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When Women Stopped Coding

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Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#141

Post by tsotha »

onewaystreet wrote: post #100
crusso wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They were marketed almost exclusively to boys" Back before anyone was really marketing computers in any mainstream way, I remember gathering around the few that were available in the school library or in a math teacher's classroom. The only people interested EVER were boys. It had nothing to do with marketing.

You say "ever" but the early history of computing was filled with women. Something caused a change.

The field was too small at the time to draw any useful conclusions.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#142

Post by zxcv731 »

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…

This turned out to be very controversial.

I was not around in those days. Can someone who studied computer science in the 70s comment on whether data entry/data process was indeed an important sub-field of data science?

As another commenter pointed out, Data entry and data processing are indeed counted towards computer science. Although there is no data on the relative weight

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#143

Post by Jare »

tonyplee wrote: post #37

I have 15 year old daughter and would love to get her more interested in computer science. She is doing good in school getting A in math/science, etc. Any suggestions from HN on how best to guide her interests? Extra project? incentive? For now, her interests are typical teenage - school clubs, facebook, youtube, tumblr, etc.

Encourage her to build and create things. If she chooses the computer as her tool, all the better, but provide her with as many avenues of creation as possible (paper, sound, words, images, code, wood, ideas, etc) and she will find the one that's right for her.

She is a teenager, I believe you are not her guide anymore, but you can (and should) be an amazing facilitator and her #1 fan.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#145

Post by 3rd3 »

aragot wrote: post #126
3rd3 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is tinkering almost exclusively for men?

I know I'll get banned and cursed for years for that but here you go: Oh stop it, those are gender differences and girls also enjoy their differences, even if they're unfortunately imprinted by culture. They're untouchable, they are given what they ask (which is: often dolls), they're social. And the few that are in IT, they don't show up at the Java User Group, even if it's their job, even if it's free, even if it's…

It seems to me that you are considering only symptoms of more underlying driving forces here. For example: Why is it that they don't show up at the Java User Group? Maybe they feel uncomfortable in a room with 95% men? Then you would have to explain why there are 95% men in that room in the first place.

Women probably get promoted relatively earlier for reasons like token women and the fact that they less commonly have computer experience since early on.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#146

Post by tsotha »

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…

>I can't quite articulate the feelings of isolation and frustration I felt in that class...

Right. And there's the difference. Many of your classmates were feeling the exact same thing, but for whatever reason they decided to stick with it.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#147

Post by waterlesscloud »

rverghes wrote: post #125

Mathematically, isn't this a guaranteed result? The article said that the share of women in other programs kept rising. So doesn't the share of women in different programs need fall to balance? If more women become lawyers, aren't there fewer women left for other programs? I really wish these types of articles would show absolute numbers. Percentages can be so misleading.

Absolute numbers here - http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#148

Post by jjindev »

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 was one of those boys who bought a TRS-80. The thing is, I don't remember it as a peer accepted pursuit for me either. This was before anyone noticed, let alone Hollywood recast it as their version of Revenge of the Nerds. This was when being a nerd was not nice.

While I did get some quasi support from people who thought it might help in a career someday, the much more common response in those days was "who needs a home computer?"

Update: I agree that we should encourage everyone with an aptitude now to go into higher ROI fields (of which CS is one), I do think it is a bit reconstructed history to make TRS-80s actually "cool" and "non-cool kids excluded."

Indeed, the TRS-80 was not even a game machine. PCs as game machines came a bit later, and as price effective ones, much later.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#149

Post by guard-of-terra »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #137
guard-of-terra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Eastern Bloc countries nobody bothered to market computers, for many reasons including closed off markets and economical disasters. They also valued gender equality a lot. But the end result was absolute the same - massive male domination in everything computer-related. So i's not marketing.

Could it be the operating systems or the UI? There are fewer choices nowadays you know. At least one person I know completely lost interest in the field because of the switch from DOS to Win 3.1.

GUI lived alongside with keyboard-based text UIs for most of 90-s here. Actually it was women who stick to Norton Commander lookalikes for many years. I still don't think it made any gender-balance difference.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#150

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

Yup. I started programming at 13 because I wanted to make my own better (obviously) StarCraft. Poking around in existing games and trying to make my own during my teens is the sole reason I work as a programmer today.
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