11 ms·

Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

212 points by denzil_correa 11y ago

rahimnathwani 11y ago
~50% of undergrads at Stanford are female. ~30% of new Stanford computer science majors are female.
- ngoel36 11y ago
  Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now. What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major, and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    Is that really awesome, or is is bad news for say engineering or physics which could be losing those same women and are traditionally even more male dominated than computer science is? If those subjects are losing as many women, then this is actually bad news for gender same-number-ness.
    - richmarr 11y ago
      Good question. There's been a significant change (at least from my perspective) in the awareness of inequitable treatment of women in tech in the last few years, and I'd like to think that's one of the contributing factors to this change. If true, that means that the previous levels of entry into other subjects were (in part) due to students rejection of CS. If CS loses its repulsion factor then that brings everyone's metrics back to neutral and will make other problems clearer. Much as I hate to wheel out the trite "everything is a market" trope, the more subjects like physics will have to work to improve the treatment of women in science (although my perception is that it's not as bad as tech)... and maybe (one day) the way science is run to make it a more appealing career. I was a physics undergrad and chose to ditch science as a career at my first opportunity. A majority of the people who stayed on to do an MSc or PhD did so only because it would buy them a well payed role at a bank, or PWC, or Anderson (sorry, "Accenture"). It's a shitty career, fighting for funding or tenure, full of victorian-era bullshit. The sooner physics (for one) cleans house the better.
  - 001sky 11y ago
    In all fairness, this is likely a structural data anomaly. ie, it is driven by the number of majors at the school, and their level of abstraction. Here are some historical data points. Notice the arbitary abstraction of, eg Bio Sciences Human Biology 1955 1. History 2. Economics 3. Psychology 4. Political Science 5. Bio Sciences 1965 1. History 2. Political Science 3. English 4. Psychology 5. Economics 1975 1. Psychology 2. Bio Sciences 3. Economics 4. History 5. English 1985 1. Economics 2. Human Biology 3. Bio Sciences 4. Electrical Engr 5. English 1995 1. Bio Sciences 2. Human Biology 3. Economics 4. Psychology 5. English and now we look at 2010 (from quora) Biological Sciences (1.32%) but Human Biology (12.58%) Biology (5.74%) =~20% of Standford majors in 2010 are "biology majors" in plain language usage. Based on data on Bachelor's Degrees conferred in the 2009-2010 school year[1], the top majors are: Human Biology (12.58%) Economics (8.10%) International Relations (6.20%) Biology (5.74%) Computer Science (4.94%) Engineering (4.71%) Psychology (4.54%) Political Science (4.25%) English (3.96%) History (3.62%) Management Science and Engineering (3.39%) Mechanical Engineering (3.10%) Science, Technology, and Society (2.30%) Communication (2.18%) Electrical Engineering (2.07%) Mathematics (2.01%) Earth Systems (1.84%) Physics (1.84%) Sociology (1.49%) Biological Sciences (1.32%)*
    - eitally 11y ago
      I suspect that differentiation would make more sense if they replaced "human biology" with "pre-med". I graduated from UVA In '99 and the biggest majors by far were psychology, sociology, history and economics, possibly in that order, but definitely each having ~500 graduates (out of a class of perhaps 2800-3000). I think the entire engineering school only graduated about 300-400 people each year (at that time). The current enrollment seems to match Stanford's stats, interestingly: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/ http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- adamwk 11y ago
  They call it Simpson's Paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
  - colah3 11y ago
    I don't think this is really a case of Simpson's paradox. What we're seeing is that female students at Stanford are less concentrated on a single major than the male ones. As a result, their top pick isn't as high as the male top pick. I'd guess that the distribution of female majors is higher entropy than the male one. Simpson's paradox would be if there was some second confounding variable that corelated to gender which was causing these results. There might be, but I'm not seeing it.
    - natmaster 11y ago
      I'm genuinely curious why I haven't seen any uproar about the numerous majors where men are in minority.
      - reagency 11y ago
        Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors.
        yareally 11y ago
        > Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors. Men do face discrimination in nursing. However, men are still paid more on average than female nurses[1]. Make of that what you will. The thing I find most striking is that before the 20th century, most nurses were men and in the early days of computing there was a much higher number of women in the field. [1] http://medcitynews.com/2015/03/male-nurses-earn-maybe-gender-discrimination-maybe/ http://medcitynews.com/2015/03/male-nurses-earn-maybe-gender... https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/1l1k75/any_male_nurses_experience_discrimination/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/1l1k75/any_male_nu... http://www.jacksonvilleu.com/resources/career/men-in-nursing/ http://www.jacksonvilleu.com/resources/career/men-in-nursing... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272837 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272837
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  So more than 50% of Stanford undergrads are CS? Shit. Does that not sound like aa glut?
  - coyotebush 11y ago
    No, those two statistics alone don't say anything about the total number of CS majors. Per the article, CS represents ~20% (of students with declared majors).
    - 001sky 11y ago
      CS is 214 of an estimated 3500 female student body. That still seems exceptionally low. Posted this upthread but in 2010 20% of the student body was in Biology (once topical sub-specialties were aggregated). 20% of ~3500 would be closer to `700, which is 3.3x the number of declared comp sci students. Or maybe my math is wrong? I'm more interested in the actual knowledge being put in and attention being paid out than a critique of the degree naming conventions.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      Thanks, I got the numbers twisted in my head.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    And if it were true, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a glut. CS is, to some extent, the new mechanical or electrical engineering. ME and EE are very broad degree programs, with students coming out of the same university with totally different specializations. They may have only taken 50% of their courses in common with each other. CS is (or depending on the school, is going) in that same vein.
  - ngoel36 11y ago
    No. Very little of a CS degree is "coding" - CS is so much more than that. It's even beyond "engineering". A proper CS degree teaches you how to think, how to solve insanely hard problems, and how to do so with a team of other smart people - often with different personalities. What separates CS from other degrees is that it does filter out those without the horsepower or fortitude on both the quant side (algorithms) and the creative side (systems, architecture). That means, that even if the SV bubble crashes, CS majors are the best equipped to handle whatever career is hot next - any hiring manager at Goldman, McKinsey, or F500 company X will tell you the same.
revelation 11y ago
With their high number of (rejected) applications and subjective criteria they can of course shape these statistics any way they want. So is this progress or Stanford appearing progressive? There is no way to tell.
- sloanesturz 11y ago
  At Stanford, undergrads are admitted generally to the school, then they get to pick whichever major they like. Most students don't pick a major until sophomore or junior year. Stanford accepts 50% women and more of those women are picking to become CS majors after they get in, when they didn't just a few years ago. This is actually progress.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - argonaut 11y ago
    To be fair, applicants indicate major areas that they're interested in. The admissions committe may or may not take that info into account in deciding on applicants.
- bjwbell 11y ago
  You doubt university administrators sincerity ;) I've noticed very few of these articles look at the recent past ('80s) when women were a significant percentage of programmers. I'm too young but I have the feeling working conditions were much better back then.
  - eru 11y ago
    > I'm too young but I have the feeling working conditions were much better back then. You mean working conditions for programmers? From talking to people who worked in computing back then (like my grandfather), it seems like we have it better today. Of course that's only anecdotal, and my perception of today is as coloured as my choice of people to talk to. Would be interesting to see a more formal study.
avivo 11y ago
This is also true of MIT. http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html According to the article "It was unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university where computer science is the top major for female students." That link was the top hit for https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment This is a pretty sad thing to see in something purporting to be journalism. I can't blame the really writer though. They probably only had 30 minutes to get something out the door to drive their view count...
- lancewiggs 11y ago
  Sure the journalist could do that search for every university - but why would she start with MIT? She (Sarah McBride from Reuters, not a click-bait agency) also talked to UCLA and Harvey Mudd, both Californian schools and on her beat (as a SF-based journalist). Harvey Mudd had a reputation for high female enrolment in STEM and was a more logical first call than MIT, on the other coast.
  - avivo 11y ago
    The article tries to present Stanford as relatively unique in this light — which is great for Stanford but potentially bad for the overall ecosystem. It shores that up with the vacuous statement about how it is "unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university [...]". A few minutes of online research (or perhaps an hour(s) of calls to registrars) would have resolved that. Then she could have made a concrete informative statement like "[?All] of the top 10 ranked schools (via US News and World Report) have seen a significant increase in female computer science majors." and/or "MIT & [...] also reported that CS is the most popular major for women."
raziel2702 11y ago
That's percentage wise, but which university has the highest number of cs majors I wonder? Stanford is a comparatively small university no?
baldajan 11y ago
Really glad to see these trends, not only at Stanford, but other universities. Diversity in any field makes it richer.
- eru 11y ago
  > Diversity in any field makes it richer. In a testable way? I'm really interested to see which of diversity's claimed benefits hold up to scrutiny. Perfectly happy to see diversity as an end and not a means.
  - reagency 11y ago
    Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity". http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....
      - kelukelugames 11y ago
        Here's the abstract from your link. A bit more complicated than your summary. Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.
jlees 11y ago
This is cool, and interesting in a couple of ways. The declarations are preliminary, meaning (I presume) that students may change their minds; according to some studies (e.g. [1]), women tend to transfer out of CS at a higher rate than men. Some anecdotal reasons behind this include a hostile atmosphere/alienation [2], sexism from students and teachers, unequal backgrounds due to pre-college factors [3] and so on (of course, there are plenty of non-gender related reasons why someone might switch majors). The flip side is, these are upperclassmen, which I understand to mean they probably have been taking CS classes for some time already at Stanford. Most of these factors would have been encountered already if they are indeed present at all, which is cheering in its own way. [1] http://www.academia.edu/5317313/STEM_Switching_Examining_Departures_of_Undergraduate_Women_in_STEM_Fields http://www.academia.edu/5317313/STEM_Switching_Examining_Dep... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11182833/How-She-Did-It-Girls-I-dropped-out-of-Computer-Science-so-you-dont-have-to.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11182833/Ho... [3] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
samfisher83 11y ago
How many of them are just doing it for money since salaries are high right now? How many of them actually would do it if it paid 50k instead of a 100k?
- mc32 11y ago
  I think it's the same with finance, right? Lots of people follow the money --whether it be finance, CS, law, med-school. Personally I think it's BS for people to tell you to "follow your passion" and also am critical of the "we need people who are passionate about x". Most people work as a way to make a living.
- josephagoss 11y ago
  And the same can be said of many Men... The first thing that came to my mind, is that many girls that are interested in this stuff may now feel more comfortable than ever to enroll in Computer Science, as the issue of sexism is being tackled and talked about a lot.
- ngoel36 11y ago
  A job at McKinsey or Goldman pays far more (risk-adjusted, 7-10 years out of school) than a CS degree does - you can verify that easily. If you're optimizing for money, CS is not the answer (unless you're leveraging it to get a job on Wall Street).
  - this2shallPass 11y ago
    How many McKinsey or Goldman jobs are there? How many of the women that enter the funnel are there in 7-10 years? In addition to money, how flexible are the McKinsey or Goldman jobs with having and raising children?
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Why is this a relevant question? Of course some of them are doing it for money, why wouldn't they? You think it's any different for men?
- tomp 11y ago
java000 11y ago
I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets lamenting the lack of women in CS are actually partly to blame for it for their ongoing denigration and belittling of those already in the field. For example, someone in this thread cited an NPR article titled "When Women Stopped Coding." Does "coding" sound like a prestigious job activity to you? How many news articles have you seen lately that casually refer to psychiatrists or psychologists as "shrinks," and how many have you seen that refer to us as "coders," "geeks," or "nerds?"
- mrdrozdov 11y ago
  Woz, Bill and Larry were coders, geeks and nerds at some point, and in many ways still are. Are they prestigious? I guess it's up for the reader to decide.
  - morgante 11y ago
    Nope. The media does not treat even extremely successful and talented coders the same way they treat (for example) top bankers.
  - java000 11y ago
    They're famous and respected as businessmen and philanthropists, not software engineers. The media and general public are largely ignorant of the technical accomplishments of those men and would pay them little notice had they not been so phenomenally successful in business. Compare the responses to the deaths of Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.
    - stdbrouw 11y ago
      Well sure but nobody cares about most Nobel prize winners either, and nobody cares about great poets. It's just that money is an "objective" yardstick, you either have it or you don't, which makes it easy for people to wrap their head around.
ivanca 11y ago
What's with the obsession of gender equality by women in high paying jobs?, is never about lack of women in sewer maintenance or coal mining, or bugs exterminators, or firemen (firewoman? Is that even a word?). Is always CEOs or STEAM jobs at silicon valley. That's a very narrow and convenient definition of "equality" isn't it?
- learc83 11y ago
  It's not even about the lack of women in undesirable male dominated jobs. What about the lack of women in relatively high paying skilled trades like electrician or elevator repair? I think you'd get more bang for your buck by funding programs to help working class women move into skilled trades, than by trying to move middle class women who are already going to college from one major to another.
- dublidu 11y ago
  Because CEOs and other higher paying jobs impact the world we live in. Women need to be represented in high impact jobs so that we don't have a world designed entirely by men.
- zasz 11y ago
  Believe it or not, women have had to fight for the right to work in coal mines. You probably hear only about the fight to get more women in tech, since you are in tech. But anyway, here you go: http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309 http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309 Proof that there used to be laws on the books banning women from working in mines, and feminists went and fought them. It's quite possible that the other reason you don't hear about female coal miners asking for more representation is that tech is worse at hiring women than coal mines are by now.
  - ivanca 11y ago
    Actually I know that, I was talking about _modern feminis_ where this kind of jobs get a lot more attention by them than any other "gender gap"
hendry 11y ago
I don't quite understand if "Majoring" means completed degrees or not. In my old University, women were common in the first year of Comp Sci, as it was the easiest department to gain entry to for them as females because of quotas or whatever positive discrimination is called. However in the second year, they would typically transfer out to another department they were more keen on, but probably wouldn't have won a place at initially.
- douche 11y ago
  Anecdotally, it seemed like all of the ladies in my CS department wound up actually majoring in Cognitive Science, which was part of the CS department technically, but about half psyche and pre-med, really.
- discodave 11y ago
  Do you actually have any evidence of it being easier for women to get into CS because of quotas?
  - r0naa 11y ago
    Isn't quota and affirmative action the very definition of making it easier for a certain group to get access to a particular institution?
    - richmarr 11y ago
      I think discodave is asking for evidence that quotas are in use for these courses, as oppposed to evidence that quotas increase numbers of otherwise-underrepresented groups
  - niuzeta 11y ago
    not the parent, but the discussion is of interest for me. I've quickly run a search query for "affirmative action statistics for computer science". First page result included a report from http://www.civilrights.org/ http://www.civilrights.org/. I am ignorant of veracity or validity of this organization, so I can't verify if its contents are sufficient to be "evidence". But here goes(emphasis mine): "By 2010, one in four new jobs will be “technically-oriented,” or involving computers. However, women still lag far behind in earning computer technology degrees and working in computer technology-related professions. High school girls represent only 17 percent of computer science AP test takers and college-educated women earn only 27 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer science (down from 37 percent in 1984) and 16.3 percent of doctorate degrees in computer science. Overall, women comprise roughly 20 percent of IT professionals. (“Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age,” American Association for University Women, 2000)" [1] Barring the "down from 37 percent" part, it tells me that 17% of female high schoolers take AP computer science, but actually a higher percentage of women end up with a CS diploma. It's very thin connection but that does raise a question that affirmative action lets in more women. [1] http://www.civilrights.org/equal-opportunity/fact-sheets/fact_sheet_packet.pdf http://www.civilrights.org/equal-opportunity/fact-sheets/fac...
tracker1 11y ago
What are we going to do about the lack of boys/men in higher education?
- draugadrotten 11y ago
  Embrace it and see how society will change from it.
- douche 11y ago
  Write NY Times op-eds bemoaning the scarcity of quality marriageable men in ten years.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    In 10 years, I'll be a 50yo graybeard, and definitely not concerned about writing any such op-ed.
userium 11y ago
This is great news. One issue is still how to retain these women in tech as over 40% of women leave tech mid-career [1] [2]. [1] http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology.pdf http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-... [2] http://keepwomen.com/static_pages/subscribe http://keepwomen.com/static_pages/subscribe
randyrand 11y ago
As a foreigner, can someone explain me why this is important?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- j-l- 11y ago
  As a foreigner, I guess it is similar to importance of a labor in previous socialism. Maybe there is some "The Part played by CS majoring females in the Transition from Ape to Man" on the way. Who knows :)
- jberryman 11y ago
  The vast majority of people working in software in the US are men. The statistics, various studies, a mountain of anecdotes by women working in tech, etc. all point to systemic problems of sexism in the industry and society more broadly. There's a growing movement from various corners to try to address fucked up tech industry culture issues in various ways, encourage interest in programming among women, etc. So statistics like these are encouraging.
randyrand 11y ago
As a foreigner, can someone explain me why this is important news?
sunstone 11y ago
Oh jeez, there goes the neighbourhood :)

212 points by denzil_correa 11y ago

rahimnathwani 11y ago

~50% of undergrads at Stanford are female. ~30% of new Stanford computer science majors are female.

ngoel36 11y ago
Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now. What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major, and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.
- Asbostos 11y ago
  Is that really awesome, or is is bad news for say engineering or physics which could be losing those same women and are traditionally even more male dominated than computer science is? If those subjects are losing as many women, then this is actually bad news for gender same-number-ness.
  - richmarr 11y ago
    Good question. There's been a significant change (at least from my perspective) in the awareness of inequitable treatment of women in tech in the last few years, and I'd like to think that's one of the contributing factors to this change. If true, that means that the previous levels of entry into other subjects were (in part) due to students rejection of CS. If CS loses its repulsion factor then that brings everyone's metrics back to neutral and will make other problems clearer. Much as I hate to wheel out the trite "everything is a market" trope, the more subjects like physics will have to work to improve the treatment of women in science (although my perception is that it's not as bad as tech)... and maybe (one day) the way science is run to make it a more appealing career. I was a physics undergrad and chose to ditch science as a career at my first opportunity. A majority of the people who stayed on to do an MSc or PhD did so only because it would buy them a well payed role at a bank, or PWC, or Anderson (sorry, "Accenture"). It's a shitty career, fighting for funding or tenure, full of victorian-era bullshit. The sooner physics (for one) cleans house the better.
- 001sky 11y ago
  In all fairness, this is likely a structural data anomaly. ie, it is driven by the number of majors at the school, and their level of abstraction. Here are some historical data points. Notice the arbitary abstraction of, eg Bio Sciences Human Biology 1955 1. History 2. Economics 3. Psychology 4. Political Science 5. Bio Sciences 1965 1. History 2. Political Science 3. English 4. Psychology 5. Economics 1975 1. Psychology 2. Bio Sciences 3. Economics 4. History 5. English 1985 1. Economics 2. Human Biology 3. Bio Sciences 4. Electrical Engr 5. English 1995 1. Bio Sciences 2. Human Biology 3. Economics 4. Psychology 5. English and now we look at 2010 (from quora) Biological Sciences (1.32%) but Human Biology (12.58%) Biology (5.74%) =~20% of Standford majors in 2010 are "biology majors" in plain language usage. Based on data on Bachelor's Degrees conferred in the 2009-2010 school year[1], the top majors are: Human Biology (12.58%) Economics (8.10%) International Relations (6.20%) Biology (5.74%) Computer Science (4.94%) Engineering (4.71%) Psychology (4.54%) Political Science (4.25%) English (3.96%) History (3.62%) Management Science and Engineering (3.39%) Mechanical Engineering (3.10%) Science, Technology, and Society (2.30%) Communication (2.18%) Electrical Engineering (2.07%) Mathematics (2.01%) Earth Systems (1.84%) Physics (1.84%) Sociology (1.49%) Biological Sciences (1.32%)*
  - eitally 11y ago
    I suspect that differentiation would make more sense if they replaced "human biology" with "pre-med". I graduated from UVA In '99 and the biggest majors by far were psychology, sociology, history and economics, possibly in that order, but definitely each having ~500 graduates (out of a class of perhaps 2800-3000). I think the entire engineering school only graduated about 300-400 people each year (at that time). The current enrollment seems to match Stanford's stats, interestingly: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/ http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
adamwk 11y ago
They call it Simpson's Paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
- colah3 11y ago
  I don't think this is really a case of Simpson's paradox. What we're seeing is that female students at Stanford are less concentrated on a single major than the male ones. As a result, their top pick isn't as high as the male top pick. I'd guess that the distribution of female majors is higher entropy than the male one. Simpson's paradox would be if there was some second confounding variable that corelated to gender which was causing these results. There might be, but I'm not seeing it.
  - natmaster 11y ago
    I'm genuinely curious why I haven't seen any uproar about the numerous majors where men are in minority.
    - reagency 11y ago
      Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors.
      - yareally 11y ago
        > Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors. Men do face discrimination in nursing. However, men are still paid more on average than female nurses[1]. Make of that what you will. The thing I find most striking is that before the 20th century, most nurses were men and in the early days of computing there was a much higher number of women in the field. [1] http://medcitynews.com/2015/03/male-nurses-earn-maybe-gender-discrimination-maybe/ http://medcitynews.com/2015/03/male-nurses-earn-maybe-gender... https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/1l1k75/any_male_nurses_experience_discrimination/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/1l1k75/any_male_nu... http://www.jacksonvilleu.com/resources/career/men-in-nursing/ http://www.jacksonvilleu.com/resources/career/men-in-nursing... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272837 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272837
sliverstorm 11y ago
So more than 50% of Stanford undergrads are CS? Shit. Does that not sound like aa glut?
- coyotebush 11y ago
  No, those two statistics alone don't say anything about the total number of CS majors. Per the article, CS represents ~20% (of students with declared majors).
  - 001sky 11y ago
    CS is 214 of an estimated 3500 female student body. That still seems exceptionally low. Posted this upthread but in 2010 20% of the student body was in Biology (once topical sub-specialties were aggregated). 20% of ~3500 would be closer to `700, which is 3.3x the number of declared comp sci students. Or maybe my math is wrong? I'm more interested in the actual knowledge being put in and attention being paid out than a critique of the degree naming conventions.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    Thanks, I got the numbers twisted in my head.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  And if it were true, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a glut. CS is, to some extent, the new mechanical or electrical engineering. ME and EE are very broad degree programs, with students coming out of the same university with totally different specializations. They may have only taken 50% of their courses in common with each other. CS is (or depending on the school, is going) in that same vein.
- ngoel36 11y ago
  No. Very little of a CS degree is "coding" - CS is so much more than that. It's even beyond "engineering". A proper CS degree teaches you how to think, how to solve insanely hard problems, and how to do so with a team of other smart people - often with different personalities. What separates CS from other degrees is that it does filter out those without the horsepower or fortitude on both the quant side (algorithms) and the creative side (systems, architecture). That means, that even if the SV bubble crashes, CS majors are the best equipped to handle whatever career is hot next - any hiring manager at Goldman, McKinsey, or F500 company X will tell you the same.

revelation 11y ago

With their high number of (rejected) applications and subjective criteria they can of course shape these statistics any way they want. So is this progress or Stanford appearing progressive? There is no way to tell.

sloanesturz 11y ago
At Stanford, undergrads are admitted generally to the school, then they get to pick whichever major they like. Most students don't pick a major until sophomore or junior year. Stanford accepts 50% women and more of those women are picking to become CS majors after they get in, when they didn't just a few years ago. This is actually progress.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- argonaut 11y ago
  To be fair, applicants indicate major areas that they're interested in. The admissions committe may or may not take that info into account in deciding on applicants.
bjwbell 11y ago
You doubt university administrators sincerity ;) I've noticed very few of these articles look at the recent past ('80s) when women were a significant percentage of programmers. I'm too young but I have the feeling working conditions were much better back then.
- eru 11y ago
  > I'm too young but I have the feeling working conditions were much better back then. You mean working conditions for programmers? From talking to people who worked in computing back then (like my grandfather), it seems like we have it better today. Of course that's only anecdotal, and my perception of today is as coloured as my choice of people to talk to. Would be interesting to see a more formal study.

avivo 11y ago

This is also true of MIT. http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html According to the article "It was unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university where computer science is the top major for female students." That link was the top hit for https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment This is a pretty sad thing to see in something purporting to be journalism. I can't blame the really writer though. They probably only had 30 minutes to get something out the door to drive their view count...

lancewiggs 11y ago
Sure the journalist could do that search for every university - but why would she start with MIT? She (Sarah McBride from Reuters, not a click-bait agency) also talked to UCLA and Harvey Mudd, both Californian schools and on her beat (as a SF-based journalist). Harvey Mudd had a reputation for high female enrolment in STEM and was a more logical first call than MIT, on the other coast.
- avivo 11y ago
  The article tries to present Stanford as relatively unique in this light — which is great for Stanford but potentially bad for the overall ecosystem. It shores that up with the vacuous statement about how it is "unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S. university [...]". A few minutes of online research (or perhaps an hour(s) of calls to registrars) would have resolved that. Then she could have made a concrete informative statement like "[?All] of the top 10 ranked schools (via US News and World Report) have seen a significant increase in female computer science majors." and/or "MIT & [...] also reported that CS is the most popular major for women."

raziel2702 11y ago

That's percentage wise, but which university has the highest number of cs majors I wonder? Stanford is a comparatively small university no?

baldajan 11y ago

Really glad to see these trends, not only at Stanford, but other universities. Diversity in any field makes it richer.

eru 11y ago
> Diversity in any field makes it richer. In a testable way? I'm really interested to see which of diversity's claimed benefits hold up to scrutiny. Perfectly happy to see diversity as an end and not a means.
- reagency 11y ago
  Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity". http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....
    - kelukelugames 11y ago
      Here's the abstract from your link. A bit more complicated than your summary. Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

jlees 11y ago

This is cool, and interesting in a couple of ways. The declarations are preliminary, meaning (I presume) that students may change their minds; according to some studies (e.g. [1]), women tend to transfer out of CS at a higher rate than men. Some anecdotal reasons behind this include a hostile atmosphere/alienation [2], sexism from students and teachers, unequal backgrounds due to pre-college factors [3] and so on (of course, there are plenty of non-gender related reasons why someone might switch majors). The flip side is, these are upperclassmen, which I understand to mean they probably have been taking CS classes for some time already at Stanford. Most of these factors would have been encountered already if they are indeed present at all, which is cheering in its own way. [1] http://www.academia.edu/5317313/STEM_Switching_Examining_Departures_of_Undergraduate_Women_in_STEM_Fields http://www.academia.edu/5317313/STEM_Switching_Examining_Dep... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11182833/How-She-Did-It-Girls-I-dropped-out-of-Computer-Science-so-you-dont-have-to.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11182833/Ho... [3] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

samfisher83 11y ago

How many of them are just doing it for money since salaries are high right now? How many of them actually would do it if it paid 50k instead of a 100k?

mc32 11y ago
I think it's the same with finance, right? Lots of people follow the money --whether it be finance, CS, law, med-school. Personally I think it's BS for people to tell you to "follow your passion" and also am critical of the "we need people who are passionate about x". Most people work as a way to make a living.
josephagoss 11y ago
And the same can be said of many Men... The first thing that came to my mind, is that many girls that are interested in this stuff may now feel more comfortable than ever to enroll in Computer Science, as the issue of sexism is being tackled and talked about a lot.
ngoel36 11y ago
A job at McKinsey or Goldman pays far more (risk-adjusted, 7-10 years out of school) than a CS degree does - you can verify that easily. If you're optimizing for money, CS is not the answer (unless you're leveraging it to get a job on Wall Street).
- this2shallPass 11y ago
  How many McKinsey or Goldman jobs are there? How many of the women that enter the funnel are there in 7-10 years? In addition to money, how flexible are the McKinsey or Goldman jobs with having and raising children?
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Why is this a relevant question? Of course some of them are doing it for money, why wouldn't they? You think it's any different for men?
tomp 11y ago

java000 11y ago

I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets lamenting the lack of women in CS are actually partly to blame for it for their ongoing denigration and belittling of those already in the field. For example, someone in this thread cited an NPR article titled "When Women Stopped Coding." Does "coding" sound like a prestigious job activity to you? How many news articles have you seen lately that casually refer to psychiatrists or psychologists as "shrinks," and how many have you seen that refer to us as "coders," "geeks," or "nerds?"

mrdrozdov 11y ago
Woz, Bill and Larry were coders, geeks and nerds at some point, and in many ways still are. Are they prestigious? I guess it's up for the reader to decide.
- morgante 11y ago
  Nope. The media does not treat even extremely successful and talented coders the same way they treat (for example) top bankers.
- java000 11y ago
  They're famous and respected as businessmen and philanthropists, not software engineers. The media and general public are largely ignorant of the technical accomplishments of those men and would pay them little notice had they not been so phenomenally successful in business. Compare the responses to the deaths of Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.
  - stdbrouw 11y ago
    Well sure but nobody cares about most Nobel prize winners either, and nobody cares about great poets. It's just that money is an "objective" yardstick, you either have it or you don't, which makes it easy for people to wrap their head around.

ivanca 11y ago

What's with the obsession of gender equality by women in high paying jobs?, is never about lack of women in sewer maintenance or coal mining, or bugs exterminators, or firemen (firewoman? Is that even a word?). Is always CEOs or STEAM jobs at silicon valley. That's a very narrow and convenient definition of "equality" isn't it?

learc83 11y ago
It's not even about the lack of women in undesirable male dominated jobs. What about the lack of women in relatively high paying skilled trades like electrician or elevator repair? I think you'd get more bang for your buck by funding programs to help working class women move into skilled trades, than by trying to move middle class women who are already going to college from one major to another.
dublidu 11y ago
Because CEOs and other higher paying jobs impact the world we live in. Women need to be represented in high impact jobs so that we don't have a world designed entirely by men.
zasz 11y ago
Believe it or not, women have had to fight for the right to work in coal mines. You probably hear only about the fight to get more women in tech, since you are in tech. But anyway, here you go: http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309 http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309 Proof that there used to be laws on the books banning women from working in mines, and feminists went and fought them. It's quite possible that the other reason you don't hear about female coal miners asking for more representation is that tech is worse at hiring women than coal mines are by now.
- ivanca 11y ago
  Actually I know that, I was talking about _modern feminis_ where this kind of jobs get a lot more attention by them than any other "gender gap"

hendry 11y ago

I don't quite understand if "Majoring" means completed degrees or not. In my old University, women were common in the first year of Comp Sci, as it was the easiest department to gain entry to for them as females because of quotas or whatever positive discrimination is called. However in the second year, they would typically transfer out to another department they were more keen on, but probably wouldn't have won a place at initially.

douche 11y ago
Anecdotally, it seemed like all of the ladies in my CS department wound up actually majoring in Cognitive Science, which was part of the CS department technically, but about half psyche and pre-med, really.
discodave 11y ago
Do you actually have any evidence of it being easier for women to get into CS because of quotas?
- r0naa 11y ago
  Isn't quota and affirmative action the very definition of making it easier for a certain group to get access to a particular institution?
  - richmarr 11y ago
    I think discodave is asking for evidence that quotas are in use for these courses, as oppposed to evidence that quotas increase numbers of otherwise-underrepresented groups
- niuzeta 11y ago
  not the parent, but the discussion is of interest for me. I've quickly run a search query for "affirmative action statistics for computer science". First page result included a report from http://www.civilrights.org/ http://www.civilrights.org/. I am ignorant of veracity or validity of this organization, so I can't verify if its contents are sufficient to be "evidence". But here goes(emphasis mine): "By 2010, one in four new jobs will be “technically-oriented,” or involving computers. However, women still lag far behind in earning computer technology degrees and working in computer technology-related professions. High school girls represent only 17 percent of computer science AP test takers and college-educated women earn only 27 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer science (down from 37 percent in 1984) and 16.3 percent of doctorate degrees in computer science. Overall, women comprise roughly 20 percent of IT professionals. (“Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age,” American Association for University Women, 2000)" [1] Barring the "down from 37 percent" part, it tells me that 17% of female high schoolers take AP computer science, but actually a higher percentage of women end up with a CS diploma. It's very thin connection but that does raise a question that affirmative action lets in more women. [1] http://www.civilrights.org/equal-opportunity/fact-sheets/fact_sheet_packet.pdf http://www.civilrights.org/equal-opportunity/fact-sheets/fac...

tracker1 11y ago

What are we going to do about the lack of boys/men in higher education?

draugadrotten 11y ago
Embrace it and see how society will change from it.
douche 11y ago
Write NY Times op-eds bemoaning the scarcity of quality marriageable men in ten years.
- tracker1 11y ago
  In 10 years, I'll be a 50yo graybeard, and definitely not concerned about writing any such op-ed.

userium 11y ago

This is great news. One issue is still how to retain these women in tech as over 40% of women leave tech mid-career [1] [2]. [1] http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology.pdf http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-... [2] http://keepwomen.com/static_pages/subscribe http://keepwomen.com/static_pages/subscribe

randyrand 11y ago

As a foreigner, can someone explain me why this is important?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
j-l- 11y ago
As a foreigner, I guess it is similar to importance of a labor in previous socialism. Maybe there is some "The Part played by CS majoring females in the Transition from Ape to Man" on the way. Who knows :)
jberryman 11y ago
The vast majority of people working in software in the US are men. The statistics, various studies, a mountain of anecdotes by women working in tech, etc. all point to systemic problems of sexism in the industry and society more broadly. There's a growing movement from various corners to try to address fucked up tech industry culture issues in various ways, encourage interest in programming among women, etc. So statistics like these are encouraging.

randyrand 11y ago

As a foreigner, can someone explain me why this is important news?

sunstone 11y ago

Oh jeez, there goes the neighbourhood :)