ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science 329
theodp (442580) writes "Over at the Communications of the ACM, a new article — Computing's Narrow Focus May Hinder Women's Participation — suggests that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should shoulder some of the blame for the dearth of women at Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and other tech companies. From the article: "Valerie Barr, chair of ACM's Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W), believes the retreat [of women from CS programs] was caused partly by the growth of personal computers. 'The students who graduated in 1984 were the last group to start college before there was personal computing. So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world. After personal computers, that wasn't true any more.'" So, does TIME's 1982 Machine of the Year deserve the bad rap? By the way, the ACM's Annual Report discusses its participation in an alliance which has helped convince Congress that there ought to be a federal law making CS a "core subject" for girls and boys: "Under the guidance of the Education Policy Committee, ACM continued its efforts to reshape the U.S. education system to see real computer science exist and count as a core graduation credit in U.S. high schools. Working with the CSTA, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, NSF, Microsoft, and Google, ACM helped launch a new public/private partnership under the leadership of Code.org to strengthen high school level computing courses, improve teacher training, engage states in bringing computer science into their core curriculum guidelines, and encourage more explicit federal recognition of computer science as a key discipline in STEM discussions.""
Do they? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never heard someone saying a sentence like this in high school (girls or boys). Anyone?
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Not me, either. If anything that would happen in college, wouldn't it?
Anyway, from TFA (by the way, is it really displaying as grey text on a white background):
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Check my math, okay?
100 tech women
56% leave the private sector (56 in this example)
75% of the 56 continue to work full time (42 in this example)
~50% of 42 continue in tech (21 in this example)
So that 21 plus the 44 that did not change is 65. So only 35% of women in tech leave tech in mid-career. 65% are in tech and stay in tech full time.
Well, there is also a dearth of women studying mathematics.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do they? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that is more a problem of perception in HR and hiring managers than reality. If you've seen one silver bullet that willd solve all our problems, you've seen them all.
Sure, things do change in just a few years, but it's not that hard to catch up given you needn't bother with the flash in the pan stuff that already went away again.
C is still C, Java is Java. Python is more popular, Perl a bit less. Java is the new COBOL. It's not like taking a few years off to stay at home until a child is school age is spent in total isolation. Most of the tech news is on the web anyway.
Re:Do they? (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that women don't just go to work one day and go into labor, right? There's generally ample warning.
Depending on the length of the sabbatical and her employer, she might join a different team or department, or perhaps go to work elsewhere. But there's no reason to leave the profession.
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You've gone too far. You should have stopped when the answer was 42.
So... (Score:5, Interesting)
So women stopped studying computer science because they didn't have to anymore? That certainly sounds like a crime against humanity.
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I bet back in the days computer science was more of an high engineering education than it is now
No, it was math. It was engineering for a little while in the 90s. Now it's like accounting - mostly applied software engineering, unless it's a top school.
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That did not preclude women, and that seems to be a new area of study for this problem. Women aren't being pushed out by misogyny and male culture (according to this hypothesis) - they are self-selecting, or pushing themselves out. They have the option, but choose not to.
Except when it is part of some other goal - that is, women do use computers, just not for the sake of using computers (generally). Women are utilitarian in using computers to support other endeavors.
why can the world (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because the pay is terrible, and you can't support a family as a primary school teacher?
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That's kind of a crock of shit. My mom is a primary school teacher. At a middle class school in the suburbs, she brought home a very generous salary, followed by a sizeable lifetime pension after retirement. This myth that all these poor teachers are living in poverty needs to end.
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how long ago was your mom a teacher? and how long was she a teacher?
I can tell you that there are current grads that are trying to get teaching jobs, most these jobs for a first year student are under 27K a year ( granted thats with 3 months off) but still, in NY, you cant live on that
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Skilled trades have the advantage of being hourly positions with overtime pay. This can easily make a job in the skilled trades quite comparable to something one might have gone to college for.
You actually get paid for the time you work instead of everyone expecting you to work more hours for a fixed salary.
Re:why can the world (Score:5, Insightful)
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its a problem because...its a problem
My response to that is no, its not
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Re:why can the world (Score:4, Insightful)
If there is a social cause, then society can work to undo it. If it is a biological cause, then we can stop wasting time and effort thinking it is a social cause.
First of all, we also need to consider the possibility that it could be BOTH. I.e., that certain gender stereotypes have some relationship to biological facts, and thus gender stereotypes end up having other effects which are not necessarily biological (but may be partly rooted in them).
The reason I bring this up is because it makes an interesting conundrum for these sorts of arguments. If something is entirely biological, there's supposedly no sense fighting it. (Of course, not all women are exactly the same, and some may have those "natural" biological elements emphasized to more or less degree in their talents and personalities.) But if something is entirely social, it's perceived as a gross injustice.
But what if we combine these? For example, someone earlier in this thread brought up the biological fact that women bear children and thus may need to take significant time off of work to have a kid and especially in the first year or two do things that only women can do (particularly nursing). If a woman wants to have more than one child, that can easily add up to 5-10 years of absence from the job force. In a fast-paced field, it may be difficult for women to then hop immediately back in to the job force with skills that are already starting to be outdated.
So, the issue here is not entirely biological (women could choose to forego children or dump their kid into daycare when he/she is a couple months old or women could actively try to keep up their skills even while not working full-time), but it's not entirely social either (men don't have the same hormones driving them to have children or nurse or be with infants). Yet we're still stuck with the problematic effects -- women will often get behind in their jobs or have trouble keeping up or returning to the workforce. We can't just blame it on biology, but it seems impossible to completely eliminate social issues that arise either.
But I bet that many women of her era would have convinced themselves that being a chemist was a foolish notion and wouldn't have pursued it at all. That's social self-regulation. That should be eliminated.
Obviously we need to eliminate actual ignorant prejudice. But the problems are often a lot more subtle than that these days. I know a lot of professional women who "came up through the ranks" in the 1970s, and they have horrific stories to tell about the kinds of indignities women suffered in the workforce back then. Let's not forget all the amazing progress we've made in a few decades... it's important to keep that in perspective.
Nowadays, we're mostly confronting those harder problems I mentioned earlier, like how to figure out a way to be "fair" in a workplace (and all the related decisions like salary, promotion, etc.) where one gender is more likely than the other to disappear from their career for 5-10 years at a time.
And we also have to deal with cases where "social self-regulation" actually does serve some important purpose. Sure, is it biologically possible for a woman to have a child and dump the infant in daycare almost immediately to be fed with formula? Yes, obviously. And lots of women do it because they have to.
But aren't there also psychological and perhaps social benefits to allowing women to choose to stay home and take care of a small child as they are biologically programmed to do? Moreover, aren't there also social benefits to having communities where children are raised by some parent (male or female) who can spend more time with them, rather than getting kids out of the home as quickly as possible and into large groups of kids often taken care of by people paid minimum wage? (Of course, some might argue the reverse -- that many parents are bad parents, and daycare may be helpful to the kids. Perhaps that's true
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Re:why can the world (Score:5, Interesting)
But why do they like different career paths?
I'm going to posit that women are smarter about accepting abusive work conditions than men are. 90-hour weeks where you sleep at your desk and get free Mountain Dew and a game of pinball in a few times during a death march is an abusive situation.
What I really don't get is why some women want so badly to put other women in these situations when they're already winning. I guess what we need is more women entrepreneurs, to run companies sanely. Or men to grow a pair and tell their masters to kiss off so that tech work environments can become places where women would feel welcome.
Yeah, smoke on that one - when you work unpaid overtime you're being hostile towards women.
Re:why can the world (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps women have the luxury and privilege of not losing attractiveness when working low-paying jobs. Perhaps men are the victims of a society that forces them to over-work and be over-competitive because women ultimately select whose genes are passed on and whose are not. Perhaps this competitiveness is why men will take on more hard jobs, fight for more raises, and suffer the abuses.
Is female materialism driving men into high wage jobs? Maybe there should be a federal law to address this...
Re:why can the world (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why should he shut up? I hate going to my job but it pays so damned good. For every one of your type, there are 10 of us. I mean I wanted to be a goddamned astronaut but it just didn't work out that way so now we do what we must to get by. You should applaud people like me
I applaud you. Good job. I just don't want to work with you.
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> Is it that there is a biological difference that guides men and women to different career choices, or is there some social prodding that causes men and women to self regulate?
You do realize the answer is not mutually exclusive, right?
Men != Women for biological and social reasons. Film at 11.
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maybe they should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
CS Core Curriculum? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Please, please, teach them something besides how to code in Java. A little theory would be nice. Some basic understanding of what a computer actually does with that code they type in. Some idea of how algorithms are turned into programs. Please?
I think the reason why the students are being taught Java is so that the Professors can focus on those other things. For lots of students the gotcha's of native code get in the way of learning the theories, algorithm tuning, and data structures. So by using a managed language in the classes, the classes can spend more time focusing on something else besides language implementation details.
mass hysteria? (Score:2)
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Why? Is it mostly fat chicks in the ACM-W? 'cause I never heard anyone come up with harebrained shit like that anywhere else.
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Was a reference to mass hysteria.
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In 1984... (Score:4, Informative)
"So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."
These weren't even things in 1984.
Computers were not so pervasive that you were missing out on much if you didn't know anything about them.
G.
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These weren't even things in 1984.
People working with Smalltalk machines and Lisp workstations at that time would probably disagree. But then again, only a chosen few could afford those.
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"So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."
These weren't even things in 1984.
It depends on what you mean by "weren't even things." If you mean that most people didn't know about them, well, that's still true. If you mean that NO ONE -- even at research labs and in grad school projects, etc. -- was doing this stuff, well, you're wrong. Even if you just do some searches in Google Books restricting sources to 1984 or earlier, you'll find the use of the term "bioinformatics" going back to the early 1970s (the first shared protein databases go back to the early 70s, and gene sequencin
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As for "quantitative anthropology," there are a few sources out there that mention applying quantitative methods back then, but I doubt there was as much computer use as in, say, economics. On the other hand, I know a number of people who did their doctoral dissertations in the humanities in the 1960s and early 1970s who were making use of computers to try things similar to what we'd called "digital humanities" today. And I've read papers in the humanities using computer-aided analysis going back to at least the early 1960s. Perhaps it was the "space race" era or something that influenced those projects, but computers were around particularly at universities.
One word: SNOBOL. :-)
Know what that sounds like? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like some jocks complaining that they didn't wanna hang with the uncool geek crowd and now they're relegated to polishing the cars of those eggheads.
What about nursing?? (Score:4, Insightful)
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How come there aren't any people complaining that there are VASTLY more women in nursing than men.
There are. For example, have a look at organizations devoted to recruiting more men, like the American Assembly for Men in Nursing [aamn.org] or the "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" [oregoncent...ursing.org] campaign. Also see various studies and concerns about the issue on the Minority Nurse [minoritynurse.com] page. It's really a complicated issue, and organizations like this have really been trying to figure out recruitment efforts.
Maybe there should be more "people complaining" about this issue, but your assertion that "there aren't any" is just untru
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Because women who want go into medicine end up nurses instead of doctors. This is the result of stereotypes, peer pressure and a largely male establishment.
So what you are saying is if a field is male dominated, it is because of men and we need to change it. If a field is female dominated, it is still because of men. Is there anything that is not a man's fault?
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I know tons of female doctors... Most recent my doctor is a woman and the one before that was a man who had a female intern who I saw more than him. Women tend to like medicine in general, but while they are found equally in nursing and as doctors men are rarely nurses. A lot of this goes to society. Men are distrusted in occupations like nursing, teaching (elementary mostly), and secretarial fields. All fields long dominated by women because they were the only jobs available for women.
Re:What about nursing?? (Score:4, Informative)
Because women who want go into medicine end up nurses instead of doctors. This is the result of stereotypes, peer pressure and a largely male establishment.
In 2011-2012, women represented 47.0% of entering students entering medical school, and it's been hovering at just below half (around 47-49%) for the past decade. This value has also been approximately proportional to the gender mix of applicants, which was 47.3% female in 2011-2012.
Source: https://www.aamc.org/download/... [aamc.org]
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..or maybe nursing offers a social and psychological environment more suited to them. It's not that women are corralled into it, it's that they want it.
Men who try on nursing often find that long term exposure to 'female space' politics is toxic to their sanity and productivity. While both men and women have their own set of group work dynamics, the problem is that feminism demonizes the existence of men's while praising the existence of women's. In fact, it goes out of its way to justify "make history,
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I know a person who has worked at an inmate detention center for 20 years. That long around people and you gain some insight in to human behavior. In general they summed up the interactions between inmates in the following manner.
Males: Violent.
Females: Manipulative.
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In Belgium at least in the 90s med school was populated by more women than men (I'd say 2/3rd).
I would actually argue that where intelligent scientifically inclined men tend to choose engineering, the women tend to choose med school.
Med school is harder than nursing school as well. I'm sure the women that are smart enough to go for med school won't just settle for nurse. And respect is due for nurses as well, it's a tough job.
Ever-increasing proportion of female physicians (Score:2)
According to this data chart [kff.org], about 30% of physicians are female.
As time go on, this will even out. While the ranks of older physicians are male-dominated, females make up just slightly under half the medical school class in the US. In parts of Europe, they already make up the majority:
women make up 54 percent of physicians below the age of 35 in Britain, 58 percent in France and almost 64 percent in Spain, according to the latest figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03... [nytimes.com]
Men in education and healthcare? (Score:3)
Where is the push to get men to become primary school teachers? Half of students are male shouldn't the same be true of the teachers?
Same for healthcare. With the exception of doctors most healthcare is dominated by women yet men are a large number of patients.
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2013 Mean salaries
There's also a gap in garbage collectors. Nobody is concerned about those jobs because they are low-end jobs.
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Programmers: 1 million
Nurses: 3 million
Doctors: 700,00
The total payroll for the "poorly paid" lady jobs is higher than the high-test positions, and the majority of men are earning less. There are probably 10x as many waitresses as there are garbage men
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Does it really matter if he is? The question is whether he's telling the truth. The fact is, school systems have become quite toxic to men. There used to be a lot more of them, and now they're leaving for a reason.
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The fact is, school systems have become quite toxic to men. There used to be a lot more of them, and now they're leaving for a reason.
That's not true, there are actually more male teachers now than there were when my dad (born in 1927) went to school.
There is no "toxic environment". The truth is, most men don't teach because they view it as a low paying low status job dealing with people "kids" they don't want to have to deal with. In other words. Men are more selfish.
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Ah I get your rules now.. Only you're allowed to say your anecdotes are correct. I'm not. I forgot. Sorry. That's about the kind of logic I'd expect from a feminist or any social 'justice' warrior, really. Maybe your area wasn't the norm? Oh, oops, sorry, another failure to conform. When will I ever learn never to question?
You're engaging in the same sort of systemic shaming towards me that you would not tolerate towards women. The only arguments you've made are an ad hominem and a generalization that
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Whether he is or isn't, false accusations of pedophilia are a real risk for any adult working with children, which is unlikely to increase the quality of said people any.
"Computing's Narrow Focus"? (Score:3)
"Computing's Narrow Focus"? Get a degree in petroleum geology or structural engineering if you want a narrow focus. Or pick the wrong field in biology. I know a woman who got a PhD in an area of microbiology that turned out to be a dead end. She ended up managing a coffee shop.
Re:"Computing's Narrow Focus"? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's certainly true that my not-far-post-1984 CS degree was focused pretty much on computing itself; computer architecture, automata, algorithmic complexity, database internals. Not so much on applications; the article suggests that pre-1984 there was more focus on what you can do with computers. I'm not so sure this particular explanation holds up, because the drop in women in CS is mirrored by a drop in women in business computing, which by definition remained focused on applications.
To throw out my own hypothesis, the PC revolution also caused a huge increase in the number of prospective majors in the field. Overwhelmed departments responded with "weed-out" classes and restrictive admissions policies; this may have had a disparate impact on women.
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It's certainly true that my not-far-post-1984 CS degree was focused pretty much on computing itself; computer architecture, automata, algorithmic complexity, database internals. Not so much on applications; the article suggests that pre-1984 there was more focus on what you can do with computers.
I must have missed something because when I look at Knuth and Dijkstra, they apparently expect you to already understand how to apply the stuff, and they did so in the 1970s. Was there actually any change in this respect, in the CS field proper?
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"Computing's Narrow Focus"? Get a degree in petroleum geology or structural engineering if you want a narrow focus. Or pick the wrong field in biology. I know a woman who got a PhD in an area of microbiology that turned out to be a dead end. She ended up managing a coffee shop.
The last has probably nothing to do with her choice of subject. Most biology students end up as unskilled workers. I have several friends who have studied biology, and the job market for them while big is way too small for the sheer number of biologists educated.
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I have several friends who have studied biology, and the job market for them while big is way too small for the sheer number of biologists educated.
Advanced degrees (well, really, PhD), or BS only?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (Score:3)
It's certainly true that the first drop in female enrollment happened shortly after the PC came on the scene (the second drop happened after the dot-com crash). I'm not sure that's sufficient evidence to blame the PC (my post title is a formal fallacy, after all), but at least it has better support than the prevalent "smelly misogynistic nerd" theory.
Here's a thought, lets ask actual women (Score:5, Interesting)
Yknow, like Susan "HedgeMage" Sons? She certainly had some choice words [linuxjournal.com] about this entire tempest in a teacup.
Also it's worth pointing out that computer science degrees are something like 10% of all degrees conferred in the US, and women utterly *dominate* every single aspect of education from K12 through college, even earning nearly 2/3rds of all bachelors degrees. I would think the fact men are barely over 1/3rd of college graduates in the first place is a bit of a bigger problem than what major women choose.
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Hey, the focus is on where women are not excelling at. Stop pointing out that they are excelling overall.
Please ignore my crossed eyes.
Let me get this straight (Score:4, Funny)
So, basically, because personal computers made CS more accessible, and men took advantage of this access in greater numbers than women which resulted in the imbalance we see today, it is therefore the fault of personal computers that this imbalance exists.
We need more women in STEM why? (Score:3)
Just the other day we had a story about how american tech companies only want the top 1-10% of available tech workers in the US and everyone else they hire is a visa worker... This suggests that maybe 1 in 10 STEM workers in the US actually can get a job in the US in tech... So for the love of god we need more women to enter this often dead end field why? So more women can remain unemployed, underemployed, and otherwise in debt?
As fundamental as computers are today I can sort of understand a certain level of computer competency/literacy is probably a good thing... But this drive to force more women into STEM seems a bit silly to me... If they want to sure, if not that's fine....
ACM Awards - Academy of Country Music (Score:2)
My wife watches those country music awards shows
We don't know (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the biggest problem is that people aren't willing to just admit we don't now why computer science has the male-female imbalance that it does.
There are differences between men and women in terms of temperament and aptitudes, but those differences are small and don't seem to explain it.
There are aspects of the culture in computer science that are inconvenient for parents, and usually wives expect husbands to make compromises (which not all men and not all women are happy about). That doesn't seem enough to explain it either.
There is certainly no lack of encouragement and support for women in the profession, so it's not that any of that is lacking.
We don't know, and that means we don't know what the solution is, or even if there is a problem in need of a solution.
Loud and clear (Score:3)
So, it sounds like women don't go into computer science because they don't like computers.
Alright, that makes sense. I don't like pig shit so I didn't become a hog farmer.
You've got to be kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
The social justice warrior push into tech is getting brazen. The article goes to the edge of suggesting that women are smarter than men, but then says when the applied knowledge gets specific enough, they fall behind? The problem is that the best way to measure mastery of knowledge is to measure how well it is applied to open ended problems. If most women are dropping out at that point, it means they can't hack it. If the majority of high performing employees at places like google are male, that suggests a problem with how the schools measure performance more than anything else. It's not like google isn't rolling out the red carpet for them, and if they were truly better, google would snap them up in an instant and have a female majority by now. Do women earn more credits and get better grades? Probably, but these days, high schools and colleges are bending over backwards to give women the fast track, so I wouldn't trust any of the statistics they present. In fact, the whole article reeks of political think tank style 'research.'
Lucy Sanders, CEO and co-founder of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), noted that compared to universities, "corporations are all different, and they're all very private."
I think this unintentionally presents the real motivations behind this whole piece: The justification of more regulation from the feminist lobby.
There are many theories. One asserts that prejudice against women's abilities throws barriers in their way; a related perspective suggests women are less likely to enter technical fields because they expect such barriers.
If this is even true, I wonder why they expect to find such barriers? Maybe because the media, school system, and society have beaten it into their heads they they're victims of the evil 'patriarchy' keeping them out of everything?
"Boys fall in love with computers as machines; girls see them as tools to do something else,"
Exactly true. I would say this is so with all technology, not just computers. However, it takes passion to stay afloat in these fields. You can't just get a degree and then expect to operate as a drone for the rest of your career if you want to move beyond the internship. Perhaps this is the reason why women drop out of the highly competitive applied fields. Hell, most men can't hack those positions either. It's one thing to be motivated by general ideas as the article suggests, but tech people have to have the ability to break those down into individual steps and then build something that executes them.
If anything, the ubiquity of an open, relatively cheap platform like the PC grants the majority of the population the opportunity to learn computing skills at nearly all levels in a meritocratic environment. Other than the cost of the hardware and an internet connection, there is no boundary, except motivation and interest. Sex has nothing to do with it. It doesn't surprise me that SJWs have a problem with such open meritocracy: it provides objective measurement of individual achievement, which is a big emotional hiccup for those who want to believe we're all intrinsically equally capable, yet 'oppressed' by class warfare.
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Of course not. Those jobs aren't in the spotlight nor are they were the money is.
PC is most important tool since the printing press (Score:4, Insightful)
... how can you argue that at all, let alone suggest it has a gender bias?
Having babies.... (Score:3)
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I don't have self-confidence for two cents and I'm in CS. Any other theories?
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual, the ACM totters between cluelessness and a corporate stooge.
CS population is a social issue. To be blunt, the USA views STEM as low class. "nerd" and "geek" are 4 letter slurs coming from most people.
Women are taught to be more in tune with social issues so shy away. Later on, 75% of STEM graduates leave the field.
It's worse in Canada and some European countries. After working several years there, I'll never willingly go back. If you're in tech then you're an untouchable lower social rung.
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The 'CS population is a "women aren't fucking interested" issue' Stop trying to make it out to be more than it is. Stop trying to make it 'equal'.
People are different.
Genders are different, if you don't realize that, you need to take sex ed over again.
Races are different, if you don't realize that, take a look at distribution of races in sports (All of them from chess to basketball).
Certain groups of people have certain attributes in GENERAL that make them prefer, not prefer, or have some general level of
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:4)
I agree with some, for example, why aren't more men in elementary education? In some cases there is true sexism at play: some people think men who teach little kids are either gay or perverts (and some think those are the same thing...). But for the most part I don't know many men who'd want to do these things.
To be blunt, the USA views STEM as low class.
I think he's right on this one. The US is entirely about idolizing business and management, in spite of how very bad most of our businesses are managed. If you're in STEM, you are always going to be on the bottom rung. You will be paid much less, you will work longer hours, you will not have nearly as much control or options. You're the one that gets axed when the boss makes a mistake, you're the one that has to stay in the office late when the customer wants a new feature, you're the one that has to take the fall when a very public mistake is caught that probably was the result of some bean counter elsewhere.
Yes, the company comes to a grinding halt if we were to all band together and fight, but that's unlikely. Hell we can't even VOTE together to stop H1B nonsense, never mind do something that might draw attention personally to us.
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we would expect to see very little variation from country to country in terms of male vs. female interest in STEM careers, right? Is that the case? It may be the case there there are physiological differences between men and women on an aggregate level that give rise to some of the gender disparity, but you're an idiot if you don't think social issues also play a part. For instance, if it's all physiological then why was women's participation in computer science higher in 1984 than it is today?
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Zuckerberg is not a problem to your old money theory, as well, the rest of the "upper class" is probably just riding the money the other people "lucked into" in the past.
Unless he fucks up somehow, his whole lineage will live off this same money, and well, it will became old money just like the rest.
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Zuckerberg was already going to Harvard when he started Facebook. He was in the club from the beginning.
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Is it a social issue or is it biology?
Maybe fewer women want to go into CS because fewer women actually like that type of work? I mean I do not see anybody upset over fewer men going into cosmetology than women. BTW at the top of the field you can make good money.
Maybe we should drop the idea that we need equal numbers to be equal. What we should care about is no one is restricted or prevented from doing into any field that interests them and they have a talent for. At my office we have lots of diversity in
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Boys fall in love with computers as machines; girls see them as tools to do something else," said Barbara Ericson, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who tracks the AP exam.
What does this have to do with self-confidence? This is women approaching computers from a different perspective (on average).
"Then girls think, Ãfmaybe I don't belong because I don't love them like the boys do.Ãf(TM)"
And they'd be right. Why do they belong at a company passionate about technology if they aren't passionate about technology? They don't belong there any more than I belong in a doctor's surgery as anything but a patient - I'm not passionate about healthcare and didn't take exams to become a qualified doctor.
Re:The problem, as always is ignorant commenters (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't as obvious as you made it. No quote in the article, including yours, points to self confidence as the problem. The one that comes closest is the second half of your quote.
But that's pointing towards realizing a fairly obvious difference and responding appropriately. Should they overcompensate and think that they belong despite evidence otherwise? Is that how this should work? Ignoring evidence? I'm not sure how else you could interpret that.
This is the first explanation I've seen that really makes sense - that women focus on "what it can do for me" and men focus on "what I can make it do". As men tend to design courses, and that develops into the curriculum, and then to an entire program, computer science is focused on the manly perspective.
The other quote :
I'm not sure how that is backed up by real information, but it certainly makes a certain bit of logic. Women in general do have higher verbal skills (ignoring the applicability to real life of such research). An average woman with strong math would still have a verbal edge. Self confidence plays no part in this one.
The post-PC specialization idea makes a certain amount of sense - women got a CS degree to get further in a chosen career, not to do CS stuff. And now that they can learn on a PC instead of a classroom, there's no need for the CS degree. This has nothing to do with self confidence.
The data near the bottom seems to bear out this concept, and it has nothing to do with self confidence. So no, Anonymous Wrong Person, it has nothing to do with self confidence unless you want to drag out something that 1) has been debunked 2) is ten years old or 3) didn't look at environmental causes.
lolwut (Score:3)
Girls who have strong math skills tend to have higher verbal skills than boys who are strong in math, which opens up new avenues to follow, like the social sciences
Social science is about as scientific and STEM as Scientology. It's called Voodoo sciences for a reason. Nobody goes into it thinking it will be a great way to utilize their strong math skills.
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We need to work on ways to improve our self confidence and the rest will follow.
Why do you *NEED*?
Why the statistical spread of man and womans *NEED* to be equal on the various fields of human knowledge and/or work?
EVerybody must, or at least, should, be able to choose whatever he/she wants - if she/he is able to do so. What I don't get is the use of the verb "NEED".
Why wornens *NEED* to work on I.T.?
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:5, Funny)
We can't even solve the problem of Unicode on /.
Re:The problem, as always... (Score:4, Funny)
It wouldn't be hard to solve, but given the current state of affairs: no dice.
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You can't be serious. Of course the answer here is to force them to do something they don't want to do. Because clearly if there's a deficiency in the supply of women in a given field it's clearly because there's something wrong with the men in the field. If we force women to get involved in the field we can put those men in their place.
The fact that you'd now have men that are unhappy and being underpaid due to the increased competition and have women that are unhappy with a career that they didn't really
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With respect
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