I am jumping in here at the risk of inciting flame mail but I have been
intrigued by these questions for many years as well. I am not a current
programmer per se but graduated as one of two women at my university with a
physics/geophysics degree many moons ago and did a fair bit of Fortran
programming in my younger days (I am revealing my age here). I assumed
that the ratio of M:F in technical fields would get better as time went on
and it did for awhile (through the late 70's and 80's) and has then
actually gotten worse throughout the 90's. I am not sure what has caused
this reversal but do have some thoughts on the subject.
I now have a son (age 11) and a daughter (age 6) and do some volunteering
at the local schools here trying to get more girls interested in math and
science. The simple truth of the matter is that careers in technical
professions pay more than careers in non-technical professions. So in my
volunteer efforts, one of the things I have observed is that it is rare to
have "mothers" at home (or even mothers that work full-time) interested in
computers or science and math in general. And, by about age 6 girls are
modeling their behavior after their mothers, their girl friends and peers,
and other female role models (usually media models like Madonna, or
Britanny Spears, or the Spice Girls god forbid). Boys, at about the same
age, are doing the same. I was in a fourth grade math class recently and
already there was a gender gap between the girls and boys in their relative
performance. When I talked to the girls they all said, "Oh I am not good
at math". So I queried them about their mothers and lo and behold their
mothers were saying the same thing and imprinting this message on their
girls, even if they had fathers that were good at math or involved in a
scientific profession. So, in society in general their is a lack of female
role models for girls in technical fields (and it has to start at home at a
very young age).
I have also noticed that children these days, at a very young age, are
introduced to computers (unfortunately it is mostly the Windows OS).
However, fairly soon, it is the boys that remain interested in computers
because of computer games. For some reason girls are not interested in
computer games. Several companies have tried to develop computer games
specifically for girls but have failed. By age 8 most girls are not as
interested in computer games but boys are intensely interested through the
end of high school. A certain percentage of those boys are interested in
games enough to dive into their computers to upgrade sound cards and video
cards, memory, processors, etc. They begin to navigate the web to find
solutions and tips and tricks to get better at games. A certian percentage
of those boys develop their own websites and are writing their own pages in
HTML and finally looking to a scripting language in embed in their HTML
pages to make their websites interactive. They have left the girls far behind.
This observation begs the following question: So what is it about computer
games that are so attractive to boys? Having watched my son and his peers
for several years, I have come around to thinking that computer games are a
safe place to engage in a competitive activity ("...how many Pokeman do you
have, what level are you on..."). It used to be the sand lot and the
neighborhood baseball game or basketball game. But, only a certain
percentage of boys (those that were good at sports) could comfortably
engage in this activity. Computer games don't require you to be a jock
(although they do require pretty good eye hand coordination and problem
solving skills). So what does this have to do with programming and this is
where I am making a conceptual leap. As you migrate from games to
programming, I think to some extent computer programming is a competitive
endeavor in a problem solving environment. And, in general men tend to be
more competitive than women (although there are certainly exceptions).
I have read an enormous amount of books and scientific articles on
evolutionary biology and in a very "Darwinian" sense there was an
evolutionary advantage to those men that were competitive in the fight for
survival. So if we accept the premise that computers to some extent have
replaced the battlefield for men how do we attract women to this same
competitive environment.
I'll now duck and wait for your answers.
At 12:30 PM 1/16/00 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>>> "Clinton" == Clinton A Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>Clinton> Oddly enough, though, the last few webfactory projects I
>Clinton> worked on at Ford had an overwhemlimg majority of female Perl
>Clinton> programmers. 6/2, 7/1 and 5/2 females to males.[1] Most of
>Clinton> the people we're training came out of and went back into
>Clinton> these webfactory pools, and I'm at a loss to explain the
>Clinton> discrepancy. Maybe the females are self-taught? Maybe our
>Clinton> hiring manager discriminates? I don't really know.
>
>I've noticed that if it's traditional CS, males far outnumber females,
>but if it's web-related stuff (including ecommerce), the numbers get
>much more even. Why so?
>
>--
>Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
>Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
>See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!
>
>
Madeline Schnapp, O'Reilly and Associates
101 Morris Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472
Tel: 707-829-0515, FAX: 707-829-0104
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], URL: http://www.oreilly.com
