Just a couple of data points for the discussion.My eight-year-old daughter loves math and computers and has asked me how she can make her own computer games. I've tried showing her what goes into making games and she lost interest for now. She also writes stories, draws beautifully, invents constantly (including how- to step-by-step sketches), and prefers to play roughhouse (and chess) with the boys than to hang out with the girls, who (at least last year) were more into psychological games and popularity contests than actual play.
I also recently worked with a practicum student from Chile who was suprised to find her IT classes mainly full of boys here in Vancouver, apparently in Chile mostly girls study computer science and IT.
On the rare occasion that I go to parties, men are more likely to be talking about computers than women, even if the women are programmers. Boys and their toys, I guess. I know a lot of great women programmers and women who like to *use* computers, but not very many women who are into computers for the sake of computers or who treat them as attractive gadgets.
When I switched from the Creative Writing department to the Computer Science department, I found there was far *more* freedom of expression and creativity allowed, but I don't think that's widely known, and it may not be common in other schools. The women in my CS classes (not universally, but mostly) treated the classes as classes, and only did what was required to get through the class. Some of the men were the same, but a substantial proportion programmed because they loved computers and loved to make them do things. Computer programming was the closest thing they'd found to magic.
Overall, I think there are a lot of reasons why boys choose CS more than girls, but I think they are culturally dependent, not universal, and I think some of it is just that both boys and girls have a poor understanding of what computer programming is (or can be) all about.
--Dethe The laws of nature were not repealed on September 11. --Kathleen Tierney
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