I've found that in the last few years as the "we must encourage more women into tech" train has gained speed, people have lost sight of the importance of removing barriers in favour of recruiting girls simply because they are girls.
In addition to being totally messed up politically, it's really harmful to your self-esteem if you think that you are being given special treatment to satisfy someone else's political correctness quota. Not to mention that eager men (with the best of intentions, no doubt) over-compensating can lead to "othering", that feeling that everyone is going overboard making you so welcomed that you kind of want to barf.
My current speculation is that for most girls, it's actually their parents that instill a nagging sense of doubt regarding what they are "supposed" to consider good career options. Therefore, I think the key is to reach young minds.
Girl coders: go speak at public schools or high schools today!
Why does it matter how many women are in tech? If we're all equal then it doesn't.
Not all the people I socialize with are into computers. Most aren't. You can't make all your friends in your own industry. I don't care if a person is a man or a woman, unless there are seriously extenuating circumstance I won't work or socialize with them if their assholes. The problem is that in geek circles there is a heavy social penalty of advocating that someone be ostracized for behaving like an asshole, everyone has to be included no matter how much no one else wants to hang out with them.
There are a lot of anti-social retards in tech regardless of gender. I'm quite happy with it as there are lots of people willing to hire devs who are willing to not be condescending and have some semblance of adherence to social norms. As the OP pointed out quite accurately in their post 'I realized he was just an asshole who probably wouldn't get too far in life anyways.'
Many people are hardwired to respect the opinion of anyone who forcefully and confidently expresses it. It's a two way street though, want people to think you know software engineering or any other topic? Just say something reasonably intelligent in a forceful and confident way, also if someone else has said it that they respect mention that person as having saying it. Most of the debates in software engineering are subjective in nature as much as everyone involved in the decision likes to claim otherwise.
If you know your rhetoric you'll have no problem intellectually disarming most people in CS. CS geeks think they only pay attention to logos but realistically there are a lot of CS decisions made based on ethos and pathos. I'll probably be down modded for saying this but the appeal of open source is based largely in ethos and pathos, and not logos.
I'd settle for more people in tech who can write working code with out being an asshole regardless of gender.
> Why does it matter how many women are in tech? If we're all equal then it doesn't.
This is an argument that's popped up in a dozen varieties over the last century of slowly bringing equality to a bunch of different groups. An extreme example would be the "separate but equal" line that promoted racial segregation in America; if there is no codified barrier, the argument goes, then there must be no barrier at all! Right?
The problem is that scripted barriers are not the only barriers that exist. Social barriers are much more prominent and damaging. If the culture around technology has been built in a way that encourages a certain type of usually-male character and discourages anybody else, and I would argue that this is the case, then even if everybody's invited they're not necessarily going to show up.
This isn't a tech-only problem, mind you. The acting world is famous for its cliquishness; certain sports and school sports teams also have a certain exclusive attitude. It's not that you can't participate equally in theory; it's that the prospect of participating at all is so unpleasant to certain kinds of people that they choose not to of their own volition.
The programming world is remarkably and unfortunately geared towards only certain sorts of minds. It's very late at night so I hope you'll excuse me if I'm not defining just what sorts of minds those are, but I know that I find programming a hostile and unapproachable subject in general. There's nobody out there teaching it or explaining it in a way that appeals to me. The programming courses I've taken in college failed to spark my interest entirely. So it's not just that women aren't in tech; there are a lot of sorts of people who simply aren't represented, and so the entire field misses out.
This doesn't matter if your only goal is to maintain the status quo of programming — but I think that's a remarkably shallow ambition. The more people we have programming, the more diverse and creative we'll find programming becomes. Everybody benefits from such diversity, because each potential new approach to programming will yield discoveries that bounce back to benefit people in each field. Fact is that programming is still an incredibly new industry; we haven't begun to see the extent of what it can do for society. And our progress will be limited to the sorts of people who are able to develop a passion for programming. If we don't strive to invite and encourage new sorts of people to join the fold, we're hurting ourselves as well as those others.
You're technically right that everybody's equal in tech. But in practice there's a severe discrepancy in gender, and that discrepancy will only naturally balance itself out very slowly. If we make an effort to push towards real equality we can speed up the process immensely, and it's also a nice thing to do, so I don't see much of a reason not to do it.
> I'm quite happy with it as there are lots of people willing to hire devs who are willing to not be condescending and have some semblance of adherence to social norms
Tech startups overwhelmingly focus on male or gender neutral problems. In sectors where female spending dominates there are far fewer startups, and that is a problem.
The key quote: "It is also very intimidating to take classes where it seems like most people know all the material already and have been programming since middle school or earlier..."
The key to getting more females in CS is to expose them to programming in middle school or earlier.
Jean put her finger on why recruiting females for CS at the college level is so difficult: if they are starting programming in college (or even high school) when most of the class has been programming for years, they are way behind on the learning curve and have a daunting task to catch up.
You've missed the most important two words of that quote: "seems like". She goes on:
"Something that frustrates me about the field of computer science is that there are a lot of jerks who think that just because they've "mastered" some programming language or know some obscure unix commands, they are gods and you are nothing."
And frankly, that's the level at which a typical CS freshman is operating. Lots of knowledge about "coding"...very little knowledge about anything else. The playing field is much more level than it initially seems, but because the CS 101 classes are mostly about writing toy code it's easy for prior coding knowledge to be intimidating. In my own undergrad CS program, the CS101 hotshots fared no better, on average, than the kids who came in with no experience at all. In fact, a few of the loudest initial braggarts were the most spectacular flameouts, and about an equal number of the no-prior-experience kids ended up the honors graduates.
Universities could do a lot to combat this problem -- it might be a good idea to let the high-school coding jocks place out of the first CS classes. Alternatively, making first-year classes more about math and less about code would probably put 99% of all incoming students on an even playing field.
All sentences that start with these words are misguided. It is a complex issue with contributing factors at EVERY stage of a programmer's development.
Yes, let's help middle school girls get a chance to program. But let's also change CS curricula to draw on more skills besides programming. And let's make intro programming classes more welcoming to nonprogrammers. And let's find new venues for promoting startup job openings. And let's give grants for women making open source contributions, and, and, and....
The same is true of promoting literacy and bike friendly cities and fighting racism and most every other kind of activism. This is not a world of root causes.
I don't believe the age argument. At what age was Grace Hopper first introduced to programming? Based on the wikipedia article, Grace Hopper appears to have started programming 14 years after getting her PhD and didn't seem to have been hampered by not having started programming before high school. [Insert COBOL joke here.]
What about others who have a few more gray hairs than I? When did Seymour Cray, Vint Cerf, Peter Norvig, Tim Berners-Lee, and other early pioneers start programming? I think it's pretty safe to say they didn't have mainframes in their parent's basement growing up that they were programming on since before high school. They had a natural interest and the aptitude to do well in it.
But that is a ridiculous thing to say. Should people be banned from programming until college so everyone can be "equal"? It's like whining that you can't compete with an athlete who has been training since they were a kid.
Thing is, this is a perplexing problem - my SO teaches at a school that has a "computer club" where they do such things, and it has a lot of female members, but there's a distinctly bizarre issue of girls interested in computers at Secondary/6th form level not then going on to do degrees in the subject. I think a more in depth study interviewing the "potentials" needs to be done in order to understand whether there's a problem with endemic sexism or whether it's something else.
I think that it is important to make software engineering a codified, professional field.
It is not an advantage to have programming be a field where the bragging rights go to those who put together a D&D weather generator in a true Mini-computer in Middle School.
Rather, it is much better to have software engineering be something you can enter in college if you a good mastery of abstract thinking.
I would further mention that it helps programming as a professional if a good programmer is a generalist who knows how to get any required details. The process of becoming a generalist is entirely possible if you enter the software engineering field in college. Essentially, the point is for a person learn good process and let the rest take of itself.
Oppositely, if programmers are merely hackers, geeks or idiot-savants, who accumulate massive amounts of details concerning systems, languages and libraries in a near-autistic fashion, then not only will programming remain a ghetto but it will be a poorly paid, miserably ghetto.
I don't go to a school known for their CS program (we have a good one, just not a renowned one). Of roughly 30 or so freshman in the CS program, I know of about 20 or so who said they did not know how to program before they went to college.
So, your premise of "most of the class has been programming for years" is false in at least my case.
[The professor] once told me that even though the females are fairly quiet, and the boys in the class showed off a lot, when it came down to projects and exams, the female average was often higher
At his confirmation hearing, when Greenspan was asked why Townsend-Greenspan employed so many women (> 50%, compared to about 5% in finance at the time), he replied that since he valued women as much as men, but other firms didn't, he could get better work for the same money by hiring women. Are there any software companies doing the same thing today, and if not, why not?
I don't think the opportunity to do that even exists. I haven't heard female engineers complaining that they can't get jobs. The problem is there there are so few looking for the jobs in the first place.
He may have just been more active about hiring women and provided an environment that was more appealing. I've turned down jobs before where I considered the environment hostile (for example, centerfolds on the wall, servers named after playmates - seriously!). Younger establishments and startups have been far more interesting for me to work at, so I avoided applying to companies who had an 'old-school' IT department.
I now run my own company and it's really hard to find women to hire as developers - out of every 100 resumes I might get one girl, who doesn't have the qualifications. I'm hoping to see that change over the years. I feel I need to help on that and do outreach, speak at highschool classes maybe.
I don't think the main problem is companies not valuing women, because it starts much earlier. University CS departments are tilted very heavily towards men (~10:1 at my school) so there are far, far fewer women graduating with CS degrees and entering the marketplace. If many companies have a similar ratio, it may reflect the availability of female programmers rather than any bias on their part.
Interestingly Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor had a similar problem, he was Jewish and none of the firms on Wall Street would hire a Jew, so he had to start his own firm.
Last year I attended a panel about women in tech on the fairly new CCC congress "SIGINT" in Cologne, which focusses more on society and politics. The panel itself was rather boring and not really insightful, but during the Q&A a young woman from Eastern Europe pointed out something interesting: she stated that in her country there's a 1:1 male/female ratio in all science fields at the universities, including computer science. I haven't checked the facts, but even if that is not entirely true, the difference to Western countries is astounding. She went on to say that the problem is entirely with culture, and all aspects of it, and that the numbers were just reflecting that.
The women on the panel, who were all Westerners, couldn't even comment on that. They were just plain speechless, and rightly so, because most of their arguments involving bullying boys, mother nature, and other standard points were pretty much refuted by the simple fact that there already exist places in the world where this topic is not even an issue. And it's not the ones you would usually relate to human progress.
The participation rate for women in these fields is slightly higher than for men: 7.8 percent of the female college-age cohort obtained an NS&E degree in Bulgaria in 1992; 7.2 percent of males in this age group obtained such a degree in that same year.
In 1992, women obtained 57 percent of all university degrees. In addition, they obtained half of the engineering degrees, 70 percent of the natural science degrees, and 73 percent of the mathematics and computer science degrees. These percentages have not changed since 1975 (Stretenova, 1994).
Growing up in Russia, I remember the stereotype that girls are better suited for sciences because they are more studious (the exact Russian word is hard to translate but basically means that one is physically able as well as personally inclined to sit down and study for a long period of time). Boys on the other hand were considered too boisterous to pay attention for very long.
Of course, this stereotype was perceived as The Truth. Mother Nature, backed up by statistically demonstrable demographic evidence. Can't argue with that, right? And so it goes...
Really well written article. I'm not a female, but I resonate with a lot of her points, especially:
They can say something so simple as "Oh don't you know that command?" but in an inadvertently condescending voice that makes you feel like you're the only person who doesn't know it. As someone just testing out the CS waters, that type of experience in every class can be very daunting.
In general, computer science tends to be a major where people go into college with a lot of prior-knowledge and I have seen this discourage many people from majoring in it.
My question is: what is it about the naivete of the uninformed/the queries of the inexperienced, which incite such revulsion in the mind of a programmer? Aside from the fact that obviously no one wants to waste time filling someone in on the basics, or do their work for them? Something about being an outsider is, sometimes, inherently looked down upon in this field, it seems. These aren't isolated incidents, is it some sort of reflex? Could it be an assumption of stupidity, because how could any cognizant human be unable to think in that way?
I think that the % of women graduating from CS programs is a horrible indicator of the % of women programming in industry. The author hints at this in the last paragraph.
At Clojure Conj I think there were 0 women (other than guardians of minors) out of 200 people. On programming mailing lists I almost never see female names.
I think CS graduation rates might be much higher for a number of reasons. I think females have higher college graduation rates overall in the US, they may be more likely to switch fields and pursue a graduate degree, to switch out of programming after graduating, and in a field like programming where many are self-taught they may be less likely to learn programming out of the classroom.
I used to work with graduate EE students in a research lab. We had male and female students. They joked around a lot. Nothing ever too serious. If you pulled your weight, you had everyone's respect.
One day, a top male student came into the lab. A female student was writing some code.
Guy: "What are you working on."
Girl: "Code for the new project."
Guy: "What are you writing it in."
Girl: "Perl."
Guy: "Perl!? (long pause) now that's a man's language."
Girl: "Rolls her eyes... shut-up dumb ass."
That's an example of the banter. The girls wrote just as much code and did all the things the guys did. The only major difference was numbers. There were 6 guys for every 1 girl.
Any sufficiently driven, or competitive woman, will do far better financially and "psychically" to go into management or marketing sides of a tech-related field.
CS / software engineering is an underpaid ghetto, and as outsourcing continues, will remain so.
You could say the same thing about blokes too. When people ask me for career advice, I tell them to do car sales for a couple of years (until they're good at it) and then go work for a large corporate. Their 10% commission on a 100 million dollar sale will blow away anything the average programmer will get in their entire lifetime.
If they insist on IT, I point at helpdesk. The turn-over is so big that within 8 months you can be team leader (by virtue of seniority) and you're on a fast track to management.
===
On the other hand, if we deny the premise that CS / Software Engineering is a ghetto for men too, then what is wrong with the picture? Do men get opportunities that women don't get? E.g. ground floor of a start-up?
I think the premise needs to be not that "something is wrong with women", but rather "something is wrong with the system if it treats men and women differently".
That's a sad way to approach a career. Really, most industries are an "underpaid ghetto" by those terms, especially for women.
Wouldn't any person be better off "psychically" to do a job they enjoy and are driven to pursue? I don't feel like the same person who is passionate about coding would neccesairily be so passionate about marketing.
I knew several blokes who had the same problem, they were getting straight A's but they didn't believe they were 'worthy' to work in the industry if there was even one person in the class that was better or smarter than them.
Funnily none of the guys getting B's or C's had that psychological problem.
Interesting article. Did not expect a negative experience for the author in a post-secondary institution.
On her point about being at a disadvantage compared to the other students since she had low experience with computer science (having only taken classes in high school). In my point of view, I think she had sufficient exposure to compsci. I didn't get into computer science, or even know of its existence, until my 2nd year in university.
I definitely do think personality has an effect on the experience. The author of the article, I think, took comments and retorts too seriously or negatively. In addition, I think she uses her gender as a weakness but rather it has no effect on her ability at all. Though at least she recognized the asshole soon after his outburst.
In my experience, I don't see a decline of females in computer science, rather it is a increase. I have passed by the portraits of graduated students in my hallways and definitely there are way more females than in the previous years. Matter of fact, it was almost a 1:5 ratio of females:males (may not be super accurate).
The word "sexism" is too often used without any discussion of its definition. Here are a few definitions for "sexism" from Google:
I. discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of the opposite sex
II. prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially: discrimination against women
III. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles
IV. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
The sexist remark in II is quite common. In some dictionaries the word "sexism" is itself defined in sexist terms: "sexist - a man with a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women". It may be warranted by the attitude's prevalence; it is sexist nonetheless because it promotes stereotyping.
Definition IV is probably the most enlightening of the bunch. One valid yet unpopular answer to the question "why so few female software engineers" is that most parents provide a sexist (IV) upbringing. Given the standard attitudes (gender identification), conditions (girl's toy collection), and behaviors (mom's occupation), the odds are stacked against a female becoming a software engineer even before she enters the first grade. These things change but it takes generations.
Inspecting my own behavior as a male software engineer, I would find myself guilty of several of the attitudes and behaviors mentioned in the article. My first hope is that I do not discriminate by gender (I'm a jerk to men and women equally) and my second hope is that I can be less of a jerk to everyone.
For why so few girls major in computer science in college, below is my answer. Sorry to say this, but I have to conclude that my points below are the main ones to explain the data and so far have received too little attention on this thread.
From a standard point about good parenting, nearly all the girls with good parenting had mommies who were happy being mommies.
For more, I draw from
E. Fromm, 'The Art of Loving'.
and
Deborah Tannen, 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation'.
So, I continue:
Way before age 5, the little girls realize that they are small versions of Mommy and NOT Daddy. They know in absolute terms that they are a GIRL and NOT a BOY.
Since their mommy was happy being a mommy, the little girls want to be like Mommy and on the 'mommy track'.
By about age 18 months, little girls are already masters at eliciting positive emotions from adults, MUCH better than boys. The girls are also MUCH better at reading emotions than boys. Facial expressions and eye contact are part of how the girls read and elicit emotions; other ways are to 'act' (they are MUCH better at acting than the boys) cute, meek, and sweet and to be pretty. Since being pretty lets them do better eliciting positive emotions, they love pretty dresses with ruffles and ribbons. So, they are in a 'virtuous circle': They act sweet, elicit positive emotions in an adult, e.g., father, grandfather, uncle, get a gift of a pretty dress, wear the dress, elicit even more positive emotions, get even more pretty dresses, white bedroom furniture, patent leather shoes, cute stuffed animals, etc.
Having to act like a boy or be treated like a boy, instead of like a girl, would be terrifying to them.
So, in their first years, such little girls, to be on the 'mommy track' want to play with dolls and not Erector sets, want to work at being pretty and not how to hot rod a car, want to learn how to bake a cake and not how to plug together a SATA RAID array.
Give such a girl a toy truck and she will know instantly that the toy is 'for boys' and will avoid it as a big threat.
Generally, from a little after birth and for nearly all their lives, human females are MUCH more emotional than human males. So, they pay a LOT of attention to emotions, both theirs and others'.
One of a human female's strongest emotions is to get security from membership in, and praise, acceptance, and approval from, groups, especially groups of females about their own age. That is, they are 'herd animals'. Gossip? It's how they make connections with others in the herd. Why do they like cell phones so much? For more gossip. Why pay so much attention to fashion? To 'fit in' with the herd.
In such a herd, in most respects the females try hard to be like the 'average' of the herd and not to stand out or look different. [An exception is when a female wants to lead her herd, e.g., go to Clicker, follow the biographies, get the one for the Astors, and look at Ms. Astor and her herd of 400.] Well, as long as human females with good parenting are on the 'mommy track', and the human race will be nearly dead otherwise, the 'average' of the herd will emphasize the 'mommy track', dolls, looking pretty, cakes, and clothes and not Erector sets, hot rodding cars, or building RAID arrays.
When it comes to a college major, any human female 18 months or older will recognize in a milli, micro, nano second that her herd believes that mathematics, physical science, engineering, and computer science are subjects for boys and NOT girls. Instead the girl subjects are English literature, French, music, acting, 'communications', sociology, psychology, nursing, maybe accounting, and K-12 education. By college the girls have been working 24 x 7 for about 16 years to fit in with the herd of girls, and their chances of leaving the herd in college to major in computer science are slim to none.
Don't expect this situation to change easily or soon: Mother Nature was there LONG before computer science, and, as we know, "It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.". Or, to get girls to major in computer science, "You are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.". Having women pursuing computer careers give girls in middle school lectures on computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. Nearly all the girls will just conclude that at most such careers are for girls who are not doing well fitting into the herd of girls, are not very good socially, don't get invited to the more desirable parties, don't get the good dates, are not very pretty, and are not in line to be good as wives and mommies. By middle school, the girls have already received oceans of influences about 'female roles', and changing the directions these girls have selected and pursued so strongly for so long is hopeless.
Besides, 'middle school' is an especially hopeless time: The girls have just recently entered puberty, just got reminded in overwhelmingly strong and unambiguous terms that they are now young women, have received a lot of plain talk from their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and older sisters about the birds and the bees, in their gossip with their herd members have been discussing the birds and bees with great intensity, already have a good woman's figure or nearly so, really, are well on their way to, in another year or so, being the most attractive physically they will ever be and know it, notice men of their age up to age 80 or so looking at them as women, and are in no mood to consider being 'more like boys'. Middle school is about the worst possible time to try to get the girls to fight Mother Nature. Suggestions of such lectures are 'clueless' in grand terms.
So, a typical scenario is a boy in middle school who is really excited because he just understood how an automobile differential (TCP part of TCP/IP, binary search, virtual memory, etc.) works and with great excitement tries to explain it to a girl his age at, say, lunch, and we have a strict dichotomy: The boy is totally clueless that the girl couldn't be less interested. The girl sees right away that she couldn't be less interested, not to offend the boy unduly pretends to be a little interested, and sees in clear terms that the boy is totally clueless at perceiving her lack of interest. She concludes that he is so clueless he is really easy to manipulate (a fact she suspects could be useful and saves for later). The boy doesn't understand the girl, and the girl regards the boy, and soon, all boys less then 2-6 years older than she, as at least 'socially' immature and, really, just immature. She wants nothing to do with such 'children' (she already understands that a woman needs a strong man) and will concentrate on boys 2-6, maybe 8 or 10, years older than she is. She has a point: She was likely more mature socially at age six than he will be at age 16.
Look, it's WAY too easy to fail to understand: So, we can just assume a simplistic 'rational' model. In this model, sure, we can teach 2 + 3 = 5 and (2 / 3) / ( 5 / 4 ) = 8 / 15, and both the boys and the girls can learn, although typically the girls will do better on tests in such things than the boys. So, we entertain that the boys and girls can exercise all their 'rational' abilities and, thus, can learn and do well with anything their rational abilities permit. Nonsense. Naive, clueless nonsense. Instead, Mother Nature says that in addition to rational abilities are emotions and commonly has the emotions overwhelm the rational abilities.
Net, such a simplistic rational model is clueless, even dangerous, nonsense. Give a girl of 4 a toy truck and take away her dolls in pretty dresses, and she will cry, and the crying will be heartrending to any adults around who will quickly swap back the truck and the dolls. It's no different at age 13 in middle school or 18 in college.
Actually, there can be a reason for a girl in college to take some courses in computer science: Look for a husband!
It may be that in college girls of Asian descent are more willing to pursue math, physical science, etc. than are girls of Western European descent.
[+] [-] peteforde|15 years ago|reply
In addition to being totally messed up politically, it's really harmful to your self-esteem if you think that you are being given special treatment to satisfy someone else's political correctness quota. Not to mention that eager men (with the best of intentions, no doubt) over-compensating can lead to "othering", that feeling that everyone is going overboard making you so welcomed that you kind of want to barf.
My current speculation is that for most girls, it's actually their parents that instill a nagging sense of doubt regarding what they are "supposed" to consider good career options. Therefore, I think the key is to reach young minds.
Girl coders: go speak at public schools or high schools today!
[+] [-] fleitz|15 years ago|reply
Not all the people I socialize with are into computers. Most aren't. You can't make all your friends in your own industry. I don't care if a person is a man or a woman, unless there are seriously extenuating circumstance I won't work or socialize with them if their assholes. The problem is that in geek circles there is a heavy social penalty of advocating that someone be ostracized for behaving like an asshole, everyone has to be included no matter how much no one else wants to hang out with them.
There are a lot of anti-social retards in tech regardless of gender. I'm quite happy with it as there are lots of people willing to hire devs who are willing to not be condescending and have some semblance of adherence to social norms. As the OP pointed out quite accurately in their post 'I realized he was just an asshole who probably wouldn't get too far in life anyways.'
Many people are hardwired to respect the opinion of anyone who forcefully and confidently expresses it. It's a two way street though, want people to think you know software engineering or any other topic? Just say something reasonably intelligent in a forceful and confident way, also if someone else has said it that they respect mention that person as having saying it. Most of the debates in software engineering are subjective in nature as much as everyone involved in the decision likes to claim otherwise.
If you know your rhetoric you'll have no problem intellectually disarming most people in CS. CS geeks think they only pay attention to logos but realistically there are a lot of CS decisions made based on ethos and pathos. I'll probably be down modded for saying this but the appeal of open source is based largely in ethos and pathos, and not logos.
I'd settle for more people in tech who can write working code with out being an asshole regardless of gender.
[+] [-] rorymarinich|15 years ago|reply
This is an argument that's popped up in a dozen varieties over the last century of slowly bringing equality to a bunch of different groups. An extreme example would be the "separate but equal" line that promoted racial segregation in America; if there is no codified barrier, the argument goes, then there must be no barrier at all! Right?
The problem is that scripted barriers are not the only barriers that exist. Social barriers are much more prominent and damaging. If the culture around technology has been built in a way that encourages a certain type of usually-male character and discourages anybody else, and I would argue that this is the case, then even if everybody's invited they're not necessarily going to show up.
This isn't a tech-only problem, mind you. The acting world is famous for its cliquishness; certain sports and school sports teams also have a certain exclusive attitude. It's not that you can't participate equally in theory; it's that the prospect of participating at all is so unpleasant to certain kinds of people that they choose not to of their own volition.
The programming world is remarkably and unfortunately geared towards only certain sorts of minds. It's very late at night so I hope you'll excuse me if I'm not defining just what sorts of minds those are, but I know that I find programming a hostile and unapproachable subject in general. There's nobody out there teaching it or explaining it in a way that appeals to me. The programming courses I've taken in college failed to spark my interest entirely. So it's not just that women aren't in tech; there are a lot of sorts of people who simply aren't represented, and so the entire field misses out.
This doesn't matter if your only goal is to maintain the status quo of programming — but I think that's a remarkably shallow ambition. The more people we have programming, the more diverse and creative we'll find programming becomes. Everybody benefits from such diversity, because each potential new approach to programming will yield discoveries that bounce back to benefit people in each field. Fact is that programming is still an incredibly new industry; we haven't begun to see the extent of what it can do for society. And our progress will be limited to the sorts of people who are able to develop a passion for programming. If we don't strive to invite and encourage new sorts of people to join the fold, we're hurting ourselves as well as those others.
You're technically right that everybody's equal in tech. But in practice there's a severe discrepancy in gender, and that discrepancy will only naturally balance itself out very slowly. If we make an effort to push towards real equality we can speed up the process immensely, and it's also a nice thing to do, so I don't see much of a reason not to do it.
[+] [-] tjogin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb2k_|15 years ago|reply
> I'm quite happy with it as there are lots of people willing to hire devs who are willing to not be condescending and have some semblance of adherence to social norms
That actually sounded pretty condescending to me.
[+] [-] ig1|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loewenskind|15 years ago|reply
Equal in the sense of:
TotalSum(Woman) == TotalSum(Man)
not:
Woman == Man.
[+] [-] Shorel|15 years ago|reply
We all have the same rights. This a very different thing than being equal.
[+] [-] gvb|15 years ago|reply
The key to getting more females in CS is to expose them to programming in middle school or earlier.
Jean put her finger on why recruiting females for CS at the college level is so difficult: if they are starting programming in college (or even high school) when most of the class has been programming for years, they are way behind on the learning curve and have a daunting task to catch up.
[+] [-] timr|15 years ago|reply
"Something that frustrates me about the field of computer science is that there are a lot of jerks who think that just because they've "mastered" some programming language or know some obscure unix commands, they are gods and you are nothing."
And frankly, that's the level at which a typical CS freshman is operating. Lots of knowledge about "coding"...very little knowledge about anything else. The playing field is much more level than it initially seems, but because the CS 101 classes are mostly about writing toy code it's easy for prior coding knowledge to be intimidating. In my own undergrad CS program, the CS101 hotshots fared no better, on average, than the kids who came in with no experience at all. In fact, a few of the loudest initial braggarts were the most spectacular flameouts, and about an equal number of the no-prior-experience kids ended up the honors graduates.
Universities could do a lot to combat this problem -- it might be a good idea to let the high-school coding jocks place out of the first CS classes. Alternatively, making first-year classes more about math and less about code would probably put 99% of all incoming students on an even playing field.
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|15 years ago|reply
All sentences that start with these words are misguided. It is a complex issue with contributing factors at EVERY stage of a programmer's development.
Yes, let's help middle school girls get a chance to program. But let's also change CS curricula to draw on more skills besides programming. And let's make intro programming classes more welcoming to nonprogrammers. And let's find new venues for promoting startup job openings. And let's give grants for women making open source contributions, and, and, and....
The same is true of promoting literacy and bike friendly cities and fighting racism and most every other kind of activism. This is not a world of root causes.
[+] [-] biot|15 years ago|reply
What about others who have a few more gray hairs than I? When did Seymour Cray, Vint Cerf, Peter Norvig, Tim Berners-Lee, and other early pioneers start programming? I think it's pretty safe to say they didn't have mainframes in their parent's basement growing up that they were programming on since before high school. They had a natural interest and the aptitude to do well in it.
[+] [-] gaius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antihero|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|15 years ago|reply
I think that it is important to make software engineering a codified, professional field.
It is not an advantage to have programming be a field where the bragging rights go to those who put together a D&D weather generator in a true Mini-computer in Middle School.
Rather, it is much better to have software engineering be something you can enter in college if you a good mastery of abstract thinking.
I would further mention that it helps programming as a professional if a good programmer is a generalist who knows how to get any required details. The process of becoming a generalist is entirely possible if you enter the software engineering field in college. Essentially, the point is for a person learn good process and let the rest take of itself.
Oppositely, if programmers are merely hackers, geeks or idiot-savants, who accumulate massive amounts of details concerning systems, languages and libraries in a near-autistic fashion, then not only will programming remain a ghetto but it will be a poorly paid, miserably ghetto.
[+] [-] cyen|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] younata|15 years ago|reply
So, your premise of "most of the class has been programming for years" is false in at least my case.
[+] [-] shortlived|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luu|15 years ago|reply
At his confirmation hearing, when Greenspan was asked why Townsend-Greenspan employed so many women (> 50%, compared to about 5% in finance at the time), he replied that since he valued women as much as men, but other firms didn't, he could get better work for the same money by hiring women. Are there any software companies doing the same thing today, and if not, why not?
[+] [-] natrius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marquis|15 years ago|reply
I now run my own company and it's really hard to find women to hire as developers - out of every 100 resumes I might get one girl, who doesn't have the qualifications. I'm hoping to see that change over the years. I feel I need to help on that and do outreach, speak at highschool classes maybe.
[+] [-] hristov|15 years ago|reply
Women that do go into engineering and do well in school usually have no problems finding jobs.
[+] [-] necubi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stormbringer|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binbasti|15 years ago|reply
The women on the panel, who were all Westerners, couldn't even comment on that. They were just plain speechless, and rightly so, because most of their arguments involving bullying boys, mother nature, and other standard points were pretty much refuted by the simple fact that there already exist places in the world where this topic is not even an issue. And it's not the ones you would usually relate to human progress.
[+] [-] binbasti|15 years ago|reply
Exemplar: Bulgaria
The participation rate for women in these fields is slightly higher than for men: 7.8 percent of the female college-age cohort obtained an NS&E degree in Bulgaria in 1992; 7.2 percent of males in this age group obtained such a degree in that same year.
In 1992, women obtained 57 percent of all university degrees. In addition, they obtained half of the engineering degrees, 70 percent of the natural science degrees, and 73 percent of the mathematics and computer science degrees. These percentages have not changed since 1975 (Stretenova, 1994).
http://anitaborg.org/files/womenhightechworld.pdf
[+] [-] capstone|15 years ago|reply
Of course, this stereotype was perceived as The Truth. Mother Nature, backed up by statistically demonstrable demographic evidence. Can't argue with that, right? And so it goes...
[+] [-] ernestipark|15 years ago|reply
They can say something so simple as "Oh don't you know that command?" but in an inadvertently condescending voice that makes you feel like you're the only person who doesn't know it. As someone just testing out the CS waters, that type of experience in every class can be very daunting.
In general, computer science tends to be a major where people go into college with a lot of prior-knowledge and I have seen this discourage many people from majoring in it.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Naomi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbubb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|15 years ago|reply
That is a problem for perhaps 90%+ of Googlers, regardless of their gender.
[+] [-] whakojacko|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solipsist|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brainfsck|15 years ago|reply
I wonder how much of the gender discrepancy in CS can be objectively attributed to personality differences. Populations who participate in certain logical activities have rare personality traits (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=946249, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=112...) which are far more common in men than women.
If this is the case, is it possible that direct attempts to "increase the number of women in CS" are misguided?
[+] [-] scottjad|15 years ago|reply
At Clojure Conj I think there were 0 women (other than guardians of minors) out of 200 people. On programming mailing lists I almost never see female names.
I think CS graduation rates might be much higher for a number of reasons. I think females have higher college graduation rates overall in the US, they may be more likely to switch fields and pursue a graduate degree, to switch out of programming after graduating, and in a field like programming where many are self-taught they may be less likely to learn programming out of the classroom.
[+] [-] 16s|15 years ago|reply
One day, a top male student came into the lab. A female student was writing some code.
Guy: "What are you working on."
Girl: "Code for the new project."
Guy: "What are you writing it in."
Girl: "Perl."
Guy: "Perl!? (long pause) now that's a man's language."
Girl: "Rolls her eyes... shut-up dumb ass."
That's an example of the banter. The girls wrote just as much code and did all the things the guys did. The only major difference was numbers. There were 6 guys for every 1 girl.
Edit: spelling
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|15 years ago|reply
They can say something so simple as "Oh don't you know that command?" but in an inadvertently condescending voice
--
"Condescending voice" is a matter of perception. It's quite possible that these engineers were totally ok that she did not know some stuff.
Still it's possible that females are more sensitive to [imaginary] condescending tone, so they shy away from the field.
[+] [-] patrickgzill|15 years ago|reply
CS / software engineering is an underpaid ghetto, and as outsourcing continues, will remain so.
Perhaps I should have pointed out Philip Greenspun's take: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/acm-women-in-computing
[+] [-] Stormbringer|15 years ago|reply
If they insist on IT, I point at helpdesk. The turn-over is so big that within 8 months you can be team leader (by virtue of seniority) and you're on a fast track to management.
===
On the other hand, if we deny the premise that CS / Software Engineering is a ghetto for men too, then what is wrong with the picture? Do men get opportunities that women don't get? E.g. ground floor of a start-up?
I think the premise needs to be not that "something is wrong with women", but rather "something is wrong with the system if it treats men and women differently".
[+] [-] Nobido|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stormbringer|15 years ago|reply
Funnily none of the guys getting B's or C's had that psychological problem.
[+] [-] aming|15 years ago|reply
On her point about being at a disadvantage compared to the other students since she had low experience with computer science (having only taken classes in high school). In my point of view, I think she had sufficient exposure to compsci. I didn't get into computer science, or even know of its existence, until my 2nd year in university.
I definitely do think personality has an effect on the experience. The author of the article, I think, took comments and retorts too seriously or negatively. In addition, I think she uses her gender as a weakness but rather it has no effect on her ability at all. Though at least she recognized the asshole soon after his outburst.
In my experience, I don't see a decline of females in computer science, rather it is a increase. I have passed by the portraits of graduated students in my hallways and definitely there are way more females than in the previous years. Matter of fact, it was almost a 1:5 ratio of females:males (may not be super accurate).
[+] [-] skeltoac|15 years ago|reply
I. discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of the opposite sex II. prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially: discrimination against women III. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles IV. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
The sexist remark in II is quite common. In some dictionaries the word "sexism" is itself defined in sexist terms: "sexist - a man with a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women". It may be warranted by the attitude's prevalence; it is sexist nonetheless because it promotes stereotyping.
Definition IV is probably the most enlightening of the bunch. One valid yet unpopular answer to the question "why so few female software engineers" is that most parents provide a sexist (IV) upbringing. Given the standard attitudes (gender identification), conditions (girl's toy collection), and behaviors (mom's occupation), the odds are stacked against a female becoming a software engineer even before she enters the first grade. These things change but it takes generations.
Inspecting my own behavior as a male software engineer, I would find myself guilty of several of the attitudes and behaviors mentioned in the article. My first hope is that I do not discriminate by gender (I'm a jerk to men and women equally) and my second hope is that I can be less of a jerk to everyone.
[+] [-] Tycho|15 years ago|reply
The thing is the uber-geeks do this to each other too, the difference is to them it's water off a duck's back.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] leon_|15 years ago|reply
3 years out of school and already a big ego :)
[+] [-] HilbertSpace|15 years ago|reply
From a standard point about good parenting, nearly all the girls with good parenting had mommies who were happy being mommies.
For more, I draw from
E. Fromm, 'The Art of Loving'.
and
Deborah Tannen, 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation'.
So, I continue:
Way before age 5, the little girls realize that they are small versions of Mommy and NOT Daddy. They know in absolute terms that they are a GIRL and NOT a BOY.
Since their mommy was happy being a mommy, the little girls want to be like Mommy and on the 'mommy track'.
By about age 18 months, little girls are already masters at eliciting positive emotions from adults, MUCH better than boys. The girls are also MUCH better at reading emotions than boys. Facial expressions and eye contact are part of how the girls read and elicit emotions; other ways are to 'act' (they are MUCH better at acting than the boys) cute, meek, and sweet and to be pretty. Since being pretty lets them do better eliciting positive emotions, they love pretty dresses with ruffles and ribbons. So, they are in a 'virtuous circle': They act sweet, elicit positive emotions in an adult, e.g., father, grandfather, uncle, get a gift of a pretty dress, wear the dress, elicit even more positive emotions, get even more pretty dresses, white bedroom furniture, patent leather shoes, cute stuffed animals, etc.
Having to act like a boy or be treated like a boy, instead of like a girl, would be terrifying to them.
So, in their first years, such little girls, to be on the 'mommy track' want to play with dolls and not Erector sets, want to work at being pretty and not how to hot rod a car, want to learn how to bake a cake and not how to plug together a SATA RAID array.
Give such a girl a toy truck and she will know instantly that the toy is 'for boys' and will avoid it as a big threat.
Generally, from a little after birth and for nearly all their lives, human females are MUCH more emotional than human males. So, they pay a LOT of attention to emotions, both theirs and others'.
One of a human female's strongest emotions is to get security from membership in, and praise, acceptance, and approval from, groups, especially groups of females about their own age. That is, they are 'herd animals'. Gossip? It's how they make connections with others in the herd. Why do they like cell phones so much? For more gossip. Why pay so much attention to fashion? To 'fit in' with the herd.
In such a herd, in most respects the females try hard to be like the 'average' of the herd and not to stand out or look different. [An exception is when a female wants to lead her herd, e.g., go to Clicker, follow the biographies, get the one for the Astors, and look at Ms. Astor and her herd of 400.] Well, as long as human females with good parenting are on the 'mommy track', and the human race will be nearly dead otherwise, the 'average' of the herd will emphasize the 'mommy track', dolls, looking pretty, cakes, and clothes and not Erector sets, hot rodding cars, or building RAID arrays.
When it comes to a college major, any human female 18 months or older will recognize in a milli, micro, nano second that her herd believes that mathematics, physical science, engineering, and computer science are subjects for boys and NOT girls. Instead the girl subjects are English literature, French, music, acting, 'communications', sociology, psychology, nursing, maybe accounting, and K-12 education. By college the girls have been working 24 x 7 for about 16 years to fit in with the herd of girls, and their chances of leaving the herd in college to major in computer science are slim to none.
Don't expect this situation to change easily or soon: Mother Nature was there LONG before computer science, and, as we know, "It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.". Or, to get girls to major in computer science, "You are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.". Having women pursuing computer careers give girls in middle school lectures on computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. Nearly all the girls will just conclude that at most such careers are for girls who are not doing well fitting into the herd of girls, are not very good socially, don't get invited to the more desirable parties, don't get the good dates, are not very pretty, and are not in line to be good as wives and mommies. By middle school, the girls have already received oceans of influences about 'female roles', and changing the directions these girls have selected and pursued so strongly for so long is hopeless.
Besides, 'middle school' is an especially hopeless time: The girls have just recently entered puberty, just got reminded in overwhelmingly strong and unambiguous terms that they are now young women, have received a lot of plain talk from their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and older sisters about the birds and the bees, in their gossip with their herd members have been discussing the birds and bees with great intensity, already have a good woman's figure or nearly so, really, are well on their way to, in another year or so, being the most attractive physically they will ever be and know it, notice men of their age up to age 80 or so looking at them as women, and are in no mood to consider being 'more like boys'. Middle school is about the worst possible time to try to get the girls to fight Mother Nature. Suggestions of such lectures are 'clueless' in grand terms.
So, a typical scenario is a boy in middle school who is really excited because he just understood how an automobile differential (TCP part of TCP/IP, binary search, virtual memory, etc.) works and with great excitement tries to explain it to a girl his age at, say, lunch, and we have a strict dichotomy: The boy is totally clueless that the girl couldn't be less interested. The girl sees right away that she couldn't be less interested, not to offend the boy unduly pretends to be a little interested, and sees in clear terms that the boy is totally clueless at perceiving her lack of interest. She concludes that he is so clueless he is really easy to manipulate (a fact she suspects could be useful and saves for later). The boy doesn't understand the girl, and the girl regards the boy, and soon, all boys less then 2-6 years older than she, as at least 'socially' immature and, really, just immature. She wants nothing to do with such 'children' (she already understands that a woman needs a strong man) and will concentrate on boys 2-6, maybe 8 or 10, years older than she is. She has a point: She was likely more mature socially at age six than he will be at age 16.
Look, it's WAY too easy to fail to understand: So, we can just assume a simplistic 'rational' model. In this model, sure, we can teach 2 + 3 = 5 and (2 / 3) / ( 5 / 4 ) = 8 / 15, and both the boys and the girls can learn, although typically the girls will do better on tests in such things than the boys. So, we entertain that the boys and girls can exercise all their 'rational' abilities and, thus, can learn and do well with anything their rational abilities permit. Nonsense. Naive, clueless nonsense. Instead, Mother Nature says that in addition to rational abilities are emotions and commonly has the emotions overwhelm the rational abilities.
Net, such a simplistic rational model is clueless, even dangerous, nonsense. Give a girl of 4 a toy truck and take away her dolls in pretty dresses, and she will cry, and the crying will be heartrending to any adults around who will quickly swap back the truck and the dolls. It's no different at age 13 in middle school or 18 in college.
Actually, there can be a reason for a girl in college to take some courses in computer science: Look for a husband!
It may be that in college girls of Asian descent are more willing to pursue math, physical science, etc. than are girls of Western European descent.
[+] [-] hjkdfgeg|15 years ago|reply
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