Tech's Gender and Race Gap Starts in High School

The comments on this article (and the article in general) all seem to imply that women in technology are bullied or ignored into oblivion. For the record, there were several girls in my high school AP Computer Science class, two were not white, and they all did pretty well for themselves both in the class and after it. They were not given any special treatment, positive or negative. Maybe I just happened to have had a great experience, but all these claims about how "There's a higher obstacle to overcome in the perception of computer science for girls" seem flaky at best.

It seems to me that we should universally encourage people to do what they're good at, regardless of race or gender, or the field they want to enter. Giving so much attention to women/minorities in technology just feels unnecessary.

Tyson's first TV appearance came when he was in graduate school. A local network asked him to explain a meteor shower. Initially, Tyson felt shy and uncomfortable with the publicity.

After he did the interview, he became more observant of the media and noticed something strange: he didn't see any other black men featured in segments that didn't have to do with being black. Sure, there were well-intentioned pieces highlighting the struggles of black Americans, but there weren't any other segments in which an expert, who happened to be black, discussed science.

That realization is part of what inspired Tyson to pursue physics and speak to audiences about science. I think his story speaks volumes about the tone with which we, members of the "tech community," discuss the race and gender gap.

Tyson's message was simple: show, don't tell. In other words, don't just examine why certain groups are underrepresented and dwell on the inequality. Instead, counterbalance these types of stories with stories that show how members of the underrepresented groups are making progress.

During the past few days I've seen dozens of articles about the disadvantages that women in tech face. But I haven't seen a proportionate number of stories about the women who are succeeding in the industry.

Tyson said that, for many American TV viewers, seeing one "smart black man" discuss science was enough to overturn deeply ingrained stereotypes. Stories about female founders succeeding are equally powerful, and we should highlight them in addition to focusing on the inequalities.

That 1.5% participation rate for blacks is about the same as their attendence at Yosemite National Park.

Of course, very few are actually aware of the Sierra Club's racist history. The irony should not be lost: not only is the sierra club a supposedly "progressive" organization, it was founded and lead from the heart of the culture that begat silicon valley. Its earliest and most prominent members were products of Stanford and Berkeley, and influential lawyers and academics. Interestingly, however, they were not sexists in the exclusionary sense. The tended to bring their wives along, at least the more adventurous ones, who were on a variety of recorded early expiditions. Of course, this was still before women could vote.

http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/556

Basically nobody takes this test. I think producing a finely detailed list of observations like "no females took the exam in Mississippi, Montana, and Wyoming" is a little weird. Because only twelve students total took the test in all of those states put together!

I certainly agree that more women and minorities should be encouraged to take it. But a prerequisite is probably getting it on the curriculum in schools at all.

Just because the sexes should be treated equally under the law doesn't mean we should expect them to have identical preferences.

Try: before you're even born.

Most movements and organizations dedicated to advancing minorities in CS have largely focused on the former.

While starting off younger does have advantages (although your skills might stagnate at a certain point where a person who started later has just caught up with you), I'm not familiar with any push to do so.

There's a push to introduce compulsory coding classes, but that's distinct.

Unsurprisingly, the article's only source to this claim is PG's out-of-context statement that already got beaten until it was a carcass.

It was a pointless and discouraging experience all around. The only people who came out of those classes and actually did anything related to technology were already learning on their own in the first place. A neutral effect at best, more likely negative.

I'd explain further, but instead of complaining more about my specific experience, I'll just get to the point: the problem is not that the high school compsci curricula are somehow biased against people that aren't white and male, it's that the curricula are totally fucking useless and aren't teaching anyone anything. The only way to do "well" in them is to have preexisting programming knowledge, which just happens to mostly exist in middle class boys privileged enough to own a personal computer.[2] The whiteness and maleness of the kids in these classes is not the problem, it is a symptom of a greater problem.

I think to fix the gap, you have to introduce some level of computer science education in elementary school. If you just leave it to kids to discover the magic of computers on their own, it shouldn't be surprising that most kids won't, and the ones with opportunities to use computers at home get a huge head start.

The other thing: We need people in "tech" to be selfless and sacrifice their cushy salaries to contribute to education. My teacher barely knew how to program, and couldn't teach worth a damn either. One memorable moment that stunted my growth as a programmer for a while: She actually, I shit you not, told us that all the programming jobs were being offshored to India and that we shouldn't bother. We believed her. If that is the kind of teacher that we have introducing kids to computer science, there is clearly a problem, because just about any CS undergrad could have done a better job. Given enough freedom (that is sadly nowhere to be found in our bureaucratic education system), they could easily design a curriculum that goes far further than the AP curriculum while being more approachable and more exciting. Here's a start: Ditch Java for Python, Lua, or even (barf) Javascript. Here's another idea that can start as early as elementary school: Give kids ~50 megabytes on a web server and teach them to make their own personal static web pages by hand in HTML, Geocities-style. And another: either ditch Windows XP, or configure the systems so that they aren't completely locked down and impossible to do anything on.

I think you see my point here: These are ideas that should be totally obvious to anyone who cares about education and has basic programming experience, that could make a big difference with very little effort, yet no one is doing anything like them at all. This suggests that there are systemic problems that will not be easy to correct: the early education system is hopelessly bureaucratic, the tech industry has no voice in it, that smart programmers aren't altruistic enough to give up relatively large salaries to work for education...

If I seem bitter about this, it's because I am. My education system (and I suspect many others) only focused on improving the racial divide, barely making any effort to improve curricula, hire better teachers, or think outside of the box in any way, to the detriment of everyone.

[1] I don't speak Java, did I get that right?

[2] It's not just about middle class privilege, though: When I was in school, I think it was actually more common for girls to have personal laptops than boys, probably because parents believe that "if you give a boy a computer, he'll just look at porn all day." Yet still there were very few girls truly interested in computers or taking the computer science classes.

Or, you could end up optimizing ads, working in some badly ventilated open plan office. (This is what every developer in my city seems to be doing).