The Hidden Engineering Gender Gap 807
ifindkarma writes "Joyce Park, CTO of invitation site Renkoo.com, has written a two-part essay exploring why there is no pipeline of self-taught female engineers entering the tech industry via Open Source or other individual efforts. In The Hidden Engineering Gap, she asks why there are so many self-taught male software engineers in startups, but no similar pool of women. In A Modest Proposal, she discusses a potential short-term fix to the problem: a one-year, co-op, certificate-granting program for women set up and sponsored by Silicon Valley companies."
An intentional allusion? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Proposal [wikipedia.org]
Re:Its Software Programmer! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cultural or Biological? (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the time, with no prompting, the girls will cuddle and mother the trucks that you give them, and the boys will throw the dolls.
There are inherent differences between girls and boys. And why wouldn't this be true? Every other species on the planet seems to recognize this fact.
Think of it this way. If the differences between male and female humans were arbitrarily decided by society, then how is it that every separate human culture on earth arrived at a similar result?
The experiment you describe happened thousands of years ago before there were baby dolls, footballs, and ovens. You can see the results of it by looking around you.
Re:let's condescend to women (Score:3, Informative)
Nursing
Such a program exists for both women and men (Score:5, Informative)
I direct just such a post-baccalaureate program at Mills College [mills.edu] in Oakland, California, not far from Silicon Valley. It is coed, although the majority of students are women. Many successful graduates have gone on to industry jobs and CS PhD programs. The application deadline is February 1, if any Slashdotters want to apply.
There was a recent article about the program [sfbg.com] in the San Francisco Bay Guaridan. For more information, see http://ics.mills.edu [mills.edu] and/or contact me.
Re:Don't paint engineering pink! (Score:3, Informative)
Instead of seeing this diversity to be a problem, we should see it as an asset. Next we'll see an attempt to make nursing "more blokey" so that we have more men in nursing. I doubt though that patient care will improve.
Re:facial hair (Score:5, Informative)
Query: Why are they different with regard to engineering?
Problem: Axiom is insane. No rational conclusion can be drawn from insane first premises.
Conclusion: As long as political correctness pervades our universities, any science they produce in these areas is warped.
Actually, there's a formal study on gender & F (Score:4, Informative)
It was a report commissioned by the European Union of all things. Have you every checked out the FLOSS Policy Support page?
http://flosspols.org/ [flosspols.org]
Very interesting stuff.
And here's the article on their on gender findings:
http://flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16-G
Along with their recommendations...
http://flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D17-G
A bit dry perhaps, but still a very interesting, and informative, read full of thorough investigation and professionally collected statistics.
Re:facial hair (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently, an official on the regional level has decided not to give grant money for a book unless an interview with a feminist is removed. The feminist in question states that men's brains work differently and offers as proof the difference between mens and womens service station bathrooms.
"banned research" indeed.
Re:facial hair (Score:5, Informative)
A variety of reasons have been kicked around. Some off the top of my head:
Obviously, a big problem is that the debate is so charged that dispassionate, impartial discoveries and testings of hypotheses are very difficult. Even good unbiased studies will be regarded with suspicion.
In the US, Computer Science is possibly the most lopsided discipline of all. But in Israel, CS is about 50/50. I heard speculation that it was because CS is a relatively new discipline, so there aren't a bunch of crusty old prejudiced men putting up barriers like in all the other disciplines.
Re:facial hair (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Indeed! (Score:3, Informative)