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When Women Stopped Coding

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Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#51

Post by MattGrommes »

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.

Among my friends I always thought I was the odd one out because I _didn't_ start programming as a child.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#52

Post by cortesoft »

daveloyall wrote: post #35

[...] when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes [...] Doesn't anecdotal evidence suggest that children quickly exceed their mentors (parents) when exposed to 1980s consumer hardware? (That hardware was deterministic--same key sequence means same result every time. You know, like video games from the same era.) Being exceeded by your child can be a dramatic emotional event. Are the feelings that a fathe…

I am pretty sure all computer hardware is deterministic? (unless we are talking about quantum computers?)

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#53

Post by kasey_junk »

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…

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 sense to generalize about more than half the population.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#54

Post by DanBC »

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.

That Commodore ad is brilliant. It features "Magic Desk" http://toastytech.com/guis/magdesk.html

> Notice the door, calculator, phone, card file, and dollar bill graphics. Trying to select these does absolutely, completely, and totally nothing. That's right, they don't do anything. At all. This leaves one to speculate if these were supposed to be features of "Magic Desk II", parallel release versions to the "Type and File" cart, or future disk based utilities.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#55

Post by spion »

3rd3 wrote: post #25
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…

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)

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#56

Post by 001sky »

"This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were and it created techie culture."

The facts seem to (rather) be that computers were no longer just toys, they were becoming serious tools. As such, "tool geeks" gravitated to computers. This hypothesis would explain the inevitable sexist outcome of the field with a simple explanation. It can also be verified objectively and orthogonally by looking at other "tool" drivem occuplations that seem to share a heavy gender bias. See, eg

http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-male-dominated-indus...

Playing with tools and machines is not so much sexist as it is anti-social more broadly speaking.

It's not clear the both genders share similar preferences in thus regard.

If you look at more "social" industries (or business functions) like in Media/publishing/advertising you tend to find a significant number of very successful/world class etc women in very high powered jobs.

The bigger question is when did coding become so anti-social? And is/was this anti-social nature somehow necessary or functional?

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#57

Post by bhaumik »

kasey_junk wrote: post #42
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.

The segment mentions that most "tool toys" are marketed at boys. Specifically mentioned Tonka Trucks but think plastic saws, hammers, etc. They couldn't find any data one way or another about if that marketing made sense.

My younger sister would've been more likely to enter tech if there was less barbie and more this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIGyVa5Xftw

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#58

Post by seanflyon »

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.

I think that when CS was a newer field it was treated more like Math and less like engineering.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#59

Post by jamesaguilar »

wyager wrote: post #47
jamesaguilar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goes to credibility. When you're talking about a post with zero evidence presented, sometimes it really is more believable coming from Neil Degrasse Tyson versus the guy who believes in Timecube.

>zero evidence presented, He posted some evidence. Not a lot, but some. More than his detractors here have posted so far. There's also more in that reddit thread, it looks like. I'm not saying he's right, but it does no one any favors to slam someone instead of refuting their argument.

He posted a link to an n-gram search, which is like me posting a picture of a flower to prove that the sky is blue. The data cited is not germane to the quesiton.

To wit: one would expect that n-gram search to look the same whether or not data processing was a CS subdiscipline, because data processing dropped in relevance as digital systems became the primary source of truth. Therefore, it is not evidence either way for the claims the comment made.

Re: When Women Stopped Coding

#60

Post by jamesaguilar »

zxcv731 wrote: post #39
jamesaguilar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The views in that comment are completely unsubstantiated. There was no evidence presented that "data processing" was ever taught as part of or categorized as computer science. In fact, later comments debunk that viewpoint. Also worth noting that the person who wrote that subscribes to the Men Going Their Own Way movement [1] (his username is thrownaway_MGTOW), which while not an outright debunking of his claims, shou…

I agree, it is clear that the author seems to have a bit of a bias. (I guess you can also tell from his tone) Although the "debunk" wasn't very clear. With some posters that also saying that their family members indeed obtained data entry degree in computer science http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what... Hard to make a judgement call, but I think the truth is probably not as clear cut as NPR s…

> Hard to make a judgement call . . .

It is not hard for me to decide whether to trust Planet Money or anonymous Reddit commenters, at least one of which is a known MRA, especially on a topic relating to sexism. I guess that might just speak to our different priors, but it's a no brainer over here.

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