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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

#141

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…

"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 programm…

> "computing" was a secretaries job.

Correct, that was the case with a number of the roles. Those roles were sort of like the modern day CRUD development and things that (mostly) get automated away.

However, Grace Hopper[1], Betty Holberton[2], Frances Spence[3], along with around a half dozen of the original programmers of the ENIAC[4] would disagree that they were only filling a secretary like position.

In reference to my previous comment, I mostly found it surprising that these pioneers didn't lead to more women pursuing CS early on. I suppose it has more to do with the cultural trends that came after the war as you said yourself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Spence

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

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

#142
post #10

This is also true of MIT. http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html According to the article "It was unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university where computer science is the top major for female students." That link was the top hit for https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment This is a pretty sad thing to see in something purporting to be journalism. I can't blame the really writer t…

Sure the journalist could do that search for every university - but why would she start with MIT? She (Sarah McBride from Reuters, not a click-bait agency) also talked to UCLA and Harvey Mudd, both Californian schools and on her beat (as a SF-based journalist). Harvey Mudd had a reputation for high female enrolment in STEM and was a more logical first call than MIT, on the other coast.

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

#143
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having 1 or 2 races dominating the population doesn't make it racially diverse.

More racially diverse than other high-paying industries in the US, which I'm guessing sre mostly dominated by white people (except basketball).

As white people make up a significant portion of the population this just explains demographics more than anything. You might also correctly guess high-paying industries in Japan are dominated by Japanese people.

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

#144
post #50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, what? Do we say this kind of crap to Lawyers? Doctors? Engineers? (scratch the last one i'm sure we do say this kind of crap to them) Why must programming be such a soul sucking life encompassing thing? It doesn't matter if you're a woman or man, this stupid mindset that somehow the only way to be a programmer is to be a stereotype needs to be launched into the sun and forevermore forgotten. Just today I met a g…

Bad code causes real harm to everyone else on your team, so coders have more incentive to worry about the skill of their coworkers than other professions do. You don't need to be nerdy for that, just good, but the two are correlated because you gain skill if you willingly spend all of your free time on technical stuff. As for workload, lawyers and doctors tend to be overworked and honestly that's really not okay for…

What sort of 'real harm' are we talking about here.

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

#145
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad code causes real harm to everyone else on your team, so coders have more incentive to worry about the skill of their coworkers than other professions do. You don't need to be nerdy for that, just good, but the two are correlated because you gain skill if you willingly spend all of your free time on technical stuff. As for workload, lawyers and doctors tend to be overworked and honestly that's really not okay for…

What sort of 'real harm' are we talking about here.

You can miss your deadlines due to dealing with it. When you're on call and you get pulled in to clean up someone else's problem. Bad design patterns cause lots of unnecessary duplication of work.

Yes, you can find other jobs where a mistake brings down the whole team, but it's rarely the kind of mistake that can persist in the codebase for years on end simply because there's no budget to refactor.

Now, you might point out that managers can, in fact, cause even more problems than that, but I don't think you'll find many people who want to work for a bad boss, either and I bet you or someone you know knows people who have left otherwise good jobs because of their boss.

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

#146
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.

You're extrapolating from a few select examples. ASCC and many other computer precede ENIAC, and their programming was absolutely not a "women's work".

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

#147
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…

Not the case at Stanford.

Stanford doesn't separate undergrad admissions by department. When I applied, the application didn't even ask what my intended major was. All Stanford undergrads start out as "undeclared", and many don't choose a major until sophomore year.

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

#148
post #10

This is also true of MIT. http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html According to the article "It was unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university where computer science is the top major for female students." That link was the top hit for https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment This is a pretty sad thing to see in something purporting to be journalism. I can't blame the really writer t…

Sure the journalist could do that search for every university - but why would she start with MIT? She (Sarah McBride from Reuters, not a click-bait agency) also talked to UCLA and Harvey Mudd, both Californian schools and on her beat (as a SF-based journalist). Harvey Mudd had a reputation for high female enrolment in STEM and was a more logical first call than MIT, on the other coast.

The article tries to present Stanford as relatively unique in this light — which is great for Stanford but potentially bad for the overall ecosystem. It shores that up with the vacuous statement about how it is "unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university [...]".

A few minutes of online research (or perhaps an hour(s) of calls to registrars) would have resolved that. Then she could have made a concrete informative statement like "[?All] of the top 10 ranked schools (via US News and World Report) have seen a significant increase in female computer science majors." and/or "MIT & [...] also reported that CS is the most popular major for women."

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

#149
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…

I think the 80's geek / nerd image is history in the age of starting strength, stronglifts and /r/fitness

Only a matter of time. Somebody should update the jargon file.

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

#150
post #101

What are we going to do about the lack of boys/men in higher education?

Write NY Times op-eds bemoaning the scarcity of quality marriageable men in ten years.

In 10 years, I'll be a 50yo graybeard, and definitely not concerned about writing any such op-ed.
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