many cases, they were someone with boobs (only if they knew engineering well) or someone who may have had skin darker than mine. We hired *people*, not colors or genders and those people were hired to perform a job. The bottom line is I recommended someone for the job IF I felt they could do the job or had the capability to learn to do the job.. Ironically, I was on a team that turned down our manager's brother (who happened to be a white male) because he wasn't a good candidate for the job. He was a crappy engineering graduate. It's what one can do, not the outward appearance that makes the difference. If our stupid "governments" hold technology jobs so high, perhaps they should *mandate* engineering and computer science courses in the public schools rather than forcing the outcome on people of various appearances with little or no training.
So they want to implement Affirmative Action at the class level? That will only make the program fail, no matter how much "diversity" is forced.
I hope the law ends up not passing or gets pre-empted by Federal anti-discrimination law.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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Say what? Is this yet another solution looking for a problem? When I was taking computer classes in high school the hands down top performer was a young woman named "Marjorie" who went on to an Ivy League school. WA has lost its collective mind again...
Trying to legislate kids desires when kids are given choices and they don't choose how politicians say they 'should' is pretty idiotic.
I hesitate to be more specific not having read the details of the legislation. But on info posted here, it is pretty crazy.
Not everyone has to be creative in the same way. Boys ARE different than GIRLS. Not better, not worse, just different.
Forcing kids to conform to a curve of political design is a good way to get them all to ignore you. Make the classes interesting to all kids will get more to go there. Try things, like a class or two JUST for girls, but make one or two JUST for boys, as well as one or two mixed. Find the level that works for YOUR KIDS, not for bureaucrats making points. Legislating education from capital hill is pretty stupid and arrogant IF the politicians aren't volunteering time to help educate kids at ALL levels, with ALL skills, and ALL sexes.
Time to go take my grumpy pill.
with expressions like OMG and LIKE and WUTEVER!!! That will roll them right in.
... Repeal the 19th amendment to the US Constitution.
To vote you must be a male property owner over the age of 25.
Perhaps they fail to see the appeal of a career with diminishing pay Checks
Ken
That's just what we need, more discrimination.
They are focused on biochemistry, biology, medicine, audio engineering, geology, architecture, marine biology, genetic engineering, truck mechanics, electrical technicians, etc. I have only met a few that were hip to CS in any real sense. Those few were either UI designers/developers (yes they wrote code), or Psychology majors with an interest in UX (didn't write code for development, but did write code for processing their study data).
Stop the pigeon-holing! Many disciplines encourage their practitioners to learn coding, indirectly! HOWEVER, most of the specific personages I reference indirectly above were coders because their disciplinary goals required that they learn to write code on their own, NOT because their discipline requires it, but because their projects indirectly require it! Having a strong coding background myself I was in a position to offer useful advice on where they could refine their skills to achieve their disciplinary goals with code. It really had very little to do with pure CIS... It had to do with getting a pie-eating-contest off their plate so they could move on to the rest of their research!
Code development is not an end. It is a means to accomplish a disciplinary goal that cannot be solved by any other method, and all of the academic and professional women I have met dealing with that particular challenge grok that. They don't love computers, but they know what such machines can do for them, and they are more than willing to roll up their sleeves to learn it, and keep their hands dirty in it, only so long as that effort is required to satisfy that portion of their larger goal.
SO:
In K-12 teach Discrete Math, Data Structures, Algorithms and call it good. If you must get feed back, teach them a core language like ANSI C. But let it go after that. Make it a required section of every math class, scale it to fit the level expected for that student. By the end of k-12 every student should know what an integer and a float is, what a pointer is, what arrays and strings are, what control statements are, and why they are important for computer processing. This should be true even if they never want to see a line of code again. Put it where it belongs. Programming is applied math. Treat it as such. Don't bury women in a discipline that does not interest them. Teach them how they can apply Discrete Math and automatic computation in their own path.
Coda: Women generally won't spend 20 years studying one species of dragonfly -- guys have, and do similar things all the time. That is a guy thing.
Women, if they focus down on something like fruit fly larva, it is generally for a greater purpose that tends to broaden their efforts not narrow them. That is a key difference between guys and gals. Guys are content, for a lot of bad, or ill-defined reasons, to narrow down to a laser fine focus on shit that most women just can't be bothered with. It is not that women can't do it, or won't do it! I think it is more that they recognize it is usually self-destructive and self-limiting. I think the feminine approach is healthier, for a lot of reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... VERSUS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Casteism
Since 93% of job fatalities are men, there's a real need to push women into jobs where they have a non-negligible chance of dying on the job - equality demands it!
"Boys don't count?" What a crock. Of course boys count. So do African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, women, autism-spectrum people, and pretty much every other identifiable subgroup you can think of. Here's a clue: no subgroup has more innate ability for CS than any other. Unless your chosen subgroup is "people who have innate ability for CS."
Every time the gender imbalance in CS comes up on Slashdot, we see the same phenomenon: a huge phalanx of men jumps out and tries to defend their ignorant biases. Actually, it's kind of generous of you folks: by loudly proclaiming your prejudices, you make it easy for savvy employers to avoid you. Because frankly, one hugely skilled guy who pisses off ten talented women just isn't worth having around.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of the two people (both men, BTW) who taught the first Harvey Mudd course for students with experience. (See TFA if that isn't meaningful to you.) We weren't the first to figure it out (that credit goes to CMU) but we were the first to do it in a compelling intro course (I don't get credit for that either--write me privately if you're dying for details of how I fell into it). But I'm currently the only one who teaches that course to experienced students. The whole idea was originally developed by two amazing men (not me) and one brilliant woman (not Maria Klawe, BTW; she'll tell you that herself because she wasn't even at Mudd at the time). So let's not pretend that anti-male bias was a factor.
But what has been found based on *science* (oh, that) is that some groups of people, women included, are easily intimidated by show-offs. Which, if you haven't caught on, includes most of the noisiest Slashdot crowd. By and large, these are people who are fascinated with computers and don't have the social skills to see that some of their questions and opinions are irrelevant to whatever discussion is going at the moment. So they blurt out their questions, and the intimidated ones think (this really happens) "Maybe if I don't know the multiply cycle times of the latest Intel chip then I can't do CS." And then we lose those people even though they're incredibly gifted. (BTW, this example was taken from a class this week--and the person who announced multiply cycle times was wrong. Which is often the case in these situations, but they still intimidate others because they make their statements with such confidence. But I politely pointed out that the information was irrelevant, giving the rest of the students a chance to concentrate on the material that actually matters. I can only hope that the message gets across.)
The data is incontrovertible. Gently shutting down the show-offs (most of whom aren't even trying to show off; they're just eager and socially inept) doesn't discourage them in the least. But it keeps them from discouraging others. The result is more total people majoring in CS, and a far wider variety of ideas. All benefit, no loss.
If you feel threatened by that, I suggest that maybe *you're* the intimidated one. And I encourage you to try to develop your self-confidence by taking pride in your own strengths, rather than dissing complete strangers.
Rather than to force more girls into CS courses the question is why many girls do not want to attend CS courses. So before legislating anything find out what the cause is and then take corrective measures.
Well, then it seems IT security isn't quite a field where a lot of women try to specialize in. I'm sorry, but I will not hire a woman because she's a woman. If she has the qualification, no doubt about it, but I refuse to partake in the gender bullshit that's going around like a disease. I cannot afford my staff to consist of duds because I have to hire people who are not qualified just to fulfill some inane quota.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.