Now that we have a quorum, let me ask a question. Do we all think that this deplorable situation we have observed for women in school and the workplace for computer science is really that much better in medicine and law where the chart shows ongoing increases in participation by women?
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic @user4321? I’ll assume you’re not. If you are, there’s no need for it.
My observations is that the negative stimuli often come from online meeting places as well as socially awkward / immature boys. I think it’s logical that this is a lot more common in CS - clearly the former. And the latter is certainly a stereotype, which probably has some basis in the truth.
I think a desire to go into medicine would typically come with a healthy dose of empathy / desire to help others. That would seem to me to be correlated with a more accepting culture, even in middle school / high school.
So I can easily imagine that the externalities influencing career choice would strongly favor medicine over CS for girls. But this is just my opinion. I have no evidence or facts to back anything up.
The interesting thing is that, in the computing industry, women in technical roles appear to be more likely to be immigrants than men.
Some anecdata from DS. He has observed that a moderate number of women, fewer than men but non-zero, start out in CS. CS is very difficult at his school, which takes a theoretical and very mathy approach, so a good number of kids change majors, probably in equal gender ratio.
The remaining males are not socially gifted. DS is a nice kid, has a lovely GF, and was raised in a pro-feminist household (values that he internalized). He and his GF attended a CS party together and his GF, not one to hand out empty praise, told DS that he was by two standard deviations the coolest guy in the room. So, women make the first cut (CS is tough) but not many survive the second cut (my classmates are meatheads, I can’t stand being around them).
I hear it’s better at Stanford 
It essentially doesn’t exist at all in law, and as far as I can tell very little if at all in medicine. (At least medicine-medicine. There does seem to be something of a bro culture in some surgical specialties. But the days of MAS*H and House of God seem to have passed a long time ago.)
Sorry, not trying to be sarcastic at all. I think I could have worded my question better. If women are treated worse in comp sci schools and workplaces than in medicine or law, then it would make sense that they would move to where they are treated better. If women are treated equally badly or worse in medicine and law then there is some other factor in effect. Just wondering what people’s experiences and observations may be regarding this.
Ah anecdata. We’ve missed you.
Why should we “belive [sic]” your personal observations? (A: we shouldn’t.)
Without having listened to the Planet Money story, my vague sense of history is that early-days coding was seen as women’s work because it was boring and repetitive, and actually involved manual dexterity (punching holes in those IBM cards). It was the type of ministerial thing men delegated to their secretaries after the men had outlined the big picture. Except many of those women coders came up with better, more elegant ways to do things, and were highly skilled and valued, if not paid. Most of this predated the era of Computer Science departments, however.
Funny story @IxnayBob . I’ll add (just because it’s fun, not trying to make any more points!). D is just over 5 foot, a flyer on the football cheer squad (so very slight) and on the track team for winter/spring seasons. Instead of playing computer games, she was playing sport. Anyway, when she found out all the other interns were older and male, she was nervous for about 5 minutes. She met them and summed up with this, “oh, man, I could take any of them.” Things worked out well, but I promise the first guy to have asked her about cup size or similar would have found himself impaled with one of her stilettos.
And maybe she missed all the stupidness of middle school because she didn’t have any interest in comp sci until she took a required programming class at college for her math major.
Yes, you are a hundred percent right. We shouldn’t believe my personal observations any more than the contributors to the original story. I’m hoping to have my observations contradicted by someone who will tell me about their computer science departments during the early 80’s where 35% of the students were women. And I’m really not trying to be sarcastic, I just want to know if it’s true.
I started to college in 1981. I would guestimate that women comprised ~15% of my CS classes, maybe less.
I would say, however, that the general tone of the conversation in CS back then was more civil, less macho, and a lot less like a marine barracks than it is now.
Anecdotal, but-There were two women on one of my son’s teams in his first job (out of 8). They all got along well. He is friends with both (and dating one of them now, that they are no longer working together). They are not “immigrants.” But, both went to small colleges for Computer Science (Harvey Mudd and Swarthmore). Maybe smaller environments ( or women’s supportive programs within engineering or CS departments at bigger schools) could help. There are definitely women that are interested in CS but still not in large numbers.
This reference cites 37%. And you can see from the chart that degrees issued to women in STEM have increased in every field except CS where they have declined dramatically. Second page.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~women/resources/aroundTheWeb/hostedPapers/Syllabus-Camp.pdf
Well, until you mobilize your task force to get to the bottom of it, I’m going to go with the “National Science Foundation, American Bar Association, American Association of Medical Colleges” on this one. I hope you’ll understand.
Silicon Valley companies actively recruit females for software engineering positions. There aren’t that many graduating from college with CS degrees. I don’t know the answer. I think it has to start at a very young age to get girls interested in computers/software and I don’t know how to do that.
@googledrone A desire to build, create, and express yourself. A love of puzzles. The realization that you DON’T need to be a math whiz, that B’s are good enough if you do great in your programming classes. I love to write. I also like to build (legos, knex). I was a big jigsaw puzzle fan. I learned to type with a Timon and Pumba typing CD when I was 7, that’s when I got hooked.
You have to encourage innate interests and mitigate all the discouragement they’ll receive.
I agree with @DoyleB. Got my CS degree in '83 and even in L. A., there were very few women in my classes. Sometimes I was the only one and the other gals were Asian (American) like me. I used to punch cards for the guys because they never learned to type!
The guys treated us gals equally and we helped each other on projects. We even had a female prof!
One thing I saw happen is, the new desktop computers in the lab were very attractive to the guys (another cool engineering lab) and the gals were turned off because it looked like a secretarial pool.
We had the Apple II series computers at home but the only games were male based. Yes, like the broadcast said, computers were marketed to the guys more than to gals.
I don’t know what it’s like today in college, so I enjoy reading this thread! I just know it’s much tougher to get through the CS curriculum!
My son said there are more females in his Aerospace Engineering program than his minor in Computer Science.
We had a female prof for the undergrad survey of programming languages course. When I graduated with a BSCS in '77 and there were 1-2 women in each 25-30 person section.Today we have about 40% women programmers in my current workplace and not one is an American national or went to an American university. The recent grads we hire, who are all male, are truly the nicest guys I ever met. They’re all getting married and starting families they seem as normal as can be.
I graduated CS in 1988. My CS classes were never more than 25% women, usually quite a bit less. There were a lot of super nerdy guys, but also a lot of really nice, smart young men. It was never an unwelcoming environment.
I don’t know anything about the current climate in CS programs. But all of the (male) interns we’ve had at work have been really nice, smart young men. I can’t imagine them contributing to an unwelcoming environment for their female peers.