I never hear people speak about fixing the nursing gender gap....
Perhaps because that is a different discussion for another forum and this forum is a better fit for discussing Rob's article.
The power of role models
111–120 of 380 posts
Re: The power of role models
#112Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, w…
Are there any good sources that analyze the causes exodus of women from computer science? To solve these kinds of problems it would be helpful to learn the cause of the change.
Like AA, first you have to admit you have a problem. (Not you personally, but there are plenty of people who claim it's just the natural order of things.)
The profession does not conduct exit interviews, but fortunately every few weeks someone will write a blog post on why they (a women) left computer science. These articles may be posted to HN, where they often get a skeptical to hostile reception.
Harrasment is the big one in the news (Uber passim), but there are all sorts of lessor problems which result in women's contributions being ignored or misattributed to men who are louder.
(Astronomy is not immune to this problem, even if it might be better: http://www.nature.com/news/astronomy-roiled-again-by-sexual-... )
Re: The power of role models
#113This is a fine and good idea, as long as the central pillar is that we remain meritocratic first, everything else should come after that.
Diversity is a social issue. Meritocracy is not a good tool to fix social issues.
Computer science is not a social issue. It's a technical issue. So meritocracy is a good tool for it.
Re: The power of role models
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
oh ok. What is wrong with being shy. 'none of them were wallflowers' seems like such an odd thing to say. As a shy person myself, hate this .
Pike was pointing out that the women present participated as one would expect of any professional in such a meeting. Do you think there are benefits to being shy in such a context?
>Do you think there are benefits to being shy in such a context?
One doesn't decide to be shy after doing cost/benefit analysis of a situation, it's a character trait.
In this particular context women have 'confidence gap'[1] so its kind of stange to brush them off as 'wallflowers'
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-con...
Re: The power of role models
#115Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, w…
Bluntly, computing was a low-status field. There isn't "computing envy", there is "physics envy". Never mind that computing is critical path to all fields now...
As status has risen, it's become more status-ey. Surprise!
Re: The power of role models
#116The article suggests that power in computing is something men have to give. It isn't. Computing is a market based economy. Anyone can start a computing company, and run it as they please. I.e. women can start computing companies, and hire women. Women do not need permission from men to do this, nor do they need favor from men.
But they do need capital.
There's no shortage of women with money.
Re: The power of role models
#117Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, w…
Citation needed. How and by whom are girls being chased away? I mean when I was a teenager, it was exactly the other way round: kids who liked computers were social pariahs...
Re: The power of role models
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it might be valuable to reflect on why your immediate reaction to "push them into positions of influence" is to think that women are unqualified to be there and they must be receiving "special advantage" if they are.
Was it not his entire point that these people should be given an advantage? What else do you think it means to be "pushed into positions of influence"?
It's not giving people an advantage, it about giving people equal opportunities to succeed.
Re: The power of role models
#119Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, w…
>Rob is right that role models are important. I've heard this thought expressed a lot, but I have to ask a genuine question: Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field? I'm a man, so maybe it is different for women. But I never really had any role models in programming that I looked up to/wanted to emulate. Personally, I was always interested in computers, softwa…
growing up in a poor country my two options were 1. become a software engineer 2. continue to live rest of your life in dire poverty.
This is precisely the reason you would find so many female programmers in south asian and other poor countries.
Its funny to see all the armchair philosophers like Pike come up with some 'Well actually, it's because X' explanations without presenting a single bit of evidence to back it up.
Re: The power of role models
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you disagree with Pike's implied priors, do so directly; don't huff about how logic that starts from a different set of premises to yours ends at a bad place when you swap the premises out from under it. One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being su…
> accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being suited to men To be fair, the gender gap is present in many engineering professions, computer science is in no way unique here.
The article we're talking about opens with an observation about better gender parity in another hard science field, so it's hard to see how computer science can somehow exempt itself from the observation without special pleading.