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

No, I was referring to the original comment or comments of this form generally.

BTDTBTTS. I know the overachiever psyche a bit too well. Last female unit spoke five languages and was serious about opera and poetry. Personally, I much prefer females of the English or business depts to most engineers or scientists... sorry most of HN, I work and live better with wilder ones. I'll turn my enginerding creds in at the door.

Anywho, It's a dangerous topic to compare men to women, the SJWs love to make an example out of anyone with external genetalia that's not in a protected group with something usually of the form "it's men keeping women down with bias, assumptions and force." This is usually followed by statements of equality (literal, numeric group parity) rather than equity (parity for the individual's particular needs and desires).

If the idea is to push girls into computer science at every opportunity whom don't want to, while simultaneously short-changing boys, that seems unfair.

I can see not assuming stereotypes about anyone. Boys want to cook or knit, girls want to code, weld or rebuild engines, very cool... whomever can do whatever, all Kosher and good.

What about the absence of boys to girls ratio in academia? You never hear that talked about by feminsts (except maybe Camille Paglia)... maybe because the majority of modern feminism is inherently sexist. Gasp! Slay the unbeliever!

Anyhow, I hope more boys and girls try coding, machining, robotics, chemistry, physics, painting, baking and so on and do it if they want to, rather than being hearded into it like one more multitalented, performing-monkey "prodigy" class like piano, tap, violin, etc.

> I don't think you appreciate what a CS degree means.

Yeah, I will admit am not too keyed up on what a CS degree entails. I thought it was like CS 101, CS advanced or something like that, some other choice of CS electives like visual programming, and then the usual course load that is required for most other degrees like English, etc. I know for certain though, just by looking through some of the videos on MIT's opencourseware and Harvard's videos and problem sets for their beginning CS course, that the even if you could get a perfect score on your AP computer science exam you could easily be unprepared for advanced programming classes at university. I don't think an exam and a high school cs class is anywhere near enough to be worth college level cs credit.

They aren't only misrepresenting Reges in these essays. Some of the things these women finger as "holding them back" are actually (fairly predictable) problems with their own behaviour. I see no rational argument for why men should take the blame.

Consider this passage from the second essay, which seeks to school men on how to avoid discouraging women:

In my case, my college adviser assumed I’d be going to medical school and did not guide me toward the courses I’d need in computer science. During my senior year, when he discovered his assumption was wrong, there was little time left to fill in the blanks in my education. It is easy to assume the wrong thing about someone, and this is where implicit bias can creep in. It is far better simply to ask.

The implicit assumption in this paragraph is eye watering: she appears to believe it was up to her advisor to telepathically figure out that she was not in fact interested in medical school, and would prefer computer science, without her ever telling him that. In Mankoff's world view it wasn't up to her say, actually I want to do computing, could you steer me towards courses I'll need for that that please? Rather it was up to him to "discover" that his "assumption" was wrong.

But she took the courses the advisor recommended, so, apparently his assumptions weren't so wrong. She agreed with his advice after all. There's clearly some misrepresentation of the poor advisor going on here: he didn't pull medical school out of thin air, she must have indicated a bit of interest, then she changed her mind and has re-interpreted her own life story to make her own indecisiveness the man's fault instead of her own.

A "blame men" attitude seems rampant in such stories. There are two anecdotes about someone else trying to take credit for their work. Instead of blaming human nature and recognising everyone suffers this they make it about men vs women. Pratt says men interrupt her in meetings. Guess what, men interrupt each other in meetings all the time. That isn't sexism. It's how men talk sometimes. Interrupt them back, perhaps.

The third essay is pure ad hominem insults and trash - anyone who disagrees with Julie Letchner is a "mole" who needs "whacking", by which she means Reges should lose his job. It's deeply unfortunate that women like Letchner claim to speak on behalf of all women and apparently meet no resistance. Where are all the women standing up for Reges and his right to explore these issues? Not a single essay is supportive of him. Perhaps that's deliberate by the Seattle Times.

The essay by Pratt reveals she's got another problem that she probably can't recognise:

Last year, I asked my students to describe why they think women are underrepresented in STEM fields.

Isn't she supposed to be teaching computer science? This question is asking the student's opinions. There is no right answer to such a question. But she doesn't see that ...

I was dumbfounded that students would put their names on such statements and submit them to me — a woman grading their responses.

... and we can assume proceeded to downgrade everyone who submitted the "wrong" i.e. non feminist answers, whilst marvelling at their stupidity in assuming their female professor might actually be neutral or fair. Yes, how foolish of those students to submit their real opinions instead of flattering their professor's political biases. If she's spending her time on this sort of "teaching" it might explain why she gets paid less than her male peers, who presumably don't.

This is me with my tinfoil hat on, but I think the real reason behind the push to get women into tech is to drive down wages by growing the labor pool. That's the real reason IMO that big companies and others are pushing so hard for women to code and to get into STEM. I don't think that these big companies really care about women or anything, but doubling the labor pool and thus driving down wages, now that's something I can really see big corps getting on board with.