ian@utcsstat.UUCP (Ian F. Darwin) (02/20/84)
The following is reproduced with the author's permission from _T_h_e
_T_o_r_o_n_t_o _S_u_n of February 10, 1984, p.82. Please don't flame me for
the ideas presented; I am merely passing it on for discussion. Any
polite comments mailed to me or posted will be fed back to the author.
The article was headed ``Micro Chip Gender Gap'', but the
front-page teaser headline was a somewhat more provocative ``Lit-
tle Girls Don't Compute.'' You should be aware that the writer of
an article often has little control over headlines - and even
sub-heads - used in the article.
_t_h_e__m_i_c_r_o_-_c_h_i_p__g_e_n_d_e_r__g_a_p
by Jean Sonmor, Staff Writer
Sally's Grade 1 teacher was a computer nut. Under her
tutelage, Sally became a genuine junior ``hacker.'' By Grade 2,
she was saving birthday money and allowances to buy a Commodore
64. She convinced her older brother John to help and together
they bought the machine.
John hadn't had much exposure to computers, but he was soon
hooked. Sally complained that she wasn't getting equal time, but
gradually she lost interest. While John made quantum leaps in
skill and finesse, Sally went back to playing ``school'' with her
dolls.
What happened?
Sally and John are hardly unique. Educators, psychiatrists
and social scientists everywhere are trying to come up with
explanations for the newest wrinkle in the female stereotype:
Girls don't like computers. Even if they start enthusiastically,
as the boys' interest deepens, theirs fizzles out.
_c_o_m_p_u_t_e_r__a_v_o_i_d_a_n_c_e
Educators still fret about how girls tend to avoid math.
Today, they're adding ``computer avoidance'' to their list of
concerns. In Toronto high schools, twice as many boys as girls
take computer science.
``We've got a gallery of photos of winners in our computer
programming contests in the last few years,'' says Susan LeRoy of
North York school board's computer resource team. ``In 35 kids,
I'll bet there aren't more than two girls. When I asked why I was
told the girls don't enter.''
Video arcades are another place few girls enter. We did an
informal study of Yonge St. fun parlors and found boy players
outnumbering girls 10 to 1. Most of the girls we did see were
watching the boys play.
Girls don't play football, much, either, so who cares if
they don't get a lift blasting Space Invaders to smithereens? We
all should, say psychologists Geoffrey and Elizabeth Loftus,
authors of _M_i_n_d _a_t _P_l_a_y: _T_h_e _P_s_y_c_h_o_l_o_g_y _o_f _V_i_d_e_o _G_a_m_e_s.
``Computer literacy is going to be as critical as being able
to read and write,'' says Geoffrey. ``These games may be giving
people an edge in terms of acquiring that computer literacy.''
The couple found their own reactions stereotypical. Eliza-
beth felt obliged to play video games for the book research, but
she'd wake up in the night and hear the games still bleeping.
``Yeah,'' Geoffrey admits, ``I really got into a couple of
games.''
There's growing interest in supplementing the aggressively
masculine content of the video games. So far, designing the games
has been a male preserve. But the video game market is a tough
one and some smart marketers types are looking at ``girl appeal''
as the next frontier.
One of the first entries is Bubble Burst. The graphics are a
bathtub with lots of soft blue bubbles to chase and break.
_s_t_e_r_e_o_t_y_p_e_s__e_n_d_u_r_e
Though heavy blue pencils have been cutting blatant sex
stereotyping from textbooks, not much seems to have changed in
kids' heads.
In a California study of how kids perceive the coming com-
puter age, little girls fancied housework of the future would be
made easier because of a home computer with arms and legs that
mopped up and did the dishes.
Boys saw themselves playing games and doing their banking on
the handy machines.
Jane Matthews, a Thornhill mother, educator and computer
enthusiast shakes her head over her 7 year old twins, Elizabeth
and Robert. She tried not to give them any clues about sex roles
and computers but found their uses of the machine totally stereo-
typical.
Elizabeth, the more verbal twin, uses the computer as a
word processor. Robert, who loves machines, knows nothing about
word processing. But he is able to take apart the computer com-
ponents, then re-assemble the joystick, monitor, disc drive,
printer, keyboard and power supply.
Matthews is astonished. ``He'd seen it done three or four
times but nobody taught him. Honestly, _I don't know how to do
that.''
_b_r_a_i_n__d_i_f_f_e_r_e_n_c_e_s
The brains of men and women are anatomically different. For
one thing, women's corpus callosum - the path between the brain's
two hemispheres, is wider - says Dr. Sandra Witelson, a McMaster
University psychiatrist and sex/brain specialist.
But she won't go as far as University of Buffalo researcher
Conrad Toephler, who has a theory called brain growth periodiza-
tion to explain why boys are better than girls in math and science.
Using Paiget's notion about the brain growing in spurts,
Toephler says that the last one - when abstract reasoning powers
are developed - comes at the time of puberty. The growth spurt is
would affect girls roughly age 10-13 and boys 13-16.
After the spurt there is a plateau or consolidation period,
when abstract notions find much less fertile ground.
``The first really abstract ideas are in grade 11 algebra,''
says LeRoy. If the theory is true, that's a good time for boys
and a bad time for girls. In fact, it is the worst possible time
for girls, and since they have so much trouble, they get turned
off and give up.''
_b_e_y_o_n_d__b_i_o_l_o_g_y
Even if some biological basis may be found to explain why
men outnumber women 13 to 1 at the top of the heap in math, that
doesn't automatically explain why male graduate students in MIT
computer science outnumber women 10 to 1.
The truth is that hotshot math skills are not needed to mas-
ter computers.
Dick Lee, Toronto school board computer studies co-
ordinator, says that the ``myth was reality 20 years ago when 90%
of the uses for computers were mathematical.'' But today,
language skills, patience and attention to detail - all con-
sidered ``female qualities'' are the critical skills.
Still, a computer barrier seems to hamper many women - even
women with good math skills.
Peggy Aitchison, a math teacher at A. Y. Jackson Secondary
School in North York, remembers her first exposure to computers
in university. She took the required courses, but ``they got
away from me.''
Years later, after hearing a lecture on how women would be
disadvantaged in the future because they weren't mastering com-
puters, she tried again.
``That lecture sort of gave me the permission. Of course I
should be able to use a computer. Of course I can. Now I really
enjoy programming. It's addictive.''
Aitchison sees the same cultural conditioning working on her
students. In the Jackson Grade 11 computer science classes, boys
outnumber girls 3 to 2. By grade 12, the ratio is down to 3 to 1.
In math the situation is even more extreme. And next year
the school is moving to all-girl math classes in grade 10 to head
off problems.
``There's peer group pressure both ways,'' explains Mary
Lynn Jefferies of the math department. ``Girls won't speak out
for fear of appearing too stupid - or too smart.''
_f_e_m_i_n_i_n_e__r_o_l_e__m_o_d_e_l_s
``Girls just don't see themselves with a place in the com-
puter world,'' says Aitchison. ``I saw two girls and eight boys
waiting for computer time. The boys just swarmed in and the
girls were left out. The girls just aren't sharpening their
elbows to get on the machine.''
She believes ``dramatic moves'' are necessary to get girls
on the computer early - including ``girls only'' days in elemen-
tary schools. ``We've got to give them space and permission.
They're intimidated by the boys.''
Dr. Graham Orpwood, a Science Council of Canada adviser, is
impressed by North York's efforts. He'd like to see more segre-
gated classes computer time rationed so that girls get their fair
share - whether they shout for it or not. ``Circumstances have
to dictate,'' he says. ``That's a problem to lay at the school
board's door.''
Even if biological differences do give men a computer edge,
he says, school systems should try to help women be competitive.
``If somebody had poor eyesight, you give them glasses. If
someone has trouble learning to read, schools make tremendous
efforts to help them.''
But Dr. Arthur Cordell, another council adviser, dismisses
the angst, seeing the gender gap as a short-term problem.
``As technologies become more useful, they become tran-
sparent,'' he says.
``In 1915 you had to be a great burly man with a tool kit to
drive a car. In 1984 a 90 pound, 90-year old grandmother can
drive.''
-30-
--
Ian F. Darwin, Toronto uucp: utcsstat!ian