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When Women Stopped Coding

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Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#11

Post by [deleted] »

guyzero wrote: post #4
brandonmenc wrote: post #3

> And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. They give two piddly links to commercials aimed at boys. Explain these ads, then: http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342 Or Commodore ads like this one: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1325832/commodore-765.jpg In the 80s, computers were marketed to the whole family, boys and girls included.

Were you there? I was. Computers were marketed to boys and families for whatever reason reinforced this as well. It may not explain everything, but it explains the genesis of the situation.

[deleted]

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#12

Post by maybe_maybe1 »

Maybe, just maybe, they got out because they could see far ahead at the mess coding would become in the future. They were there at a time when the computer staff were more respected members of an organisation, rather than just a cost centre to be minimised and offshored. Maybe, just maybe, they could foresee a horrendous time when technology was chosen as it was the flavour of the month, regardless of how good the technology actually was (see: Ruby on Rails, and about every single JS framework to date).

Mostly though, they could probably see the fact that most coding work was going to be mundane, bug fixing, and working in an industry that never seems to learn, but throws away knowledge and experience, and focuses solely on the new shiny, and keeps thinking it has invented something new, when it is really just a poor rehash of something earlier, something that was probably more solid and more robust.

Maybe.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#13

Post by orionhenry »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #8
nathan_long wrote: post #2

This story makes a compelling case that women stopped programming because - 1. Computers started being sold as consumer products - 2. They were marketed almost exclusively to boys - 3. Boys played with computers and learned about them, while girls were made to feel that computers weren't for them - 3. Men showed up to college with more computer experience - 4. Women felt they must not be "naturally good" at computers…

When I studied CS , only a small minority arrived with programming skills, a much larger number came with knowledge of gaming and by extension computer building because it was much easier to afford a PC required for the newest games if you could build it yourself.

Gaming has been a hell of a gateway drug for programming.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#14

Post by zxcv731 »

This same graph used in the article was extensively discussed on reddit 3 days ago. [1]

I want to quote some of the comments, which I think is extremely important to this discussion.

" The far simpler answer is that the 1970's "explosion" of women into the (purported) field of "computer science" was largely women obtaining degrees in (what were then "computer science" courses) the subfields of "Data Processing" and later on "Word Processing". (Edit: see the Google Ngram on the transition of terminology from "Data Processing" to "Computer Science"[2] ). With the ending of punch cards, and the increasing decentralization via personal computers (and networks of them) and subsequent later software improvements (spreadsheets, advanced databases, WYSWYG word processing), those functions ceased to be viable degrees and lost their status as "computer science" related functions... everyone became (in one form or another) involved in data-entry and/or word processing. The plain truth of the matter is that women were NEVER highly represented in the true "computer science" fields of programming (and later network & database administration). "

Although I believe the comment author can use a better tone, I think these facts are extremely important to this discussion. There were more people echoing that their grandmum got a CS degree in data entry[3]

Edit: Data processing are indeed counted towards computer science. Although there is no data on the relative weight

[4] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf

[1]http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what... [2]https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=data+processin... [3]http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what...

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#15

Post by 3rd3 »

zxcv731 wrote: post #14

This same graph used in the article was extensively discussed on reddit 3 days ago. [1] I want to quote some of the comments, which I think is extremely important to this discussion. " The far simpler answer is that the 1970's "explosion" of women into the (purported) field of "computer science" was largely women obtaining degrees in (what were then "computer science" courses) the subfields of "Data Processing" and l…

Sigh, not this comment again.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#16

Post by waterlesscloud »

freshflowers wrote: post #6

Maybe just a total coincidence, but the mid-80's is also the time when media and authorities started their witch hunt against hackers and the word "hacker" became equal to "criminal". Basically, in the mid-80's the predominant media image of computer engineers was either social outcast of criminal. Gee, wonder why women weren't attracted to that.

You know, this might have more to do with it than the actual marketing of the time. As shown in another post here, home computer makers tried to market to the whole family. And why wouldn't they? Computers were relatively expensive and esoteric, why not aim at their uses for everyone in the family? And they did.

But WARGAMES and that whole media portrayal that followed of the computer hacker/enthusiast was definitely male and outsider.

Interesting point.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#17

Post by waterlesscloud »

inclemnet wrote: post #10
freshflowers wrote: post #6

Maybe just a total coincidence, but the mid-80's is also the time when media and authorities started their witch hunt against hackers and the word "hacker" became equal to "criminal". Basically, in the mid-80's the predominant media image of computer engineers was either social outcast of criminal. Gee, wonder why women weren't attracted to that.

This argument seems to rest on the assumption that women are fundamentally more susceptible to decisions based on stereotypes than men are. Do you have any evidence both that this is the case, and that any measurable difference (if there is one) is significant enough to blame for this effect?

No, it suggests that men and women both are both susceptible to media stereotypes.

He's just suggesting that the "outsider outlaw" is more appealing to men than to women.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#18

Post by jcdavis »

zxcv731 wrote: post #14

This same graph used in the article was extensively discussed on reddit 3 days ago. [1] I want to quote some of the comments, which I think is extremely important to this discussion. " The far simpler answer is that the 1970's "explosion" of women into the (purported) field of "computer science" was largely women obtaining degrees in (what were then "computer science" courses) the subfields of "Data Processing" and l…

The account that made that comment is a frequent poster in mens rights & friends subreddits, and probably should not be taken without a SUBSTANIAL grain of salt (particularly given the lack of any data to back it up)

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#19

Post by colomon »

I think the graph here -- http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... -- provides an interesting contrast. Seems like what has happened is the percentage of women in CS was tracking along with that in architecture or the physical sciences, and whatever happened in the 80s caused it to gradually move down towards (but so far always above) the percentage of women in engineering.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#20

Post by cscheid »

cheez wrote: post #9

Interesting link in the comments: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/women-... This graph shows that the drop off was nearly identical for men. Maybe the initial bump was just people getting overexcited for this computer thing and then hearing from their friends that it's kind of nerdy. Edit Another interesting link seems to show that women receive degrees at a significantly higher rate than men, a…

Read the graph again. The dropoff for women is much larger.

$ python

>>> 20000.0 / 17000.0

1.1764705882352942

>>> 12500.0 / 7000.0

1.7857142857142858

CS enrollment for women in 1984 was 78% larger than in 1996; For men, it was 17%.

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