Girls Go Geek Again 378
nessus42 writes "Computer science has always been a male-dominated field, right? Wrong. In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. Women had started to flock to computer science in the mid-1960s, during the early days of computing, when men were already dominating other technical professions but had yet to dominate the world of computing. For about two decades, the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984.... And then the women left. In droves. ...it looks like women are now returning to computer science."
Oh I'm sorry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh I'm sorry (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Girls do geeks again. However, they are all female geeks. Sorry.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that this is the first comment on this article is pretty ironic, given that it's these kind of attitudes that keep women away.
Re:Oh I'm sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
... given that it's these kind of attitudes that keep women away.
If that were true, wouldn't women keep out of pretty much every industry?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I think it's normal for any industry to have assholes and have even been on the receiving end of sexism for being male. Two thirds of my coworkers are female, one is my direct supervisor, but I work in a different industry. My point is that I don't believe it's misogyny keeping women out of this field, they're not all so delicate that they can't stand up to the aforementioned assholes, maybe they'd just rather do something else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I still like to geek, and am raising a pod full of
Re: (Score:3)
Actually the fact that you find this offensive shows that you have no idea what real objectification is.
This is a standard joke everybody could anticipate, it's the standard joke one would expect in *every* *single* tv show about IT, or any other thing.
Besides nowhere in this joke is the idea that women are impersonal objects merely for sexual gratification, if any, this is self deprecating humour by geek men against geek men.
That you choose to read it any other ways says more about your fucked up self than
Re:Oh I'm sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Oh I'm sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Women stay away because guys intimidate them and don't respect their intelligence, it has nothing to do with sexual jokes.
Re:Oh I'm sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Be attractive
2) Don''t be unattractive
Re: (Score:2)
You dont usually do girls?
I usually do women. At my age, girls are illegal!
Hey (Score:2)
S/He said girls. ...
it's a good thing.
they're looking for something (Score:2)
It seems the girls are looking for something.... coming, leaving, coming again. What might it be? Girls are strange :P
Re: (Score:2)
My dad says that's how they shop, check the same shelf over and over again to see if anything's changed :-P
Re: (Score:2)
Am I the only one thinking of that song from Blazing Saddles here?
Re: (Score:2)
Am I the only one thinking of that song from Blazing Saddles here?
Yep, I think so.
they all seem to work at MS or Google (Score:2)
most of the hot women i've seen on Google+ so far seem to work for MS or Google. and in media
Thank god! (Score:5, Funny)
Its been a total sausage fest in I/T for the last 20 years. We need more women so we can act uncomfortable and awkward in what we consider our native surroundings.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, we're geeks ... I thought uncomfortable and awkward was our native surroundings. :-P
Re: (Score:2)
The meaning of "geek" has changed too much. In 1987 I was just coming out of school and having my first full time job. I would guess there were maybe 1/3 females in the CS classes and 1/3 in the workforce. However, male or female, only a very tiny number were geeks. Most were in CS to get a career, it was a growing field and their parents pushed them that way, etc. Back then a geek was the person who stayed late programming even if it wasn't for an assignment, they opened up disk drives to see how they
Honey, can you compile that code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
If women with computer science degrees peaked in 1984 at 37%, then it also means women working as software developers were less likely to have a degree.
From the Article: "In the past year, the number of women majoring in Computer Science has nearly doubled at Harvard, rising from 13% to 25%"
If there was that much change in a single year, I'm betting it has more to do with the admissions process or other factors than any society-wide phenomena.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You sound like one of my community-college stats students.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"If women with computer science degrees peaked in 1984 at 37%, then it also means women working as software developers were less likely to have a degree." ... in computer science.
For example, I worked as a software engineer with my M.A. in mathematics & statistics. I know others who had physics degrees, etc.
Just my theory. (Score:3, Insightful)
It has to do with the complexity of the systems. Those early computer systems were not very complicated. Then, throughout the late 80s and 90s systems and software became much more complex. However, in the last ten years or so, much of the complexity is hidden. Programming and systems management has become just a lot of pointing and clicking without any need (usually) to really understand what's going on underneath the covers.
I want to add that this is just a theory, and that tt's not that I think women are incapable of understanding very complex systems, it's just that I think the majority of them have no interest in that kind of work.
My mom was a computer operator in the 70s (Score:4, Insightful)
These days your average person pushes a button, types in a username/password, and starts clicking things to get to work.
She powered up various large devices in order, typed a long hex boot string into the system, then proceded to load punch cards, open reel tapes and hard drive cake platters, and perform other various complicated tasks.
It's a lot easier now.
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually making my point. That 70s era computer was pretty simple even though there were a lot of parts. Jobs tended to be run one at a time in individual batches. There would be books of written procedures that would say things like, "1. Load tape xxx. 2. Insert card stack yyy. 3. Type CALL PR0102C and press Enter." Very simple stuff compared to later systems where multiple users ran multiple applications from multiple locations and networked with systems all over the place.
When I started in t
Re: (Score:3)
Okay, pick some task that needs solving. Now try implementing it on a modern computer in a high-level language. Then try implementing it on a machine from the early '80s, say a 1MHz 6502 with 16KB of RAM. Now tell me that programming back then was easy. Maybe I should repeat the quote from the STANTEC ZEBRA users' manual, which said that the 150 instruction (baroque instructions, with hundreds of side effects and behaviour that altered depending on the sequence - not uncommon at the time) limitation for
Re: (Score:2)
What you did was describe a situation where someone was moving around the room loading cards, messing with reels... now you sit in the same chair most of your day.
Is it a matter of complexity or a matter of movement? Consider gaming. Mostly male sitting on the couch. You introduce movement (dancing, guitar controllers, Wii) and you see more feminine interest. Secretarial work requires moving about the office filing papers, answering the phone, checking appointments, escorting people around... dominated
Re: (Score:2)
Computers in the 70's and early 80's were immensely difficult to work on. They were huge, had, at best, text based interfaces assuming that they weren't older models with card readers, were programmed in either C or Assembler (FORTRAN or COBOL if you were a specialist in the relevant field) had disk drives that required physical mounting (as in you picked up the big heavy assed disk and "mounted" it on the drive, that's where the term comes from)... It was only toward the mid-eighties that things for mos
Re: (Score:2)
"I want to add that this is just a theory, and that tt's not that I think women are incapable of understanding very complex systems, it's just that I think the majority of them have no interest in that kind of work."
More likely that kind of ridiculous condescending attitude sent them away.
Re: (Score:2)
Like I said, it's just a theory. I'm trying to explain the interesting fact that women were active in computing, then virtually disappeared from the field, only to begin to return to it. Whatever condescending attitude there is among computer geeks has nothing to do with gender. Geeks are chock full of hubris towards anyone who can't understand information systems whether male or female. Throughout much of the late 80's and 90's there were not enough computer professionals to do all the work that needed
Re: (Score:3)
I think we just found the real problem: a perceived hostile work environment. Would you want to work in a field where you thought/found that most of your co-werkers thought you were inferior/didn't belong there? I wouldn't and I am guessing that neither would they.
Re: (Score:2)
That's interesting, and you may have something there, but it still doesn't explain why women seemed to leave computing. I mean, I can see more men coming into computing because of changing attitudes, but why didn't more women also come into the field?
Doesn't add up (Score:2)
Perhaps I missed a math lesson somewhere, but aren't 42%, 34%, and 37% all below half, meaning that even at that time the respective fields were male-dominated?
Re: (Score:2)
You need to normalize to the percent of the total work force that was female to get a more meaningful picture.
Or, for a shortcut, you could compare to the percentage of teachers that were women at the time.
My guess is that those were pretty high numbers for a field at the time.
And of course, the juvenile comments from some of the slashdotters on this thread is amply demonstrating why many women find these fields unwelcoming.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps I missed a math lesson somewhere, but aren't
You missed the icon for this story. It's a chalkboard that says "2 - 2 = 5"
Here's a link to the icon:
http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/education_64.png [fsdn.com]
Itchy (Score:2)
Although it's great that more women are getting back into CS, these kinds of articles make me itch. Geek girls shouldn't be hired or coerced into taking CS because of or in spite of their gender. They should be hired because they're good at what they do, and they should be encouraged to study if they have a sincere enthusiasm for the subject. If it turns out that the best students, or the best employees are male... so be it. /female CS grad and web developer
Re: (Score:2)
I found that rather interesting as well. The author actually says they were looking to hire more females and the first thought through my head was: "How is this not discrimination?" They went so far as to identify sex based on first name because the resumes could not include sex.
Re: (Score:3)
It is, they just call it the euphemism "affirmative action" in this case.
Women Were Driven Out (Score:5, Informative)
Women didn't leave the field voluntarily. Once it became apparent that programming was becoming a lucrative field women were systematically driven out by a system that favored men [stanford.edu]:
The gender disparity in programming is not the result of slight differences between men and women or subtle unconscious biases. It is the result of overt discrimination going back decades to the origin of the profession. And it will take overt action to correct the disparity.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to say that I was both socially awkward and interested in computers long before I ever thought about a career, or social stereotypes. I think it is just true that slightly autistic/whatever people have an affinity for logic and programming.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh goody, an AC troll who doesn't understand the function of commas!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Women Were Driven Out (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah, I'll be more sympathetic when I see people trying to change unjust systems in both directions. Until then it's just sexist hypocrisy.
Re: (Score:3)
So yeah, I'll be more sympathetic when I see people trying to change unjust systems in both directions. Until then it's just sexist hypocrisy.
Frankly your opinion is silly. You're basically saying that everyone has to do everything and everything has to be perfect or there's no point in trying.
That's just a crock.
I, like most people on this site exist in the wider computer industry. This is the area we care about and are active in. We are more familiar with the injustices present and some of us want do some
Re: (Score:3)
It amounts to a sort of social contact. Part of the reason that Western society evolved chivalrous behavior towards women was in compensation for their disenfranchisement. Men
Re:Women Were Driven Out (Score:5, Insightful)
So they selected anti-social people who at the same time were highly social in joining fraternal organizations? Sounds perfectly and utterly non-contradictory.
Re: (Score:2)
"[T]he tests were widely compromised and their answers were available for study through all-male networks such as college fraternities and Elks lodges"
Well unless the tests where knowingly leaked by someone in charge just to all male groups then that is not discrimination just apparent evidence that men cheat better.
Which actually could be a good skill in programming where taking some open source code and inserting in your program can speed up development time.
and for sys admins, well pirating can be a usef
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
could be a good skill in programming where taking some open source code and inserting in your program can speed up development time...for sys admins, well pirating can be a useful skill I suppose.
Properly using open source code isn't cheating. Cheating would be using GPL'd code without releasing the source to the derivative work. If the company was caught it could seriously harm the company (imagine if Microsoft was found using GPL'd code inside Windows or Office). And a pirate sysadmin sounds great until the BSA extracts licenses from the company at roughly 3 times the market rate. So no, cheating is not a good skill for a programmer.
stats showing a large number of graduates and low employment in their field would be proper evidence that this discrimination is happening.
Why would women spend 4 years studying CS if they knew the em
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Women Were Driven Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, you're on to us. We wanted to keep it a total secret etched in the tablets of our elk lodges, but we totally prefer the fat, anti-social, greasy fingered, soda sipping dweeb mold rather than simply trying to look for the most qualified individual for the job. It's completely overt - we are even willing to give up our capitalistic ideals and endure dents in our bottom line to maintain this fraternal tradition.
It's probably okay that you know this now though - we are not frightened of loosing our stronghold. We know that you are incapable of taking overt action because we have evidence that is equally as strong as what you have presented, that you are all spending your time having topless pillow-fights in your sororities.
This all makes total sense if you don't think about it and just assume that a significant majority of people in high places are just filled with hate to the point where they are willing to sacrifice financial and technological gains to consciously perpetuate an arbitrary standard.
Signed CEOs everywhere
Re: (Score:3)
, is there anything else that government can do to make hiring people any more dangerous
Look at the statistics for hiring academics. In the US with a government enforced discrimination in favour of women, when normalizing for the different biases across subjects, women need basically the same qualifications to get a job as men. In Europe where this is not the case, women need higher qualifications to get the same job. Basically, there is a massive bias and the government is doing its job by making society w
Cause and effect (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it has anything to do with a rising interest in IT. its that women need jobs these days too, due to the economy, so i bet you will find ALL industries are increasing their woman count. Especially 'clean' jobs since most women ( or men really ) don't want to go out and dig ditches for a living.
Re: (Score:2)
Girls gone geek (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose the fact that we are attracted to attractive women makes us sexist, objectifying pigs, too.
Typo (Score:2)
Submission (Score:2)
Why (Score:3)
Misogyny is rampant in CS (Score:2)
Unfortunately, misogyny is rampant in all "geek" fields (as it is in the rest of society). Just see the "Perform Like A Porn Star" talk at Ruby Con 2009, or even "ElevatorGate" in 2011.
(Btw, here in $European_Country, the percentage is still something like 10% female/90% male.)
Lets run the fogcreek numbers per hiring category (Score:5, Informative)
Made it to resume review: Female - 75.68%, Male - 72.05%
Made it to the coding stage: Female - 28.38%, Male - 26.49%
Made it to phone interview: Female - 0.054%, Male - 0.099%
In person interview: Female - 0.041%, Male - 0.0565%
Received an offer: Female - 0.041%, Male - 0.0194%
Official Hire: Female - 0.014%, Male - Male - 0.013%
Even though this was a small sample, is there anything we can derive from this? The last stat to me doesn't matter as much, even though the numbers were for all intensive purposes the same percentage, even though there were 8 times more male applicants.
If we were to break down the stages the women had better percentages up to the phone interview. Does this show or should this show that the males did better at the coding assignment? If we can agree that that is what happened then the whole "boys play with computers more, tinker, etc etc" might have 'some' truth to it. Before the phone interview the females led by nearly 2%. By the time the phone interview came around, the males had gained that 2% but additional ground on top of the that.
However 100% of those females that made it to the in person interview made it to the offer stage while the men lost the ground that they gained during the coding stage. Does this mean perhaps that the males had poorer social skills to cause some doubt in their ability to do the work or perhaps be a good fit? Did the women wear low tops?(i am not suggesting the Joel and his interviewers are biased regarding to this, but i am just babbling there).
Would be interesting to see what others think or perhaps what Joel thinks of the numbers after he printed them(assuming that he wasnt keeping track as things progressed through the entire process.
Back in '91 (Score:2)
My CIS major was almost 50% women.
From Wikipedia:Programmer (Score:2)
Critical mass (Score:2)
Here is the real reason people go into specific careers, especially women:
From TFA:
I’d say I was able to make more friends through things like the dorm than in my Computer Science classes. But that means that I can’t really talk to my friends about the stuff I do for my classes, which is frustrating.
Women tend to value social activities and communication far more than men. Women want to be able to talk to other women about common interests.
So if fewer women are in a field, fewer women will go i
what the hell is that? (Score:2)
What is that? [fogcreek.com]
Google VP Marissa Mayer: " People ask me a lot what it's like to be a woman at Google. I don't think of my experience that way. I'm a geek at Google."
what the hell is that? Now I see what they mean by Google 'perks'.
Grace Hopper (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget Admiral Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org] who programmed, developed a successful programming language, led successful standardization efforts, managed--did just about everything you could do with computers both as a direct individual-contributor and as a high-level manager.
She was a nerd and she did "stuff that mattered."
Re: (Score:3)
The figures do not add up (Score:3)
"In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women."
So 58% of developers were men and 64% of systems analysts were men. Looks like men dominated the field then too.
Re:/. cannot math today it has the dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
There may be some disagreement about what it means to "dominate." Clearly the author feels it requires a higher disparity.
Re:/. cannot math today it has the dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
I question the "leaving in droves" comment though. Did the females leave or did the number of males coming in just go up an a rate faster than women? According to their data, far more men have submitted resumes than women.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That means 58% were men ... and 58 > 42, last time I checked ...
You might be missing a variable ??? ... ... X (% of women) + Y (% of men) + Z (% of other [transgender / lack thereof ???]) = 100%, then Y = 100% - Z - 42% = 58% - Z, and Z = 100% - 42% - X = 58% - X
... just sayin'
If
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
*Just for women to break even, no more than 42% of the work force could be male. 42% x 2 = 84%. 100% - 84% = 16%. Therefore, for women to break even, much less dominate, at least 16% of the work force must be neither male nor female
Re:/. cannot math today it has the dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always had majority men, but 58-42 is very different from the roughly 80-20 split that it has now. It's sort of like the difference between pediatric medicine (currently about 55-45 in favor of women) and nursing (95-5 in favor of women).
In the cases where you have a gender in an extreme minority, you often get silly social reactions around them. For instance, male geeks who stay in all-male environments might not get used to treating women professionally rather than drooling over them or harassing them. Similarly, some female nurses (particularly older female nurses) have been known to mistreat male nurses because they think there is something wrong with the men.
Re: (Score:2)
That made the statistician's job really easy.
Re: (Score:3)
They defiantly approach problems differently, I find women developers tend to be less interested in the next big things but the daily process of keeping things working... Now I could be way off because most of the Women developers I have worked with are from the 1980's graduates, and are focused on retirement. But even with younger women developers they seem less interested in trying to make something and more to keep it running or do what it is told.
This isn't a bad thing, I have seen some very good code
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Either way, he's probably not going to work tomorrow, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I'm feeding an AC troll, but there are 1500 people in the engineering department where I work, the majority being software engineers. While there aren't many women, all of them can code in C and C++, because that's what we use for our products.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm assuming there was a large surge of hermaphrodites interested in computer science that year.
Re: (Score:3)
The 42% are women and the 58% are nerds. That's when.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe he said that women ever "dominated" the field merely that it didn't used to be "male dominated". 42/58 is definitely still "mostly male", but it's much further from "Male dominated" than the current split.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure I'm just responding to flamebait... but I'll bite.
Every manager I've had in the past 10 years has been a woman. Matter of fact I just lost out a promotion to a woman. I'm not bitter either, she's just as good as I am and has been with the team longer.
There may be a disparity of women to men in many IT workplaces... but it isn't always the case. Take your stereotypes somewhere else because they don't always apply.
Re: (Score:2)
Even if they are, most of them are not what you would want to look at; let just say that i would not consider interfacing your hardware with their software.
Re: (Score:3)
WOW look like someone panties is riding a bit too high and is getting uncomfortable, that was meant to be a joke.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are several in my team. Not a majority, nor even 50%, but enough to keep it from being completely testosterone insane (like my last job was).
However, we've been interviewing lately, and have had exactly zero female applicants, which is disappointing.
I hope I wouldn't give an unfair preference based on gender, but I've found that a mix of genders, cultures, interests and ages makes a much more pleasant working environment, and often a more productive one.
Re: (Score:2)
What a lame troll. Try harder.
Re: (Score:2)
THIS. Discrimination is a problem, a gender imbalance isn't.
Although I would like to see more women in IT...for gross awful male reasons :D