Um… I’m not saying I agree with the googler’s explanation of why the ratio of men to women is 5 to 1. It could be biological (according to him), or something entirely different.
One way to interpret that graph though, is that female biology did not change at all, but the field of Computer Science has. Maybe something changed drastically in this field in the 80s so that many more women became incapable of mastering it?
Definitely no. How about you? I have always thought the push for gender diversity is wrong… I have stated this in this forum many times, so is not a new stand I say now. I interpret what he wants to say differently, what he wants to say is what I have said a few posts earlier, “Go for intellectual diversity, not physical and physiological diversity”. I think he puts too many points in his 10 pages, is bounce to have some inaccurate points that become ammunition for others to attack his message, the very bad one is what you have pointed out, the biological one.
That something was computer games catering to boys only. By the time men went on to college they already have much heavier exposure to computers than women and so women got intimidated and dropped off CS programs.
This comes from research on peer reviewed journals. By the way that google guy wrote 10 ages without a single reference to back up his claims.
No either. I have always been a “feminist”, starting from my college days.
We experience the world thru our bodies. How men and women see the world cannot be bridged by intellect alone.
I’m not a woman but was never interested in video games nor computers. Did not study CS in undergrad either. But I got into the field anyway purely driven by money. Yes I was intimidated by the hotshots but so what. You got to do what you need to do to make your dough. So those women who got intimidated and dropped out really have no one to blame but themselves.
However, I agree that outreach programs to recruit more women into the field might help.
[quote=“manch, post:103, topic:2843”]
That something was computer games catering to boys only. By the time men went on to college they already have much heavier exposure to computers than women and so women got intimidated and dropped off CS programs.
[/quote]IT industry has changed from management information system/ mainframe/ english-like COBOL focused to web/ fat client/ closer to assembly language C/C++/OO like Java. During the MIS days, system analysts need to talk to business users a lot to understand their business requirements/ rules, and then use English-like COBOL to program the requirements and submit the batch jobs. Now, those jobs still exist but greatly reduced, in place, we have many shrinkwrapped office software, front-end/back-end applications written in C/C++/Java/ Javascript/ HMTL/CSS and tons of web apps that don’t need to talk to business users (not the 1-1 kind of communication). Knowledge of hardware is necessary for coding efficient programs and algorithms are more mathematical than those during MIS days.
[quote=“manch, post:103, topic:2843”]
By the way that google guy wrote 10 pages without a single reference to back up his claims.
[/quote]I understand what he wants to say but would fail his essay. I guess he has graduated before UCs introduce compulsory critical thinking writing courses (1-3 courses, depends on your critical thinking level during admission).
Definitely will help but I doubt it would reach the ideal goal of 50:50 ratio because from my experience females don’t like hardware. Nowadays, coding means you need to be fairly strong at data structure and algorithm, and need to understand computer architecture, operating system, linear algebra, computer modeling, distributed system, and probability & statistics. Very hardware- and mathematical- oriented. Of course, to be truly successful, a male coder does need some “feminist skills” such as empathizing with users.
Well, if you believe in innate abilities, no amount of outreach or support is going to help the situation, so might as well redirect your resources to something more meaningful.
So, if a woman is good at computer science, then she will find a way to succeed in this field even without any support. However, if she is not, then no amount of support can turn her into a success. So, no special outreach needed! Everyone (men and women) given the same support. No more no less.
I have no interest and time to read 10pages of paper which doesn’t look interesting at all to me.
In general, i believe STEM is very good field for women mainly because its evaluation system is more objective than other fields.
Frankly, i haven’t experienced any gender discrimination during hiring/evaluation process so far.
I don’t think this guy’s view point is common or popular in SV. Not worthwhile to pay attention.
My observation shows that majority of women engineers are from China. So American PC culture did not increase the women engineers, and China’s pragmatic culture produces many more women engineers.
PC’s effect is very limited, it’s often used for political gain not the actual improvement. Who benefit the most from PC culture? The leftist politicians. Just like the communist movement, that claim they fight for the people. But in the end, the people suffered under comminism. Only the party leaders got the benefit.
The key question he raised is whether women needs affirmarion action or special priority in hiring and promotion
One reason is that Silicon Valley working hours has increased dramatically sicnr the 80s. Prior to 80s, computer scientist often work in the acadmia, and software engineers do not need to work hard. A CS grad can go to IBM and work as a software engineer or computer scientist with very good work/life balance. But now, you need to work to death in SV. And the IBM’s comfortable SW jobs have been outsourced to India.
In SV’s tech industry with terrible work/life balance, the #1 deterrent for a woman engineer is the long hours and high level of stress.
So the obvious way to attract women engineers is to reduce work hours, reduce work stress, reduce competitive work practice, improve work/life balance. Affirmative action is an insult to women
Some people are always talking in extreme political correctness. But in the real life, they beat wife and sexually harass female employees. Sometimes you wonder whether they use PC talk as a way to hide their crime or guilt
Anything overly extreme could be suspicious
Tim Cook is extremely PC but I doubt he sexually harasses women…
Really??? Reduce work hours and stress, being less competitive in order to attract more women.
Then in that case everybody can just go home. Because these companies will soon be bankrupt! Competition from elsewhere will swallow them alive.
That is one way to look at it. However, people seem to forget that the culture (in the USA at least) in the late 80s and 90s was that only “weirdos” studied computers. And this wasn’t “weirdo” in a cute, joking fashion. It was more of a “kids, don’t talk to that guy down the street” type fashion. Before that (in the 60s/70s, comp-sci was just another branch of mathematics). Here is another opinion – this is not my quote, I copied it from slashdot user “thecombatwombat”.
“In the late 90s and early 2000s, I never heard anyone suggest the all male or nearly all male CS and IT classes I was in were full of sexist men keeping the women out. Just the opposite, I constantly heard they were full of loser boys, women weren’t there because they had better ways to spend their time. These guys were nerds, and were on the fringes where they belonged. (The notion that “nerd” and “geek” were positive words was just barely beginning to become a thing.)
Fast forward 15-20 years, and that time they thought they were outcasts? They’re now being told that no, quite the opposite, they were being privileged jerks. That whole time they thought they were being ostracized, they were actually gender bullies who now must take responsibility for all the women they’ve been keeping out of the field. The shift should be enough to make anyone’s head spin”
With success comes responsibility. Just because you were treated badly in the past doesn’t give you privilege to become a bully now that you are successful. You could lose respect and your hard earned success if you did.
It’s about time someone stood up to the thought police. The people who talk a big game on diversity, then tell all us exactly how we are allowed to think on every issue. Disagreement gets you labeled as a whole host of negative terms. We can’t even have an honest discussion about issues in this country, because simply sharing data that’s negative about a group is racist, xenophobic, etc, etc, etc. We’ll just keep on blaming white people and the rich for all the problems in communities they don’t even live in. It’s not going to solve any of the problems.,
Rich white men got blamed the most because they are the most successful group out there. Rich white straight men I should say. People always like to blame their mishap on someone else. The fact that white men colonized the planet and subjugated natives to slavery in the past didn’t help either…
Yes, but telling people they are victims of someone else’s evil strips them of all power. The message should be more positive in terms of how they can lift themselves up. Once they stop being victims, then they have the power to change their own situation. One message leads to a cycle of being a victim that can span generations. The other message empowers people to make the life they want. Why do we continually give them the negative message and fill their minds with the belief that they can’t change things?
This is about gender, not race.
Gender is more important politically since women is over 50% of the population