Computer science lacks women, minorities

http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=33742

by dp619 • 17 years ago

6 36 17 years ago

The National Science Foundation says that women and minorities are not seeking jobs in computer science. A job shortage looms.

Tichy4• 17 years ago

I think women are underrepresented in garbage collection, too (among other jobs).

drhowarddrfine• 17 years ago

Similarly, knitting clubs everywhere are applying for government aid to recruit more men.

petercooper• 17 years ago

I learned the other day that not a single man under the age of 25 works in a state run nursery in the UK: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article4... - Even counting the over 25s, there are only 56 men working in nurseries in the entire country.

If women feel unwelcome in areas of computer science (and I know that they do, and don't really judge their feelings on that), men in professions where they have to deal with kids are even more ostracized.. and we don't seem to be dealing with that problem properly either as a society (and I'd argue the men-children issue is more important to society overall).

gaius• 17 years ago

Well, this is a crucial point. Feminists have tunnel vision. They look in one direction and see that CEOs and politicians are mostly male. But they don't look the other way and see those in dirty and dangerous jobs are overwhelmingly male too. And in prison. And living on the streets. 80% of people working more than 50 hours a week are male. 97% of people killed at work are male. I can't even recall a feminist calling for the retirement age of women to be increased to that of men, despite higher female life expectancy...

But this is why it's not called "equalism".

aplusbi• 17 years ago

Many women may not be aware. I know that the feminists I know would not be surprised if you told them that and would agree that it is not fair for men.

The feminist fighting for greater rights than men is a stereotype that represents only a small (but extremely vocal) minority of feminists.

compay4• 17 years ago

Sure, society has loads of examples of jobs being divided up along gender lines, and of unfairness against men too.

But does that mean we can't even talk about why our profession in particular attracts so few women, while lots of other "knowledge worker" professions are more balanced? Do we have to resolve all other fairness issues first, before we can even talk about it?

I think it's an interesting topic and that the hostility and derisiveness that usually surrounds these articles are unjustified.

Dellort2• 17 years ago

It's not hostility or derisiveness, it's just pointing out that it's not just our particular profession that attracts so few women.

A lot of work in all professions is needed to solve this problem and we must devote all of our time to point that out equally.

Hookers for example is another problem area, most hookers are women. Where are all the male hookers?

Tichy4• 17 years ago

"Do we have to resolve all other fairness issues first, before we can even talk about it"

I would be interested in why few women choose IT. However, the phrasing of the headline made it sound like more than just talking. "Lack" implies a problem that needs fixing, doesn't it?

timr• 17 years ago

There's some irony in your comment: I think you're coming at this from the perspective that programming is a desirable field, and that "feminists" want to be part of it, while not wanting to be part of the dirty or dangerous jobs that other men do (those greedy feminists!)

But what if the reason that women don't take part in CS is because it isn't desirable? What if women avoid the field because it's a glorified, white-collar version of ditch-digging, without career longevity or personal growth?

Tichy4• 17 years ago

"But what if the reason that women don't take part in CS is because it isn't desirable?"

I consider that likely, actually. I am also not sure who is shouting about the women in IT issue - is it really feminists?

uninverted• 17 years ago

Yep, total old boys club; you only get in from reference counting. When will women be able to mark and sweep?

der_ketzer• 17 years ago

I think it's all psychological and the way we are educated. Many people doesn't study an engineer career because math is very difficult. But in fact, at the math faculty where I study, there are more females than males studying math, and in engineering there are more males than females. Something I don't understand.

yummyfajitas• 17 years ago

In my experience, most of those women are trying to be math teachers. If you create an actual Math Education major, they will vanish.

btilly• 17 years ago

My experience strongly disagrees. In my most advanced undergraduate math classes, and then my graduate school days there were a lot of women. Most of whom seemed to want to become mathematicians. The statistic I saw at the time said that women were 40% of people in graduate school in math nationwide.

This struck me as incredibly odd when every discipline that used a lot of math had very low numbers of women. Purportedly because "women find math hard". With the result that when I took a third year differential equations course, there was a sea of men. In my fourth year number theory course, half the (admittedly small) class were women.

Those numbers may have changed radically since.

stonemetal• 17 years ago

I would hazard a guess that since teaching is a pink collar profession you would find more females in the Math Department since some of them plan on teaching it in high school. This doesn't happen for engineering since engineering isn't taught in high school. (Note: at least in the US to teach something at the high school level you typically major in it at the university level as well as taking teaching courses on the side.) The only female I know in graduate school math wants to teach college.

rufius• 17 years ago

No shit?

kobs• 17 years ago

This article reminded me of a comment posted by manvsmachine in a previous thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=105295):

I'd suggest that a large part of the reason is the issue of prestige. In America, intelligent black people will tend to choose high prestige, low-risk career paths more often than not. A lot of it is about the uncertainty of failure; In black communities, a lot is expected of the really smart kids. They're seen as not just representing themselves, but also their communities and, to an extent, their race. It sucks, but it's the truth. So a lot of them choose to be doctors, lawyers, etc, because you're viewed differently by society. If we ever get to the point that being a software engineer is viewed in the same light as the aforementioned occupations, I'm sure there would be a sizable increase.

Seems plausible.

speby• 17 years ago

Why is this news? Well, it isn't. And, why is it that whenever an article comes up like this (and it's not just computer science), it's almost always written in a way that seems like there's something wrong with the current state of affairs.

I mean, so what if women are "underrepresented." Who says there should/needs to be a balance in every profession of men and women working in the same fields?

Like Tichy said below, women are underrepresented in garbage collection, too. No one seems to write articles about that, though.

natrius• 17 years ago

Underrepresentation matters to the extent that the differentiating factor shouldn't have any effect on one's desire to be in a given field, nor on their talent in that field. Maybe you don't care if some people aren't ending up in the careers that would make them the happiest, but some people do, and they investigate the causes to try to fix it.

If women, for instance, are genetically predisposed to liking engineering less or being less capable at engineering, then it's not an issue. If they avoid engineering because of other factors, don't you think that's something that should be fixed?

wlievens• 17 years ago

I definitely feel there's something wrong with the current state of affairs. All my colleagues (in live in Europe) are white middle class males with a university degree. I'd love some more variety...

thras3• 17 years ago

That's the way we are. Let me quote Fred: http://fredoneverything.net/HeadSpaces.shtml

It would be fascinating to get Zogby to run a poll which would ask the following questions:

What does a camshaft do?

What is a vertical flyback interval?

What role does expansion play in refrigeration?

What does an address bus do?

Timed delay of arrival is the basis of what common technological service?

What is the role of a CCD in a digital camera?

Name any spacecraft now in orbit around anything.

What does TCP/IP stand for?

What is the purpose of a torque wrench?

The questions measure, I think, the degree to which people understand the physical world in which they live. Now, I may be wrong (almost inconceivable, I know, it has to happen sometime, like an asteroid strike) but I will bet that anyone scoring perfectly on the foregoing will be male. In fact, anyone coming close will be male. Should this prove true, the conclusion must be that men and women inhabit utterly different head-spaces.

Kadin• 17 years ago

I do not doubt the premise--that the vast majority of people who score well on that "quiz" will be male--but I do not see how that leads to the conclusion, namely that there's some sort of biological difference.

That strikes me as the reification of what's pretty clearly a social difference. More men than women know what a torque wrench is, because we teach boys about torque wrenches and let boys know that they ought to know what one is, while we teach girls about other things and let them know that it's okay to be ignorant about torque wrenches.

When I was a kid there was a common party game where the boys and girls would break up into separate teams, and the boys would attempt to come up with questions that they could all answer but would stump all the girls, and the girls would do the same to the boys. It was, at least that I ever saw, always much easier for the girls to come up with questions that would stump us guys than for us to come up with "common guy knowledge" that would stump all the girls. There were always more girls who knew "guy things" than guys who knew (or were willing to admit to knowing) "girl things."

I'm not sure that really proves anything except there was a wider diversity (at least within the relatively limited sample of kids I grew up with) of acceptable gender role behaviors for girls than for boys. Girls certainly can know "guy stuff" when they're exposed to it, that much was pretty obviously clear.

It may be that there's some biological difference between how men and women approach problems, or learn various skills. But I can guarantee you that those differences are, like differences associated with skin color, far less than the differences between individuals in the same group.

thras3• 17 years ago

But I can guarantee you that those differences are, like differences associated with skin color, far less than the differences between individuals in the same group.

I always chuckle when people trot that one out. Did you know it's equally true for the differences between dog breeds? Body size varies more within dog breeds than between them. Also intelligence. Somehow that doesn't stop dog breeds from being fairly different from each other. (Actually, somewhat more than human races from the genetic studies I've seen.)

As for the differences between guys and girls being taught not inborn...how many kids do you have? Parents get disabused of that sort of thinking pretty quickly.

myth_drannon• 17 years ago

What ? Is this a joke ? I think more that 80% of my comp-sci class were minorities (a university in Canada) and I know for sure it's the same situation in other universities.

compay4• 17 years ago

Well, the first sentence of the article starts off with:

"Large segments of the U.S. population are not considering careers in IT"

msluyter• 17 years ago

What does the term "minority" mean in this context? Am I alone in assuming the article means african-americans and hispanics, and is excluding asian/indian americans?

tybris2• 17 years ago

Non-computer scientists are a minority in computer science.

tybris2• 17 years ago

Well, they're very welcome to join.

edw519• 17 years ago

Large segments of the U.S. population are not considering careers in IT

I dunno, the last thing this field needs are more people without passion, regardless of personal demographic. If someone isn't considering a career in IT, why push them? They'll have a hard time achieving much success if they don't care that much, and they'll make life suck for their fellow workers.

I can't imagine doing anything else. I would hope that others considering the field felt the same way, no matter who they are.

Computer science lacks women, minorities

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