CS Programs Changing to Attract Women Students

Magnifico writes "The New York times is running an article about a push by American universities to actively recruit women into Computer Science courses. The story, 'Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold', explains that the number of women in CS is shrinking: 'Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.' One of the largest barriers to recruiting women to the field is the nerd factor. To attract women students to the CS field, 'Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.' Changes at CMU increased women students in the CS program from 8 percent to nearly 40 percent."

Work at home Moms?

[LoverOfJoy]

When I went to BYU around the start of the dot com boom, there was a lot of talk about how the women graduates were in demand and (from our school at least) they made more on average than their male counterparts. A big recruiting bullet point was the possibility that women could have kids and work from home. From what I'd heard, that didn't pan out as well as hoped and while at-home jobs ARE possible they are still far from a given and most still need to go into the office regularly. Has the ability to work from home improved significantly since those days?

Pity.

[Just Some Guy]

Too bad. CMU had been a well-respected university. Are there any other schools that are also likely to be dropping off the map in the near future because of similar schemes?

offensive and really quite strange

[andy314159pi]

' One of the largest barriers to recruiting women to the field is the nerd factor. To attract women students to the CS field, 'Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.'

Does she not see how this might be considered offensive to male students (i.e. 'guys in CS are nerds') and women (i.e. 'we have to dumb down the curriculum.') What are these people thinking?

Re:Nerd factor?

[freemywrld]

Maybe it's just me, but I see no reason why people need to be recruited into compsci.

I agree. I am woman in the IT field, and am very passionate about it. I have a degree in Biology -it turns out I am also passionate about science. I understand that universities care about demographics across programs, but you rarely hear about programs trying to attract more men for Women's Studies, do you? Anyway, my main point is, attracting women to CS can be all fine and good, but what I would really like to see is a job market that is more gender balanced. There still exists a school of thought that women are less suited to IT. More women with CS degrees may help this some, but in the end, not everyone who is interested in IT work necessarily gets a CS degree.

This is hardly new

[jandrese]

I went to college between 1995 and 2000 (co-oped for a couple of semesters) and this was already a big issue with our local administrators, especially the only female professor on the staff. She was always going on trips to high schools around the area trying to get women interested in computer science. She organized (with the help of the ACM) computer science events that were marketed towards girls (especially in high school) to try to convince them to enter the field. They most certainly did not reduce the math, programming, and other "nerdy" parts of the curriculum to try to attract more girls.

On the other hand, all of that work was apparently for naught because my graduating class of around 50 students had exactly 1 female graduate (who was already married). While our year was especially bad, the numbers for the other years weren't much better. We did start with considerably more girls freshman year, but almost all of them dropped out when they realized that the large amount of homework and projects would cut into their evenings and weekends a lot, and when they realized they were literally one class away from a Math minor.

Actually, lots of jobs here

[WindBourne]

They are in small to medium size companies. The large companies will play with hiring contractors, but few are moving their work overseas. The only companies really moving the jobs overseas are monster companies that have enormous IT operations or those that are pure IT companies. MS, IBM, HP, ATT, QWEST, Verizon, etc. are all moving jobs overseas. The reasons vary, and the results more so. Where the large companies have found is that hiring in India is difficult due to the fact that the good ones have already been hired on. Now, the majority are those coming from starter schools and 2 year schools. In addition, Indian law makes firing somebody difficult (as hard as in much of europe). At this time, India is actually worse then hiring in America.
That is why Argentina is catching on. If and when Russia ever gets their act together and create better laws for a business world (and enforces them), then that will be THE place to be.

But even with all that, we will still have plenty of good CS jobs here. But I maintain, that we CSers are better off starting our own companies. Even if you have to do a dozen of them before succeeding.

Re:Bad idea

[Nightlily]

I agree it is insulting. I think programming is essential to a good computer science education. I think maybe the approach should be (and this would help all students) is show that writing code is just part of the process. I'm a programmer and yes I write a lot of code. However I read a lot of design specs, spend a lot time in design meetings, spend time talking to potential users, spend time talking to testers, debugging, etc...

The very idea that somehow I overcome some inherent deficiency to become a programmer is horrible.

For example, I was helping my parents clean out their basement. My parents kept all my report cards, progress reports, etc... I found a progress report from my junior high school programming teacher. The person commented that I was picking up programming faster than the other students and suggested my parents encourage me to go a computer camp or learn a more complex language. My parents dismissed the very idea of me being a programmer. There was no deficiency on my part.

Re:Nerd factor?

[Omnifarious]

I've been on the interviewer side of the table more than once when a woman showed up to be interviewed. In general, the reaction (not in front of her of course) has been to be flabbergasted and pleased that we might actually end up with a girl who was working in the tech side of the business.

We did apply the same standards of hiring both (yes, I said both, it only happened twice, and both times the girl was Asian) times and she made it. Once just scraping by (she didn't care a lot about quality and took criticism very poorly, but she did know how to program fairly well) and the other doing pretty well.

I find this rather depressing. When I worked at Amazon, the only women who were ever hired as programmers were from Asia (most from India). There is some strong cultural force at work here that discourages women from becoming programmers.

I wish I understand what it is that convinces US born women to not become programmers. I don't think it's a harassment issue. That's not something I've especially noticed. Though, since I'm a guy, it's possible it just passed me by.

But, I haven't noticed the bias you speak of. As I said, the places where I've been an interviewer people were really happy that a woman was interviewing. And it wasn't because they wanted to hit on her either. :-)

Growing Pains

[Bluesman]

This is all part of the growing pains of a relatively new, hot field. This too shall pass.

If you can't handle the political correctness, you guys should hop on over to the Electrical Engineering department. There's absolutely no effort to dumb things down to recruit girls here -- the math is about 20 dB more difficult, and there's no way around that.

Besides that, if you do encounter a girl, odds are about 2 to 1 she doesn't even speak English.

So come on over to EE. Nobody cares how socially inept you are here. The nerd factor has been converted to the frequency domain, where it's just lost in the noise.

as a woman programmer...

[butterflysrage]

let me say this... you can change up the university degree all you want and you will not radically change the gender makeup of the student body as that is not where the problem is... it's in the highschools.

The number of girls that are presured by friends, family and even teachers to get out of maths and into the arts and social sciences is crazy. "Math just isn't a good choice for you... how about law? or history?", if this was just from other girls it wouldnt be as bad, but that quote was from my algebra teacher (a course which I got a 90% in dispite his dislike of me). Young girls are actively presured by teachers and adminsistration to avoid maths and science.

If you really want to get more girls into comp sci, stop highschool teachers from telling us what we can and can not do.

Re:Nerd factor?

[Moofie]

Why the normative language about gender preference? Why not design the CS program to attract the most capable potential computer scientists, and not worry too much about what their plumbing arrangements are?

Call me crazy.

As a female CS major...

[zelphie]

I'd be overjoyed to see the percentage of women in my courses get above 10%. But I don't think that changing course content should be the answer, since I don't think it's the problem. Instead, I'd blame:

1.) Lack of any experience of CS in high school. Even in schools that offer AP CS (which mine didn't), isn't it usually an elective that could just as well be filled with a language or second science course or music, etc? Since it's not a required class like math or chemistry, it's pretty easy to graduate from high school without ever even realizing computer science exists... or that you're good at it or like it.
2.) And when you get to college, who wants to have all their courses with just guys? Especially when everyone knows that CS majors are nerds? So why bother seeing if you like it? If everyone there already is a guy, then they must be better at or it something, right? Why else would it be so unbalanced?
3.) Bad advising. When I told mine I wanted to take intro to CS, because I was planning on majoring in chem and thought it might be useful, she told me I should take a humanities course instead, because I'd probably get a better grade. Luckily I decided to take it anyway and liked it enough to change my major.

And now when I try to convince friends to take the intro course (because I thought it was fun... and it could be good to know anyway), my guy friends tend to say that it sounds interesting, while my girl friends usually say something about how they'd probably fail. I think until the perception of who can take CS classes and do well in them changes, changing the curriculum or appearance of the program won't do much.

Re:nerd factor

[deanc]

I realize that there is more to CS than programming, but I would be surprised if theoretical computer science, which is more math intensive, would be that much more appealing

In my experience, women in computer science lean heavily towards theory, where they are over-represented compared to their numbers in CS departments overall. Men in graduate programs tend to heavily dominate the "systems" groups.

I always figured this was because boys grow up "playing with computers" and already have interest in programming, while equally-capable women get into computer science later and, with less already-established interest in programming, get excited about theory.

Re:Nerd factor?

[Dog-Cow]

You don't see it reported on slashdot, but there is actually a push to get more men into nursing. This is not because of a perceived idea of gender-equality, though. It is because there are instances in nursing where men would be better. For example, the average man is stronger than the average woman, and that comes into play with moving patients, or even just moving equipment. Having more men around to do those things is useful. Also, there's the issue of modesty. Many male patients are uncomfortable with the idea of females examing certain portions of their anatomy.

Re:Nerd factor?

[frank_adrian314159]

There is some strong cultural force at work here that discourages women from becoming programmers.

Yes! It's called "higher pay" and it applies to fields of law, medicine, and business. With women generally being smarter and in other fields not needing to interact with as many social retardates, it is clear that there is a cultural imperative to discourage women from programming.

Or maybe it's nonsense like this [feministe.us] or this [bbc.co.uk] coming from the IT world that keeps them out. Who knows?

Re:Nerd factor?

[kripkenstein]

Maybe it's just me, but I see no reason why people need to be recruited into compsci. There's plenty of interest in it already. Should there be more men going to beauty school just to balance out the demographics a bit?

From an idealistic point of view you are 100% right. Why should we care what the demographics are, if people are free to choose what they want? And why should we care more about CS than about beauty school? So, in theory, you are right. But in practice you are wrong, I am afraid.

Human beings do care about demographics. If you live in a country with red-haired and brown-haired people, and all the red-haired people do menial labor, whereas all the brown-haired people have cushy desk jobs with salaries 100x higher, you have a problem. Even if there is no discrimination, you still have a problem. People aren't rational creatures, they will perceive such a situation as discriminatory, and you will quickly have social unrest, and worse. Furthermore, such a situation also breeds some forms of discrimination - not intentional ones, but ones just as effective. Brown-haired people won't have the contacts to get into desk-job schools, and will probably feel quite odd even if they do get in. This is a self-perpetuating system, in other words. Yes, it might 'right' itself in time, but meanwhile you have, as I said, social unrest. It is just better, from a practical point of view, to nudge the system in the more balanced direction.

This is a realistic, not an idealistic point of view. In fact, it even violates some ethical decrees: nudging red-haired people into desk-job school means that some brown-haired people will not get in, who otherwise would have. This is not fair to them, no doubt. But no social policy is fair towards everyone. Helping red-haired people get into desk-job school is probably the fairest overall.

Re:Bad idea

[Jtheletter]

They are talking about admissions criteria, in the context of high school computing backgrounds. Attracting talent that may or may not have extensive programming experience, rather than focusing just on the people who enter college with a lot of programming under their belt

It sounds all well and good when you put it like that, but as an undergrad at CMU in the ECE program (which shares a lot of classes with CS kids, and I had a lot of CS friends) what we witnessed in reality was: the program was dumbed down for girls to get in. This was reflected in many more incoming students not having a clue about how to use a computer, let alone program it, and a lot of female CS majors changing majors by sophomore year. I'm not being mysogenistic here, trust me, CS guys were THRILLED at the prospect of more girls in the program, but it didn't pan out that way. Caveat being this was 1999-2002, I have no knowledge of how it's working now, but in the first 3 years we witnessed lower quality students and more CS degree program dropouts.

Re:Great for the gene pool

[hobbesmaster]

The real question is why are all the women in engineering (at my school) signing up for Civil, Mechanical and Chemical (more women than men in CME from what I can tell) instead of Electrical, Computer and CS? (CS is in the College of Engineering here)

If I had to pull numbers out of thin air, I'd say that approximately 1/3 of MEs and around 1/2 of CEs are female. This compares with 1/20 or so in EE and maybe 1/10 to 1/5 in CS. (again, at my school - and I may be wrong on the CE/ME numbers)

Why? I bet the women learning about building bridges are capable of learning control theory or algorithms if they were interested - why aren't they interested?

Of course, most engineers on /. will take exception to the lumping in of CS with all the engineering disciplines (ie, ones that you can be a PE in), I generally do as well, but I think its interesting because it takes the same "kind" of person to declare any one of these majors - you have to like math, and thats the same for a real CS curriculum.

A CS Chick's Opinion

[Rachel Lucid]

As a CS major, I found out quickly that a LOT of the boys had more programming know-how than I did -- and I swept the floor with the idiots I put up with in AP CS! In both classes I was the 'Odd Girl Out', but I quickly went from one of the smarter students to the midrange once the pool widened.

I CAN program, I just sort of prefer to program when I can instantly see what I'm doing; i.e. interfaces and website programming as opposed to engines and threads. Admittedly I've got a hard liberal arts slant going on, which affects at least some of my work.

The problem is that the CS programs at most places are aimed for a VERY narrow subsection, both of boys and of girls, and this serves nobody's best interests. Ironically, it's also why people are looking for 'More Women' in the hopes they'll crack the nut. Georgia Tech's recent broadening of their CS degree with the 'Threads' program is an interesting approach by allowing for a more customizable education -- and theoretically open the door to more people in general (not just women) who might be scared off by the narrower curriculum -- but I don't think it's enough.

Re:Dilute to taste.

[innosent]

Exactly, as an employer looking to hire people as programmers (which would be the majority of the jobs looking for CS degrees), you now have people with a degree that means nothing. There are very few positions (professors, researchers) where theory is more important than actually being able to write code. I say we should go in the completely opposite direction, with more architecture and programming classes (using architecture to have people actually understand what they are doing, and why a certain code block is efficient/inefficient on the hardware it is running on), and only one or two survey courses on algorithms and theory, with more available as electives. CS should be an Engineering degree, as it is in my school (UCF), not a liberal arts degree. I don't see many women in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical, or Computer Engineering either, should we stop building cars, satellites, and circuits too? Of course, 28% seems extremely high to me, as my experience has been that there are far less than that in my classes, at least in the later stages (1 each in my senior/grad classes).

Re:My own CMU story

[torokun]

LOL.

Not too far from the truth, at least as far as I'm concerned. I went there from 94-98. There were about 10 girls out of 110 students in CS. By the time we graduated, there were about 6, I think. A bunch of people (not just girls) switched out to ECE for something easier. It was hard.

We had our share of smelly people. One was really bad and only slept like every 3rd night. I slept very little, but did shower. I hacked an asshole's machine and messed with his head a bunch. I also messed with my friends who usually had X set up to accept any command to open a window or play a sound, usually from alt.tasteless or whatever.

I think it was great that the people there really wanted to be there, and brought all their varied experiences with them. Toward the end, people showed up who wanted money. They switched to teaching the intro and data structures classes in Java instead of C/C++. Luckily, I got the old-skool experience. I don't like a lot of these changes...

BTW, I met my wife there. She was actually hanging around our dorm. ;) And not even a CS student. When I met her I had a shaved head, was wearing a yukata, and was tossing a plaster penis back and forth with a friend.

Re:Nerd factor?

[reachums]

well as a chick in IT I have to say I'm moderately offended. Did you ever have any girls in any of your CS classes? most of us just don't care. Honestly, we've been surrounded with guys most of our career, we're used to it.

And would it kill all men everywhere to watch language? don't call all women bitches and hos and were all good. and I'm sure some men would rather the cussing be kept to a minimum. Honestly, as long as you don't refer to me as *insert derogatory term for a woman here* I could care less.

Try working in an environment that's all women! Dear God it's terrible. Everyone is catty to each other calling other women Cunts behind their backs, it's just as bad with all women as it is with all men!! that's why it's good to mix it up, we are all on better behavior when the other sex is present. Why do you think that's a bad thing????

I agree that women who pull the layer card give all of us a bad name. But sometimes they are justified, don't make sexual suggestions to her, don't touch her inappropriately, don't offer to share porn with her. it's mostly just common sense stuff guys! CS girls are notoriously cool about all the stupid shit that goes on in a CS/IT office filled with guys, at least all the one's I know.

Re:Nerd factor?

[reachums]

so, you're a guy, good to know.

girls in my high school were always discouraged from taking computer classes in favor of takeing psychology or business. I asked if I could take classes at the local college for computer science (not an uncommon practice amongst my male friends) I was told that I could not, despite the fact that I had enough credits to graduate a semester early. I was repeatedly told to take a business class because that would be more "useful". I had one ally in the whole faculty and she couldn't help me because she wasn't my assigned counselor.

In a society where everyone is encouraged to go in to a tech field and (surprise surprise) there are more equal numbers entering the field, doesn't it strike you that if we encouraged people to follow their passions they would follow them? In the US people are encouraged to go into business, hence, a fairly equal number of male and female business majors. I was discouraged from going into CS, there were other girls interested and they all bailed and became teachers and nurses(noble professions to be sure), but they had originally wanted to go into CS and if they had been encouraged to follow through with that, there would be a few more women in CS instead of a few more women who are nurses and teachers because that was what they were told good little girls became.

Re:Dilute to taste.

[VENONA]

"CS should be an Engineering degree"

Strongly disagree. It should be made more of a science, not less of one. Computing is going to become increasingly vital for many things. CS should be where the basic reseach happens.

I'm not arguing against better programs which focus on programming--algorithm selection, design patterns, architecture (machine and software), etc. There is a rather large divide between science and engineering. CS already has science in the name of the program. Use it for that. For the rest--stay with engineering terms, such as Software Engineering or similar.

If CS becomes an engineering course, where is the science supposed to happen? How do you train the next generation of researchers? Do we have to create a program called Really Computer Science? Of course we'd immediately need a course within the program called Identification of Serious Semantic Suckage.

Re:Why not call it Math?

[mechsoph]

A bunch of lower division math courses do not a math degree make.

Who said lower division? You take out "Advanced C Programming" and replace it with "Advanced Algorithms" or some such. There's more to math than Calculus.

I don't know where you go to school

Purdue

CS - programming = a few lower division math and science courses. I went to the University of California, and the highest math class CS majors had to take was the lowest upper division math class offered, a "bridge course" on proof techniques and set theory (which, when I took it, most of the CS majors managed to fail).

Students here take through some level of calculus (I don't know the exact requirement. I'm also engineering and they require more calc than CS) and Linear Algebra. They also take a discrete math and and an algorithms course. FA's are covered in Compilers. "Theory of Computation" (FA, PDA's, Turing machines, more proofs) is an elective.

CS may have grown out of the math departments at Stanford and Berkeley, but these days (lamentably) a CS degree appears to be equivalent to a vocational programming degree from a technical school like DeVry. Seriously, it doesn't take much to learn Java, C++, assembly or whatever.

Agreed. Some of the stuff that passes for CS is pathetic (Ball State is an example close to home).

The abstract algorithm development stuff with proofs and rigour that used to be the core of a CS degree is mainly taught in graduate school these days.

But that's all that's left when you take out the programming. You can make a strong argument that CS is just a branch of discrete mathematics, and if you believe Djikstra, computers are only incidental to CS. My point was that a CS degree is a combination of discrete math and it's application (programming). If some schools want to separate the two, fine, but maybe it would be better off putting the math in the math department rather than doing something just to get women into computers.

Earning Power

[Dareth]

Currently there is probably more earning power and demand in traditional fields for women such as nursing than Computer Science. As our population ages, more and more nurses will be needed. Why so much effort to attract women to a career path that many feel is in decline?

I changed majors from Radiological Technologies to Computer Science. I enjoyed the science and theory behind Rad Tech, but not the actual practice of it. I really enjoy being a System Administrator. There are still times when I wonder if I made the right decision in regards to quality of life issues, and pay.

Women also tend to seek more flexible employment so they can balance career and family. The traditional jobs for CS graduates such as programming and systems administrations are not very forgiving in regards to life issues.

Re:Nerd factor?

[Shadowlore]

We're talking about a 1:2 ratio in a situation where there is no identified genetic reason one gender would dominate over another so much, and that ratio is not consistent in other countries. That leads to reasonably suspect that the reasons are cultural and can be improved. If they can be improved through reasonable attempts to recognize the needs and desires of different groups, there's no good reason not to.

What scientifically analyzed and credible research has shown that the more "equal" the ratio of men to women or women to men in a given endeavor (other than reproduction of course) is quantitatively "better"?

Consider this.

You are arguing that the field of CS would be somehow better off in capability and ability of more women were in it. What is that implying? It implies that women are better at it. You aren't saying we need MORE people in general, but more women. If more women would improve the field itself then the only way they can do that is if they are inherently better at it. More of the same is not a recipe for improvement. Now, women may actually have an inherent advantage to CS over men. But if you believe so I think you should just say so instead of hinting at it as you do here. And then hold yourself up to your asserted standard of scientifically valid and correct studies that show it.

This isn't about making the field of CS better. It is about nannies who want to feel better about themselves.

Re:nerd factor

[Frumious Wombat]

They're moving away from letting people into the program based upon their previous programming experience, which is different from moving the entire program.

On a second note, this is not a bad idea, as you've probably noticed that a good deal of software out there, while written by what appear to be otherwise skillful people, is virtually unusuable. Undocumented, hostile interface, brittle, difficult to modify/extend/repair, and otherwise apparently written by sociopaths on a caffeine hangover. What they're trying to overcome is a culture that has grown around a field that keeps people who are interested in the material, but not in the sociopathy, out.

You'll also notice the article points out that they're emphasizing the applications that computing is integral to, rather than computing for its own sake. Once again, there is a population, talented, but differently (or when talking about CSci programs, at all) socialized, who wish to do things using computing, and who don't wish to to spend their time on Linux-distro p*ng contests. This actually bodes well for many fields in which computing is applied, as we may be able to get better communication between (for example) chemists and comp-scis, yielding applications that allow us to do our work more efficiently, while giving an intellectual challenge and sense of accomplishments to the compscis, i.e. they built something and it's being used.

This attitude that everything is being dumbed-down to allow women in is the same one you hear in physics, medicine, or similar traditionally all-male fields, when what's really being requested is that a bunch of prima-donna alpha-males (and beta-males with delusions of alphacity) are being asked to grow personalities and interact a little more humanely with their colleagues who just want to do their work, and not compete for the gold-plated sphincter award. And yes, I have met women who compete in those fields under the old rules, and you guys aren't happy when you find out what a pair of brass sharp elbows look like from the other side.

One Women's Perspective

[Dr_Bliss]

I did a CS degree in the mid 90's. I was one of 3 women who graduated out of a class of 60-odd. Most girls dropped out in the first year but to be perfectly honest it was because the CS major course was deadly dull. I wanted to do research in CS so I stayed.

The course I attended was a complete dirge until the final year when the active research staff began feeding material into the optional modules. Suddenly it came alive. These people were passionate about what they were doing and were literally changing the world. This along with the opportunity to design, develop and manage a research-based project of my own and I was hooked. I went straight into a PhD and loved every minute of it. The people I worked with were great. I was treated royally. Interestingly there was higher proportion of females to males at PhD level.

I subsequently lectured at a couple of institutions hoping to encourage more women into the field. I had a little success but to be honest, until we get some more challenging and creative CS programmes girls are going to continue to stay away in droves.

There are too few women in the system to affect the required change - and there is one less since I quit (academic politics - yawnsville!!)

Re:Great for the gene pool

[Anonymous Coward]

"de-emphasizing programming" IS changing things. "uses and applications for computers than just the programming of them" is vague, but one could easily see this dumbing things down.

While programming is just part of CS it is where the rubber hits the road. You can have all the theory and warm fuzzy stuff down, but if you can't create an end application it all goes to waste.

I'm all for anyone and everyone going into CS, but changing it to fit what THEY think women can handle strikes me as sexist.

Not to mention salaries are falling in the industry. Women should note that they are being asked to take over a field that men are now LEAVING and employers are now PAYING LESS for. That strikes me as sexist.

Re:My own CMU story

[Kissy Monster]

Funny, and it points directly to the actual issue.

As a female and a minority computer scientist (non-Asian, by the way), I find the article both intriguing and disappointing. I understand the dilemma - it is a real one. But promoting CS while leaving out a major component is a mistake. The goal is not to dumb-down the curriculum, but to catch the female's interest.

Females are loosing interest at an earlier age because a stereotypical CS is a male figure who has no social skills, unclean, and very awkward as you clearly pointed out. Regardless of what anyone says stereotypes do make a BIG impact. As someone who has been stereotyped many times in many ways, whenever someone finds that I don't fit their stereotype, they are genuinely very surprised. Honestly, that's to be expected. In many ways, I actually enjoy smashing people's stereotypes. Women have enough stereotypes to deal with in the first place (whiny, overly-sensitive, freaks of nature...). Some just don't feel like putting up with anymore than they have to. Those of us in the field already either don't care or have already learned to adapt and handle those who have the stereotypes.

I believe the answer is more successful female computer scientists and engineers showing how they live their lives and how much they enjoy doing what they do and what they can accomplish with the knowledge that they have. The answer is not to let people believe that programming is not a major aspect of CS. It is a major aspect - one that has many rewards.

The point in all of this should be to show people that being a nerd can have some awesome and fulfilling results without being stinky and anti-social. There are females nerds out there - I'm one (and I smell pretty good). We need to work on not making them feel more out of place than they already feel. It's not a problem with CS. It's the PERCEPTION of those who are in CS. Thank God we did not all have the aforementioned CMU experience... RedHat Rocks!!

Re:Dear GP, sorry for this, it is nothing pesonal

[docrmc]

I don't find it offending, but I will have to disagree. The idea i not to remove programming, but not to let it be the sole feature.... You started off so well there that I rather was not expecting the finish. Your statements about the confusion between CS and Soft. Eng certainly ring true, though. Coupled with Dr. Faustus, it addresses the matter quite neatly.

The problem comes with the "omg, ponies" attitude, bigtomrodney and naturation displayed so nicely. We're not talking about teaching women programmers to code more realistic looking flowers in video game environments here, and we're not "moving math away from doing math problems". That isn't analogous to what the article addressed at all.

Let me say right here that, as a woman, either of those things would offend me. I don't believe that things should be inherently woman (or anyone) -friendly, but I like "level" playing fields. I am not for necessarily making things more butch, anymore than I am for making thing more perty - pink DS lites, Razrs, guitars.. flowery, touchy-friendly games... annoy the fuck out of me, but there should be that option. However, it is quite probable that things will have a more "masculine slant", or to be misrepresented, and for CS, this can result in the low enrollment of women.

The article is talking about the misrepresentation of what CS is; that if it were to move the emphasis - i.e the projected image of what CS constitutes - away from _simply_ programming, it could only benefit the levels of female interest. Indeed, the only language I bothered to certify in is Java, so I've understandable bias. But if all the AP exam is, is Java... then it needs to be redone. Is the GRE CS exam all programming? Heck no. It's wide-ranging, as CS is a broad thing.

Let me add that, what I find even worse than misguiding those who are about to enroll, is guiding the enrolled student down the programming path, giving them a sense of "this is what the industry wants". I see it in my own university and its effects in future courses of study. e.g. I discovered in the first week of a class, this Sunday, that another female CS student and I applied to the same MSc. program at the same university. I got accepted the week they processed the apps, she is still waiting. The difference? She was advised to do VB, C++, Java, Software Analysis...; I did what I wanted. What I wanted happened to be Networking, Programming, Databases, Security. This makes the article's point about diversity in CS quite nicely. It is the diversity in CS, the ubiquity, that needs to be emphasized.


And for the record.. my bass and electric r black and electric blue; the only flower i want to see is if the Hitman is disguised as a flowery delivery man; and, most of the geeks I know stare at me over a pair of Windys and try to kick my ass, chicas included.

Pocket protectors and stereotypes be damned. Thank you very much.

Re:Dear GP, sorry for this, it is nothing pesonal

[TheTapani]

>> CS is NOT all about programming, there are countless branches of Computer Science were programming has *nothing* to do

> Name one. I bet there's some programming involved in there.

Bet taken.

In our department (one of) the largest research groups are into type theory. Also hard computing science fields like, complexity theory, computability and (say quantum) algorithms require little or no programming.

> Sure, you need the theory as well. If you've got an algorithm that you think is always more clever than the currently accepted best - or that breaks something currently thought of as unbreakable, etc, you need to prove it mathematically. But a lot of people will think that you're probably pulling a fast one if you don't have actual data to back it up, so you probably should implement it.

I am a Ph.D student in algorithms, and my (and most of my research groups) view is the exactly opposite. Proofs are the good stuff, proofs are what you want, and by proving facts is how a/the science advances. Having benchmarks demonstrate an inability to prove/formulate claims, or indicate that you are actually studying something else than computing science. Also benchmarks have the old problem of being easy to tweak to indicate a more favourable result than might be expected. //T

Re:Bad idea

[Jtheletter]

When you say you're class of '00 I assume that measn you graduated in 2000, except that the lowered CS admission standards I'm talking about weren't implemented until after I was attending, and I'm class of '02. So the admissions standards you were accepted on would have been from 1996/97, a few years before the changes we're talking about. And while the cirriculum was certainly not dumbed down, I'd say the general level of programming competence of CS students entering with the lower standards were, both by definition, and in practice. Now of course, this doesn't mean these people were idiots, or guaranteed to fail, but failure rates certainly increased when people who previously would have been rejected were allowed into a very rigorous program. I have plenty of respect for anyone who graduates from the CMU CS/Engineering programs, or hell just about any of the colleges, and I'm curious to see how their experiment in admissions criteria is playing out half a decade later. Still, at the time it was a big topic of discussion for my group and we were rather upset that standards we were held to were lowered just to attract women, it seemed to us not only would that hurt the overall program, but it also sent a bad message to female applicants, that standards needed to be lowered just for them. That's insulting no matter what your skill level IMHO.
And it also seemed to us that anyone who was interested enough in CS at CMU should have made some effort to have a programming background, otherwise why should they expect to get into one of the toughest CS programs (at the time, not sure how it ranks now) in the country just because they were motivated and "had an interest" in programming? Yes, it's sad that otherwise excellent students were being turned away because they didn't have enough computer background, but it's not like seats were going empty because of this, there were plenty of other equally motivated and exceptional students who *did* make programming a priority who were trying to get in.
I do understand that striking a balance between hyper-focused programmers and people with broader interests is healthy for the university, but why then should the key programming standards be lowered, why not raise the requirements for having a broad range of interests? The answer is because then they still wouldn't get more girls in the program. So what it looks like is admissions standards were lowered specifically to allow more girls into the program. Equality of the sexes doesn't mean that a 1:1 gender ratio is always to be expected in all cases, sometimes other factors affect that. Most likely it's other influences from a much earlier age that result in fewer women being interested or motivated towards CS, so by the time you get to the college level it's late in the game to correct for that. Does it mean we shouldn't? No, certainly the university should fill admission slots for women as a priority if that is their aim, but making the pool of qualified applicants larger by lowering the bar doesn't seem like the right way to do it. Ideally of course, it is programs and mindsets outside of the university's control that need to be altered to increase the pool of qualified female CS applicants - more programming in grade schools, and cultural shifts are required. I think the rise of geek culture as something more respectible (we make the world's technology afterall) is going to help this in general, and constant exposure to computers at an early age should also help as well.