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"IT Professionals" is a broad label. Maybe we can think of getting a 'degree in a field' as a proxy-variable for 'interest in the field'. What's astonishing to
by ci5er 10y ago
"IT Professionals" is a broad label. Maybe we can think of getting a 'degree in a field' as a proxy-variable for 'interest in the field'. What's astonishing to me is through the 60s, 70's and into the mid-80s, computer-tech interest in female cohorts tracked with science, law and medical fields. Then it flattened and fell, while female participation in those other three fields continued to expand at the rates they had before. (So, what happened in 1985?)
- rrdharan 10y agoThis Planet Money episode attempted to tackle that question: 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-... Their tl;dr answer is that video games happened, and they were marketed exclusively to boys; that's what created and drove the cultural rift.
- ci5er 10y agoThanks for that link. My original sighting of the phenomena used the exact same graph, but made no attempt at being explanatory. I have since then, been searching, but failed to re-find a copy of that graph to stick into my files. Now, thanks you you, I have! Thanks!