How Girls Hold Themselves Back from Pursuing Computer Science (Infographic) | Hacker News Reader

How Girls Hold Themselves Back from Pursuing Computer Science (Infographic)

blog.play-i.com

16 pointsjunelin11 comments

How do we know that girls study CS less due to misperceptions? The infographic is a collection of factoids, logical leaps, and prescriptions derived from those leaps.

I'd be interested to hear the source of the line that "in college women make up 52% of math and science majors"

I'm aware that chemistry maintains gender parity [1] and that medical schools are near-parity [2] (if you consider medicine to be math or science) but I'm not aware of a 52% figure covering all math and science.

[1] http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2012May/Yellowlees-w... [2] https://www.aamc.org/download/277026/data/aibvol12_no1.pdf

On page 25 of the NCWIT scorecard it states that in 2009 women earned:

57% of all undergraduate degrees, 52% of all math and science degrees, 59% of the undergraduate degrees in biology, 42% of mathematics degrees, 18% of all computer and information sciences undergraduate degrees

We cross-checked 2 other sources for 2012 numbers as well.

http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/scorecard...

I was really hoping to find a field CS could look to for inspiration on achieving-gender-equality done right.

Looking at citation 32 from the PDF you linked it seems to be based on IPEDS [1]. Their data, for 2010 bachelors degrees conferred:

  IPEDS title                                | Table | Male    | Female
  Health professions and related sciences    |   326 |  19,306 | 110,328
  Biological and biomedical sciences         |   314 |  35,865 |  50,535
  Mathematics and statistics                 |   327 |   9,087 |   6,943
  Physical sciences and science technologies |   328 |  13,862 |   9,517
  Engineering and engineering technologies   |   320 |  73,833 |  14,896
  Computer and information sciences          |   318 |  32,410 |   7,179
                                             |       |         |
  Total excluding health prof + related sci  |       | 165,057 |  89,070 (35% female)
  Total including health prof + related sci  |       | 184,363 | 199,398 (52% female)

So we seem to be relying on "Health professions and related sciences" to bring the average up. I assume that's SIP code 51 but that seems like a very broad category [2] - for example it includes medicine, dentistry, nursing, yoga, dance therapy, and medical insurance coding.

I'm not sure science as a whole should be patting ourselves on the back yet. It would be nice if we could get to gender equality without lumping all medicine in with science.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables_3.asp [2] http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/cipdetail.aspx?y=55&cipid=8...

Carnegie Mellon has done some amazing work that has raised female enrollment in Computer Science from 7% in 1995 to 42% in 2000. We're going to do a follow-up examining what they've done. In fact, one of our female engineers went to CMU!

I'd rather see an info-graphic on athletes in CS (both genders). My experience is likely skewed by living in Boulder, but the national stats might still be interesting.

Girls don't hold themselves back, they are just in general not as interested. This might change over time. None the less it's a non issue.

My counter to this, is the documentary "Brainwashing" from Norway.

I think the title and general argument here is horrible. Even if their point is accurate, how are you going to blame them for what they don't even realize they're doing? Wouldn't it be more effective to find a positive way to express the idea that we should introduce kids to technology and eradicate stereotypes?

(Also, I would argue that "computer science as a career" is not necessarily a wonderful thing; lots of jobs in technology don't require a CS degree, and we don't have to push them towards that very specific track to get them working beside other CS and non-CS geeks)

Hey Peter, I do agree that the title missed the mark and should have had a more positive spin. We didn't mean to put the blame on girls but merely to highlight the social and cultural factors that discourage girls from pursuing computer science.

At least they aren't blaming boys for it like the usual trope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com