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

Is it achievable at scale for all colleges once they all start to make that effort, though? And if so, it it achievable the way Harvey Mudd did it?

Harvey Mudd is a very elite college with considerable resources, and it has a relatively small class, especially compared to large public universities.

https://www.hmc.edu/institutional-research/institutional-sta...

It looks like there were 27 CS majors out of Harvey Mudd in 2017. We can probably add in another 20 from the joint CS-Math degree. So, about 50.

Here are the numbers for Berkeley:

https://eecs.berkeley.edu/about/by-the-numbers

Berkeley graduates almost a thousand students in EE or CS every year. The accounting is tough here because the degrees at Harvey Mudd and Berkeley are different, so I may be over or under counting, but I hope you can see my point - Harvey Mudd succeeds in a way that might not apply once you try to reach scale.

Consider that 27% of the high school students who take the AP Computer science test are women. This next part is a big assumption, but let's say that this reflects the percentage of students in the current pipeline, and that a "5" on this test clearly represents a high talent student. It's not the only way to identify such as student, but it is a strong indicator.

Harvey Mudd could probably fill it's entire class, all 50 spots, with women who got a 5 on the AP CS test. Harvey Mudd could probably go up to 100% women without meaningfully compromising admissions standards. Remember, this debate is about ratios. The author of the controversial piece is not under fire for saying that talented women don't go into CS, he's under fire for saying that 20% is a natural equilibrium.

Yes, Harvey Mudd could fill its small but very elite CS class entirely from the 20% of the top cohort. But could Berkeley, and Michigan, and UW, and Georgia Tech, and...

I'm not saying that these schools can't achieve parity, nor am I arguing that they shouldn't. But the process for getting to parity across lots and lots of large schools is very different from what Harvey Mudd can do. There would still be lots of men with "5"'s looking for a spot, but not as many women - simply because there aren't as many women taking the test.

At some point, the elite programs will be unbalanced if they simply reflect the pipeline. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try for more equity, but we should recognize that Harvey Mudd's approach won't necessarily scale, it may reflect the recruiting advantages of an elite, well funded school with lots of resources and very few undergraduates.

Why didn't you choose nursing or teaching? Probably going to get mostly: not into it.

You're essentially asking if Mudd succeeding in expanding the total worldwide applicant pool, or just managed to take a slightly larger share of a fixed size pool. It's a fair question, but there are so many confounding factors that we won't know for sure until multiple large colleges make similar efforts.

Mudd is a relatively new college and actually doesn't have the same level of resources as some other selective colleges, at least not when measured on an endowment dollars per student basis. I'm not convinced that this is a resource issue. It seems like focus and commitment by the administration and faculty are more important.

I agree with everything you posted, but I don't think the parent was making a right vs left argument; in particular, Peterson isn't particularly right-wing (from what I can tell, we would have unambiguously classified him as 'liberal' 5 years ago).

>one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts

This is not a problem that's unique to STEM or CS or anything like that though.

>another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here

Again, I don't see that as a problem thats particularly tied to CS or programming or STEM or whatever. I'm not saying its not a problem but thats simply a general problem. I mean a woman could literally name any field and state those reasons and it would have the same impact, and be equally as bad, but those aren't problems specific to the field of STEM or CS or programming or whatever.

>I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers

I've literally been in the room when my boss made weird sexual comments to a female coworker. We looked at each other wide-eyed like neither of us could believe this was really happening, and it was like something out of a training video it was so stereotypical. She thought it was weird but it didn't really phase her, she just let it pass and didn't call him out on it. I think he was just socially weird and didn't realize how his comment would be received until he saw our faces. Nobody said anything and we just carried on with our meeting. She seemed to just take it as "this happens occasionally" almost like encountering road rage on the highway, like I'm not going to give up driving because some people are annoying. I think she took this type of attitude.

These things happen and the level of behavior control/policing that would be required to eliminate such occurrences would be onerous. The cure would be worse than the disease in my opinion. Particularly heinous harrasment can already be dealt with in the legal sphere. I don't want to hand wave it away but, I don't think it can be eliminated in a practical way TBH.