WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes 779
theodp writes Boys' over-representation in K-12 computer classes has perplexed educators for 30+ years. Now, following on the heels of Code.org's and Google's attempts to change the game with boys-don't-count gender-based CS teacher funding schemes, Washington State lawmakers have introduced House Bill 1813, legislation that requires schools seeking K-12 computer education funding to commit to preventing boys from ruling the computer class roost. Computer science and education grant recipients, HB 1813 explains, "must demonstrate engaged and committed leadership in support of introducing historically underrepresented students [including girls, low-income students, and minority students]" and "demonstrate a plan to engage historically underrepresented students with computer science." Calling it "a bold new bill that we hope more states will follow," corporate and tech billionaire-backed Code.org tweeted its support for the bill.
That's like ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's like ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Informative)
*whoosh*
That was the subtle humor -- not that the boys are getting autism from the vaccines but that if you stop vaccinating them we'll kill enough of them off to even it out.
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it really a zero-sum game where a girl studying CS means that a boy can't?
To progressives, everything is a zero sum game. The metric they are measuring gets a desired increase if a girl joins CS or if a boy is excluded from CS.
Re:That's like ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really a zero-sum game where a girl studying CS means that a boy can't?
To progressives, everything is a zero sum game.
You have it backwards. To liberals, there are no zero-sum games. Giving things out for free will never cost more money. The "free" community college education will not draw money out of other programs. The examples are endless.
To answer the OP, yes, it very well can be a zero-sum game. I remember being shut out of classes because they were filled when I was in high school. My school had to prioritize enrollments to make sure upperclass students got the requirements to graduate, at the expense of lowerclass students who were on advanced tracks.
Schools have X dollars to hire Y teachers for Z classrooms. It's isn't as easy as "let's add another section" when the existing CS classes fill. That CS teacher is already teaching as many classes as she's paid to teach, and likely there are already the number of students her union contract limits specify. The room is already in use the rest of the day. (Colleges, at least, get increased tuition payments when they add a section to a filled class. High schools do not.)
This has already been demonstrated by Title IX requirements. Schools have to provide "equal opportunity" for girls and boys in sports. In some cases that meant boys teams were cut. In others, money is being spent on girls sports that nobody really wants to play. In Oregon, that "opportunity" is measured by actual participation numbers. Nobody cares if the girls in a certain school district have no interest in sports, if a school doesn't have the right percentages of participation it is assumed they are violating the girls' rights and corrective action is required.
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Schools have X dollars to hire Y teachers for Z classrooms. It's isn't as easy as "let's add another section" when the existing CS classes fill. That CS teacher is already teaching as many classes as she's paid to teach, and likely there are already the number of students her union contract limits specify. The room is already in use the rest of the day. (Colleges, at least, get increased tuition payments when they add a section to a filled class. High schools do not.)
The situation isn't as you describe it. If a student enrolls in a CS class, that almost always means that there is a different class that the student is choosing not to take. Computer classes are often electives, so that means one less student in art, or gym, or music. In the short term, more interest in a class might mean some who want it don't get it, in the long term though, schools generally fit supply (number of teachers/sections) to demand (amount of student interest). Additionally, if more students e
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To liberals, there are no zero-sum games. Giving things out for free will never cost more money. The "free" community college education will not draw money out of other programs. The examples are endless.
Did you mean that as an insult to liberals? Because our educational system that ensures people are properly trained to find work and not live off of charity seems like the most obvious of programs which aren't zero-sum.
You're right Liberals do champion tons of programs:
- Education to keep people out of jail and off of welfare.
- Loans to help people afford education.
- Energy Efficiency programs to ensure that cars cost slightly more but save their buyers tens of thousands.
- Anti-Monopoly efforts to prevent
Re:That's like ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally it isn't a zero-sum game. Anyone who wants to study can, but if a funding model is introduced that penalizes schools for having too many boys it's likely that you'll see some get excluded, either because there's now less funding available than before if there aren't enough girls in the class or because the school is not able to get enough girls in the class to qualify for funding.
Really, they should just make a basic computer course mandatory in one of the earlier grades. That way everyone will have exposure and if it turns out that girls still aren't interested then people need to start looking for other causes or perhaps it does lead to more interest from girls and it solves the problem in that way.
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that is right, actually.
We know that women generally are under-represented in the STEM fields. Is that because women generally are simply less interested in those type of jobs due to genetics or is it because of environmental factors? I think there's a bit of both, but I have a hard time believing it's all nurture and no nature.
We know that women are over-represented in primary school education positions. Its the same thing reversed. I don't think men (on average) want to teach a bunch of 8 year olds, but there's probably some environmental factors there as well (you want to be around a bunch of little girls all day, what are you a pedophile?).
There is only a problem here to the extent that people are choosing not to study a particular field because they feel like they'll be a nerd or pedophile or whatever for choosing that field.
Re:That's like ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you trying to say that girls are genetically predisposed to be uninterested in CS? That doesn't seem right...
That's exactly what he's saying. I have 3 kids age 7-9. The boys love computers and video games. My girl won't touch a video
game unless someone else is playing with her. It took years for someone to create a game that attracted girls. Sims was the
first real hit with the female population. Girls are much more social than boys even from a very young age. They have no interest
in staring at a screen all day by themself. There might be ways to encourage them. Introducing pair programming in grade
school might help or doing other things that make it more social but most girls have no interest in being the stereotypical computer
nerd who codes for hours in their parent's basement which is how many computer programmers became computer programmers.
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think on some level it is right. I suspect girls are predisposed to making a better cost-benefit decision on whether or not to get into it. Except for the very lucky (which I thankfully consider myself), much of the programming world is dull: connect 1 peice of complicated, poorly written code to another peice of complicated, poorly written code. There's just enough time budgeted to make it "work" before moving on and doing the same thing over again. Invariably any time not spent doing that is spent in long (often pointless) meetings discussing the changes. Assuming you are actually good at what you do, you will have a flock of managers and coworkers trying coopt you to do their work for them.
If you win the lottery and are lucky enough to end up working on something you love, the lifestyle still takes a toll. The constant computer time is tough on your body, even if you exercise regualrly and mix sitting/standing. Unless you are gifted, you'll be spending a lot of free time just trying to keep up with the folks who are (and technology changes in general). It's pretty tough to balance work and home life if you have a young family. Later on in life, there's a very real threat that if you haven't moved up into management by the time you are in your 40s you'll be seen as a liability vs younger and cheaper labor.
It's not all bad (pay is good, chance at interesting work, probably won't get skin cancer, etc). I suspect the reality though is that women have a pretty good idea of what the tech world entails (beyond the misogyny) and simply decide it's not worth it.
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Are you trying to say that girls are genetically predisposed to be uninterested in CS? That doesn't seem right...
That's because it isn't right. Many computer science pioneers were women [wikipedia.org], and programming didn't use to be male-dominated. But something has clearly changed.
There are many theories as to why programming became male-dominated. My personal theory is that programming jobs started to suck. Gone are the days when you could get a 9-5 at IBM for life and retire with full pension. Now, you get to work 60+ hours per week plus on-call duty and try to survive an avalanche of conflicting and ever-changing demands and
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Females generally (standard disclaimer for anyone dumb enough not to already know: group statistics say nothing about individuals) show more interest in communication, language and social tasks than physical, mechanical and solitary ones. Quite a bit of that may well be socialization, but similar patterns are also observed in other primates, so there may well be some real genetic sexual dimorphism.
Personally, I think that the type of jobs available in programming are bad for everybody, but are especially u
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:That's like ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So... refusing someone who wants to learn (white boys) so that you can keep your percentages up... is seen as a win?
What twisted world are you in? How does reverse discrimination solve anything?
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hi. I am a Software Engineer with degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. My high school had a small computer lab and no other computers. I never once got to take a computer science class before college or do any programming on a High-school computer.
I learned BASIC, switched to Linux, learned, C, C++, Perl, Shell script, Awk, and Sed on my own. With a couple books, some resources from the library, and no instruction from anyone.
I don't think High School CS education is as important as they think.
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The poster never said that parents (or anyone for that matter) filled in the blanks. What part of "With a couple books, some resources from the library, and no instruction from anyone" is so hard to understand. There is NO need to teach CS before college. Anything you teach before that will be obsolete anyway, and those who want to learn will do so on their own time, on their own dime, and they'll do fine.
Programming is fast becoming a dead end as a career, in large part because of the industry-wide ageis
Re:That's like ... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is brilliant. Force the classes to have sufficient gender representation, and cancel them because they don't. Then the only people learning CS are those motivated enough to do it on their own... which will be even MORE male-skewed. Thus continued male dominance of the CS field. Wow, the masters of the patriarchy sure are clever!
"equal treatment" (Score:2)
Hey, better be careful of what you wish for. A surprisingly large number of liberal causes depend on the principle of equal treatment. If you now have a law where it's OK to be unequal, that might open the door for others.
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A surprisingly large number of liberal causes depend on the principle of equal treatment.
Liberals are for equal outcomes, not equal opportunities.
Conservatives are for equal treatment. For instance, a law against sleeping on the sidewalk should be enforced equally on both millionaires and homeless vagrants.
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Which says nothing about whether such a law should exist in the first place of course.
Otherwise there would be no problem with a law against having less than $500 in your wallet, as long as it was enforced equally on both rich and poor people.
Or a law requiring people to allow anyone who asks for shelter in their house during rain to do so, as long as it was enforced equally against mansion owners and those living under bridges.
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Liberals are for equal outcomes, not equal opportunities.
Wrong. Non-strawman liberals are, in fact, for equal opportunities.
Re:"equal treatment" (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. Non-strawman liberals are, in fact, for equal opportunities.
When you automatically consider the existence of unequal outcomes as a problem, and then use this now identified "problem" as a reason to try to manipulate things towards equal outcomes, you are not in fact supporting equal opportunities at all no matter how you try to word it.
You exist and in fact automatically believe there is a problem simply because there isnt equal outcomes, therefore the argument is not straw. The argument is in fact all about you, and that makes you so uncomfortable that you want to dismiss it. Too bad. Not dismissed.
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... and if girls didn't get in with equal numbers, that is ipso facto evidence of having been steered away for sexist reasons then or earlier in life.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a straw man argument intended to degrade anyone who identifies themselves as "Liberal".
There's no content or intelligence in it.
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Granted; I see your point.
On reflection, the part that speaks to me is: "Conservatives are for equal treatment. For instance, a law against sleeping on the sidewalk should be enforced equally on both millionaires and homeless vagrants." The part about liberals, I'm not impressed by that.
In any case, I have no use for either label -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- and prefer to avoid them altogether. To paraphrase John Brunner -- don't trust people who hate others based on generalities; only trust those wh
Anatole France (Score:3)
"La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Anatole France, 1894
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Thanks, I do appreciate the heads-up.
I agree that the conservative statement is as much bullshit at the anti-liberal statement is bullshit.
I should have made clear that the conservative statement -- "sleeping on the sidewalk" -- is such patent bullshit that I took it for sardonic irony. Granted, the original poster might not have sardonic irony in mind. But if I use the phrase in conversation, I'll make the sardonic irony patently obvious.
I shouldn't have commented in the first place. Broke my own rule:
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Granted, the original poster might not have sardonic irony in mind.
I am the OP, and I certainly had sardonic irony in mind. I am surprised by the amount of "whoosing" that my comment engendered.
Re:"equal treatment" (Score:5, Informative)
Considering the Democrats are a center-right party, I am not sure how anybody can call or be called a liberal for donating to their casues or candidates. If he donated to the Greens, then it would be fair to label him a liberal.
There is a major disconnect between European definitions of Left/Right vs US definitions of Left/Right that leads to much argument and misunderstanding.
European version of Left/Right is socialism/communism vs fascism.
In the US, Left/Right is 'more government' vs 'less government'. This actually has little to do with political party in the US, as both Parties have those who desire more government and those who desire less government.
Liberals in the US are a misnomer, as they are nothing like the "classic liberal" that many if not most people think of when "liberal" is mentioned, and are actually the Progressives from the early 1900s who, after having their ideology totally discredited, "rebranded" themselves as "liberals" so they could try again to push the same failed ideology.
The plan proposed is simply another flavor of "affirmative action" for females in a specific field, attempting to force the outcomes without addressing the natural & non-political reasons behind the differences or simply ignoring them for political convenience.
Strat
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Institutionalized Prejudice (Score:5, Insightful)
We will truly evolve in our values when we finally return to egalitarianism. When we finally admit that you cannot push people ahead in line because of their race/sex/sexuality without simultaneously pushing someone else back in line because of theirs, we will be truly enlightened.
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On the contrary, helping people to succeed does not necessarily mean that others do not succeed.
Helping more people to succeed often means lowering the bar. And that makes the really talented ones lazy and bored.
Re:Institutionalized Prejudice (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want more equal participation, fund and introduce a mandatory computer science class at an earlier grade level. That will expose everyone to it and if certain groups of people decide the don't like it, they don't have to take additional classes.
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So, you are saying that an employer can hire infinite employees?
All instances of this are competative markets for a finite resource-- the job openings available-- and there are not infinite numbers of employers.
This combination of finite openings with finite employers means, without question, that there are finite possible successes per unit of time.
Or do you somehow ascribe that people can wait infinite amounts of time to land one of these finite opportunities?
If you think that, might I introduce you to th
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Holy Strawman batman! He's moving the goalpost!
Nice slight of hand there. "Skilled applicant" is not the term used. "Qualified Applicant" is.
A "Qualified Applicant" is an individual who meets a certain restrictive set of metrics that are pre-determined by the employer, BECAUSE THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL APPLICANTS APPLYING IS ASTOUNDINGLY LARGE.
As the number of applicants in total increases, the specificity of "Qualified applicant" will also increase, so that total positions will remain at or just below the numb
Umm... not quite. (Score:3)
On the contrary, helping people to succeed does not necessarily mean that others do not succeed. There are not a finite number of "successes," as you imply is the case
In some theoretical sense, yes - it is beneficial to everyone in a society and the society as a whole if there is some way to help those in need.
No issue there.
Problem is that the case described above is not that.
It is favoritism according to sex, parental income and racial/ethnic status.
Only one of those can be in some way or form a responsibility of the society, and a thing that society should work to amend.
"Amending" someone's racial or gender status is not only wrong on account of such actions treating
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Although less strident that the usual SocSci puppeting, it follows the same boilerplate: I'm (race to disparage), I'm (class to disparage) and I've gotten (cause supporting). So, since I match that demographic I can tell you that whatever *you* are saying isn't true but your delusions, for I suffer none of my own.
I'll follow the whole thing with a caveat that, though I
I got a solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not make a few of the classes a requirement, not an elective.
I suspect you may be able to entice more young women into tech, if you expose them too it more.
If EVERYONE in your grade has to take a few of the basic computer science classes, you may find that more women get interested in the subject. Women who wouldn't, on their own, think to take the class.
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Replace CS with English literature:
Why would you make such a worthless class a requirement? Just to make sure boys take it? And yes, most English majors are women.
The reason to make CS a required class would be to expose more people to it so that they understand the concepts that underlie the machines playing such an important role in our world today. Also so that, when they choose what to specialize in, they have some understanding of what choosing to specialize in CS would entail.
I am not going to defe
Also take aim at... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Also take aim at... (Score:5, Interesting)
We should also take aim at the over representation of female teachers. In my kids elementary school, the last male teacher left a few years ago.
Re:Also take aim at... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is indeed a serious issue, especially at primary level (er... elementary in the US I think, under age 8). There has been a big push to get more men into primary education in the UK, but it's been kinda hampered by the paedophile hysteria that's been going round.
There have been a lot of studies into just how bad the lack of male role models at school is for kids, but it's probably going to be even harder to solve than the lack of women in CS. If you think people railing against that are bad, wait until you try to tell them that they have to stop reflexively thinking every man who wants to work with kids being a paedo.
The way this sounds (Score:2)
How do you recruit minorities and women into CS? (Score:3, Insightful)
I see an awful lot in here about forcing educators to push students into these classes, but nothing about making these classes attractive to kids who would otherwise skip it.
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How do you recruit minorities and women into CS?
By teaching them LOGO when they are eight.
Excellent idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Great idea. Let's take all the enthusiastic, optimistic, and insightful CS students and throw them out the window, then try to coax and cajole the uninterested into replacing them. I don't see how this plan could possibly fail.
Seriously, guys?
What happened to merit? What happened to "the heart wants what the heart wants"? What happened to free choice?
Why must there be more girls in CS to the point of excluding those *actually* interested in the subject itself? And why is this situation not repeated in welding, or mining? Why don't you want women to make up their own minds on what they want to do?
I see lots of women every day that somehow managed to pick a career and/or interest without anyone having to invest lots of money into convincing or cajoling them, so I'm pretty sure it can be done.
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The answer is simple - by artificially flooding the market with more coders, you lower the price business pays coders. It's just supply-demand 101.
Just look at the backers. It's not like there's any shortage of coders - just coders that won't work for 3rd-world wages.
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CS is already badly damaged as it is. From the feeling that jobs are going to be at minimum wage rates, to the fact that there is extremely heavy H-1B competition for every single position, be it an entry level coder on up, to the fact that it is looked down upon [1]... all gets people to look for other professions. I've even met high school counselors steering kids away from STEM in general, and into law or business with the phrase, "there is no such thing as an unemployed attorney or CPA".
The last thing
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[1]: CS and IT get relatively little respect as a profession compared to others that take as much education and experience. Tell someone you are a veteran IT person, they will immediately ask you what to do because their Windows PC seems slow.
To be fair, tell anybody that you're a doctor and they'll immediately ask you what that weird growth on their foot is.
Re:Excellent idea (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to merit? It was re-labeled "privilege". You don't think you actually earned your accompilshments, do you?
Going about it all wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you target the poor inner city youth to get them interested.
Gender? (Score:2)
Wait a minute.. what kind of cruel state still defines our little darlings as being either boy or girl? That's clearly not the type of progressive thinking we should be pushing for. Do they still have separate but equal bathrooms? The horror! Frankly, CS enrollments are the least of the problems in such backward thinking divisive environments. Won't somebody please think of the children?
Redistribution of your "privilege" (Score:3)
If you are good at something, your achievements will be labeled as a "privilege" and redistributed to others. I hope you like the society that most of you voted for.
Question: Does creating a new, powerful disincentive for (the wrong kind of) people to achieve help or hurt our chances to have a prosperous society in the future?
It is not enough (Score:4, Funny)
I find outrageous the male dominance in the plumbing industry, most plumbers are males, and government should push more incentives so women can also succeed in the plumbing industry, i will also support a bill for more heterosexual male hairdressers, feminine sides can't understand my side cut!
Just a question (Score:3, Interesting)
Why aren't these people so concerned about the overwhelming majority of teachers and nurses being female?
Isn't this as big of a problem?
Don't we need to do *something* to encourage more men to become nurses? I mean, isn't this so f'ing important that Google needs to get behind it?
Pretty Blatant Sexual Discrimination (Score:2)
Can't get much more blatant than that. So you have to PAY to get girls (and some minorities) to even try to program?
That's pretty stupid too.
Hmmmm .... (Score:2)
So, we're going to actively block the little nerdlings if they happen to have a penis?
This sounds utterly moronic, misguided, and pointless.
Sure, try to get other people involved .. but don't fucking actively stop the boys if you find yourself with no girls or minorities who are interested.
How about the exact opposite? (Score:3)
Obligatory song lyric (Score:3)
by hatchet, axe, and saw.
Stop forcing people to like things they don't like (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen exactly how this comes out... (Score:4, Informative)
First: Yes this is anecdotal, but it is my own experience with 'diversity' in the academic environment. It may not happen all the time or everywhere, but I don't believe it is uncommon either.
The summer before my senior year in college I acted as the boy's counselor for a career "summer camp" sponsored by the State of Michigan, aimed at high-school students. There were many different topics offered, but my school (U of M-Dearborn) was providing an engineering focused camp. As a counselor, I was involved in the selection process, which was run by the engineering admissions office. There were many more applicants than we had openings for students (approximately 30 openings), and the state had mandated a diversity goal (including geographic diversity). The result was a process that went like this:
1. Sort the applications. Place all white male applicants in pile 'B', retaining all female and non-white male applications in pile 'A.' (Actually, the gender sorting was retained.)
2. Review female applications and select the best to fill 50% of the openings.
3. Review non-white male applications and select the best to fill the remaining openings.
4. Plot geographic location of selected applicants' hometowns on the state map. Notice that no applications were selected from the Upper Peninsula. (U.P.)
5. Look for U.P. applicants in the A pile. Finding none, go get the 'B' pile (white males) and search for U.P. residents. (two found)
6. Replace bottom two selected males with the two U.P. residents.
7. Congratulate the team that they have done a wonderful job at promoting diversity.
I do not have a poker face and my disgust must have shown, because the Associate Dean of engineering approached me afterward and said "See, we got some white males in the end." What she didn't seem to understand was that what disturbed me wasn't the outcome (which was bad enough), but that if you were a white male applicant, your application wasn't even considered (except for the two Yoopers*, and they wouldn't have been if there had been any in the 'A' pile). Given the topic today, I suppose I should have been happy that they accepted any male applications at all.
*For those who don't know: Yooper = someone who hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U - per). Conversely, the Yoopers call those of us from the Lower Peninsula "Trolls", because we live "below the bridge." (the Mackinac bridge which connects the two)
not that long ago (Score:3)
OK, long ago for people, but the majority of programmers used to be women. They started this field : http://womensenews.org/story/b... [womensenews.org]. It was considered clerical work at the time. When it was recognized as pretty substantial work, companies turned to universities for recruiting and male graduates were far more prevalent at the time and the graduates quickly dominated the field.
My wife was told by her guidance councilor that she shouldn't be a programmer because she'd just be typing stuff in and working with dusty old tape. My mom was steered away from engineering, so she got an RN instead. The dominance of boys over girls in this field was culturally manufactured. What else would one expect from a culture that teaches girls the importance of being pretty, their parents giving praise when they are pretty, and boys being praised for being strong or smart?
There is nothing intrinsic in boys or girls that makes them good or bad at computer science and programming. People will cling to the myth that they have some rare super ability in their brain to do programming; it gives someone a sense of self worth which is important for people to have. What you need is a reasonable memory and time to practice. Can everyone do it? No, but the bar is not sky high; the majority could pass it.
Let's move more women into dangerous jobs . . . (Score:3)
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:4, Interesting)
You could make a perfectly good argument about making a gender-blind program
That would be a good idea but not the case here. To be gender blind one would not even count the number of students in the different demographics and would not be able to see that there are any underrepresented demographics. The problem is how to encourage underrepresented demographics to participate without discouraging over represented demographics from participating.
Misandry is not the solution to misogyny; it is just a different problem.
Just a note; Google dictionary knows the spelling for misogyny but not misandry.
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't seem to understand the necessary impact. They think, oh, we won't persecute boys; we'll just incentivize the special treatment of women. You get $100 per female seat and $10 per male seat, so you're encouraged to seat more women; we don't dock you for having too many boys in class.
Cue consideration that expanding the number of seats is expensive, while selecting for more women to fill the limited seats is not. The profit motive here is to push male participants away and lure female participants. Even worse, some may use propaganda to lure unqualified female participants: make the whole thing seem more attractive to girls, but don't actually change the curriculum to be more enjoyable for girls, so that it becomes an annoying struggle. Worse, but less likely, is the change of the curriculum to appeal to and interest girls, at the expense of actually being useful; we've taken long strides down the road of impressing parents and entertaining students with changes to the education system detrimental to actual education, but appealing to the public opinion as better marketing.
We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more.
This is not a prediction of the future any more than would be the answer to a physics question: I know what I am looking at, and I know what effect these things have. As a boulder rolls down a hill, so does misplaced effort generate misunderstood outcomes. I have seen these things before, I have seen them repeated over thousands of years, and I know what form the misunderstanding will take: it is always the fault of those in the system, and never the fault of those who designed the system.
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
Chuckle.
I think the female gender is more intelligent than you give them credit for. Computer Sciences, Programming, Network Engineering, are all decent paying jobs I suppose, but far from the most interesting. ( Some are downright boring, monotonous, and mind numbing after a while. )
If the truth about many of these jobs became widely known, ( long hours, cubicle environments, you're a number to a company - not a human being, hunched over a keyboard staring at a monitor 10-12 hours a day ) you might even have a difficult time getting ANYONE to show interest in the field, gender notwithstanding.
Perhaps the female gender sees that all of the negatives far outweigh the positives and really don't want anything to do with it. Unless you walk, talk, eat, sleep, breathe and DREAM this stuff, it really is rather boring. Important work ? Absolutely. Just not very exciting.
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Interesting)
No one is inherently more intelligent about anything. The truth is boys go into computers because boys are interested in computers: experiments with small children under 2 years old have shown that small boys find interests more in trucks, and small girls prefer dolls. Small boys who do play with dolls in such experiments tend to make them fight; we call boys's dolls "action figures" for this reason. In both cases, the children select for what interests them inherently.
The selection criteria for a career is, similarly, based on what interests people. As G'Kar once said, all people do everything for precisely the same reason: It seemed like a good idea at the time. Some people select a career for money, for power, for working hours, for its attractiveness to women, its ease, its challenge, or its interest. Women, for example, may select a career for its monetary benefits, as a way to command their own independence; while men may seek a career for a perception about women being hot under the skirt for doctors, lawyers, and executives. Overwhelmingly, the decision is based in what is interesting.
The most obviously interesting career, the one selected for when no planning nor cunning nor foresight is applied, is the one which essentially amounts to playing with toys. Women like children, and select teaching jobs to interact with children; men like computers and machines, and become programmers and lube techs. Often this leads to hating your job and having your primary loves in life destroyed; nobody thinks that far in.
Ultimately, the women who get into computer science are largely there for the money, to assert their independence and their ability to challenge a male-dominated society; the small minority actually like computers. The men are, of course, only interested in tech. We see this pattern most clearly in casual conversation: outside the office, men talk about computers, about networking hardware, about software, about computer games they're writing at home; women mostly complain that their coworkers want to keep talking about work, instead of something interesting, and wish they could just talk about something else and enjoy their lunch break.
It hasn't occurred to most people that a pool of 100 men and 100 women produces 10 female programmers and 90 male programmers because women just aren't interested. Most people probably haven't considered a career choice as a multi-factor decision, but rather a matter of "what do you want to do?"; some are viewing it as a "what do you believe you're allowed to do?" problem. I wonder how long before the crisis of the male-dominated penis market will come up.
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is how to encourage underrepresented demographics to participate without discouraging over represented demographics from participating
What if one of the causes of participation by the well represented ("over-represented", after all, implies a predetermined desirable level of representation) is the very fact of under-representation by other groups? i.e. what if geekdom is-or-was a "safe space" for an oppressed group?
It isn't an accident that the image of "computer nerds" from the 1980s was what it was, nor was it some grand plan of the patriarchy to enable their heirs to carry on the torch of Y chromosomal world dominance. It was because we were the people who couldn't get dates, who got bullied, who retreated into our imaginations and creativity because what we found outside was so ugly and off-putting and predatory to us. We're The Mentor, and these people are still trying to spoon feed us baby food [phrack.org].
And now that we've won, we've actually built the shining city on the hill that stands a good chance of no less than saving the whole world from darkness, here come the barbarians to demand their share. Well if you ask me, they can fuck right off back to their hellish world of head chopping, marketing, buying, and hating. We built this, and we don't have to share it with assholes.
Re: (Score:3)
Considering that women have been there all along, and that many of the men are not the basement dwelling or unloved stereotypes you claim, I conclude you're full of it. and your last paragraph pretty much seals the deal.
Re: (Score:3)
To be gender blind one would not even count the number of students in the different demographics and would not be able to see that there are any underrepresented demographics. The problem is how to encourage underrepresented demographics to participate without discouraging over represented demographics from participating.
Why do all demographics have to be represented equally?
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:4, Insightful)
This is going to come across as flamebait, but I really don't mean it that way. My guess is that social liberals are very empathetic to a particular stereotype of suffering: that of a girl, who through no fault of her own, was placed in a society that kept her from having as fulfilling a life as she could. They're greatly troubled by this, and are desperate to address the problem, thus alleviating their own sympathetic pain.
Re: (Score:3)
How are you defining an underrepresented group without using a quota?
Re: This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
But addressing the reasons that cause such self-segregation and the effects of it isn't easy.
Re: (Score:3)
But addressing the reasons that cause such self-segregation and the effects of it isn't easy.
It isn't easy because society doesn't actually want to know the truth.Whenever we as a society want something to be true that isn't we ignore the truth and spend inordinate resources trying to prove what we want the truth to be.
The truth is there is indeed a biological component that drives humans that can be repressed but not eliminated. And there are dire consequences for repressing them as well. Scientific studies have proven this repeatedly but even many scientists ignore the facts because they are so
Football (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to know is: why do we have such a lack of female pro-football players?
How about coal miners?
Heavy equipment operators?
In other words, why is CS such a big deal?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You say it isn't what is needed, but I think people are overestimating the point of the law.
This is numbers. The kind of people that support this kind of legislation only want to balance out the numbers of people. Reduce the number of boys and increase the number of girls; equal seats is equal opportunity. They don't care about improving CS education or the quality of the industry. The law isn't needed because of the thousands of CS-interested girls that aren't getting into classes because the boys are taki
Re: (Score:3)
There isn't a section that explicitly says 'discourage white boys from signing up for class'.
But, like the zero tolerance policies that are mis-interpreted to include biting a pop-tart into a vague gun shape, pointing your fingers, and having a 1 in plastic molded machine gun for your GI Joes, what will happen is if you can't get enough of the underrepresented demographic students into the class as a percentage of the entire class, then there's going to be a kid that really wants to take the class told 'Sor
Re: (Score:2)
I see you mocking the argument, but I don't see you refuting it... Would you care to try again, or is this all you've got?
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but why do we need to make an argument for a gender blind program, again? Has someone slipped a coherent and convincing argument in favor of gender discrimination past me? One that invalidates all the staid and dependable refutations of the "logic" of discrimination?
Here's my argument against programs like this, and there are no red pills involved:
People who aren't interested in tech aren't going to suddenly start caring about it because society found a way to be paternalistic and manipulative enough to coax them into it, or because some pedagogic official somewhere told them to be. Did any official tell us to be interested in this stuff? Is that how we got here? My sense is that the truth is closer to the opposite: geekdom is a counterculture, i.e. a rejection of the very mainstream collective that's now using its disgusting, lamentable techniques to try and sell our valuable and important ways to the muggles en masse.
It's killing the goose that laid the golden egg. We have this beautiful, productive, vibrant culture of tech geeks driving the world forward, and we say that we want to expand and grow it. So what is our solution? Of course, not to walk to the mountain by adapting ourselves to this new way that according to the evidence offers these advantages... instead, we want to disassemble the mountain and ship individual grains of dirt to each person, whether they even want a mountain or not. This is not a recipe for a mighty monument, but a tragic iconoclasm.
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you ever think that women are too SMART to consider a Computer Science job? While the (mostly) guys in the field are pulling all-night marathon coding sessions to meet unreasonable shipping deadlines and worrying about their job getting outsourced overseas, many women are still going after cushy union teaching jobs.
Why? Because most teachers have a 35 hour work week, 12 weeks of paid vacation every year, and practically guaranteed job security and retirement benefits once they're tenured after a few years.
We're the morons here, people.
Re: This sewer of hate is not about gender (Score:3, Insightful)
I just did a career day at my sons middle school last week. I was the only programmer speaker. I did 3 30 minute sessions with about 40 kids per session. I'd say the ratio of boys to girls was 10:1. So what? Makes me sad if those boys interested in programming get weeded out to fill a female quota.
Re: This sewer of hate is not about gender (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because I'm sure there are lots of colleges and universities out there are telling girls that they can't be programmers, and throwing them out of the CS program the second they're discovered to possess vaginas. The administration probably threatens them away with a stick or something.
Re: This sewer of hate is not about gender (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because I'm sure there are lots of colleges and universities out there are telling girls that they can't be programmers, and throwing them out of the CS program the second they're discovered to possess vaginas. The administration probably threatens them away with a stick or something.
You are absolutely correct in your sarcasm. Hormones and other chemicals in the body heavilly influence what someone finds interesting. I am a mechanical engineer and always had interests in machines, repairing things, and science. But if I smoke some weed the left side of my brain takes over and creative tasks become much more interesting- playing music, writing, etc. I had no interest whatsoever in playing an instrument until I started using marijuana at age 28. THC, a chemical, has changed the way I see those things and how much I enjoy them.
It could very well be that the chemicals Estrogen and Testosterone have an effect on which things a person likes and how much they enjoy them. If my estrogen/testosterone balance was tilted the other way, maybe I would find teaching small children stimulating and interesting. Or maybe if a women's estrogen/testosterone balance was shifted, they would find writing code fun.
Maybe estrogen and testosterone have nothing to do with the reasons why women aren't that into science and engineering. But maybe they do. There are shedloads of possible reasons besides "the culture" that haven't really been explored. Women are now 33% more likely than men to earn a bachelor degree [cnsnews.com]. That's alarming. Women are getting degrees in literally everything else, including in medicine, advertising, and law. Those fields put up a lot of overt sexist resistance back in the day. Science/Engineering doesn't have that overt sexism (or it doesn't anymore), and I don't think that "subtle" sexism can be more powerful than the overt sexism that existed, and was soundly defeated, in medicine/law. There have been pushes for at least the last 10 years to improve the % of ladies in science and Engineering, and the numbers haven't really budged. I think that if women wanted to be in Science/Engineering, they would be.
Re: This sewer of hate is not about gender (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Boys are into video games - for the very same reason that big gaming is targeted at boys and that the majority of players are male. Those gamers are into computers and the possibility of coding future games, so they go into computer science. Girl gamers are starting to become a little more common, and their representation in computer science might increase organically if everyone just left it alone.
2. Boys like to build things - along the lines of Lego, blocks, and carpentry. Boys dominate "shop class", but I don't recall any big push to change that. OK, the shop class I had in high school did have a fair amount of girls in it, so maybe that's not a big concern. The building enjoyment flows into programming because the program that comes out at the end was "built" by you.
There are some toys aimed at getting girls into building things, so that's a good thing as well. I don't know that threatening funding is the best plan. That puts all of the pressure on the teacher or school to try to drive girls in that direction (and makes me think that down the road "unwillingly" isn't out of the question, or granting a passing grade for sub-par work just to keep the numbers up). Games that girls are interested in and getting girls into "building things" at an earlier age is where the attention needs to be. So that lies more in the parents, and asking parents to make their daughters good little cogs isn't likely to garner much traction...which is why nothing has worked so far.
Re: (Score:3)
It's obviously society's fault that girls don't want to program. There couldn't possibly be any other reason for this lack of interest.
Re:This thread will be a sewer of misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
how is
boys-don't-count gender-based CS teacher funding
Unless I misunderstand this that means, the school will get less/no money more teaching boys. How can that do anything but discourage boys from attending. Encourage and Discourage are 2 sides of the same coin, if you go around saying we really want girls then boys will get the message that they are not wanted, which of course is true since each girl in computer class is worth more to the school. Or if there are limited places then boys will be refused entry in favor of girls.
I don't really see why we need every profession to have equal distribution of the sexes, anyway? Men and women are different, no matter how much the PC brigade want them to be the same. If a girl doesn't want to do computers why does society see the need to brainwash them into doing it.
Also in areas where men are underrepresented. It seems like the law forbids this type of behavior. (I know different country)
from http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa... [stuff.co.nz].
He said despite male teachers being in a minority, scholarships were only available for women, disabled people and those from varying ethnic backgrounds.
The commission had said it would be unlawful to offer male-only scholarships.
I personally think the gender in-balance in teachers is much more important than the one in technology, teachers are major role models children's lives, and children need role models of both sexes, where who cares who wrote the latest app, or the latest network protocol.
Sorry for the pedantry... (Score:3)
...but shouldn't that be "I don't support XY-gender-doesn't-count programs?"
/duck
/run
Re: (Score:2)
Statistically speaking, there is considerable evidence to support the claim that "chicks don't dig computers" in the same way that guys do. Your response was an ad hominem attack that failed to address the claim in any meaningful way. This is not how productive discussion occurs.
What's your gender? I ask in order to check my privlege, perhaps the contents of your underwear entitles your lame argument to more respect than I would otherwise award it?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What's hilarious is the number of women who will say things like "Women are better in tune with emotions" and "Women are more left brained" or "Women are more in touch with aesthetics than men" or "Women have a higher E.Q. than men do" or "Women are better at understanding other people", etc.
But the nanosecond in which a man says "Men and women are different", the entire female population of the planet (and the sheep-like "white knights") will flip out and demand an apology.
Re:Why don't they get it? (Score:5, Interesting)
But girls are more social than boys. Math and CS are not particularly social activities. They generally require a fair amount of time spent noodling in isolation about fairly abstract ideas. That tends to favor boys. It isn't that most girls cannot do it, it is just that the endeavor is not social enough to keep most girls' interest.
Now if you were to find a way to make Math and CS more socially interactive, that might work. But don't expect to attract a lot of boys into that way of getting into Math and CS. And don't expect the two styles to co-exist in a single class.
Re:Why don't they get it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The notion that boys and girls are "the same" is the one which utterly lacks evidence.
The onus of proof lies on those who would make such incredibly unsupportable statements.
I was raised in a family with two boys and two girls and we were all raised identically. There wasn't even a close contest between gender interests: It was stark and it happened before we were two, despite my feminist mother's desire to raise us equally.
Girls and boys are not the same. Never have been. Never will be.
BUT!
Some girls ARE like boys.
And some boys ARE like girls.
You know.. the whole venn diagram thing...
Re:Why don't they get it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Thunderfoot put it well: In a sexually dimorphic species, inequality in outcome is to be expected. The important aim shouldn't be equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity. No-one should feel pressured to persue or not persue a field because it violates their traditional gender role.
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I imagine the people who seriously believe that aren't particularly nice people, but the idea itself is interesting as satirical counterpoint. Women make the majority of purchasing decisions in western countries (and possibly in non-western countries as well), which gives them a lot of influence over the economy. Advertisers know that, and outside of some niche areas tend to target women. Women also play a dominant role in childrearing and education, giving them majority influence on the next generation.
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Basic science education should be mandatory. Advanced science education should be optional and voluntary. If that results in a skewed representation in the advanced classes, that's not necessarily a problem that needs to be fixed.
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Quotas are a terrible way to get the cream to rise to the top. It is discriminatory and predatory behavior.