loren@megatest.UUCP (09/12/83)
I have always been interested in the question of why there are fewer women
programmers. Back in my teaching days (I was a teaching assistant for
several lower division computer science courses for several years, at UCSD)
I gave some thought to the matter, and came to the following conclusions.
1. there were a least as many very sharp female students as male students.
If anything the best women were more than a match for the best men.
Furthermore, many of the best TA's were female.
2. on the other hand far more of the really struggling students were female.
One of the main reasons for this was psychological: computer science and
programming is a difficult subject, for people of both sexes. To succeed in
it usually requires a good deal of persistance and self-confidence. If your
program fails the first few times, and it usually will for beginning
students, it's very easy to conclude that you're just no good at the
subject. Even more distress occurs when you later realize just how stupid the
bugs you had were. Many of the women had the feeling that they were "just no
good at computers". This became a self-fulfilling prophecy when they
encountered the inevitable beginner's problems. I spent most of my efforts
as a TA helping these students discover that they really were able to
program computers. Many went on to get A's or B's in the course once they'd
gotten over the psychological hurdle.
3. Sexist comments were rare enough to be seen as shocking. 30-40% of the
CS majors were female.
4. It's well to remember that, aside from the math aspect of programming
(which males are acculturated to excell at) there is a stronger verbal
aspect (after all, they're programming LANGUAGES), and this is something
that females are acculterated to excell at.
I'd be interested to hear concurrance or disagreement from anyone (alumni,
are you out there? sdcsvax?).
loren rosen
{sun, fortune, ucbvax!lbl-csam} !megatest!lorenminow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow) (09/13/83)
"On the other hand, far more of the really struggling students were female." Loren goes on to suggest that these women assume that they just can't understand computing science and give up. Readers might be interested in a counter-example: it's generally easier to teach juggling to women because they are less likely to give up at the first sign of difficulty. Juggling, (to change the subject somewhat) is a very good model for learning -- you learn to juggle in small stages, make progress in spurts, and learn only by perseverence. Martin Minow decvax!minow
loren@megatest.UUCP (09/13/83)
Martin points out that, in contrast to my statement that there are fewer
women in computing because women are less persistent, women learn to juggle
more easily bacause they are more persistant.
The difference is that (as far as I know) women aren't socialized to believe
they're no good at juggling.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that women are collectively less persevering
than men. If you turned the tables (imagine a course that required a lot
dealing with small children), the men would give up more easily, believing
they weren't cut out for that sort of thing. People do what society expects.
Loren Rosen
{sun fortune ucbvax!lbl-csam } !megatest!lorencraig@cfib.UUCP (09/14/83)
#R:megatest:-11800:cfib:11800001:000:656 cfib!craig Sep 13 10:11:00 1983 I have had a radically different experience as a teaching fellow at Harvard. My experience was that women rarely signed up for the introductory courses in computer science in the first place. Many courses seem to be populated almost exclusively by men. I have not had the impression, though without seeing grading statistics I wouldn't know, that the women who did take computer science courses generally did any better or worse than the men. The overwhelming impression is that there were just a lot fewer of them. This was despite some effort to make sure that there were female TFs in the intro courses... Craig Partridge ...ima!cfib!craig
engels@ihuxs.UUCP (09/16/83)
If you are not encouraged in the math and sciences in grade school, jr. high and high school( and college), you have to play catch-up when you realize that they are important to your career. It's discouraging and sometimes embarrassing. One Who is running hard to catch-up.
owens@gatech.UUCP (09/19/83)
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I taught 70% of the computing courses at a private college for
five years. The Business department was very progressive, and required
an introductory computer course for all secretarial, business, and
accounting majors. A fair number took CS minors thanks to the Intro
to Computing course. I would say that about 40% of the students were
female (In a college where 60% were female), and that there wasn't a
bulge gender-wise in the grades handed out, although I got the impression
that more females withdrew from the course than males. I have the
impression that most of the difficulty women encountered in the CS program
was social expectations ("girls aren't supposed to do that.."), and that
the fiercest opposition to their being in the CS program came from their
own sex! Peer pressure was fierce until a certain redhead, whom I fondly
remember, told the whole pack of them to go to..., er, well after that
CS became an "acceptable" ladies profession.
I'd like to see a discussion on peer pressure, and how it affected
career choices.
Gerald owens at Gatechsmb@achilles.UUCP (09/20/83)
This week's Science News (9/17) has a article on computing and gender. According to Stanford psychologists Irene Miura and Robert Hess, girls begin to fall behind at an early age. A survey of 87 children ages 5-8 showed that only boys in that age group owned home computers. This changed somewhat in groups of older children, but boys still outnumbered girls two-to-one when the psychologists studied junior high school students. In a typical home with a computer, boys would spend two to three hours a day using the machine, the fathers would routinely use them for business, and the mother wouldn't use them at all. In computer camps, girls made up 27% of the enrollment in beginning classes, but that dropped to 5% in the most advanced ones. The female enrollment seemed to be correlated with cost, which the researchers interpret as evidence of parental involvment. A third study tried examined the appeal of software titles. Children and adults agreed that over one third of the titles were of greater interest to boys, while only 5% were perceived as interesting to girls.