@ucbalumnus we talked to the police afterwards, and since D was completely unmarked, it was not a cut and dried case of battery. The kid said he meant to “fake” hit her and just guessed wrong and tagged her in the face. From my perspective, intent didn’t matter, but there is also the issue of not destroying that kid’s future because he was really, really stupid. And we absolutely could have pressed charges and really ruined this kid over it, and we chose not to, with our daughter’s support.
He knows this, and he has never given her a day of trouble since. The story was meant to illustrate the atmosphere a lot of girls deal with in the engineering/CS world.
Half the male architects I know are gay (probably partly a function of being in NYC), but I think it has influenced the architecture culture to be more inclusive. There’s enough hands on stuff in architecture, that while you could outsource drafting, you’ll always need a good portion on hand. Especially for the every day non-fancy practices.
While there could be real “brogrammer culture” problems in some situations, punching / battery is not really an inherent part of it. More common examples may be social activities that revolve around things (like going out drinking) that men are more likely to be interested in than women, which may unintentionally exclude women from off-work social connection development.
LGB acceptance (which is high in the computing industry) does not necessarily mean that issues faced by women are necessarily absent (or present) in a given situation.
@ucbalumnus he was trying to intimidate her into being quiet. Invalidating opinions is definitely a part of the culture. I can’t tell you how many times the teacher who ran the middle school robotics program would tell me my team couldn’t do something, then turn around and tell the boy’s teams to do it.
The boy’s teams would come and raid our tool boxes with impugnity because the head teacher told them they could, leaving us with nothing to work with. I, and the other mom on the other all-girls team, resorted to buying our own tools and pieces (for anyone familiar with VEX robotics, you know how expensive those are), and HIDING those pieces when they came around raiding our boxes.
FWIW, the other mom and I were the only two teams to make it to the nationals. When we brought home the trophy I had it engraved with the girls’ names before I gave it to the teacher. He yelled at me for having it engraved. He can suck it.
Laughable … given the graph in the original article showing how the split is basically 50/50 male/female in other majors. Why doesn’t your “same patriarchal culture” excuse apply to those fields as well??? I anticipate a “last bastion” argument in 3, 2, 1 …
@MotherOfDragons That is a terrible story. How did the girls and you and the other mom on the girls’ team handle it at the time?. Did the girls confront the boys, did you and the other mom address this with the teacher? Did you report the teacher if he would not make adjustments, in order to help girls coming after your daughter?
Having been in SW development for 30+ years, the data showing fewer females going into the field confirms what I had been sensing. In my experiences, a workplace with a more even mix of males/females is a better work environment. Jobs where almost everyone is a guy tend to get too locker room-like. Other than a PDP-8 (?) where we had to flip switches to enter our program, I had actually never seen a computer when I graduated with a CS degree. The real computers running UNIX A/B/C/D were hidden away somewhere and all we had access to were terminals. I remember using a terminal in the attic of our dorm with a 300 baud modem - man, was that incredibly slow! There has been so much change since then. I’ve been fortunate to be able to mostly learn on the job to keep relevant enough.
@VickiSoCal. I brought up Big Bang Theory in reference to an article from NPR that I posted in # 60. It talks about the perception that can be drawn from stereotypes (like on Big Bang Theory) out there that scientists and engineers are not cool, are super nerdy , geeks. CS is mentioned in the article. Doesn’t matter that the characters are physicists, engineers, etc. and not specifically CS people. It is still a STEM field and a “quintessentially geeky” one at that. When people in STEM fields are stereotyped in these kinds of ways, it can create barriers to entering these fields ( including CS), particularly for women.
Yes, there are always going to be people in STEM fields that fit the stereotype to a T. But it is good to also show that there are many kinds of people that can do well in STEM fields.
I was dubious about “Girl Develop it” as I’ve always been against single-gender education, I think it’s important to be in an environment that reflects reality. However, I found that “Girl Develop It” actively welcomes members of all genders and they offer some really great programs in a manner that is more inviting than some traditional tech meetup groups.
“When people in STEM fields are stereotyped in these kinds of ways, it can create barriers to entering these fields ( including CS), particularly for women.”
Here’s a silly coincidence … the movie “Revenge of the Nerds” was released in 1984, which corresponds to the peak % of women with a CS major.
Anyway, here’s a graph of some majors I found on the web:
CS is very cyclical with the economy. The major recession in the early 1980s and “Tech Crash” in 2000 are obvious. The women’s % peak corresponds to early 1980s recession. The strange thing is that it never recovered. Given that there are more women in college than men these days, where did they go?
“Given that there are more women in college than men these days, where did they go?”
-Surprise, they got much smarter - Medical Schools. My personal example goes like this. I told my D.: Listen. as much as I love my job, I kept loosing it for one reason or another. Well, few times I switched myself, and sometime they switched me, a.k.a boot me out. So, you are smart and hard working, use what is under your skull and get something that deserves you better with much better job security. Well, D. of the CS professional became a doc. I am sure, there are many examples of that. We did not have job security in a place where we choose to live, so we let the kid know that if she wants to choose her place and always have job security, then do not choose CS. I still love my job, it is the job that fits me the best, I am employed well past my full retirement age, but it can end tomorrow. In addition, I never had what it takes to become an MD, but many medical school classes became more female than male in the time period since I started working in the IT / IS departments. I am sure the similar trend is in the law school also. I am not big on checking the stats on the internet, i will let others do it, if they want.
@PrimeMeridian
Conferences are notorious … and it goes both ways. Men are more obnoxious in general but there’s definitely another side to it. Been there, been the recipient of that. If you want to take offense then that’s your choice. That’s people being people. Where it crosses the line is when a professor (a position of power) does truly offensive behavior to a student, like what happened to my sister in college. You’ve crossed over into truly abnormal behavior that is criminal, imho. I’m proud of my sister for reporting it to the Dean and going through the whole process.
The pregnancy issue is difficult. That crosses over into the realm of people who are unable to work.
I don’t think there’s any difference in degree of difficulty. It’s just that the subjects taught have changed. When I got my CS degree back in '83, it was more of a mix of hardware and software than today, which is mostly software. Those hardware classes were hard as hell.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s, programming departments more professional than the frat house atmosphere you find in so many software companies these days. I can see why the latter would drive women away. In my last job, we had about 100 programmers, and I can’t think of one white female among them. We only had a handful of Indian and Chinese female programmers.
@droppedit Not silly coincidence! Movies like Revenge of the Nerds and also ads showing only boys wanting/using computers are part of what the Planet Money article points to as influencing the drop in women CS majors!
