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Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

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Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#71

Post by brighteyes »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54
reagency wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find

Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity". http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

I think it's obvious that diversity can be both good and bad.

A team where everyone speaks a different language is very diverse, but not effective, since there is no communication. One in which they at least share some common language which for all of them is a second language, not with full fluency, would be able to function, but likely not as efficiently as one in which everyone speaks the same language as their mother tongue.

And language can be just an analogy. Instead of language, imagine a cultural background of shared assumptions and experiences. A shared background can help avoid misunderstandings and speed up communication.

At the same time, it's clear that diversity can help in many ways, avoiding single-mindedness, for example. If everyone has the same concepts and background, they might miss something important.

For political reasons, people like to say that diversity is good, and it is indeed good in some ways. But that's far from the whole story.

It would be better to not use "diversity is good for business" as a slogan, when there are other more valid reasons to fix issues with inclusion where they exist.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#72

Post by java000 »

mrdrozdov wrote: post #64
java000 wrote: post #58

I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets la…

Woz, Bill and Larry were coders, geeks and nerds at some point, and in many ways still are. Are they prestigious? I guess it's up for the reader to decide.

They're famous and respected as businessmen and philanthropists, not software engineers. The media and general public are largely ignorant of the technical accomplishments of those men and would pay them little notice had they not been so phenomenally successful in business. Compare the responses to the deaths of Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#73

Post by ivanca »

What's with the obsession of gender equality by women in high paying jobs?, is never about lack of women in sewer maintenance or coal mining, or bugs exterminators, or firemen (firewoman? Is that even a word?). Is always CEOs or STEAM jobs at silicon valley. That's a very narrow and convenient definition of "equality" isn't it?

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#74

Post by learc83 »

douche wrote: post #56
ngoel36 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Very little of a CS degree is "coding" - CS is so much more than that. It's even beyond "engineering". A proper CS degree teaches you how to think , how to solve insanely hard problems, and how to do so with a team of other smart people - often with different personalities. What separates CS from other degrees is that it does filter out those without the horsepower or fortitude on both the quant side (algorithms)…

University CS programs are kinda shitty for teaching people how to actually write code. It's not really more than that, it's math and theory and proofs instead of that . University faculty, if they ever worked in a professional environment, did it years and years ago before they got tenure. The worst course I took in my CS department was the algorithms and data structures course. Didn't write a line of code. Wrote a…

That's interesting because the worse course I took was software engineering.

The techniques I learned there are all out of date or things I could have learned in the first few months on the job. While the techniques I learned in algorithms and data structures (and other theoretical classes like discrete math and automata) are pretty much still state of the art and have proved useful time and again (and I definitely wouldn't have picked most of them up after a few months on the job).

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#75

Post by codeisawesome »

java000 wrote: post #58

I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets la…

Where have you seen Media outlets talking about Programmers are "geeks" or "nerds"? I recall The Register calling scientists "boffins" but not using the other two words for Coders.

I have absolutely no problem with "Coder". At the risk of sounding grand and dandy, I think people realize the impact Code has on their lives, and being called a coder makes me very happy.

I agree with your apprehension over Geek & Nerd, though, it's a badge of honor for you and me but maybe not within wider society. But still, which media outlets?

Oh BTW: Interesting point about "prestige" affecting womens' choices in profession. I did not give that angle much thought, I'll talk to some of my female colleagues to verify.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#76

Post by hendry »

I don't quite understand if "Majoring" means completed degrees or not.

In my old University, women were common in the first year of Comp Sci, as it was the easiest department to gain entry to for them as females because of quotas or whatever positive discrimination is called.

However in the second year, they would typically transfer out to another department they were more keen on, but probably wouldn't have won a place at initially.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#77

Post by learc83 »

ivanca wrote: post #73

What's with the obsession of gender equality by women in high paying jobs?, is never about lack of women in sewer maintenance or coal mining, or bugs exterminators, or firemen (firewoman? Is that even a word?). Is always CEOs or STEAM jobs at silicon valley. That's a very narrow and convenient definition of "equality" isn't it?

It's not even about the lack of women in undesirable male dominated jobs.

What about the lack of women in relatively high paying skilled trades like electrician or elevator repair?

I think you'd get more bang for your buck by funding programs to help working class women move into skilled trades, than by trying to move middle class women who are already going to college from one major to another.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#78

Post by yummyfajitas »

brighteyes wrote: post #71
yummyfajitas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity". http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

I think it's obvious that diversity can be both good and bad. A team where everyone speaks a different language is very diverse, but not effective, since there is no communication. One in which they at least share some common language which for all of them is a second language, not with full fluency, would be able to function, but likely not as efficiently as one in which everyone speaks the same language as their mo…

It's hardly clear to me that ethnic diversity helps in any way for most companies. Several people at my current company told me they were excited that I'd be providing diversity. I asked them what they thought that would bring them, and after pressing the issue I realized they had no clue.

I have no clue either. Some unique perspectives I bring: I favor rigid APIs over close team communication, I favor Bayesian statistics over frequentist, and I'm working on convincing folks that the JVM is actually a great platform to deploy code on. Are these technical matters something that a certain ethnic group (different from mine) is uniquely single minded about?

I've been the bringer of diversity for most of my career. And I can't think of a time when it's actually mattered.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#79

Post by carbocation »

java000 wrote: post #58

I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets la…

As a physician, I don't think any of us have the perception that programming is lower status. Our in-jokes are usually about how we can't find housing on our salaries because the former computer science majors are driving up the prices.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#80

Post by douche »

hendry wrote: post #76

I don't quite understand if "Majoring" means completed degrees or not. In my old University, women were common in the first year of Comp Sci, as it was the easiest department to gain entry to for them as females because of quotas or whatever positive discrimination is called. However in the second year, they would typically transfer out to another department they were more keen on, but probably wouldn't have won a pl…

Anecdotally, it seemed like all of the ladies in my CS department wound up actually majoring in Cognitive Science, which was part of the CS department technically, but about half psyche and pre-med, really.
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