Gender Gap in Computer Science Growing 1027
EReidJ writes "Looks like finding a compatible girl geek in the computer profession is becoming even harder, as an already wide gender gap among Computer Science majors is becoming larger. From the article: 'A Globe review shows that the proportion of women among bachelor's degree recipients in computer science peaked at 37 percent in 1985 and then went on the decline. Women have comprised about 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degree recipients in the last few years, and in the elite confines of research universities, only 17 percent of graduates are women [...] The argument of many computer scientists is that women who study science or technology, because they are defying social expectations, are in an uncomfortable position to begin with. So they are more likely to be dissuaded from pursuing computer science if they are exposed to an unpleasant environment, bad teaching, and negative stereotypes like the image of the male hacker.'"
Money (Score:3, Interesting)
And to think that... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a geek girl... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a geek girl myself, I'd put it a bit above half. sucks.
It's not just schools... (Score:4, Interesting)
would be interesting to compare to other measures (Score:4, Interesting)
Respect (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, that being said, I have seen most women being viewed as technically inept. I have a friend who is working towards her masters in computer science who complained, quite frequently, that her classmates (entirely male) were not taking her seriously.
Could it be that our own geeky superiority complexes are keeping us from having the joy of female company? Something to think about before you suggest that a girl can't code.
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:2, Interesting)
I was on my university's Computing Science IRC channel at the insistence of one of the CS majors. Another chatter asked me to introduce myself, so I said I was just a typical (insert university here) CS student. Then the insistent friend pointed out that I was among the 10% or so in CS courses who lack a Y chromosome. Then the conversation went something like this between he and I
Me: jesus him. stop outing me.
Him: haha well you're not exactly 'in the closet'.
*buncha closet jokes*
Me: i find that in most online areas is it preferable to go as long as possible without revealing i'm female. it's ridiculous.
Him: "Do you have breasts?" "yes" "with a matching vagina?" "yes" "YOU ARE INTERESTING CONVERSATION. I MUST PAINT YOU."
sad thing is, he's dead on about those situations. :)
Though I'll grant, everyone WAS cool with it and he wouldn't have outed me if he thought they'd be assholes.
Re:Gender gaps elsewhere... (Score:5, Interesting)
They also have one of the most dangerous [wasteage.com] (your garbage collector is much more likely to be killed on the job than a cop) and important (along with your plumber, your garbage collector is more responsible for increased life expectancy than your doctor) jobs around.
Somewhere around here I have an old Fenton [wikipedia.org] comic strip with dialog like this: "Did you know a garbage collector makes more than I do?!" "Then get a job as a garbage collector." "Are you kidding? You couldn't pay me enough for that kind of work!"
Re:Gender gaps elsewhere... (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is earlier not later in life. (Score:2, Interesting)
American cultural thing? (Score:2, Interesting)
All this leads me to question whether the American "culture" suppresses technical aptitude and ambitions of their women. My conversations with a American female faculty member (at a prestigious Engineering institution) appears to confirm this. She claimed that all through her life, her peers, parents, and even professors told her openly about the futility of being a woman in engineeing.
Not Just Computer Science (Score:4, Interesting)
We are told that this is a problem, and to some extent, I agree. Sexual harassment or gender bias is obviously out of line, and we should not be creating an environment such that our coworkers feel uncomfortable, but some work guys simply tend to be more interested in. If a woman is more interested in the workings of the human body than how to program computers or (in my case) build forklifts, let her go study biology, chemistry, or nursing (majors which seem to have as many or more women than men). We don't need to BS people into thinking they'll like spending 8 hours a day debugging code or playing with hydraulic oil, just so the statistics impress Oprah or Hillary Clinton. Some women will like CS or engineering, some won't.
Of course, there is the question of why women often don't want to do the same things as guys, and any implication that women are fundamentally different from men different in their interests or the way they think will inevitably be called sexist by someone. Some times I get the impression that the thoughts of the politically correct mafia can be summed up as, "We have to have equality, and by golly, we're gonna get it even if the only way is to make everyone equally miserable."
Re:you guys act like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, I find CS to be ridiculously boring, which is why I wasn't intrigued by it, why my wife wasn't intrigued by it, or frankly anybody I know. (Even those I know with CS degrees didn't find it too fascinating.)
It's a good point there are a lot more things than simply being a code monkey. (Which is what most CS majors I've met end up doing.) Most people I've met with degrees in information science have been women. Engineering seems to be male heavy, and the most successful UI designers I've known were women.
Why not look at other incredibly boring number-crunching degrees? Economics, accounting, etc.? I would even expect them to have higher percentages of women graduates, since those jobs actually can have some real interaction with people, even as interns.
The sad fact is that most CS students who aren't double-majoring tend to be antisocial, which real difficulties dealing with people. Given that women tend to be more social, and that they tend to be more women at colleges these days, it really points out how awful the career field is presented in the long run.
(Were I ever to take a pure coding job, I think I'd have to kill myself.)
Two thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
2. CS degrees are less and less relevant to working in an IT environment or even as a developer. Most IT tasks and many programming tasks don't require the rigorous education in mathmatics that a CS degree gives you.
Personally, I feel that CS enrollment problems says more about the relevance of the degree than anything else.
I met my first one yesterday (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MMmppphhh (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah well, so goes life I suppose
Chauvinist response -- but maybe true (Score:3, Interesting)
I own an IT company. We've hired women in the past. We've tried to get younger females with good brains to get into the computer science market and attend colleges and programs. Yet we've seen a very high quitting percentage over the past 10 years, and so have almost all of my competitors (who I'll get beers with).
The number one reason why women have left my industry has been child-rearing. If you're a guy, try leaving the business for a year or two, and see how competitive you are when you get back.
Many women I know today (younger ones, 18-25) seem to actually be thinking of babies, whereas when I was 18-25, most of my gal pals were thinking of becoming lawyers, doctors and, yes, even engineers. Maybe society is feeling a change back to the "old bad ways" of women raising kids and men working. I'm not saying this is the best or the worst way to live, but I don't have kids so it doesn't affect me, really.
Expect to see fewer women in the market place for a decade, either way -- in IT our in other industries.
Re:Unplesant environment (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it starts younger. Raise girls to be princesses and moms, and you get women who's highest goals are domestic crap and social climbing.
Buy your girls lego. It can be pink, but it still has to have wheels and jet engines.
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's repulsive, harassing, and beyond irritating.
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:1, Interesting)
I've had managers tell me during interviews "wow! we've never had a girl work here before!" Then there's the programmers who see me as a challenge...and the ones who want to show me basic stuff. There are programmers I've worked with who couldn't talk to me face to face...then the ones who came by asking me to fix things just so they could watch me bend over. after 10 years of this I'm getting tired. I've been considering making a career change.
women write 28% of software, but use 50% of it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A female perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
What is essentialism? (Score:4, Interesting)
Essentialism is still a lie. I don't know why intelligent people can let themselves be deluded into thinking it's true. Shame on you and shame on the moderator who gave your talk a mod point.
"Essentialism and society
Essentialist positions on gender, race, and characteristics, consider these to be fixed traits while not allowing for variation in the group or individual. Contemporary proponents of identity politics including feminism, equality for gay people, and anti-racist activists generally take constructionist viewpoints. However, these proponents have taken various positions including essentialist ones. Prejudices such as racism, sexism and anti-gay bias may be based on an essentialist view, such as the view that all people of a particular race inherently possess a particular negative characteristic."
Read more at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Do you honestly think that women are bad at math because they were built that way, or is it because of years of gender stereotyping, starting with what colour clothes the parents put on the baby right after birth?
Essentialism is the lie that African Americans are born dumber than whites because they have a lower IQ, rather than looking at the distribution of income and social equality that those people have (Bill Cosby may be rich, but most black folk are still way below the poverty line; in Canada, replace African American with Native to get the same effect).
"In feminism, Yashar Keramati understands that essentialism constitutes that women have pre-determined characteristics. This goes beyond simple body parts, those being the vagina and the penis. Rather, this means that women are born 'emotional,' 'inferior,' 'irrational' and so on. Therefore, essentialism could circulate false information about women which results in lowering their status. Though this necessarily depends upon the value judgements a society adheres to. It also depends upon the supposition that these qualities are negative and don't possess the ability to be sublimated -- just like the lower qualities in the male sex. Essentialism can also be taken to an extreme by characterizing different races in such a way -- though it is true that every school of thought is subject to distortion."
Essentialism is what Hitler used as justification for putting Jews and Gays and other undesirables into furnaces. To say you support this point of view is carte blanche for a return to eugenics and all the other madness that implies.
Re:A female perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A female perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference in China is that as a new society (not in the sense that China is new, but in that the current Chinese society is the result of extreme social revolution) -- Chinese people are very much in tune with what is practical for getting ahead, both as a country and individually. There is a combination of old Confucian elements and government direction stemming from revolutionary ideology here. In China, there is no such thing as a 'nerd.' There can't be, because science and technology is considered the career path of choice, much like law school is in the states. In China, it's in fact the 'arts' majors who are looked down on.
Look at where the politicians from the US and China come from. American politicians are mostly law school graduates who studied history or english or god knows what in undergrad. The top leaders of the communist party in China are almost all engineering graduates.
So basically yes, the parent is right-on. Chinese girls are in fact much more inclined to study science and tech because that's what's expected of them. And in my opinion, if this trend continues, we will see the consequences a few decades down the line in the form of a growing East-West technology gap. A society which respects litigation and playing the stock market more than science and technology won't stay ahead too long.
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's repulsive, harassing, and beyond irritating.
Yeah, stalking and harrasment suck. I appologize for my gender and peer group. My comment was just meant to point out that I've seen many women interpret plain ol' interest by a guy as harrasment and not even have the guts to tell the guy to go away.
Sure, it sucks for the dude to be told to back off by the girl. It sucks far worse if his boss has to tell him the same thing and he never even knew there was a problem. But if you already told him to take a hike and he didn't, maybe he needs to learn the hard way. Speaking as a boss myself, if I knew someone was told "no" and they persisted, I'd have no problem showing him the door.
TW
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, it's interesting to note that, of the men in my engineering classes who asked me out or asked me to have sex with them, 100% ended up pestering me day after day, or tagging home after me like a little lost puppy, even though I reminded them every time that I had a boyfriend. I had to resort to being mean and nasty in order for them to leave me alone. I probably just attract the weirdos, but it seemed like the male geeks were either too shy to do anything or went way overboard.
Now that I'm working, the male geeks still ask me out but politely drop the subject when they find out I'm not available, and become great friends in spite of it.
So I chalk it up to guys maturing at a slower rate than girls, geeky or not.
Re:Unpleasant environment (Score:5, Interesting)
I am fortunate that the head of the CS department at my university is an extraordinarily boisterous lady. The entry level courses are taught with the specific intention of recruiting new majors. (In my second or third week or class I walked up to my professor (who is also the head of the department) to ask a question, and she didn't ask me if I was a CS major. She simply told me that I was. As though this was obvious and I should stop pussy-footing around with this undeclared major business).
One of my programmer friends is a transsexual, and she was wondering aloud to me the other day if some of her position and esteem as a programmer are leftover benefits from having been male. (In which case, she ought exploit them for all they're worth.)
By and large, the CS majors in my classes have been wonderful, welcoming and helpful. The CS people I have met in the world at large do not have nearly so pleasant a distinction in my mind.
The head of the CS department pointed out to me that it was part of the geek meritocracy--the guys won't talk to you until you prove yourself, and then you won't be able to get them to go away.
the obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
The obvious conclusion is that there are less women in CS these days because the benefits are less than the penalty. In other words, the main reason there were more women in IT during the dotcom boom was because there was less competition amongst employees (in a mathematics-dominated field), and the field was seen as immediately beneficial and growing. Anyone with a modicum of technical or mathematic ability got into IT/CS because even those that were not the "best and brightest" in mathematics could get jobs in the field. (This is further illustrated by the supposed sallary gap between men and women in technical/CS fields: quite simply, the women pick the jobs that are less technically challenging, and thus pay less.)
Women, being the sensical (and sensual! but that's something else entirely) creatures that they are when it comes to something as unemotional as picking a career, saw the obviousness of the situation: unless they really liked mathematics, there was little incentive to go into CS.
There's also very little "staying power" in the skills acquired with a CS degree (theory aside - most employers don't seem to give a damn about anything but acronyms anyway), and for many women who were intent on getting married while they are still able to have children fairly comfortably, the payoff of a CS/IT degree was further decreased: you can't really jump back into the field after having and raising kids like you can into something that's less skill-based and more theory-based, like business or management.
Anyway, flame on. FWIW, I'm a guy who happens to be not so mathematically inclined, and I've changed my degree from CS for this very reason as well (the technical ability reason, not the childbirth reason).
Re:Unplesant environment (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that's a completely false dichotomy. My wife is one semester away from her undergraduate degree - dual math/cs (I got a math degree with a cs minor). Her highest aspiration is to make babies and teach them algebra before she teaches them to read. But this doesn't preclude eduation at all - for her it's just another incentive.
Your attitude (don't take this too personally) has gotten so annooying that I'm extremely close to carrying around a 2X4 just to whack people over the head with when they say it. They ask me about what my wife is studying. I say "dual comp sci/math". Then they say "what does she want to do". I say "she wants to start a family". They say "Oh, then why on earth is shy taking such hard subjects?" That's when I restrain myself from yelling any of a variety of answers like "I don't know, because she likes the damn subjects?" or "Holy crap, you're right! What *IS* she doing outside of the kitchen?"
Why is it that we have this awful attitude that being a mother is somehow this dead-end proposition that requires no job skills? Sure, biologically making a child may require no skills, but educating and raising said child is not only one of the most demanding but in my opinion the most noble "careers" any one - man or woman - can choose. Sure, I have a career, but when the little ones come around I guarantee that being a good father will be #1 to me - not climbing the corporate ladder. I work 60 hours weeks in a full time and two part time jobs now specifically to get as secure as I can financially just so that I can have more time and freedom to spend on my family when we have one.
And my wife is doing the same thing that I'm doing financially from an education standpoint. I want to be able to provide financial independence to my family and she wants to be able to teach our kids valuable skills (which apparently are going to include both multivariate calculus and C programming) and encourage their interests - no matter what they are. The more my wife knows (she also plays guitar and piano and went to a high school focussing on humanities were she was the valedictorian) the better able she will be to give her kids that much of a boost in their own educations.
And on a final note - being a mother is not the end of your education either. My own mother dropped out of college to have her family. Not what I wanted my wife to do, but the point is that she went back to school recently and finished her BA. Now she's almost done with her masters, and when if she wants she's in a fine position to get her PhD as well.
I'm not going to say you can be a mother and a corporate VP at the same time, but I AM going to say you can be a mother and also be well educated and have an impact outside your own household.
-stormin
(PS, my wife is way smarter than me)
Re:Unplesant environment (Score:4, Interesting)
Women in Games, by Chris Crawford
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/17/3 [escapistmagazine.com]
You've go to remember that individual variation will be greater than group variation, and I definitely think that we sometimes use tradition to override individuality (and that's a bad thing). But to say that "it's just arbitrary tradition" doesn't really make sense: where do you think tradition comes from? Traditions evolved with society, and I think that both society and, therefore tradition, are essentially products of evolution.
-stormin
Re:Sadly this is not the most inviting of professi (Score:3, Interesting)
So?
My personal experiences with interviewing is that women can be just as evil, if not more evil, than men, in interview situations. As for interviews where you have to take tests, write code, solve problems - so what? Why shouldn't a company be allowed to ask an applicant to prove what they claim to be able to do? I thought that kind of thing was expected in this day and age...
If obnoxious interviewers are such a career barrier, then you probably have no business having a career in the first place. And you know what? Sometimes the answer they are looking for is "now you're out of line, you asshat!"
Re:Women out of the kitchen and into the lab (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is it that so many people assume kids are just little dumb animals running around all the time? (Granted, some of them with dumb animal-acting parents also tend to run around ACTING like a dumb animal... but that's a different topic.)
Children, even the very very young ones of 2.5yrs old and just barely speaking coherent sentences are just extremely inexperienced humans. Sometimes they will AMAZE you with their grasp of what you consider to be very tough social construct topics... like racism, addiction, anger, war, etc. Why is that? Because they are JUST INEXPERIENCED PEOPLE. Sometimes their comments about such things are cute or funny because they misinterpret what an adult said and used that as the basis for the incorrect reasoning of their comment, but sometimes they have just enough information to logically conclude some really profound stuff. Yes, ones environment can certainly shape experiences in ones life, but it doesn't dictate who we are as people entirely.
My point is that little boys like to play with toy tractors, and Lego's, and play sports, and blow stuff up because they just find that fun. Little girls like to dress up their Barbies, and play house, and cook with their moms because they just find THAT stuff to be fun. I have seen two children, one a boy, and one a girl from the same family and similar in age that will behave VERY differently about certain things. The girl will get upset about a grass stain on her dress and want her mom to wash it ASAP, while the boy is too busy running around kicking and throwing balls and getting muddy to even obey his mom when she wants him to come back to her to get some of the dirt brushed off of him. The girl is interested in talking and being "made over" about how pretty she looks in her new outfit, while the boy is interested in having you play "catch" with him. This all comes from observing children UNDER THE AGE OF 5! (and from multiple families with young kids)
Girls and boys are different! OMG, what a revelation! And each of us is unique, so sometimes guys will want to be in fashion design, and sometimes girls will want to be demolition engineers. Who cares?! We should be more happy when we're more unique than most people in our "profession" or "position in life" and don't want to follow the herd, but instead we think there should just always be 50/50 equality in everything. (But guess what? That doesn't even happen physically in nature since the mix of men to women is 49/51 or something like that.)
Just trying to provide some perspective on environment dictating who we become.
Re:A female perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers has the Go Eng Girl [ospe.on.ca] program that is supposed to reach out to girls in grades 7 - 10. One of the big things they want to do is lower math and science requirements because most women don't seem to like math and science (not my words, don't flame). Girls can then swap out a course they don't like for another, more 'softer' course when applying for university.
In my experience (I'm a guy), every girl I've talked to who's applying to university doesn't want to go into engineering. They'd rather save the world by going into life science or take hybrid programs like biomedical computing [queensu.ca].
Re:A female perspective (Score:1, Interesting)
Unlocking the Clubhouse (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of women drop out of CS because they feel like they need to be "perfect" to compete with the guys - even if they're already getting better scores than the guys. Most women in CS also don't have the same background with computers coming in to college that their male counterparts do. They probably had access to a computer, but most male CS majors already had their own PC for years before starting college.
The "socialization" (if you can call it that) in the CS world also discourages women. Even if they're not being drooled on or ignored by the guys, they're often looked down on, as if they were stupid. (Because every guy knows that having a vagina means you can't understand electronics.) They also feel that they have to be geeks and talk about nothing but computers - they see that kind of passion in the guys and figure that they have to be just as single-minded if they're going to succeed. Some simply give up and slip back into the "expected" role of women: "I don't understand these 'computer' things, they're so complicated. Can you help me?"
When I read this book, I kept saying, "That's me! I thought I was the only one!" In talking to the (few) other female CS majors I knew, I found that they felt the same way.
In a perfect world, I imagine that there would still be more men than women in CS, but it would be a much closer gap (maybe 60/40 or so). I don't pretend that this field is interesting to everyone, but there are so many girls out there who would love to try it if they could do it without becoming a "nerd". It's not that the field intentionally pushes women out, it's just that they're wired differently, and express their interest in computers differently; and because there are so many men in the field, these views are in the minority.
Another girl geek over here (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Unpleasant environment (Score:5, Interesting)
I see equal opportunity blame in that situation -- a lack of intellectual pride both on the part of the girls and the guys.
I have also had to endure the insanity of having a really smart guy ask if you want to be his partner for the year in a class, only to have him show up at the first meeting with a finished assignment and a picnic basket containing a romantic dinner. It is a really difficult situation to deal with. On the one hand, the guy has made a nice and very sincere effort to please you. Unfortunately, that doesn't measure much against the facts that (a) he never actually asked you out, so you didn't get a chance to understand what kind of 'partnership' he was really hoping for, (b) he obviously didn't then and never did think you were capable of doing the assignment, (c) he assumed that you were the type of person who would gladly get out of work, and (d) he didn't mind that fact, as long as you went out with him. And he wondered why I wasn't bursting with admiration at his display of programming prowess.
Did you really see a lot of girls brazenly manipulating their way through a computer degree? It's hard for me to imagine. The women I graduated with knew their stuff, and would gladly prove it when challenged.
Pix
The problem BEGINS in High School! (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the experience of a high-school education is discovering what interests you. That can't happen if you're discouraged from even looking. And I think that young women may be discouraged from doing so in many ways.
I'm not in the US, but from what I hear it seems that in the US, it's common for male geeks/nerds to get discriminated against in high school (even physical abuse). But they still go do geeky stuff anyway.
Hmm. Perhaps because a boy geek is perceived as a mildly eccentric target for ridicule, whereas a girl geek is an anathema to her peers at that age. Or maybe a boy's rising levels of testosterone make him feel better than a girl would about doing stuff alone.
The real tragedy here is that many crucial career choices can be made at this age, including ones that determine whether a student can pursue a career in mathematical or physical fields or not. For example, the perception that mathematics is a "boy's" subject can discourage girls from continuing to study it in high school. And that closes many career doors. Probably forever.
(I have heard that this perception does not exist in some parts of the world. For example, in Iceland: at the risk of grossly over-simplifying the picture, mathematics is actually perceived as a "girl's" subject, whereas the boys want to finish high school so they can go out and help their fathers on the fishing boats.)
I think the solution is to debunk the perceptions that young people can have about these fields, to warn them about "closing doors" to their future, and to encourage them to discover their aptitudes, whatever they may be.
As a female in Computer Science (Score:1, Interesting)
My biggest fear is by giving birth to a baby (I don't have one yet but plan to do so in a few years), I'll no longer be able to work that hard and my career would basically be ruined. But I definitely want a baby no matter what, maybe I should have chosen a career where not that many deadlines need be met?
Well, maybe it's just me.
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:4, Interesting)
I live and work in Phoenix Arizona USA and I work in an organization with thousands of geeks from both ends of the spectrum. Hardcore nerds who write obscure code all day, to technical project managers who do mostly paperwork, fill out request forms, and assign projects to sysadmins.
I work with, and talk to lots of nerdy/geeky guys and gals who seem able to differentiate between friendly chat and an interest in having a relationship. From what I've found here, there are plenty of nerdy guys around here who are capable of communicating in an effective manner, and are perfectly acceptable mates for nerdy women.
There are lots of excessively flirty guys for sure, but most of them can take a subtle hint that you're not interested. They're socially stunted sometimes, not mentally retarded.
Also, lets not forget that many nerdy women are the same way. I find it excessively difficult to relate to and talk with other women who aren't technical. I don't really have much in common with them. I find making small talk to be quite tedious when some non-technical co-worker wants to blather on about her -precious- toddler, and all I'm thinking about is the lan party tonight where I'm going to frag the crap outta' the guys in BF2.
Lots of that social akwardness starts to fade away as we get older though. I'd say by the time most geeks hit 28-29, they're getting a better handle on life and have more experience with social situations. Just my observation though.
~k
Maybe more CS majors should bathe (Score:2, Interesting)
My wife would sometimes wait for me outside of some of my CS classes, and she said that the odor coming off of some of the students that went by, as they left the class, was repulsive. It has been her guess all along that poor hygiene among the male CS majors is a strong contributor to the low percentage of women in the program. Apparently, women are more sensitive to such things.
I never really noticed the body odor, but I wonder what that says about me. At least my wife has never complained about my body odor.
Lots of reasons why this is... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am female, and I have been on a computer since I was a wee one. Worked my way through BBSes, the scary USENET world, and coding (my father started me off on BASIC when I was in grade 3). Now - one would think I would have ended up a compsci major. Well no. For various reasons, I started off as a science major - which made me unhappy so I tried to switch over to CompSci. The Compsci department was fine with that- they would let me in, BUT I had to get approval for one math course (because I didn't have the prereq). Happily, I went off to the math department and was told by the head of the Math Department at an unamed university that "girls were not good at math", and therefore, he wouldn't let me in. So, I ended up in the humanities.
I was lucky, I managed to keep up my skills on the side and eventually got a job as a systems librarian. But, I wonder how many girls gave up.
I also find that families aren't friendly to women learning technology - often giving boys the techy toys and encouraging them to learn, whereas girls are told that's not feminine (in more than verbal words). Luckily, my dad only had girls, and so I got a very nice well-rounded education. (That means, I can be a sysadmin, check my own oil, AND know which lipstick goes with my wine-coloured top).
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:2, Interesting)
>My comment was just meant to point out that I've seen many women interpret plain ol' interest by a guy as harrasment and not even have the guts to tell the guy to go away.
I've actually had this happen. Just once. Actually, it was worse than what you describe: What I thought was simple general-purpose friendliness was interpreted as sexual advances.
I went to a party with a girl, who ran into a friend of hers who I didn't know. I was introduced to the friend, I assumed, simply because that's what people do to be polite. I tried to be friendly to this new person but didn't think I showed any particular interest. I found out much later that apparently she did, and that she'd told another friend of hers that I'd been hitting on her and otherwise paying her unwanted attention. That shocked the hell out of me. I thought I'd hardly said more than hello.
That made me angry for a couple of reasons. First, that someone would think of me in those terms at all -- I aspire to be a good person, and have always thought that that was the impression I gave. Second (this is the tiniest bit contradictory), that, if she did think that I was making advances, that she was offended by them (why, what's wrong with me?). And third, because I felt that I had to change my patterns of behavior with other people as a result: I began to get the paranoid thought, "I cannot say 'hello' to other people. They will translate it to mean, 'I would like to sleep with you.'"
I've told this story to a few other people in a self-questioning way, and have only received comments to the effect of, "Don't worry; you don't come across that way." But what would I expect people to say? You can't trust people not to tell little white lies to you.
So anyway, I figured I'd post this story, at the very least, as a demonstration that the issues that everyone seems concerned with run in all sorts of directions.
Re:Why most geeks are male (Score:3, Interesting)
Feminism is now often placed in opposition to liberty for women. I think I understand why you did it, but the cultural phenomenon is strange. It is unfortunate that many women who desire freedom and successfully pursue their goals dissociate themselves from feminism.
Re:As a geek girl... (Score:2, Interesting)
Umm, in my case, how about the fact that I am married and wearing the requisite ring? It's amazing how often I get hit on in geeky locales-sometimes with my husband only a few feet away. (It's a widespread phenomenon, afflicting most of the married female geeks I know.)
Of course, I can think of several possible explanations. #1: He didn't notice the ring because he was staring at my chest or his feet. #2: He saw it and didn't get it. (But how oblivious can you get?) #3 He saw it, understood its signifigance, and thought, "Ehh, what have I got to lose?"
Frankly, none of these leave me inclined to spend any time with the guy, even as a friend. Remember, a smile and common courtesy do not a come-on make. And guys, check for the wedding ring!
What a load of sexist tosh. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen it all my life, males that are patronizing, sexiest, and frankly hostile in occassions to any women on their little male preserve. I had a boss that thought he could close deals with female clients by "pleasing" them as he used to put it. I knew of another guy that would send females to the worst hotels in economy class while all the boys were travelling business class and staying in 5 star hotels.
And that is for starters only, in most companies where policies are not in place to ensure there is no discrimination against women, women doing the same job will earn less and the real differences between sexes, like the little detail of women being the ones that give birth, in some places can be punished with summary dismissal.
There is absolutely no physical difference that would explain why women do not pursue technical carriers. In many countries they are better at science and maths until around 12 or 13 years old and then something happens, it is like if society notices that they are starting to become fully grown women and in that moment the door is shut close and any attempt to solve an equation or write a computer program is met with derision.
The first programmers were women, and they served with distinction, probing that in a virgin field where there were no misnconceptions, they could excell as anybody.
It is the macho attitude justyfing things based on hypotetical "natural differences" (that normally, oh coincidence, put women in positions of disadvantage or servitude) what stop women's progress, not any "differences" as you put it.
Re:A female perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
However, just as with affirmative action, there are clearly pros as well as cons. Some other posters have noted that "there are lots of girls in my CS classes, they're just all Chinese" and similar comments. Now, I live in China, and lots and lots of girls here are CS majors. Quality-wise, they vary just about as much as the male population does, which shouldn't surprise anyone, because as you yourself noted, possession of a vagina doesn't mean you're any better or worse at math & CS then possessors of a penis are. Some people who obviously don't spend much time around Chinese have suggested that perhaps it's because the Chinese aren't as patriarchal -- but it's very much a male-oriented society. So what gives? Why is CS an "acceptable" and even "popular" field for women in China?
I think there are two issues here. One is that during the Communist period, equality for women was one of the big pushes in this country (and I'm sure this is equally true in the former Soviet Bloc). The result is that while a tremendous gender bias still remains, respect for women (at least on a superficial level) is much more ingrained, and there is generally much less chauvinist posturing. Now you are strong and thick skinned, but discrimination and bullying weighs in on most people, and even if nothing is overtly said -- look at how incredibly sexist much of Slashdot is. I think this is one issue -- a pervasive and open lack of respect for women in these fields (and elsewhere) undeniably exists in the west.
A second reason is that in the US at least, intelligence is not looked upon very highly. My sister scored 1550 on her SATs and lied about her scores to her friends. This sort of behaviour is sadly all too common, and is not at all limited to women -- the vast majority of "geeks", regardless of gender, suffered social ostracization during their pubescent years. There is a large amount of evidence that girls in the west are more susceptible to peer pressure on average than boys (probably also a result of the expectation that women be submissive). This in itself is enough of a problem, but it's clear to me that at the root of this the social stigma on intelligence is really to blame. Lots of smart kids in the US avoid particular courses of study because of the social stigma attached to them. Let's face it, there's not a dearth of normal, well socialized guys in CS courses either.
In China, though (and I understand in Russia as well) people who are good at math and science, regardless of gender, are looked up to by their peers -- to be good in these courses means that you are intelligent and intelligence is valued. It's funny because in my experience, culturally at least, Chinese men (from China) are more threatened by intelligent women than even western men are, but despite this, an overwhelming cultural and social devotion to intelligence produces an incentives mechanism that encourages everyone to get involved in "difficult" courses. This includes women.
I don't think there's any point in denying that having more women involved in CS would be a good thing, if only to help socialize the males -- many guys on Slashdot are nice people who mean well, but it's clear that they don't spend a lot of time around women and often make incredibly insensitive comments that pigeonhole women into exactly the stereotype that would have people like yourself getting your nails done 24/7 and constantly saying things like "Like, oh my god! I like totally want to get that new dress at <whereever>!"
Do you like that stereotype?
I know a lot of geek girls, and many of them begin to build an alternate identity for themselves where they begin thinking of themselves
Re:Why most geeks are male (Score:2, Interesting)
Sigh... You express disdain to being stuck in a stereotype, yet you post a link to your photo, which virtually no guy but vain Adonis himself would do. Though on the surface it was intended to support your argument, it really comes dangerously close to compliment fishing -- a successful exercise at that, given the responses you've gotten. The problem I'm concerned with overuse of political correctness instead of common sense. The fact is that overall, there are significant neurological (and thus psychological) differences between the sexes. There are two separate issues which, for some reason, seem to blur in the eyes of PC do-gooders. One is the individual: obviously an individual should not be stereotyped but looked at based on his or her talents/skills/abilities. But when looking at populations or groups it's a different matter, as statistics come into play. PC-prone people assume differences in, for example, enrollment in various disciplines are due to purely social factors. In fact, there's no scientific evidence to suggest this. When making decisions based on statistics on groups, it is inappropriate to discount potential biological differences; otherwise, wrong desisions are made. This goes beyond the issue of sexes.
There's a great analogy to this in the case of race and affirmative action in the US. Most politicians and laymen seem to believe the PC-correct Lewontin argument that intra-racial variation is much greater than inter-racial variation, thus race is not a valid taxonomic construct. This is in fact scientifically incorrect (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin's_Fallacy [wikipedia.org] for a summary and link to the relevant research) because Lewontin only looked variations of individual genotypes/phenotypes, whereas cluster analysis reveals these aren't independent variables. Most scientist, however, are careful in choosing their words when discussing such issues with the public due to worry of bein politically incorrect. I'm not aware of research that applies this type of statistical analysis to the sexes instead of races, but I have no doubt that the general principle will remain the same and distinct clusters will emerge from the statistics, as was the case with races.
In closing, let me seal my reputation as a sexist and get modded down by giving you a rating of 7 for looks. It may not be a compliment, but at least it is honest.