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When Women Stopped Coding

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Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#161

Post by Shorel »

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…

As someone who has always thrived around computers and programming tools, I wish I also had a History degree. Some of the most interesting stuff I have ever read is history related.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#162

Post by cauterized »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #128
stdgy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

How about "Computer Science field has innate properties that discourage the female sex (biologically) from it"? Why is it fantastic? Because last time I've checked, women were also less interested in recreational fishing than men.

And why should recreational fishing be biologically less appealing to women than men either?

- from a woman who quite enjoys fishing, tyvm

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#163

Post by omonra »

crazy1van wrote: post #81

This seems like a feedback loop without a clear beginning or cause. Marketing affects behavior. Behavior affects marketing. Repeat. Does Hasbro market GI Joes to boys because boys tend to like GI Joes or do boys like GI Joes because Hasbro markets them to boys? I'm not so sure how useful wondering about finding the "Cause" of this. It isn't that simple.

I have a 2yo who has been obsessed with cars from the time he could crawl. We never encouraged it (don't own a car or a tv, no siblings) - actually got him a few dolls to try and balance it out.

I think that once you have kids and observe them do gender-specific things from a very early age, you dismiss all the talk of 'marketing is responsible for it'.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#164

Post by ritchiea »

ElComradio wrote: post #123
ritchiea wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty rude and condescending response. Feeling excluded from a particular culture is very different from expecting a task or learning a skill to be easy. Imagine trying to learn a new skill and finding that your peers & superiors in the field are hostile to you but friendly to each other. This is the experience many women report and I've witnessed it myself.

Yes. There are obstacles, we agree. If you wanted to learn something, say, plumbing, and found that fellow plumbers viewed you as an effete nerd, would you just lay down your wrench, or would you resolve to be the best plumber possible and soldier on? Which course of action do you think would be the most rewarding?

She's not talking to some faceless group or venting in a vacuum, she's on a website that is a community of programmers. The plumbers have every right to think I'm an effete nerd, but if someone tells me my misogynist behavior is excluding women from the field of programming I care.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#165

Post by kazinator »

Note that Autism and Asperger's Syndrome are "male dominated". Something like 4:1.

If you have a field toward which nerds gravitate, it will become male-dominated.

What happened around 1984? Yes, home computers were becoming much more common as the article aptly notes.

But what else? It was becoming obvious that the people who flocked to these things most, who outright related to these computers, were nerds.

Popular culture latched on to this instantly!

What was on the big screen and on TV?

- War Games (1983)

- Superman III (1983) - Major character is a computer nerd played by Richard Pryor (August "Gus" Gorman).

- Riptide TV Series (1983) [1] - Major character Murray "Boz" Bozinsky is an utter nerd

- Whiz Kids TV Series (1983) [2]

When 1984 rolled around the trend went all out:

- Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

Nerd stereotypes were in the spotlight, as well as the connection between nerds and technology, especially computers. And that of course is going to have some effect on enrollment in fields of study having to do with computers. Young people respond to stereotypes in mass culture.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riptide_%28TV_series%29

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_%28TV_series%29

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#166

Post by bane »

colomon wrote: post #19

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.

That's an interesting graph. The article makes the claim that this was an effect of computers basically being sold as toys (which are almost always gender targeted in their marketing). But this graph also makes me think about the huge and longstanding push to align software development with traditional engineering practices...that may also have been a contributing factor.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#167

Post by arh68 »

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.

Does she like math puzzles? I came across this recently, about Mary Somerville. She's not exactly Ada Lovelace, but close.

At the age of fifteen she came across a mathematical puzzle in a ladies magazine (mathematical recreation columns were quite common in ladies magazines in the 18th and 19th-centuries!)

[1] http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/the-queen-of-science-...

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#168

Post by bane »

kazinator wrote: post #165

Note that Autism and Asperger's Syndrome are "male dominated". Something like 4:1. If you have a field toward which nerds gravitate, it will become male-dominated. What happened around 1984? Yes, home computers were becoming much more common as the article aptly notes. But what else? It was becoming obvious that the people who flocked to these things most, who outright related to these computers, were nerds. Popular…

I think it's also important to note that the timing. Some of the first real mainstream home computers started selling around the time people who were graduating college in '83 and '84 were in middle school or starting high school, ripe time to start monkeying around with a computer.

The Atari 8-bits were released in '79

The TRS-80 Model 1 - '77

VIC-20 - '80

TI-99/4 - '79

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#169

Post by SiVal »

If unequal access to home computers in the 1980s was the main cause of loss of interest in CS degrees, why is it that every improvement in access equality has been accompanied by more loss of interest in CS?

I suspect that the article might be right about the sharp turn in the 1980s being the result of personal (as opposed to corporate) computing, but we've now collected thirty years of data that suggest that access isn't the issue.

Instead, I think it's the inherent lack of appeal of the activity itself. Only a small percentage of boys can maintain any interest in programming after the novelty wears off, and it's only the fact that even fewer girls stay interested that accounts for the gender imbalance.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#170

Post by ElComradio »

ritchiea wrote: post #164
ElComradio wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. There are obstacles, we agree. If you wanted to learn something, say, plumbing, and found that fellow plumbers viewed you as an effete nerd, would you just lay down your wrench, or would you resolve to be the best plumber possible and soldier on? Which course of action do you think would be the most rewarding?

She's not talking to some faceless group or venting in a vacuum, she's on a website that is a community of programmers. The plumbers have every right to think I'm an effete nerd, but if someone tells me my misogynist behavior is excluding women from the field of programming I care.

I think we are talking past each other.
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