When Women Stopped Coding
npr.org
npr.org
- 1. Computers started being sold as consumer products - 2. They were marketed almost exclusively to boys - 3. Boys played with computers and learned about them, while girls were made to feel that computers weren't for them - 3. Men showed up to college with more computer experience - 4. Women felt they must not be "naturally good" at computers, based on how men already knew more
While I think people sometimes exaggerate how much of gender differences come from society, advertising, etc, the facts of women's history in programming are clear, and I think the cause is well-argued here.
We need to fix the perception that women aren't welcome to program. We're missing out on talented developers.
I got into programming because I couldn't complete a level in a game, and I resorted to cheat-codes and hacks.
First it was the missing-no hack in Pokemon, then getting the console for "sv_cheats 1/god/impulse 101/noclip" for Half-Life and then rules.ini for the Red Alert series.
Hand hacking rules.ini for Red-Alert made a massive impression, any of the game's dynamics could be altered, you could spew out units for $1, bolt a tesla-coil on a tank etc...
Cheats and trainers got me to look into the workings of a computer program, plus the midi music from trainers is addictive :)
While I programmed long before then, that's certainly the reason I started poking at hex editors, and why I remember off the top of my head that 0x63 is 99 and 0x64 is 100.
In the 80s, even the musicians had to hack assembler (Martin Galway, for example)
They couldn't find any data one way or another about if that marketing made sense.
Oh stop it, those are gender differences and girls also enjoy their differences, even if they're unfortunately imprinted by culture. They're untouchable, they are given what they ask (which is: often dolls), they're social. And the few that are in IT, they don't show up at the Java User Group, even if it's their job, even if it's free, even if it's at the same time as for boys.
They do show up more often at higher-class networking parties where they may make connections with product managers and be promoted, rather than stay programmers like us for a bit longer.
Of course there will be counter-examples, but I see girls in IT getting promoted MUCH faster than boys. In my 14-people office? 4 women-project-managers, 1 woman-architect (who doesn't know GIT), 1 female programmer (with 2 years of experience) and 8 male programmers. Yes, I'm making this observation about my team to imply that women have better jobs, sooner than boys, and it does imply that males don't get promoted as easily as women, at least in the world around me, and I'm saying an IT career is an excellent path for a girl.
Before anyone says "Women get promoted quicker because they're just better at their job", I'd note they turn over this exact argument when it's directed to boys, by suggesting they didn't get the education, incentive, support or opportunity. It's not about anyone being better. It's about how we reach fairness.
I do see that some of the world is different for girls, but unfairness is reported more often than advantages.
Edit: "Why are there less girls at the JUG, is it because they're uncomfortable with 95% men?" > Or that they aren't involved much and reserve their evening time for their social life. The only way to be sure would be to ask them, and they'll probably remark they'll be promoted whether or not they attend the JUG, if you've followed the story of my team.
Women probably get promoted relatively earlier for reasons like token women and the fact that they less commonly have computer experience since early on.
Of course there's the Lego Friends range targetting girls, but it is once again about houses, cooking, flowers and rainbow poneys, and not at all as educative as Lego Technics.
*Such as the Lego City and Lego Creator ranges which must be the legos we encounter the most.
[0]: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
[1]: http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/Is%20There%2...
This is probably partly confirmation basis and partly insufficient data. I doubt every time you meet a fellow developer you ask them how old they were when they first started programming.
I'm 35 and didn't start coding until about four years ago (when I decided to go back to school and switch careers) - there's another dev on my team that started even later, and I know several that never wrote a line of code before college. So yeah we're out there.
So i's not marketing.
The article seems to agree, since the underlying reason is attributed to institutionalized sexism in the mainstream culture.
And explanation of why not these many women are in the CS percentage wise today as in 1984? Easy. As CS became very popular instead of being highly scientific niche subordinate to mathematics department, it just became as any other engineering department - overflown with men.
Btw, I studied English language for my Masters. Hihhly recommended : male/female ratio 1 to 7. 馃槈 And no, there are no articles encouraging men to take foreign languages as their University Major. As we are not objectifying them as feminists are objectifying women. We know that advising agents would be inappropriate. But if you want to spend 4 or 5 years with chicks around you -- go study foreign language. And you can still pick up programming after partying with them for five years 馃槈
The answer was that programming was boring and exhausting. From what I understand being code monkey who spends 40 hours a week debugging, writing crap code and checking tests with the most repetitive and non-creative manner doesn't gave them as much sense of an achievement as it gives to some men. Hell, I have doing that kind of job and only push on due to money and fact that 95% jobs in the area looks exactly like that. (And the rest 5% requires you tho know right people.)
I would say that there is relatively little of masochist women who would want to debug that race condition hell in C++/Java. There you have to endure a lot of frustration before reaching a (short) moment of satisfaction. On the other hand in some Rails startups that I know, where effect of your work was immediate and one didn't felt that she was hitting the wall all the time there was a lot more of girl programmers - about a half of the team. But there are very few of such startups in my neighborhood. All in all I've got more men around.
TL;DL - women are less of a masochist when it comes to frustrating jobs.
Back before anyone was really marketing computers in any mainstream way, I remember gathering around the few that were available in the school library or in a math teacher's classroom.
The only people interested EVER were boys.
It had nothing to do with marketing.
That hour or two a day of skipping class or eating lunch would have had a different effect if I'd spent all the time playing with computers.
I started making up for it in college as a CS class was required, I couldn't afford my own computer & so discovered the trash and Linux, and there was a badass female sysadmin who demonstrated perfect ease in owning the computer lab.
You mean exactly like chemistry sets? Yet chemistry is the most equal major in terms of gender of graduates.
I like Planet Money, but this story is unconvincing.
And chemistry is also taught in high schools, so both male and female students interested in it would've had some experience before attending college. The same is not true for computing.
6. Males are far more likely to enter jobs they're not suitable for
Of all the "programmers" without any aptitude that seem to plague corporate IT departments, virtually none of the ones I've come across have been female. If you take out these frauds when counting programmers, then the gender balance in many IT departments becomes more like the early 1980's. Added: When programming became a perceived status job, the frauds turned up to cheat aptitude tests, lie on their CV about experience and studies, and what not.
As a sought after developer in a niche area I appreciate the lack of competition.
But then again I am a selfish, cynical bastard.
While I did get some quasi support from people who thought it might help in a career someday, the much more common response in those days was "who needs a home computer?"
Update: I agree that we should encourage everyone with an aptitude now to go into higher ROI fields (of which CS is one), I do think it is a bit reconstructed history to make TRS-80s actually "cool" and "non-cool kids excluded."
Indeed, the TRS-80 was not even a game machine. PCs as game machines came a bit later, and as price effective ones, much later.
I have a History degree.
Probably a feeling many nerds have had at some point in their life.
Male nerd here. My god, I couldn't get along with 90% of my class. They all seemed to be disagreeable in a "technically correct is the best kind of correct" way, but also with lots of arbitrary fanboyism and a complete lack of basic social skills or outside interests. Not to mention the petty competitiveness and complete lack of any team player skills, and usually a huge amount of attitude dismissing these types of skills as useless.
Meh, I suffered through it (and through many coworkers of this type) as the price of business.
I'm not sure why women assume its all roses for men in these fields and classes. I dislike jerks as much as you. Heck, when we do hiring, we aim for social and inter-personal skills first and technical skills last. Its easy to find a difficult non-team player misanthrope who knows x, y, z. He's just hell to work with. I'll take the easier to work with the person who knows just x and can eventually learn y and z.
Also, this female dominated computer industry of 1970s and 80s has been shown to be something of a myth. A lot of those degrees and jobs weren't programming heavy and in practice were mere data entry or computer operator jobs, not necessarily coding. As the industry changed and those jobs moved towards administrative categories so did the women with them. IT departments dont have a team of data entry specialists anymore. They're put elsewhere, or have been eliminated altogether. If anything we have more female coders, who actually code, than ever.
You got off easy.
I went to a top engineering school out of high school, and can't tell you how many times I was berated, called names, and cursed at for being an "idiot" who didn't know things like the resolution of certain VGA modes by heart (except in that particular case, the other guy was wrong.)
I do understand that this would be more intimidating were I a woman, but still.
You know what stopped me from becoming a professional programmer? It wasn't the fact that I didn't get to study CS in high-school, nor that I didn't have a PC until I was a university student, nor the lack of Internet access at home until I was 20+ years old, nor the language barrier (English is my third language), nor being limited to free resources by my finances.
Nothing. Nothing stopped me from pursuing my interest.
I spent a lot of years working by myself, entirely alone. It never bothered me, all I wanted to do was learn and build. I've never met a woman in my entire life that would have been ok with that isolation.
Right. And there's the difference. Many of your classmates were feeling the exact same thing, but for whatever reason they decided to stick with it.
You're not alone. I've been in those environments. I have not battled on to conquer, although I've continued in math and computers. I have kept my head down, avoided a lot of people, and cultivated only those who I like to work with. Once I have a base of nice people I can deal with in a field, plus some competence, I feel free to roam further. But it's not in my personality to sacrifice my mental health or happiness for the pleasure of hanging around with assholes or people who don't want me around. I've made some peace with that.
Hanging around mostly with people who can work with me respectfully also leaves me the energy to deal with the others now and then.
I am a female born in 1987 and have similarily been interested in programming for a long time.
After reading several comments, I'm getting some sense of resentment that you were driven away from your passion while others were able to stay on course despite similar obsticles. I in no way wish to diminish their accomplishments or claim any secret insight into any hardships they had to overcome or did not have to overcome; however I feel there are some aspects that are unique to the female experience of 'isolation and frustration' in learning how to program that I wanted to clarify:
Starting off, it is not at all unusual to be the only female in the class/room. The reason this is horrible is not because there's no one to talk to or connect with, but because it's completely impossible to shake off the feeling that everyone is watching you, very closely, all the time. Having this constantly on your mind hurts your concentration, your productivity, and your ability to freely explore ideas without judgement - a very important part of learning. This is something that the female needs to come to terms with and learn to be comfortable in her own space regardless.
Second - and this one hurts to type because I can feel the coming backlash - you programming gentlemen can be a bit too... helpful. When a female does need extra help in understanding something, help is appreciated and needed! However, when several people, usually male, come at you at once wanting to help it can be a negative experience. As good intentioned as this is, it is incredibly frustrating for me for three reasons: 1) the more people that want to help only fortifies the pervasive paranoia discussed earlier, 2) the more people that want to help me highlights my knowledge gap and is incredibly discouraging, and 3) gentlemen, when helping a lady in need of something, you tend to get a sense of bravado and in an effort to show us something, you end up just doing it for us. When this happened to me, I not only missed out on an opportunity to do a task myself and learn, it also served to fortify the sense of "move aside, young lady, and let the men take care of this." Furthermore, once a female smarts up to this enough to be brave enough to refute said help, she will often do so in an unappealing way until she learns what gets the best response. I want to point out that I don't blame yall males at all, and this is something a female will need to learn to deal with.
For the record, I stuck with it and got my CS degree. I think this has more to do with stubbornness than fortitude.
All this said, however, I've come to be pretty blind to the gender gap in my day to day and try to shy away from these types of conversations because there is no winner. Starting any field of study will have its own set of unique challenges that every student needs to overcome. Right now, for females as well as males in software, one of those challenges is how to treat the gender gap. I'm pretty much over it.
This graph shows that the drop off was nearly identical for men.
Maybe the initial bump was just people getting overexcited for this computer thing and then hearing from their friends that it's kind of nerdy.
Edit
Another interesting link seems to show that women receive degrees at a significantly higher rate than men, and that the gap is widening: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72
Why is this?
$ python
>>> 20000.0 / 17000.0
1.1764705882352942
>>> 12500.0 / 7000.0
1.7857142857142858
CS enrollment for women in 1984 was 78% larger than in 1996; For men, it was 17%.
* Men: 27,500 - 17,500 -> 1.57 ~ 36% drop * Women: 15,000 - 7,500 -> 2 ~ 50% drop
So yes, you're right that women did seem to drop off more but not as much as you say.
> drop off was nearly identical for men
> women did seem to drop off more
These two statements cannot be both true at the same time.
Author notices that number of women in CS significantly went down in 1984 and searches for reasons. According to the graph provided in the parent comment it was actually CS as a whole which went down. Both lines on the graph are awfully similar, and one can assume that there wasn't any sudden catastrophe for women in CS at that time.
When analyzing 'What Happened To Women In Computer Science?' the absolute number is not important, but the ration of women in CS and when that went down (and why).
The facts seem to (rather) be that computers were no longer just toys, they were becoming serious tools. As such, "tool geeks" gravitated to computers. This hypothesis would explain the inevitable sexist outcome of the field with a simple explanation. It can also be verified objectively and orthogonally by looking at other "tool" drivem occuplations that seem to share a heavy gender bias. See, eg
http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-male-dominated-indus...
Playing with tools and machines is not so much sexist as it is anti-social more broadly speaking.
It's not clear the both genders share similar preferences in thus regard.
If you look at more "social" industries (or business functions) like in Media/publishing/advertising you tend to find a significant number of very successful/world class etc women in very high powered jobs.
The bigger question is when did coding become so anti-social? And is/was this anti-social nature somehow necessary or functional?
Asocial is a better term. Unless you're talking about the "mad scientist" (mad engineer is a better term...) that builds machines in order to take over the world.
My hypothesis is that women (specifically teenage girls) just aren't interested in the field / profession so they decide not to study it in school or search for jobs in the field.
Perhaps this is because they are discouraged from trying it by their teachers or media, perhaps its because they don't have the confidence to believe they'll succeed, perhaps they think it's not cool, perhaps they don't think it'll be a fun job.
But I guess, I see "women aren't as interested in programming" as a very likely cause for the disparity. And I don't think that's a sexist observation. I believe if we can find ways to get more girls interested we should pursue them, and indeed I root for organizations like Black Girls Code.
We live in too politically correct a world if we think it's bad to suggest that maybe girls _aren't_ interested in the field. I'm not sure that it's the biggest contributing factor, but if it could be part of the story, why are we so afraid to admit that possibility? Because it's not something we'd like to believe?
I don't think anyone is afraid to suggest that girls aren't interested in the field, it's just that it is a very unsatisfying answer and it doesn't really make sense to generalize about more than half the population.
I agree that it is strange that the drop isn't as large as it is for women in STEM in general, but I don't think it disqualifies the hypothesis.
I guess from my perspective if you only have a handful of women even entering a CS department in university in the first place, then the first and most important problem to solve is why they don't seek to study the major, or participate in high school programming classes. I believe if you can answer that question and remove that factor, it will be the biggest first step.
Disclaimer: Was a CS major, dated a CS major woman who coached me through Calculus and who I collaborated with in software classes. I'm biased.
It does in the context of gender. Sure there are outliers but men and women are generally interested in different things. To deny this is to fail to realise a huge aspect of human behaviour.
B) Even if there is a difference for some statistically significant degree, given the population we are talking about the outliers can matter a tremendous amount (for instance if "only" 20% of women are interested in computers but are forced out due to culture, that is on the order of 30 million humans).
C) Even if there aren't massive amounts of outliers, gender interest continues to not explain why the computer sciences participation decreased over time and other technology professions didn't.
I don't know very many men with a strong passion for clothing, fashion, shopping, etc. Maybe 5% of the guys I know are passionate about those things. About 95% of the women I know are.
Sports. I really don't need to explain this one. If you've dated more than a few women, you'd find most of them have a relatively low interest in watching sports on TV. They'd rather be watching True Blood, or Gossip Girl.
Babies. My Facebook feed is non-stop overwhelmed with women posting endless parades of baby related content. Babies, babies, babies, all the time. This is a 27 / 40 something female thing in my observation. None of the guys do this, ever, outside of occasionally posting family photos.
I guess that must just be the people I know, and it just happens to perfectly match up with the cultural stereotypes.
1) I don't think it is statistically dominant enough to be important for conversations about nuanced topics like computer science education. That is, just because on average more woman are interested in Gossip Girl than men, has no bearing on the difference between potential interest in computer science (especially given that an interest in computer science is already such a small minority of all people).
2) What people report they are interested in and what they would be interested in absent cultural stereotypes are 2 entirely different things. On big picture topics we are unlikely to change those stereotypes in a reasonable time frame but for something as constrained as CS education, the stereotype can (and potentially has historically) changed. For instance, to use your example, there are many, many women who are not in the least bit interested in babies, but they cannot admit this without an extreme social stigma being attached. Conversely, what would you think about one of your male Facebook cohorts posting an endless parade of baby related content? Those stigmas filter peoples behaviors.
3) social stereo types are extremely compelling minus data. For instance, I find your claim that 95% of woman are passionate about clothing ridiculous and the converse of 5% of men is also idiotic. It also may be extremely dependent on your neighborhood, background, location etc. Without data we can't know which of us is right, but many many people will assume you are.
4) Your sports example is also particularly pernicious. There is this belief that woman aren't interested in sports, yet at the youth level woman participate in sports at nearly the same rates as men. So if woman are interested in sports growing up, but have lower average televised attendance (and if you look that number up I bet it isn't nearly as disparate as you think) we can either assume that woman aren't interested in TV sports due to some inherent "woman-ness" or we can attribute it to sports on TV being targeted at men. If it is the latter that says nothing about differences in interest, only about differences in accommodation. There is at least circumstantial evidence about Sports being interesting for woman when you look at the viewership surrounding the Olympics. Figure skating & gymnastics post dominant TV numbers with high percentages of woman viewership. I'd also say that your data set of women you've dated might also be biasing your world view on this.
Consider these two statements: 1) The female sex is intrinsically(biologically) uninterested in Computer Science. 2) Girl's are raised in an environment that pushes their interest away from Computer Science.
In each statement, girls are not interested in Computer Science. But the first statement carries a tremendous amount of baggage with it, and comments on significantly more than cultural interest. It is, to put it lightly, a fantastic claim. And fantastic claims require fantastic evidence.
I don't think anyone is afraid of admitting that girls have been less interested in pursuing Computer Science than men. That's not really at issue. What's at issue is the cause and context guiding the group's interest.
``` [the] "women just aren't as interested in programming" trope rings hollow ```
To me the comment implies he is "afraid of admitting that girls have been less interested in pursuing Computer Science than men".
Throwing around unsubstantiated claims about how "society molded them into who they are" seems like a very fantastic claim to me. And I see a lot of that kind of argument going around.
Why is it fantastic? Because last time I've checked, women were also less interested in recreational fishing than men.
The problem is that I have seen no significant evidence to support such a claim. And on the flip side, it seems rather straightforward to argue for culturally guided decision making. Marketing, toys(Barbie vs Tools), socially approved courses(home economics vs woodshop), socially approved professions, 'traditional' family roles, historical religious convictions... These make for a convincing argument. And they're especially so when you begin to dissect the progress women have made in other professions, and the changes in cultural attitudes over time that have helped them make and hold on to such gains.
- from a woman who quite enjoys fishing, tyvm
The two arguments are: it's either how we're wired, that is that we're wired (or even physically built) in such a way that we end up liking or pursuing different things; or it's society / social pressure or influence.
I wish we could scientifically prove once and for all, that men and women are identical, and thus should inherently like identical things; or that we are in fact different in various ways, and thus inherently are going to like different things to different degrees.
Do men and women like programming at a different rate because of how our brains are wired? It seems to me we'd have to start by determining whether our brains are different in such a way as to make that plausible; and if that's not the case, then it practically has to be a social driven issue. Now, how can we determine the brain aspect?
Why do we take such offence when people point out a trend or pattern, and we ourselves are an exception to that pattern (I say "we" as in many people, including myself)? Is it because we think being normal is superior to being unusual, and that we not being part of something that some other person thinks is normal is an implicit threat to our threat as normal people?
More than 50% of my law school class (top ten law school) were women. In law school the know-it-all assholes were still mostly men. And that didn't seem to dissuade the women one bit from pursuing a career in law. In my first legal job, more than 50% of the first year associates were women. In my wife's firm, 70% of the first year associates were women.
When I was an undergrad (early 90s) there were about 40-50% women in the CS introductory classes, but by the 200 level classes, there were only about 10-15% women. I was pre-med for a time. Pre-med classes were just as hard ... the attrition did not change the sex ratio in the pre-med classes.
Why do people insist on making up all kinds of just-so stories to explain the discrepancy in numbers of women and men programmers. Isn't it possible that women might not be interested in programming in the same numbers as men. Even within the male population, those genuinely interested in programming seem to be a pretty small number.
Most of my classmates in the CS program did not stay programmers. Many of them went to work for places like Goldman, McKinsey, etc. In fact, those were the preferred jobs in those days. Only a very small number of us wanted to actually program for a living.
To me, that suggests a narrative where the "bust" painted computer science as a less reliable, more risky field. As a result women were less likely to go back into it.
A similar boom/bust happens in the early 2000s. Again, the female share drops more and recovers slower.
Basically, in the mid-80's the predominant media image of computer engineers was either social outcast of criminal.
Gee, wonder why women weren't attracted to that.
He's just suggesting that the "outsider outlaw" is more appealing to men than to women.
Men are usually the outliers. (See % of male prisoners)
Note that he also said "Maybe just a total coincidence".
But WARGAMES and that whole media portrayal that followed of the computer hacker/enthusiast was definitely male and outsider.
Interesting point.
And men were, because...?
They give two piddly links to commercials aimed at boys.
Explain these ads, then: http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342
Or Commodore ads like this one: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1325832/commodore-765.jpg
In the 80s, computers were marketed to the whole family, boys and girls included.
The article implies that, in the 80s, home computers were considered nothing more than glorified pong machines and girls were never seen in any of the ads, which is simply incorrect.
There are countless ads featuring Commodores, Apples, and Trash 80s displaying spreadsheets, and quite a few with girls at the keyboard.
Is there an exhaustive study of computer marketing from that time? I ask in all seriousness, because two links and hazy memories from NPR isn't very convincing.
> Notice the door, calculator, phone, card file, and dollar bill graphics. Trying to select these does absolutely, completely, and totally nothing. That's right, they don't do anything. At all. This leaves one to speculate if these were supposed to be features of "Magic Desk II", parallel release versions to the "Type and File" cart, or future disk based utilities.
Less flippantly, the larger point they were making rings true to me -- speaking as someone who, like one of the interviewees, got the initial push toward computers by hanging out at Radio Shack in the late '70s. Hobbyist electronics was mostly guys, and companies knew that. Microcomputers, back in the day we actually called them "microcomputers," came out of the hobbyist movement. And as for the part video games played, which was also a big point they made, well. If you grew up going to arcades in the early '80s, then you probably don't remember them as having a particularly balanced gender distribution. I sure don't. From very early on the basic plot of most video games was "shoot all the bad things," and that's a kind of play that boys engaged in far more often than girls. (Girls had dolls, boys had action figures, don't you know.)
Sure, computer companies occasionally put out ads trying to demonstrate that computers were for more than just playing video games and doing business work, and that they were Fun For The Whole Family! (tm). But I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that this disproves their whole thesis. They didn't just "link to two piddly commercials," they talked to men and women who went to school at the time and researchers studying this, and noted that when Carnegie Mellon added a class which was more or less "Basic Computer 101" -- teaching the stuff that they theorized boys were getting before they got to college and girls weren't -- the number of women who stayed with their CS program rose dramatically. This would seem to be fairly compelling evidence that there's something to this thesis.
My first link includes more than one ad featuring girls.
They cited two advertisements and interviews with "hundreds" of students trying to recall why their parents bought computers.
If you're going to make the bold claim that computers "were marketed almost entirely to men and boys," then you've got to present some data on the marketing of the time. Especially when there are counter examples to the claim.
Even something like, "here are ten thousand computer ads from the 80s and boys outnumber girls by a significant margin" would work.
If you have a field toward which nerds gravitate, it will become male-dominated.
What happened around 1984? Yes, home computers were becoming much more common as the article aptly notes.
But what else? It was becoming obvious that the people who flocked to these things most, who outright related to these computers, were nerds.
Popular culture latched on to this instantly!
What was on the big screen and on TV?
- War Games (1983)
- Superman III (1983) - Major character is a computer nerd played by Richard Pryor (August "Gus" Gorman).
- Riptide TV Series (1983) [1] - Major character Murray "Boz" Bozinsky is an utter nerd
- Whiz Kids TV Series (1983) [2]
When 1984 rolled around the trend went all out:
- Revenge of the Nerds (1984)
Nerd stereotypes were in the spotlight, as well as the connection between nerds and technology, especially computers. And that of course is going to have some effect on enrollment in fields of study having to do with computers. Young people respond to stereotypes in mass culture.
The Atari 8-bits were released in '79
The TRS-80 Model 1 - '77
VIC-20 - '80
TI-99/4 - '79
Any suggestions from HN on how best to guide her interests?
Extra project? incentive?
For now, her interests are typical teenage - school clubs, facebook, youtube, tumblr, etc.
Obviously suggest, not force.
She is a teenager, I believe you are not her guide anymore, but you can (and should) be an amazing facilitator and her #1 fan.
At the age of fifteen she came across a mathematical puzzle in a ladies magazine (mathematical recreation columns were quite common in ladies magazines in the 18th and 19th-centuries!)
[1] http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/the-queen-of-science-...
- Debate - Computer programming - Cooking - Soccer - Skating - Hockey (upcoming) - Fashion design
The only one she didn't enjoy was cooking so I didn't send her back. But she does ask me for more girly stuff though I don't know what that looks like :(
Nowadays we have IT, EE, CS, etc. but these are really different professions than what was originally mostly women. The first crop of nearest equivalent computer scientists usually majored in mechanical engineering, simply because there were no computer majors yet and the computers were much more mechanical, and had the same gender imbalance we see today.
* Rates of women in Computer Science jobs.
* The number (not just %) of women studying computer science. Did those numbers fall, or stay the same? Was it just that more men entered the field of Computer Science?
My hunch (clearly not backed by any data) is that prior to the mid 80's, Computer Science was a niche field, so there weren't many people who went into CS.
As CS jobs became more mainstream (given the advent of the personal computer) more men went into Studying CS, instead of other fields they had been in. With more men studying CS, more men ended up in CS jobs, and eventually you end up with male dominance.
I would love to compare these rates, with what were the top engineering/science jobs in those times, and see of there is a correlation between the decrease in manufacturing/engineering, and the increase in Computer Science jobs.
Perhaps it's also cause and effect. There were more medical and legal jobs, so women entered those professions, and were able to fight to get equality. Since CS was relatively new, the barriers that women face hadn't been knocked down. As time goes on, there were more female doctors and lawyers for girls to have as role models, leading to more women studying in those fields.
If you want to do some digging on your own, it's in XLS and PDF formats here-
Also I disagree with what nathan_long said regarding "Women felt they must not be "naturally good" at computers, based on how men already knew more". To me that is absurd to assume that woman would think that "men know more than us, so why try"? His third point would be nullified by the associated social stigma during their teen years.
And that during the 1960s through the 1980s, fields such as law or advertising were the opposite: openly hostile to women. With there being a critical difference being between aggressive and passive hostility.
As women gradually found it easier to move into fields such as law, they chose not to pursue computer science. That shift pulled women from pursuing computer science, perhaps because women found those other jobs more fulfilling for any number of reasons.
Nerds are typically not as aggressive in any sense, as the guys that would have worked in advertising or law, circa 1985 would have been.
I suspect that the article might be right about the sharp turn in the 1980s being the result of personal (as opposed to corporate) computing, but we've now collected thirty years of data that suggest that access isn't the issue.
Instead, I think it's the inherent lack of appeal of the activity itself. Only a small percentage of boys can maintain any interest in programming after the novelty wears off, and it's only the fact that even fewer girls stay interested that accounts for the gender imbalance.
I want to quote some of the comments, which I think is extremely important to this discussion.
" The far simpler answer is that the 1970's "explosion" of women into the (purported) field of "computer science" was largely women obtaining degrees in (what were then "computer science" courses) the subfields of "Data Processing" and later on "Word Processing". (Edit: see the Google Ngram on the transition of terminology from "Data Processing" to "Computer Science"[2] ). With the ending of punch cards, and the increasing decentralization via personal computers (and networks of them) and subsequent later software improvements (spreadsheets, advanced databases, WYSWYG word processing), those functions ceased to be viable degrees and lost their status as "computer science" related functions... everyone became (in one form or another) involved in data-entry and/or word processing. The plain truth of the matter is that women were NEVER highly represented in the true "computer science" fields of programming (and later network & database administration). "
Although I believe the comment author can use a better tone, I think these facts are extremely important to this discussion. There were more people echoing that their grandmum got a CS degree in data entry[3]
Edit: Data processing are indeed counted towards computer science. Although there is no data on the relative weight
[4] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf
[1]http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what... [2]https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=data+processin... [3]http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what...
But purely looking at the facts, is this factually true?
I don't have data that supports one way or another way. Looking at the comments, no one was able to dispute the claim and some other people also echoed that data entry was in fact a subfield of computer science.
There is an invisible soundless fairy unicorn in my room. Please dispute this claim with evidence. Thanks in advance.
He posted some evidence. Not a lot, but some. More than his detractors here have posted so far. There's also more in that reddit thread, it looks like.
I'm not saying he's right, but it does no one any favors to slam someone instead of refuting their argument.
To wit: one would expect that n-gram search to look the same whether or not data processing was a CS subdiscipline, because data processing dropped in relevance as digital systems became the primary source of truth. Therefore, it is not evidence either way for the claims the comment made.
The source does matter. It is not irrelevant, nor is it an "attack" in the traditional sense to offer evidence that the source might be lying or misguided.
Although the "debunk" wasn't very clear. With some posters that also saying that their family members indeed obtained data entry degree in computer science
http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what...
Hard to make a judgement call, but I think the truth is probably not as clear cut as NPR suggests
It is not hard for me to decide whether to trust Planet Money or anonymous Reddit commenters, at least one of which is a known MRA, especially on a topic relating to sexism. I guess that might just speak to our different priors, but it's a no brainer over here.
So what did the study use in its place?
That's a valid question regardless of who raised it.
So I went and looked it up, since that seemed more productive than fighting endlessly over it.
The NSF study helpfully includes an appendix that shows what fields they counted as "Computer Science", and it turns out that "Data Processing" and "Data Processing Technician" were indeed counted in that category.
Of course, that says nothing about the relative numbers and how they changed, but it does raise a possible explanation for the shift in numbers as Data Processing died out as a field.
Edit: I followed up on that after getting back to the house and I did find some community colleges that offered certificates in word processing and business information systems (which could include data entry), some which might count for credit towards an associate degree. But I remain skeptical that such vocational qualifications were ever the basis of a full degree, or that such qualifications were formerly treated as synonymous with the study of computer science.
I was not around in those days. Can someone who studied computer science in the 70s comment on whether data entry/data process was indeed an important sub-field of data science?
As another commenter pointed out, Data entry and data processing are indeed counted towards computer science. Although there is no data on the relative weight
Doesn't anecdotal evidence suggest that children quickly exceed their mentors (parents) when exposed to 1980s consumer hardware? (That hardware was deterministic--same key sequence means same result every time. You know, like video games from the same era.)
Being exceeded by your child can be a dramatic emotional event. Are the feelings that a father or mother experience different when the child is a little girl vs. a little boy?
</speculation>
Novices would quickly learn to carry out common actions 'blind'.
You could memorize a sequence of keystrokes and experiment with changing parts, or leaving out parts, to develop variations, or shorter but equivalent sequences.
The user interfaces of older computers were also orders of magnitude faster. If you were to time travel back to the 1980s and try to show off a smart phone to 8-bit hobbyists, I predict that they'd frequently attempt to remove the battery: "It seems to be stuck in a loop!"
Some might blame multi-threading, some might blame storage and communication latency... I blame planned obsolescence and the 'Halloween Documents' come to mind.
Most users were not introduced to real computers. They were introduced to products, products engineered to optimize for profitability.
The article said that the share of women in other programs kept rising. So doesn't the share of women in different programs need fall to balance? If more women become lawyers, aren't there fewer women left for other programs?
I really wish these types of articles would show absolute numbers. Percentages can be so misleading.
Does Hasbro market GI Joes to boys because boys tend to like GI Joes or do boys like GI Joes because Hasbro markets them to boys?
I'm not so sure how useful wondering about finding the "Cause" of this. It isn't that simple.
I think that once you have kids and observe them do gender-specific things from a very early age, you dismiss all the talk of 'marketing is responsible for it'.
I don't have any real explanation why.
However, I can tell my story on how I got intersted and why I do not think girls at that age would have any issues having the same story.
I can only answer for my experience, but here it goes:
When I were younger (I'm still in my 20s) I started with computers and mainly to play computer games which I quickly realized was a lot of fun.
Later on, and surely labeled as a "nerd" by my fellow classmates (girls and boys) I started to take interest in cheating in games and wondered how the hell to do it. That made me walk out on the internet learning about how programs work in the first place and I discovered modding.
I understood that I can change the game data which was saved on my local hard drive in order to gain powers in the game. Cheating quickly became boring so I wanted to know how to mod a game so bosses would spawn more powerful to meet my newly crafted gear that could beat anything. So I started to mod the client with programs that were available on the net.
At this point, I barely understood all the english grammar that was used but the interest in learning on how the stuff works eventually led me to learning to program and awoken an interest I didn't even know existed. Previously to this, I had no idea how computers really worked like I had no idea how a car engine worked. I didn't examine this until I really wanted something done.
I am sure my story is like many stories in the early 00's of people who eventually learned to program. I don't think any girl that did the same during this period would have any specific attention except good ones. Maybe the girls in my school did not learn to program because they were less interested in games, maybe something else. But what I am totally conviced of, is that there were no sexism hindering these girls to learn if they wanted to. Actually, I would think that most boys would not care as much if a girl was as interested as me.
I were labeled a nerd (and had really no problems with it) but I do not think that a girl would be labeled the same. Of course there were girls labeled as nerds but not because they were interested in computers, but because they did "too much homework" or "took school too seriously". The funny thing is that I were not labeled as a nerd because of my interest in computers, I am pretty convinced that it was only because that I had a nerdy look and sat a lot in front of computers. In fact, most of them when I showed some tricks were actually impressed and had no issues with that. Children can't hate on something they do not understand and in my experience a kid always goes on the visual things or very basic information that they do understand (i.e. do too much homework / sit a lot in front of computers).
I am sure there are some sexism out there still, but in my experience the sexism has been reversed. I have always felt "second picked" or less important because of my gender. I don't understand why girls need "extra attention" regarding computer interest anymore and I actually think it's damaging for several reasons.
My question remains the same, why can't we just try to treat everyone equally?
Movies like Revenge of the Nerds are not about nerds triumphing over adversity and getting the girls because they are nerds... it's about triumphing over adversity and getting the girls in spite of being nerds. Or, if the key to their success was really their brains, they used it to overcome an adversity that was caused by being nerds. If they weren't being nerdy and brainy, there would be no adversial story to begin with.
To implicitly suggest that movies like that are supposed to inspire people to become and continue to be nerds is asinine. It's a role reversal concept; not something that people believe happens in real life. The whole point is them being unlikely heroes and winners.
> Ord贸帽ez got through the class but earned the first C in her life.
I guess this is supposed to evoke some "hitting a low" sentiment? The sheer horror of getting a grade that is technically right in the middle? Long live grade inflation, I give it an A+++.
Mostly though, they could probably see the fact that most coding work was going to be mundane, bug fixing, and working in an industry that never seems to learn, but throws away knowledge and experience, and focuses solely on the new shiny, and keeps thinking it has invented something new, when it is really just a poor rehash of something earlier, something that was probably more solid and more robust.
Maybe.