• Welcome to Computer Association of SIUE - Forums.
 

CAOS Weekly Philosophy: Why is there a lack of gender diversity in Computer Science?

Started by Jerry, 2005-03-29T10:36:36-06:00 (Tuesday)

Previous topic - Next topic

Guest

"It's not a matter of trying to manipulate people's interests as much as removing barriers that dissuade people's interest."


that i can get behind. making cs accessable to women & diversifying perspectives for problem solving makes sense, as long as its not some bs push to try and be more 'pc'.

Gary Mayer

Quotecynic006 wrote:
so i think most women arent in cs because they arent interested & it would be difficult to get them interested.

But why do they have a lack of interest? Is it because they are uninformed or that they have made an informed decision not to go that way? If their decisions are uninformed, then providing information can be a benefit for all.

Mind you, throwing the info at them right before they come to college may be a bit tardy. I think programs like the one I descibed previously would be more beneficial. That way, they are more likely to ask questions and can explore in junior high and high school.

I have noticed a lack of feedback from the few females that have delved into the black depths of CS. Anyone know why?
-- Malekith

The higher, the fewer, Doctor. The higher it goes, the fewer.

Bryan

I've been holding out on answering this question for a while.  I'm currently taking a psychology course on gender differences in society.  I've learned an absolute ton and while I get ribbed about it by my friends gender differences are very interesting to me.

First where to start, how about the question "Why is there a lack of gender diversity in computer science?"  This is actually a very simple answer.  There is lack of gender diversity because we make it that way.  Now that answer is as simple as it is complex.  Gender differences start as soon as the friends of the family show up at the baby shower with pinks for the girls and blues for the boys.  Before children even know the difference between boys and girls. Children can't tell the difference between a boy and a girl until between ages 3-7 years of age with Gender Constancy being the point at which children are fully aware of sex differences and can identify another child as either boy or girl.  This is when our culture begins pushing children in one direction or another.  Boys want to be firefighters or super hero's and girls want to be mommies or the adventurous wnat to be a teacher or nurse (but never a doctor  :roll: )  

Flash forward to puberty when children begin taking a more wide view of the world.  Now this is actually a very incorrect statement, CHILDREN do not begin taking a wider view of the world in terms of careers.  Our culture allows boys to begin noticing sciences, mathematics, etc.  However, girls are different.  Girls views widen slightly they are guided like cattle into careers such as nursing and teaching.  These careers, while noble, are limiting to the potential of females.  Jonathan mentioned that stereotype that girls are not good at math or sciences.  This statemetn is absolutely without a doubt 100% FALSE.  In terms of gender differences in ability the largest gender difference exists in an spatial relation and it's a 5% difference.  Men perform 5% better on tasks involving spatial relations.  5% THAT IS ALL!  Now people always say "but boys always do better in school in math and science!"  This is actually true but as I hope everyone knows by now...grades aren't everything!  Not only that but teachers have let these stereotypes creep into their teaching lecture.  It's been shown that in areas like math and science the boys are often praised for their apptitude while equivilant or even better girls go unpraised resulting in a lack of interest and enthusiasm (This was either Benbow & Stanley or Rosencrantz et. al, I can't seem to find the particular citing in my book at the moment) This is also a reverse phenomenon.  How many male elementary education majors do you know?  None, because there currently aren't any.  Surprised?

I think that trying to look at computer science and say "let's eliminate the gender diversity problem" is actually a rather large goal.  Society has shown that raising large groups to new levels in society is not an isolated task.  Look at the industrial revolution of the early 1900's, or the civil rights movements in the mid 1960's, or more on topic the empowering of women in the 1970's, including the addition of Division 35 in the American Psychological Association recognizing an entire field of psychology devoted to gender differences.  All of these were MAJOR movements spanning an entire nation and included millions of people.  I think trying to convert one universtiy is a good place to start but we better be prepared to do something to gain national attention.  Only then can we hope of changing things in the entire field of computer science.

I have a lot more to say on this but unfortunatley this post took me close to an hour (including looking up references and specific numbers).  Hehe guess I got a little passionate there.  :lol:
Bryan Grubaugh
Quickly aging alumni with too much time on his hands
Business Systems Analyst, Scripps Networks.