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How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

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Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#31

Post by cmiles74 »

peoplewindow wrote: post #25

Ugh. So basically when programming was unskilled and considered one step up from being a secretary, women did that and men built the machines themselves. As software became a larger and larger component of the machines, and more and more complex, it became dominated by men. This, we learn, is because men made it more rigorous and scientific as part of some bizarre sexist plot. Or maybe the nature of programming today…

I'd bet that as the field grew, they eventually had a surplus of engineers working on new hardware and a deficit of people working to write new software. Once there were men willing to do the work, they were seen as a better bet than the women already in the field.

The same thing happened after WW2, this isn't a new pattern.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#32

Post by [deleted] »

LogicalBorg wrote: post #15
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the absolute number, not percentages? If 1 million women were coding, then 100 billion men started coding, those 1M women would still be coders. So there wasn't necessarily a decline. Or maybe there was, and the numbers will reflect that. I am interested in the ac…

This may be what you're looking for: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp According to that table, women's bachelor's degrees in computer science: * were low in the 1970's, about 15% average * were higher in the 1980's, about 35% average * declined in the 1990's to about 25-30% * steadily declined from 27 to 17% in the 2000's

[deleted]

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#33

Post by sillysaurus3 »

LogicalBorg wrote: post #15
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the absolute number, not percentages? If 1 million women were coding, then 100 billion men started coding, those 1M women would still be coders. So there wasn't necessarily a decline. Or maybe there was, and the numbers will reflect that. I am interested in the ac…

This may be what you're looking for: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp According to that table, women's bachelor's degrees in computer science: * were low in the 1970's, about 15% average * were higher in the 1980's, about 35% average * declined in the 1990's to about 25-30% * steadily declined from 27 to 17% in the 2000's

Thank you. Perfect. Now I feel like we're in a position to have a productive debate. For example, there was a sharp decline in the rate of bachelor's degrees for women, but not master's degrees. Those remained nearly the same, then declined at the same rate as men's.

It's interesting to see the actual numbers because it clearly shows there is/was a problem. Now, how best to solve it?

One issue with quotas is that the rate of women graduates can't necessarily keep up. It seems like we could use an influx of new students (in addition to the current efforts).

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#34

Post by cmiles74 »

lumberjack wrote: post #24

When do we start looking at articles like this as misandry? The author is seriously implying there was some sort of conspiracy that all men partook in, with the intent to exclude women from software development. Are you fucking kidding me? This shit has gone too far.

There's no conspiracy, there's only satisfaction with the status quo that leads to those with the upper hand working to preserve the status quo. This dynamic is discussed all the time on this forum.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#35

Post by lhnz »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

This is how I remember it in the UK, too. Computers were incredibly uncool and only people with zero interest in being cool were willing to invest their time in learning about them. If anything, these people were crowded out from lots of other domains and picked computing because it was the only place which would accept them.

Now everybody is trying to turn this around, and imply a conspiracy to "[create] the now-familiar stereotype of the computer programmer as a reclusive, eccentric man".

The stereotype wasn't created be a shadowy group of men to exclude women. That is absurd. Why would sexists block women from programming, while letting them into plenty of other more high status jobs?

Reclusive, eccentric men have difficulty finding jobs in sales, law, finance and management, and technology is one of the few jobs where they can make a difference.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#36

Post by icu »

Edmond wrote: post #30
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

The "socially awkward" archetype of a computer programmer I think is mostly a western (probably American) cultural artifact. For instance I have worked with a lot of Indian immigrants who are programmers and I don't find the correlation between social awkwardness and the people doing programming. While programming might be appealing to socially awkward western/American men , I don't think one should go from that to c…

The "socially awkward" archetype certainly existed in New Zealand.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#37

Post by Fricken »

danharaj wrote: post #9
lsd5you wrote: post #2

I am well aware that the climate is well against this position, but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand. He is not just 'wrong'. The Damore view is at the very least plausible and tarring a whole industry filled with many thoughtful and introverted (i.e. not messing with others, often taken advantage of themselves) individuals to support some view of gender economics is morally wrong. We now live in…

James Damore's arguments are only plausible in the weakest sense of the word. The only way someone would find his arguments convincing is if one's priors already favor his conclusion. If one weighs the evidence for social factors against biological factors, the question is how should a critical person weigh one against the other? It turns out if one ignores all the evidence for social factors and squint really hard a…

Biology and culture are not unrelated, there are very tight feedback loops at play there, the two factors are deeply intertwined. I'd be distrustful of anyone who suggests it's exclusively one or the other.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#38

Post by mdorazio »

Edmond wrote: post #30
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

The "socially awkward" archetype of a computer programmer I think is mostly a western (probably American) cultural artifact. For instance I have worked with a lot of Indian immigrants who are programmers and I don't find the correlation between social awkwardness and the people doing programming. While programming might be appealing to socially awkward western/American men , I don't think one should go from that to c…

But the tech worker gender gap is much higher in the US than it is in India, so isn't this evidence of exactly what the parent comment is implying? US -> computers associated with nerds and social outcasts for a long time, now we have a big gender gap in CS degree holders and tech workers. India -> computers much less stigmatized, now we see a lower gender gap there.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#39

Post by rflrob »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #14
danharaj wrote: post #6

There's a strong correlation between women entering a field and it having low prestige, and men entering a field and it having higher prestige. Guess which field of ours was considered busywork for women to do until men realized it was going to transform society as we know it.

Perhaps, but even if the article is correct, and male programmers in the 1960s did intentionally crowd out women, doesn't that demonstrate what Damore posited when he said women are less assertive and less aggressive, in general? It seems disingenuous for the author of the article to declare Damore "wrong," when studies back up what Damore said, and this article itself suggests those tendencies to be accurate, at lea…

The Damore argument as I read it said not only that women are less aggressive in general, but was premised on the idea that the reason for that difference was primarily biological, and that therefore efforts to promote diversity in CS were pushing things away from the natural gender ratio. Even if I were to grant that women are statistically less assertive (probably true, though anecdata suggest that women's ideas are likely to be misattributed in discussions), it seems unlikely to me that there's not a huge cultural component. For instance, "bossy", which has negative valences, is used almost exclusively of girls compared to boys. The objection I have to Damore is less the science, and more the conclusions from the evidence.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#40

Post by belorn »

cmiles74 wrote: post #12
lsd5you wrote: post #2

I am well aware that the climate is well against this position, but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand. He is not just 'wrong'. The Damore view is at the very least plausible and tarring a whole industry filled with many thoughtful and introverted (i.e. not messing with others, often taken advantage of themselves) individuals to support some view of gender economics is morally wrong. We now live in…

There is a lot wrong here, but what bothers me right this minute is the idea that computer programming has "changed beyond recognition" between 1950 and 1980 and that is the cause of the gender imbalance we see today. For sure, a lot of progress was made in the field during that time span. But did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all, we simply saw huge steps made in the quality of the too…

> did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all

How much money was the computer programming industry creating 1950 vs 1980.

In the memo, one of the larger points was that men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs. Would you argue that this claim is false?

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