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What happened to all the female developers?

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Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#141
post #30
post #9

A cursory look at the graph indicates that the only place women suffered was on their own code. Resume, phone skills, interpersonal skills, all great.

The downvotes are appreciated. Where am I wrong?

You're not wrong, but it's a touchy subject. Gender issues are always tinged with "discrimination" overtones.

And, just to be clear, there is _plenty_ of discrimination and bias against women. But that shouldn't detract from the fact that you're pointing out a major outlier in their data.

Unfortunately, without knowing the test, it's hard to even guess what happened there. Is it focusing on syntactic vs. semantical correctness? Does it require deep specialist knowledge, or broad generalist knowledge? How is it graded?

Or is it simply a function of the tiny sample size?

Without pointing out what you conclude from that data, people will infer what you concluded. And since it's a loaded subject, they will often arrive at "what a misogynist jerk" without ever knowing what you were trying to say.

Corollary: When pointing out data on a loaded subject, it might be beneficial to point out what you conclude, and why. At least that way, only one of the two factions can flame you ;)

(Disclaimer: I am a woman, so I obviously disagree with the "women can't code theory". I'd still love to find out _why_ women are filtered out by that test so disproportionately, simply because it might hold clues as to why women are not interested in CS)

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#142
I'm so glad to see this message out there; a frustratingly small number of people are aware of the 1984(ish) peak in females in the field. My mom taught computer programming (Fortran) in a Chicago high school from 1967 until 1984, and was actually kind of surprised when I first asked her about gender balance issues in the field—they just weren't an issue then, and her classes were always more or less balanced.

But what they also were was everyone's very first exposure to a computer. Without exception, her students had never written any sort of program before, and they were recruited from good students in the math and physics classes, coming to programming with an open mind and no preconceptions. (A lot of them, girls and boys both, went into technical computer-related fields.)

The change, as has been noted elsewhere on this page, surely has to do with the introduction of computers, but my hypothesis is that it wasn't just home PCs (not in the 80s) but classroom PCs that were the problem: in a lot of places, computers in the classroom were a fad and showed up with no training of the teachers, so they sat in the back or the side, mostly unused... unless one or two of the students pestered the teacher to play with the computer, and then used the manual and/or trial and error to figure it out. Guess which students were doing that more?

But that, I think, wouldn't be enough. The knowledge should equalise after one or maybe two terms of college CS, right? But I'm pretty sure the real problem was that professors inadvertently reinforced and magnified the difference between students who'd had previous computer experience (primarily boys) and students who hadn't (of both genders). It turns out that as a teacher, it's very, very easy to look around the classroom, see that X% of the students seem to be getting something, and decide to move on. (You can't wait for 100%, usually, so it's always a judgement call.) That's fine if it's something you've taught well and only the weak students are struggling, but what if it's something you absentmindedly glossed over? Half the class understands it, so you must have covered it, right? This is very insidious, and even being aware of it is not always enough to combat it; and if the divide of "has experience" vs "no experience" partially reflects a gender divide, that divide will only get reinforced.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#143
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

I might be completely misinterpreting sarcasm on the first points. Job insecurity in high tech? Absolutely not - the high tech industry is desperately trying to hire good people. Also, long hours are not a requirement. Lots of developers in startups or the game industry work long hours, but there are plenty of other positions (e.g. DoD sort of work) that is low stress 9-5. Medical work is decidedly not 9-5.

I urge you not to plan on such a hot market for software developers forever. Anyone who was around when the first wave of dot-coms laid everyone off around 2001 knows how quickly and severely the well can run dry.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#144
post #82
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that does not mean that software engineers are not helping people (indirectly).

In my experience, maybe 2% of software engineers are incentivized more strongly by positive social change than by money or fame. These are the idealists, like Richard Stallman and former members of OLPC, who are often ridiculed by the rest of the community. Until the academic and governmental infrastructure is able to put anywhere near as much money into CS research as private industry, the majority of technologists…

And medical education doesn't have to be structured that way at all. Medicine could be like engineering, where you start on day one of your undergrad and take 5-6 years in an average university setting, and 80 hour residency programs are just counter productive.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#145
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, maybe 2% of software engineers are incentivized more strongly by positive social change than by money or fame. These are the idealists, like Richard Stallman and former members of OLPC, who are often ridiculed by the rest of the community. Until the academic and governmental infrastructure is able to put anywhere near as much money into CS research as private industry, the majority of technologists…

And medical education doesn't have to be structured that way at all. Medicine could be like engineering, where you start on day one of your undergrad and take 5-6 years in an average university setting, and 80 hour residency programs are just counter productive.

That is how medical school works in most countries.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#146
post #73
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.

At the risk of getting quite off-topic, in my opinion most physicians will eventually be replaced by a combination of Bayesian diagnostic software and surgical robotics. There will be an intermediate period where physicians will control and oversee the software and robots, but this too will pass. Those tasks which cannot be easily roboticized (for example, all the soft skills) will be shifted over to nurses.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Bayesian analysis alone is insufficient to produce accurate diagnoses, and even with more advanced clinical decision support tools you still need a human to carry out the observations. Physicians won't be generally replaced until we have strong AI (at which point everyone gets replaced).

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#147
I worked many years ago as a substitute teacher in Oakland, CA. During that time, there was interesting pattern. The vast majority of the older teachers were black and the vast majority of younger teacher were white. At a glance, this would seem strange given that discrimination was being actively attacked. But what was happening was more socially prestiges opportunities were opening for black college graduates and so few of them wanted to go into teaching, a field with less prestige than, say, law or business.

I suspect something different but with related qualities is going on with women and programming.

* Women now have more and more opportunities in a number of fields (I recall a statistic claiming the average income of a young woman college graduate in New York was higher than that of the average male college graduate).

* Programming has become a less desirable, less socially prestiges occupation.

* Programming became a more hobby-based occupation - the expectation is more that a programmer have been tinkering with computers forever and thus (as per the article).

* Programming became a more male-identified occupation through the media and through the hobby aspect.

* Age discrimination pushes the previous women programmers out of the field (and contributes to the field losing social prestige).

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#148
Based on the handful of women I know who can program, there seems to be a few reasons why not many go into CS: 1) It seems they aren't exposed to it as much. They're less likely to read about it on the internet. Or learn about it from relatives. Or take classes in it. 2) The handful that I know who took programming in high school never (or barely) turned it into a hobby, even if they later declared CS as their major.

Meanwhile, I know tons of guys who got into programming by themselves, or because their parents did it. Also, all of the CS guys I know who took programming classes in high school did some outside of class for fun.

So, when some women become CS majors, they get intimidated. They see "everyone" outperforming them, since everyone is mostly guys with a pre-built set of skills. Even guys who are so-so at something quite frequently talk like they know stuff; that's just the way guys behave. This worsens the above impression. There's an actual culture difference. Can't stress the importance of this enough.

As a result, instead of thinking "These guys have years on me and I need to catch up and put lots of work in," many women think "I suck at this," and quit. Then next set has the same problem.

EDIT: removed a bit of unintentional italicizing

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#149
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

This isn't about high positions. This is about choice of profession. I can buy your argument for why men become CxOs (although based on people I've worked with in the past who have said they'd never report to a woman, I think sexism plays a large role in our industry), it doesn't explain why women as a whole go into poorer paying fields. Psychology is the classic example. Few women in the field in the 60s, and pay wa…

More likely the pay for psychologists dropped because the total supply of psychologists (both genders) increased faster than the population. Also the psychopharmacology industry has provided an alternative to psychologists.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#150
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't an M.D. imply more job security and a higher starting wage than any C.S. credential?

Quite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_surgery
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