Why the Widening Gender Gap In Computer Science? 1563
ruheling writes "From yesterday's New York Times: ' What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?' In many US universities, over the past decade, there has been deliberate effort to integrate and encourage women and girls to get more involved in the 'hard' sciences, engineering, and math. However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going on here, folks?"
Stability! (Score:3, Interesting)
Because of the family obligations that women often end up with (or perhaps value more than men), stability in a career is often a big factor for women. However, globalization has made it a more volatile field. Further, during downturns, new software development tends to slow or halt, further hitting one during recessions.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
"white males aren't the minority"
Actually, in much of the world (US included) males are a minority [wikipedia.org]. Meaning white females most likely make up the largest group in the US and much of the western world.
Dot... (Score:4, Interesting)
> However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the
> opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate
> degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report
> that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going
> on here, folks?
A hint: what happened in March 2000?
Undergrad vs PosGrad vs Real World (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:5, Interesting)
So that's obviously the case, but the point of studying the topic is: "why?". It's also important to determine if this is by their own choice or if women are subtly coerced into their disinterest.
I helped out with FIRST LEGO League at Georgia Tech a few years back. FIRST LEGO is a robotics competition for middle-school students using LEGO automation parts to perform various tasks. There were tons of girls participating at all levels, and it was pretty noticeable how different the demographics were between the middle school competitors and the typical college-age engineering students at Gatech. Thus, it's worth asking whether girls seem to lose interest in engineering as they get older, and if so, why?
If it's purely biological (the parts of the brain that determine interests are gender-specific), then so be it. If, however, it's due to upbringing and society's pressures, then it's a topic worth discussing. Indeed, it is probably desirable to change it. Why limit the pool of intellect in a field to men? You're potentially losing 50% of the problem solving skills, assuming men and women are equally capable.
Here's my view (Score:4, Interesting)
I've taken two classes at a major university so that I can get my degree finally. In the most recent class, the teacher has been downright sexist. Crude jokes that come out badly because of his broken-ass english and a horrible sense of what's proper and what's not. I've only gone to class 4 times this semester... the first two classes, and the two subsequent tests. During each of the first two classes I saw a woman get up and leave the classroom after a horribly sexist joke. It may be that I recognize this because I've been in the workforce for several years and have gone through "sexual harassment training" or whatever, but I doubt it. This guy is creepy, and he's outright lewd.
So yeah, I can imagine that women don't want any part of the field if the people training the next generation of workers are this bad.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"don't guys check for rings anymore?"
Why bother? With divorce and infidelity so popular these days, who cares about a piece of metal on your finger?
BTW, I'm not the harassing type. My workplace seems mercifully free of that and reasonably well balanced (for a software house). Just my observation on modern society.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The girls are smarter (Score:5, Interesting)
In terms of money, that seems to be true.
I've recently read a Groklaw article that mentioned a salary dispute between two lawyers. Both claimed to usually charge $400 per hour. AFAIK even highly sought after IT consultants rarely get away with that kind of fees.
"boys play with trucks" mentality (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
How many times must this be said? Biology plays a role, yes, but mostly it's money. Computing, post-graduate science, and engineering just don't compensate people well for the lifestyle sacrifices (long working hours, little exercise) required. Women prefer good pay and healthy lifestyles more where men prefer interesting work more. Thus...
Re:The brainy girls are going to med school (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Obvious.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm fairly sure there was a dilbert comic on that a while back which I can't find...
As for your point: would that also be a reason why there are so few males going into nursing? Being uncertain whether someone wants to talk to you because they want to be friendly just because or whether it's partly because of your gender must be terrible.
Try picking subjects which your male work colleges have no interest in and talk about them constantly to see how many get bored and stop trying to talk to you, anyone left either has very dull hobbies or is just interested in your tits.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. Dot-com crash, combined with more general computer familiarity. CS is no longer seen as a lucrative degree, not even to the extent it was before the dot-com boom. And computers are now commonplace, so the field in general has lost some of its apparent exclusivity. Those attracted to CS for money or for exclusive knowledge are not entering the field anymore, leaving the hardcore geeks, who are alas mostly male.
Mostly foreign exchange students.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Looking around at the CS students at UNM I see that most ~75% are foreign exchange students. Almost all of them are male. Of the other 25% only a few are female. I think the stats are being skewed by the shear number of foreign exchange students. Also, the number of US born students in CS is dropping.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
If by "minority" you mean "underprivileged class", then maybe women still qualify.
All the women in my family would laugh at that statement since they've all graduated from college, rejected multiple job opportunities and then stayed home to raise their children. Also, I know of at least 2 syndicated female columnists that would laugh at that statement, but for very different reasons.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
One girl to a dozen guys, you're going to get hit on, a LOT
Really? This is about the ratio in my undergrad courses, but that doesn't mean you need to socialise with your peers. Most of the people I knew socially as an undergraduate were English students (now they seem to be linguists or physicists). It's not like you get much of a chance to hit on anyone in lectures, since you're meant to be paying attention to the lecturer, and once you're outside lectures the gender ratio is the same across campus, it isn't tied to your subject.
The "OMFG BOOBS! Let's go talk to them" effect creates a really hostile environment
You know, not every time a guy talks to a girl is a come-on. Generally I would talk to people outside lectures who were standing by themselves looking bored, or who were part of a group already engaging in an interesting conversation. Whether they were male or female didn't really enter into it, but if you want to interpret this as hostility then there's a good chance you might be part of the problem.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Excellent point.
I had a female friend in freshman engineering who fits your description. She followed engineering because that's what her dad did, and also because she was talented in that area. However by sophomore year it was obvious she didn't belong. She was getting good grades, but she had lost interest in engineering and stopped coming to class.
I don't know what she's doing now, but knowing her personality she probably went with Health or possibly Premed, because she was more people-oriented.
Threads like this make me sad. (Score:4, Interesting)
And in other countries there are many female engineers. My mother worked with a Ukranian woman who thought it odd that engineering was considered a "male" profession here, rather than a female profession as it was back home. Most of the women I do see in engineering are of Asian descent. You don't think, just maybe, that we're doing a crappy job as a culture of encouraging American kids (not just girls, but even boys too) to get excited about and be interested in this stuff?
I don't deny that women think differently from men. But I do question the suggestion that this means women can't or won't do engineering or science. I question why engineering or science can't handle the way women think. It's not a matter of dumbing it down; it's a matter of figuring out how to leverage diverse ways of thinking about a problem. A group of people looking at a problem in different ways is more beneficial than one geek sitting in a cube doing what he thinks is best. A group of men is good. A group of men and women is better.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, what can those of us who are not creepy jerks do about it? We could step in and say "Hey quit being a creepy jerk," which might make her feel less capable because we're patronizing and protecting her instead of treating her like an adult. Alternatively, we could advise her to go to HR, which isn't always an option and would probably socially alienate her.
Happily, I've never had to deal with this. I just sometimes worry because, being an introverted nerd, I'm a bit socially inept, and sometimes that comes off as being creepy.
My Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:5, Interesting)
You personally might not encourage traditional gender roles, but the culture around you, including friends, relatives and the media, probably does.
That might be true, but we noticed the differences since long before they were old enough to even have a gender identity. How could a child take clues from society about his or her gender roles before even knowing his or her own gender?
Foreign effect? (Score:3, Interesting)
At least when I took CS (a decade ago) at a big middling midwest state school, there were very few US-born females. Classes tended to be about 2/5s US-born males (in-state), 2/5s foreign men (Asia, India, South America), and about 1/5 foreign women. By senior year, US-born females were one-per-class at most.
Is there a general slowdown in foreign attendance? Is there something sending fewer foreign females? Economic slowdown meaning fewer women are get the chance? Foreign universities getting more female-friendly? (I know Korean women who said they'd never get an academic job back home). Are there other degree programs attracting foreign females?
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair, she's a whackjob, and one who belongs to the fringe-end of evangelical churches.
Again, I'm not making a judgment on her (or anyone else in the race) on religious grounds, but that's a fair one to make, if you are.
Oddly, I followed the news pretty closely this past election and I've yet to see any single evidence that Palin was a "whackjob", religious or not. Ok, so, lets see what I can find...
Palin A "Whack Job" [huffingtonpost.com]. Ok, some some McCain adviser has a chip on their shoulder because she went off script? Because they think she's a diva? Because she talked about her record, instead of McCain's? Because she exploded on the scene in popularity, causing some excessive gimmicky crap to be produced? Because she said Africa was a country? Because the Republican party spent a recorded $150,000 on her cloths (with unsubstantiated rumors of having spent more)? That her daughter got pregnant, against her best advice?
I'm still looking for some decent evidence of her being this "crazy" person that everyone wants to try to make her out to be. Because none of the above passes the smell test, unless you think Barak Obama also believes America has 57 states. That Palin can control what her "fans" do. And that Hilary hasn't spent $150,000 or more on cloths, either, for a campaign. And that Mrs. Obama can't be criticized for campaigning for her husband but it's 'right' to attack and criticize the daughter of Palin's who's not even involved in the election.
I just can't see anything other than desperate attempts to try and sling mud at someone so new that there's little (real) dirt on her (yet). So, what's all this talk about Whack Job? What could people be so afraid of, except her being a powerful Republican ticket in the future? Have the Democrats no faith in their leaders and principles?
Early popularity in life considered harmful (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe there are two reasons. The first one (already discussed here) is interest. I did not study computer science to get a job -- I did it because I couldn't see myself NOT doing it. I know very few girls who get excited about mechanical things earlier in life (I spent elementary and middle school daydreaming about technology...female daydreams at that age seem to be different). I do not know how to change this.
The second one is more subtle: being really good at anything requires thousands of hours devoted to it with no apparent reward. If what you are devoted to is math or programming, it really helps to be unpopular for at least a period in your life, especially earlier. The same is not true if you are devoted to theater, chemistry, or biology, which you can practice in a more social environment. I think it is easier to be unpopular as teenage boy than it is as a teenage girl.
[this, of course, is a male point of view...I would love to hear the other side]
Professors with Dinosaur ideas.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a son who, at 2, would bite his graham cracker into a vaguely gun shape and then shoot you with it. He also has two little toy dinosaurs. The bigger one is named "dinosaur" and the smaller one "lunch". Can you guess their relationship? The girls in the house just don't do this sort of thing. I can't quite quantify what it is they do, but they have personalities that just strike me as distinctly more girl-like, even at very young ages.
Another boy in the household wanted a 'bad-guy-toy' at age 2. He didn't even know what it was, yet, but he knew he wanted one and spent fifteen minutes trying to make his mom understand that it was a gun he was asking for. And he'd been raised on almost no TV, as well (at least to that point). This same boy, now 7, acts like a goofy showoff whenever any new female is in the house (his age or older). When a new male is in the house, he starts playing hitting and tackling games, like he's trying to assert dominance. He clearly has no idea why he's doing what he's doing, or even that he is doing it, but somewhere deep in the prehistoric part of his brain he's attracting mates and asserting dominance. Its cute, in a disturbing sort of way.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
My friends who are men in the same situation as your friend have more often than not stuck it out even if they didn't enjoy it as much as they'd like. This is because they knew they were good at it and it would make them more money than jobs they might prefer. The bottom line (in more ways than one) is that allows them to be more marketable to females.
An interesting book that talks a lot about all this stuff is The Myth Of Male Power [amazon.com].
Re:Here's an idea (Score:3, Interesting)
If we start marketing CS degree as a stepping stone to interesting careers and not just as a quick route to a cubicle farm somewhere, women will be interested. We need project managers with people skills who understand programming, we need UI designers who are familiar with the underlying technology, we need architects who know how to get management support for good quality initiatives etc.
I do have a CS degree but have always found programming mostly boring. I know how to do it and after graduating have taught myself a couple of new languages, but I'm not a programmer at heart. Thus I don't usually do coding, I do computer and network security.
Re:Anecdotal Analysis, coming right up! (Score:2, Interesting)
While few of them are US Citizens, over 50% of our IT department is female. Water cooler conversations are more likely to involve baby pictures than hit points. It helps that the company has generous work-from-home policies, female support in management, and generally doesn't require sleeplessness or caffeine addiction.
If anything, this proves the statistics - our two companies balance out to get a true percentage that's higher than 5% but nowhere near equal.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
STRAWMAN ARGUMENT:
I never said women are "only" interested in pink-collar fields... please stop putting words into my mouth I did not say.
It's sarcasm, not a strawman, and I was paraphrasing not just the attitudes of the previous century, but several major court decisions - women were not allowed to tend bar, for instance, due to their innate weaknesses that might damage their constitutions when "shocked" by drunken patrons.
I said that when you peer into the Health & Human Development classes, they are dominated by 80-90% women. And similarly engineering is dominated by 80-90% men. At no time did I use the term "only". It does not apply to either major.
Instead I'd like an answer of why the HHD major only has ~10% men. Are men being suppressed by the female gender?
Yes, clearly the gender with a historical lack of political power is the one suppressing the other. No, really, patriarchy harms both genders by narrowing choice - men are steered away from HHD, just as women are steered away from engineering. Here's a question - which major leads to the career that pays more, on average?
Or is there some other mechanism at work? I suspect it's lack of interest by men in that career; similarly I suspect there's a general lack of interest by women in engineering. Making this observation does NOT make me a misogynist.
No, recognizing gender discrimination just shows that you have your eyes open... Saying "why can't people just accept it" makes you a misogynist.
Nerdy girls get bored too Re:Obvious.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Completely anecdotal: my wife has a CS degree. And she still doesn't care as much about the electronics and such as I do. I can't get her excited about upgrading the media center PC (damnit). She is a good programmer, but that's all the further interest she has in it.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:2, Interesting)
That certain part of the population I talked about before loves America like a child loves a parent. Their lashing out is the source of the label "The Blame America First Crowd" because the other group, the mature one that recognizes and tries to correct flaws, was making an honest attempt at understanding what happened to try to prevent it from happening again.
I would also advise you take a look at your reaction and evaluate it in the light of this assessment.
I'm English, not American and I've had surreal conversations with Americans who have never left their country and who claim that their country is worse than China for human rights for example. Or is solely responsible for all of the worlds problems, particularly those in the Middle East. In a sense it's a sort of inverted nationalism. Nationalists think their country is always right. Most people can see that this is not the case and start to question their countries actions which is healthy. A small but irritatingly vocal minority end up believing their country is always wrong. Blame America First is not an unfair label for these people.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
...behavior such as men choosing engineering over teaching and vice versa is demonstrably *not* because of biological differences.
Please demonstrate.
I am skeptical and would honestly love to see any data.
Why women left CS (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a very simple reason to this:
In the United State outsourcing has diven many people out of the Computer Science area. The developing nations where many of those outsourced jobs have gone still have women in many ways as second class citizen.
Enrollment has tanked in the US for an industry that is consistently being driven over seas to nations where women have a considerably more up-hill battle for quality educational opportunities.
It's that simple.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Obvious.... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is real sociological research that overwhelmingly shows that this happens universally within two generations. Even the most stalwartly entrepreneurial immigrants who reproduce end up with grandchildren who want it all, want it now, and don't believe that they should have to work for it.
Unfortunately, I don't see any rigorous research on the topic at hand. The anecdotal evidence of mostly male CS (and math) students has statistics to back it up, but no cause and effect beyond the shared belief that guys like Math and girls like English.
I'm personally way more language-oriented, but when it came time to choose what to study, computers seemed obvious. I had to enforce discipline to stay on the math, but programming and systems studies were just plain fun.
I was, and still am, just very curious about it. I like knowing exactly what computers are doing, and I often reconfirm my knowledge because it's still miraculous to me. I can see the parallels in other systems, e.g., biological, social, etc., but it's computing that motivates me to continue to learn.
I don't know any women who feel this way, although I do know of a few. I think it's the way we're wired, starting with the prenatal testosterone bath that males get in our twenty-sixth week of development and reinforced by social mores.
Re:Nerdy girls get bored too Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That make sense, but when I change the subject to music or movies, then the women suddenly pay attention. So it's not me. It's the subject.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Untrue. I have one child of each gender. Each with complete access to a full range of toys from dolls to trucks to lego bricks.
Each has naturally gravitated towards stereotype gender roles. Even though we've gone out of our way to keep everything in their lives as gender-neutral as possible.
Even with access to all the same toys, games, and movies.
It's not what I expected.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it would be wonderful to teach the biblical theory: flat earth sitting on a firmament; with the sun planets and stars under a dome of water, .... and slowly work through why these ideas were rejected.
I had a teacher who actually did precisely that over the course of a school year in junior high; used the changes in scientific understanding to illustrate the importance of challenging things and continually questioning accepted belief. Basically, the entire gist of his class was the importance of looking at the world around you and asking 'why' rather than blindly accepting what others tell you.
He got in some trouble for not sticking blindly to a textbook, unsurprisingly. But I like to think all of his students learned a lot more from him than we did from many of our other science teachers. Instead of learning rote scientific theory, we learned to question and investigate for ourselves.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
That might be true, but we noticed the differences since long before they were old enough to even have a gender identity. How could a child take clues from society about his or her gender roles before even knowing his or her own gender?
Unless you dress your kid in earth tones and name them "Pat", society at large knows if they are a boy or a girl and treats them "appropriately". If the relatives always give your kid pink things, chances are the kid will be predisposed towards wearing pink. No self-knowledge required on your offspring's part. People treat little kids differently based on whether they are a boy or a girl, regardless of what you as a parent want (or even what the kid wants).
In the end, you do what you can to give your kids the tools to break free from gender stereotypes, but it really is up to them.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you understand how a vehicle designed and built by people can fly even though people can't?
differences (Score:1, Interesting)
I honestly believe that only now people are truly understanding what CS is all about.
I remember during my first day in college we were asked about why we choose CS and what was our previous experience. Several people (including men) said that they have picked CS because they like surfing the web, chatting or playing video games. Many of them believed that the work of a CS graduate is about picking colors for a webpage or drawing textures for a game character.
I remember asking a female friend about the classes and she said "it's nice, except for all that math and programming".
Don't take me wrong I already worked with very skilled and talented female developers. But I do believe that woman generally prefer other areas instead of CS
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, there are commercials about boys. For instance, this one [glennsacks.com], where the boy is advertised as a future wife-beater.
Re:interest perhaps? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Obvious.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Where the hell have you been for the last 30 years? We've been there, tried that, it doesn't work. I grew up in the sissified 80's, and I thought it was OK for boys to cry, until I hit teenage and found out that *girls* don't think it's ok for boys to cry. I toughened the hell up in a hurry when I figured out I'd been lied to by every grown-up I'd ever come in contact with for the past 15 years. You can't seriously think we're not already a wimpy enough country.
IT's the Television (Score:1, Interesting)
What's gotten big since the 80's? MEDICAL SHOWS.
You've got ER,House, hell even Becker and Frasier are doctors. Blah blah blah. Alot of these girls grew up watching George Clooney save lives and swoon babes.
Can you think of any TV shows that 'glorify' the Computer scientist quite the same way? Nope.
Back in the 80s we had all those cool cyberpunk movies. Bladerunner, Hackers, War Games. Computers were seen as arcane and mysterious. Now they're common place. The average PC guy people know of is the dude at best buy- pretty much a glorified mechanic. That really isn't a stigma anyone wants attached to them. I mean, seriously, would you want to work at the places shown on "Chuck" and "40 Year Old Virgin"?
The CS field is highly competetive and we haven't gotten a good rap since 2000. Enrollment rates are dropping period- maybe the girls are just the first to go.
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm 27 years old (born in 1981). I have never known a time when it was okay to air a commercial where the woman was the incompetent party who was rescued by a man -- it's always the man who is the bumbling idiot.
This probably seems astonishing to people older than me who remember a time when it was the exact opposite. It's probably those people who are creating these commercials :)
Re:The girls are smarter (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Women use Google, guys can, but don't (Score:3, Interesting)
You implied that your wife seemed to be doing well with an ME degree yet you pushed your kids into non-technical fields. Might I ask what those are? I honestly can't think of a non-technical field that wouldn't be much more prone to market forces than even CS.
Re:Women don't want to do CS? (Score:3, Interesting)
See, this made me laugh. I've been programming since I was a girl, but for some damn reason, I find remote controls completely terrifying. I once remarked to a guy, "I could write the embedded microcontroller code that runs that little box over there, but the remote control is beyond me."
I think maybe it's all those freaky buttons. I don't know what all the symbols and acronyms are. And the guy -- he's always got, like, eight of the things, for different devices. So, he's in the other room, and he's all, "Hey, could you turn down the volume? I'm trying to make a phone call." And you're like, "AAAAGH, there are eight controllers!" And he's like, "It's the SONY!" And you go digging through the pile of controllers, and find the Sony, and frantically look for the volume adjuster, but instead, it's got some unconventional knob thing. You turn it, and the volume seems to go down, but when you set it back down in the pile of controllers, it bumps some mysterious button on another controller that gets the TV into some state where it's not actually showing TV anymore. And he's all, "Hey, why'd you turn off the TV?" And you're like, "I didn't turn the TV off! I... I, uh, bumped something! I don't know! The TV said something about DVD VCR DISH CABLE ANTENNA TV1 TV2 MOOSEHEAD ORBITAL-MIND-CONTROL-LASERS..." And he's all, "Why were you messing with THAT controller?" Then, he tells you to get the Toshiba or the Samsung, or some other controller, and hit a button with some unfamiliar acronym that you can't find anywhere on the damn thing. Yeah. I hate the things.
As for my media center PC, I mostly used it to get out of buying a bunch of that equipment you'd normally need extra remotes for. Also, playing computer games on a 52" LCD is so delicious that I almost don't care about ever doing anything else with it, anyway. :-)
Re:Obvious.... (Score:5, Interesting)
In many Asian societies, ones which could quite reasonably be considered more sexist than US and European society, there is a much higher proportion of women in computer science and related fields. Even some European countries have a considerably higher ratio than the Anglo-Saxon countries in my experience. Certainly the few women who I have encountered have been very capable, in contrast to many of the males working in software, and has led me to believe that there is a self-selection process going on, whereby only the top few percent of women are determined enough to make it through whatever it is that keeps women out of computer science in droves.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)