Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #110

java000 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never seen Woz celebrated as a businessman or philanthropist. He's a geek's geek, a nerd's nerd, an amazing engineer, etc.

His notoriety has everything to do with the fact that he co-founded a successful business.

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

#132

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #128

fsloth wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree theory without attending to implications in hardware in the real world is not very practical. I do wonder to what student material you've been exposed to when you claim most CS majors could not attend a basic practical programming course in C.

Ivy League student material. Oh, how people flailed when they had to wrap their heads around pointers. These were brilliant people, most of them far smarter than I was, but getting into the nitty-gritty details of things seemed to break their brains.

That's what we call "book smarts." People who can regurgitate trivia to show proof of intelligence, but can't actually think their way out of a paper bag.

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

#133

Post by sunstone » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

Oh jeez, there goes the neighbourhood :)

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

#134

Post by SolaceQuantum » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

ivanca wrote: post #127

zasz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, women have had to fight for the right to work in coal mines. You probably hear only about the fight to get more women in tech, since you are in tech. But anyway, here you go: http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309 Proof that there used to be laws on the books banning women from working in mines, and feminists went and fought them. It's quite possible that the other reason you don't hear about…

Actually I know that, I was talking about _modern feminis_ where this kind of jobs get a lot more attention by them than any other "gender gap"

There are plenty of organizations that push for women representation in a variety of jobs. Check the organization Blue Collar Women in USA.

In China just recently in 2014, women led a massive Sanitation Worker strike. http://www.labornotes.org/2014/10/women-lead-sanitation-stri...

And also in the news in 2014 a female is head of NYC's Sanitation department. http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/kathryn-garcia-named-ne...

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

#135

Post by jberryman » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #102

As a foreigner, can someone explain me why this is important?

The vast majority of people working in software in the US are men. The statistics, various studies, a mountain of anecdotes by women working in tech, etc. all point to systemic problems of sexism in the industry and society more broadly. There's a growing movement from various corners to try to address fucked up tech industry culture issues in various ways, encourage interest in programming among women, etc. So statistics like these are encouraging.

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

#136

Post by niuzeta » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

discodave wrote: post #108

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…

Do you actually have any evidence of it being easier for women to get into CS because of quotas?

not the parent, but the discussion is of interest for me. I've quickly run a search query for "affirmative action statistics for computer science". First page result included a report from http://www.civilrights.org/. I am ignorant of veracity or validity of this organization, so I can't verify if its contents are sufficient to be "evidence". But here goes(emphasis mine):

"By 2010, one in four new jobs will be “technically-oriented,” or involving computers. However, women still lag far behind in earning computer technology degrees and working in computer technology-related professions. High school girls represent only 17 percent of computer science AP test takers and college-educated women earn only 27 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer science (down from 37 percent in 1984) and 16.3 percent of doctorate degrees in computer science. Overall, women comprise roughly 20 percent of IT professionals. (“Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age,” American Association for University Women, 2000)" [1]

Barring the "down from 37 percent" part, it tells me that 17% of female high schoolers take AP computer science, but actually a higher percentage of women end up with a CS diploma. It's very thin connection but that does raise a question that affirmative action lets in more women.

[1] http://www.civilrights.org/equal-opportunity/fact-sheets/fac...

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

#137

Post by niuzeta » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

kevinpet wrote: post #93

sridca wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was seen as lowly-paid "women's work". Later it became a male profession. I just glanced at Wikipedia on this topic ... and, apart from the convenient mention of Ada Lovelace at the very beginning of both the articles[1] (makes you curious why they do this), history of programming is evidently a mostly -- no, nearly all -- male profession. Just…

In the early days, hardware was men's work, and programming was women's work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Programming ENIAC started with an exclusively female group of six programmers. This Cosmo article is from 1967: http://boingboing.net/2015/07/31/the-computer-girls-1967-c.h... In a line sure to make heads explode, it quotes Grace Hopper explaining how programming is just like planning dinner.

Well, now that you think about it, my old Java book had suspiciously many metaphors of ovens, and cakes, and "consumptions"...

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

#138

Post by Doofas » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

kevinpet wrote: post #93

sridca wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was seen as lowly-paid "women's work". Later it became a male profession. I just glanced at Wikipedia on this topic ... and, apart from the convenient mention of Ada Lovelace at the very beginning of both the articles[1] (makes you curious why they do this), history of programming is evidently a mostly -- no, nearly all -- male profession. Just…

In the early days, hardware was men's work, and programming was women's work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Programming ENIAC started with an exclusively female group of six programmers. This Cosmo article is from 1967: http://boingboing.net/2015/07/31/the-computer-girls-1967-c.h... In a line sure to make heads explode, it quotes Grace Hopper explaining how programming is just like planning dinner.

In the early days doing basic arithmetic to count up data was woman’s work because it was a low skill job that only required a person to sit down and know basic 4th grade math.

Female programmers where just people who would rewire the computers do to arithmetic that the mathematicians "programmed". They did not write the algorithms nor did they know anything more than the basics of "this plug does this". their job was taking a work sheet and making the machine do what the work sheet instructed them to do. as computers automated this the female "programmers" where no longer needed to do this low skill job https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Two_wome...

Another example of females doing low skill work that seems technical are phone workers in the 50s https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Telephon...

Due to modern programming jobs being simple maintenance work women are being pushed into the job to get them to lower the wages of male workers.

If you are a male who is a programmer or female with a husband who is a programmer you are cheering for lower wages

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

#139

Post by yareally » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 7:15 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #129

yareally wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors. Men do face discrimination in nursing. However, men are still paid more on average than female nurses[1]. Make of that what you will. The thing I find most striking is that before the 20th century, most nurses were men and in the early days of computing there was a much higher number of women in the field. [1] htt…

That's because 41% of male nurses are nurse anaesthetists, a profession that makes nearly 4 times the salary of a registered nurse. There is a gender gap even within specific nursing professions but it's not nearly as extreme as that.

> There is a gender gap even within specific nursing professions but it's not nearly as extreme as that.

Only ~10% of registered nurses in the United States are men[1].

> According to the Census Bureau, men made up about 9 percent of registered nurses in 2011, roughly a three-fold increase from 1970.

[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/cb13-32_men_in_...

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

#140

Post by dsfyu404ed » Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

yareally wrote: post #41

reagency wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors.

> Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors. Men do face discrimination in nursing. However, men are still paid more on average than female nurses[1]. Make of that what you will. The thing I find most striking is that before the 20th century, most nurses were men and in the early days of computing there was a much higher number of women in the field. [1] htt…

"computing" was a secretaries job. It was a position typically filled by a woman who worked with numerical data (working with spreadsheets, calculating an insurance premium, etc...mission critical back end stuff). During WW2 pretty much all these jobs were filled by women.

Computing and IT started to come of age during the post WW2 boom so there would have been a lot of women with the math background to make programming and working with computers somewhat of a logical next step in ones career.

Coincidentally, these woman who had math backgrounds were also some of the fist to have their jobs automated out of existence (the woman who calculates someone's insurance premium is replaced with a box of punch cards).

Just speculating but it wouldn't be a stretch to see how when choosing between going home or switching careers the woman who didn't become the stereotypical 50s-60s housewives as their jobs were automated found new jobs writing punch cards (programming) and operating computers.

(i'm in a hurry, probably lots of grammar mistakes in that)