mel@houxm.UUCP (08/30/83)
The latest InfoWorld has an article (a review of a longer paper) that claims
that computing is for boys only, and that girls are being excluded from the
field. That most workers in the field are men. That most teachers of
computing, particularly in grade and high schools are men. That most ads
for computers show men working and girls as pin-ups. That most students
in computing fields are boys. That most (they say all) purchasers of home
computers are fathers & sons. That video and computer games are very sex
specific. That we are becoming a divided society: computer literate men
with good jobs, and computer hating women relegated to menial non-computer
intensive jobs. Is this really so ??
In my own experience, it seems to be (with lots of exceptions, not
statistically significant). My wife is positively afraid of the computer,
and wouldn't touch it on a bet - and is totally uninterested in video games.
My 3 daughters range from disinterested (age 13) to an avid game player,
but not interested in programming (age 10). My oldest son (age 13) can
keep both the Rainbow and VIC-20 busy (a game on one while waiting for a
compilation on the other) and memorizes COMPUTE and BYTE. My other son
(age 11) likes the games, but prefers more social contact. Most of the
girl programmers I have worked with are "strictly business" and show little
interest in games or how things work, or how they could work better (with
a few very noteable exceptions). Why is this so ??
Is there something gender specific in computing itself ?? or is computing
just a more sensitive indicator of the gender specific flaws in our
society ?? Is the split between boys being able to handle the computing
future, and girls not, going to widen ?? what does that do to our society
if it continues ?? What can we do to help girls become interested and
literate in computing ?? What should I do to help my daughters ??
Those of you in school now; what is the situation ?? are the computer
classes mostly male ? are the majority of Computer Science majors male ?
(Eons ago, when I was an undergraduate in Aero. Engineering at MIT, we had
1 girl in the class, and I don't remember any girl engineers at Lockheed.
Is the computing field any different now? Aero. Engineering isn't too
important or wide spread, but computing is.) What's the real situation ??
Mel Haas , houxm!melbormanp@stolaf.UUCP (08/30/83)
I have noticed that CS classes seem to be around 60/40 or 50/50 for gender (male/female), but it stops there. I can't say I know of a signel female hacker at Olaf. All the females in CS seem to take the classes, do the assignments, and that's it. There are a few exceptions, but no hackers (could it be they are just smarter?). In highshool a friend of mine and I tried to teach a couple of girls BASIC (Hey, that's all we had available at the time) upon their request. It never really got anywhere, as they didn't mind the idea of knowing how to program, it just was that they did not want to practice it. I have always contended that CS is a combination of Math and Mechanics. I am not sure what the last study showed, but the last major study I saw (about 2 years or so ago) stated that ON THE AVERAGE, males had a higher apptitude in those areas then females. NOTE, THIS DOES NOT MEAN IF YOU ARE FEMALE THAT YOU DON'T HAVE AS MUCH ABILITY IN THOSE AREAS AS MALES, JUST THAT THERE ARE MORE MALES WITH THOSE ABILITIES THAN FEMALES. Actaully, I think that the differences wern't great, but noticable. Have they disproved this study in the last two years? Now, to all you flamers out there, I do not contend that sex should be used to determine if someone has Math and Mechanical abilities, each person MUST be looked at on an individule basis as there are a LOT of females out there that are VERY good in these areas. -Paul R Borman St. Olaf College ihnp4!stolaf!bormanp
spaf@gatech.UUCP (08/31/83)
I wouldn't claim that computing is gender specific, although there does
seem to be an imbalance. Here at Georgia Tech we have about 45 PhD
students in the program -- two of whom are female. I believe that the
campus-wide ratio of male to female is something like 4 to 1; GaTech
is heavily into engineering.
I wonder if this all relates to what is known as "math anxiety"?
I've seen some published reports about girls not developing the
early background in math that boys do due to "math anxiety" (cause
unknown). Anybody out there know more about this? Does it apply?
--
The padded cell of Gene Spafford
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf.GATech @ UDel-Relay
uucp: ...!{sb1,allegra,ut-ngp}!gatech!spaf ...!duke!mcnc!msdc!gatech!spafliz@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/31/83)
Well, I'm female and a hacker -- I maintain our version of Franz lisp, and we've done >lots< of hacking on that as a group. But, I know I'm kind of unusual. I'm not sure why... As far as students at the Univ of Maryland are concerned, I think the number of female undergrad students in Computer Science is growing constantly and has been out ahead (percentage-wise) of areas like math and engineering for a long time. I think that the percentage of female grad students is also going up. at AAAI, I was surpised at the number of women that were there. Especially the number of younger women. There also seemed to be more women giving talks than at past conferences. I don't know if there's anything so gender specific about computing. As far as it's mathematical/engineering, in our society (at least), it favors men, but in so far as it requires attention to a lot of small details, it may favor women (think about secretaries...). I hope the gap is narrowing instead of widening... As far as getting girls interested in computing goes, I suppose improving teaching in the schools is probably the best thing. A lot of elementary teachers are women, and a lot of the teachers are not very interested in math and science. Where those two sets intersect, it doesn't give many role models of women showing a lot of interest in math, etc. That also gives some clues as to why a lot of kids in general don't go in for math or science... (I could start flaming about our educational system here real easily...) I got into it because I really liked math, etc, but it required a bit of determination to push it through (not because of being a girl as much as because of things like not having a math teacher most of my eighth grade year -- talk about frustrating!!) -- -Liz Allen, U of Maryland, College Park MD Usenet: ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz Arpanet: liz.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay
ccc@cwruecmp.UUCP (Case Computer Club) (08/31/83)
I suppose that most people who live/work/play/whatever with computers have noticed the preponderance of males. In my experience, the reason for this is mainly due to the stereotypical connotations of the words ``engineer'' and ``programmer''. The major hurdle seems to be getting people started. I suspect the situation is similar to the prevalent opinion on the part of women (again, in _m_y experience) that mechanical devices are incomprehensible. How they can have this opinion and function in a reasonably modern kitchen is beyond me, but I'm getting off the subject. Engineering/computing/design/analysis/etc. is not gender-specific except in a social sense. Here at CWRU (whose male/female ratio is quite large) the women in technical fields far outdistance the men in many cases. Even outside of the engineering and academic communities this is true. I will give an example. A young woman of whom I am very fond is currently pursuing a double major in Linguistics and Philosophy. She is managing her math courses, although doesn't particularly like them. This past spring her family bought an IBM PC. After playing with it and taking an introductory computer course, she expressed suprise at how interesting and (horrors!) _f_u_n it was. It took a while for me to figure out what she meant, but I finally figured it out. It took some actual experience for her to realize that the essence of working with computers is problem-solving. The important thing is knowing how to define a problem and come up with a series of steps that can be followed to solve it. Actually, I suppose that applies to engineering and almost any occupation as well. If more women realized this then I suspect we would have more in ``technical'' fields. Rational replies welcome; no flames please. --Clayton Elwell --Case Computer Club
sts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs) (09/06/83)
I think it's a darn shame there aren't more female hackers (someone to understand us....). Perhaps many women just get into computers as an ordinary job, so of course they couldn't possibly become hackers. Hate to sound religious, but it's sort of like a "call" - I don't know *any* hackers that don't have programming at the center of their lives (now come on, folks, be honest with yourselves). Perhaps women are too smart to get sucked in (nahhh). Some women I know have enough trouble just getting accepted by mgmt and sometimes colleagues, that they get real serious about the whole thing. Hackers cannot take themselves or their work seriously; otherwise, that nth bug would drive them up the wall and into the loony bin (bit bucket?). I hope that as women become more relaxed and comfortable with themselves and their profession, they can stop trying to be "professional" (Real Hackers don't act professional) and uptight (Real Hackers laugh hardest at the worst bugs). stan the l.h. ssc-vax!sts (actually utah-cs!shebs)
sts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs) (09/06/83)
The imbalance noted by Gene probably has more to do with the southern locale of Ga Tech. I lived in Texas for 9 long years, including undergrad study at Texas A&M, and the clash between the "southern belle" and the "competent engineer" yielded some interesting results. Most curious were the female engineering students with mostly A's who turned into giggling airheads at the approach of a "good ol' Texas boy". Weird. stan the lep hacker ssc-vax!sts (or utah-cs!shebs)