Six women computer scientists respond to why women don’t pursue computer science

Instead of interviewing women who decided on computer science it would be better to interview women who were thinking of or who switched from CS. I am willing to venture that sexism, gender bias, and unfair policies aren't reasons women would cite.

In fact in my personal experience talking with women while I was in college who started off in CS or others that took intro CS courses typically the responses were:

  "Didn't click for me"
  "Didn't like all the math requirements"
  "Found it boring and teadious"
  "Isolated, rather work with people"

Those reasons are much simpler and frankly make more sense then a grand sexist and biased plot by men to oppose and opress women from getting into CS.

Why is this (and children) being down-voted? These seem like perfectly rationale comments on the topic.

At my last gig I was paid ~30% less than the person I worked with on the project. They joined a bit earlier and negotiated a better deal, that's all.

All this talk about being promoted and receiving pay raises is funny to me. Never in my work history I was just 'promoted'. One climbs up by looking for new and better job. Same goes to pay.

Where is this magical land where men climb up by being men? I'd love to experience that!

Also, coding is not some magical job. For most people I know the line between work/free time barely exist. People that are good 1) code all day at work and then 2) go home and code some more at home. 1 and 2 may be unrelated but only on the surface. By coding at home they improve their skills and do better at work. But there's a price to pay. Other hobbies/interests have to be sacrificed. So is social life.

All articles of this kind make it sound like coding is some sort of magical job that's easy and well paid and has no downsides. My life experience is that finding a good programming job is incredibly hard and only very few people I know are happy with theirs. More often than not it's just daily grind.

> Minus the woman specifier.

So, "you should leave this field so someone more deserving can have a place"? When you take out the gender qualifier it doesn't seem so ominous.

Sadly, misrepresenting is a common political tactic.

Remember, "you didn't build that?" President Obama made the argument that businesses do rely on substantial government services that are critical to a healthy commerce sector. He said "If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

It was a clumsy way to put it, but it was clear to me what Obama was saying. Yet many on the right attacked him for stating that people who have a business didn't build their business.

Again, it's sad, because you know what? I think the center-right has a decent point to make here. Perhaps the government should leave some of these services to the private sector. Perhaps they are providing them inefficiently. There's all kinds of ways to disagree, discuss, debate, and rightly object to President Obama's thesis.

But we didn't get that debate. Instead, we got treated to a ton of misrepresentation, 30 second attack ads, and non-discussion posturing around something that someone didn't even say in the first place. And the public was actually denied an important debate and discussion that might have led to a greater understanding of the relationship between government regulation and private business.

Yeah, the right does this all the time. I will agree with you, though, that the left does this cynically and perhaps deliberately, especially on this topic.

Another time, John Kerry said "You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq”"

His scripted statement was supposed to be: "Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

It was a pretty dumb statement, and I gotta say, even the scripted one was no prize winning quip. But of course the republicans of course had a field day with this one, claiming that Kerry was arguing that only unintelligent and uneducated people serve in the armed forces in Iraq.

And it was hard to watch a guy who received multiple educational deferrments righteously scold a vet with shrapnel embedded in his ass for saying that people use education to avoid military service.

Trust me, the right does this plenty. Plenty. So does the left. Plenty.