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When Women Stopped Coding

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Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#61

Post by istorical »

kasey_junk wrote: post #53
istorical wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Don't really follow your logic. My hypothesis is that women (specifically teenage girls) just aren't interested in the field / profession so they decide not to study it in school or search for jobs in the field. Perhaps this is because they are discouraged from trying it by their teachers or media, perhaps its because they don't have the confidence to believe they'll succeed, perhaps they think it's not cool, pe…

The "aren't interested" hypothesis would also need to explain why the physical sciences haven't had the same decline in involvement as computer science nor why there is a specific decline in participation in computer science but not in the other categories. I don't think anyone is afraid to suggest that girls aren't interested in the field, it's just that it is a very unsatisfying answer and it doesn't really make se…

That makes sense, thanks.

I agree that it is strange that the drop isn't as large as it is for women in STEM in general, but I don't think it disqualifies the hypothesis.

I guess from my perspective if you only have a handful of women even entering a CS department in university in the first place, then the first and most important problem to solve is why they don't seek to study the major, or participate in high school programming classes. I believe if you can answer that question and remove that factor, it will be the biggest first step.

Disclaimer: Was a CS major, dated a CS major woman who coached me through Calculus and who I collaborated with in software classes. I'm biased.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#62

Post by wuliwong »

grimtrigger wrote: post #36
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…

I find this explanation extremely hollow. Most programmers didn't start programming when they were kids. They started when they realized it was a good paycheck.

I'm another that didn't start programming until one of my required courses as a physics undergraduate student. We did have an 8th grade programming class but everyone took that and obviously it didn't spur me into any interest in programming.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#63

Post by HillRat »

grimtrigger wrote: post #36
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…

I find this explanation extremely hollow. Most programmers didn't start programming when they were kids. They started when they realized it was a good paycheck.

But the "gendering" of computers affects everyone, regardless of how or when they get to the table. I've known many women who found themselves regularly condescended to and even verbally abused by their CS professors, and many of them just dropped out entirely rather than face an academic discipline that quite vocally didn't want them involved. (Is this the norm? I hope not. Is it common? I fear so.) And once they get into the industry, they continue to face scorn and opprobrium, although some sub-disciplines (particularly database administration, ETL and data modeling) seem to fare better than others. Not distinct to the comp-sci field, as any female executive or high-grade salesperson will attest, but I'd like to think we're better than them.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#64

Post by stdgy »

istorical wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #5

The "women just aren't as interested in programming" trope rings hollow when the participation of women in CS majors is about half of what it was in 1985, a time when, by all accounts, programmers were far less socially mainstream than they are today.

Why? Don't really follow your logic. My hypothesis is that women (specifically teenage girls) just aren't interested in the field / profession so they decide not to study it in school or search for jobs in the field. Perhaps this is because they are discouraged from trying it by their teachers or media, perhaps its because they don't have the confidence to believe they'll succeed, perhaps they think it's not cool, pe…

What does 'not interested' connote? And how do you frame it?

Consider these two statements: 1) The female sex is intrinsically(biologically) uninterested in Computer Science. 2) Girl's are raised in an environment that pushes their interest away from Computer Science.

In each statement, girls are not interested in Computer Science. But the first statement carries a tremendous amount of baggage with it, and comments on significantly more than cultural interest. It is, to put it lightly, a fantastic claim. And fantastic claims require fantastic evidence.

I don't think anyone is afraid of admitting that girls have been less interested in pursuing Computer Science than men. That's not really at issue. What's at issue is the cause and context guiding the group's interest.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#65

Post by ElComradio »

inmygarage wrote: post #21

I am a female born in 1983 and have always been deeply interested in computers, but have nonetheless felt inexplicably out of place for it. I was in advanced math classes my entire life and placed out of calculus in college. I took a summer programming class at a different university in 2000 and fell in love with programming. But when I got back to school, I took another CS class that was exactly as described in this…

That's too bad. I wish things were easy for you, like they were for me, when my peers were cheering me on to learn how to program and I was super popular because of it. Everything was a cake walk, and I learned that if society is in the slightest way against what you are doing, it's impossible to accomplish, so I'm really glad I wasn't driven out of the field that interested me.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#66

Post by panic »

orionhenry wrote: post #13
jiggy2011 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

UNIX itself started because Ken Thompson wanted to port his game Space Travel to the PDP-7: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/spacetravel.html

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#67

Post by 3rd3 »

spion wrote: post #55
3rd3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to miss an explanation for why the marketing was directed at boys in the first place.

My take on that missing piece: once computers went personal / homebrew / RadioShack they switched categories. The new category was "tinkering with electronics", which has a long established cultural perception of being a male activity (and those personal computers were therefore marketed to males)

But why is tinkering almost exclusively for men?

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#68

Post by chipotle_coyote »

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.

So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links?

Less flippantly, the larger point they were making rings true to me -- speaking as someone who, like one of the interviewees, got the initial push toward computers by hanging out at Radio Shack in the late '70s. Hobbyist electronics was mostly guys, and companies knew that. Microcomputers, back in the day we actually called them "microcomputers," came out of the hobbyist movement. And as for the part video games played, which was also a big point they made, well. If you grew up going to arcades in the early '80s, then you probably don't remember them as having a particularly balanced gender distribution. I sure don't. From very early on the basic plot of most video games was "shoot all the bad things," and that's a kind of play that boys engaged in far more often than girls. (Girls had dolls, boys had action figures, don't you know.)

Sure, computer companies occasionally put out ads trying to demonstrate that computers were for more than just playing video games and doing business work, and that they were Fun For The Whole Family! (tm). But I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that this disproves their whole thesis. They didn't just "link to two piddly commercials," they talked to men and women who went to school at the time and researchers studying this, and noted that when Carnegie Mellon added a class which was more or less "Basic Computer 101" -- teaching the stuff that they theorized boys were getting before they got to college and girls weren't -- the number of women who stayed with their CS program rose dramatically. This would seem to be fairly compelling evidence that there's something to this thesis.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#69

Post by jgrahamc »

I did Mathematics and Computation at Oxford starting in 1986. There were four women on the course (something like a total intake of 30). Three of the four switched to mathematics at the end of the first year.

I don't have any real explanation why.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#70

Post by kstenerud »

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.

I was there. Home computers were a new thing, so the marketing was a little clunky, but print advertisement usually had both boys and girls in them, as did the Atari 2600 commercials. "Bits and Bytes" was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid. In it, the male actor played someone approaching a computer for the first time, and the female actor played the mentor who showed him how to do things with it, including programming.
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