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I think a lot of it is what society expects of people. I don't think most people ever have a moment when they say "Let me sit down and think about all the thing

I think a lot of it is what society expects of people. I don't think most people ever have a moment when they say "Let me sit down and think about all the things I can do with my life." A lot of people develop their loves and what they think is "cool" at a very young age, and a lot of that is influenced by what they absorb from their parents, teachers, TV, etc. If you're like me, you probably thought of yourself as smart, and had a short list of "smart things that would be cool when I grow up." Astronaut, doctor, computers, stuff like that. The movie War Games was honestly important to me and my career. I was small and kind of dorky but pretty smart (at least, that was what all the adults told me, I suspect even that is partly a self-fulfilling prophecy) but Matthew Broderick showed me how cool that could be. I could see myself in him. And, you know, there were TV shows and movies that made me want to be an astronaut too. I'm not saying War Games was some seminal moment in my life. But it was an influence, for sure. And when I told people I wanted to do that, they never made a face. Or they suggested it on their own "What do you want to be when you grow up? Are you going to be a scientist?" You know what people say to my girl? "Are you going to be a nurse/ballerina/etc when you grow up?" We all pick up on this kind of thing at a young age, and it shapes our perceptions of where we fit. Women choosing what fields they go into is shaped by their role-models. Do they see female programmers on TV? Do they know any family members that are programmers? That kind of thing. Fixing this has to start somewhere.

FeepingCreature 9y ago
> If you're like me, you probably thought of yourself as smart, and had a short list of "smart things that would be cool when I grow up." Astronaut, doctor, computers, stuff like that. I think it was magazines. Which weren't gendered. I don't think I've seen any male programmers on TV, and I don't have family members who were programmers, and I was interested in computers before I knew that programming was a job. As far as I can tell, computers were just innately interesting.
- Pharylon 9y ago
  Well, there's gendered and then there's gendered. Some things are explicitly gendered, like GI Joe or Barbie. Some things are implicitly gendered, like Legos. There's nothing about then that makes them "for boys." But most stores put them in the boys aisle. Lego started making "girl sets" that are all pinky not too long ago just so they could go in the girl section. As a kid, where were the magazines with computer stuff in the store? Were they next to Tigerbeat? Probably not. It's little stuff like that. That's not the whole story, of course. But what we find interesting is at least partly due to society.
  - FeepingCreature 9y ago
    The magazines were all together in a single magazine rack. I'm not saying there's not gendered influences, I'm saying my personal life story doesn't have positive-reinforcing gendered elements that I can tell.
rodiger 9y ago
Is this inherently bad? That would imply that, for systemic reasons, girls are not "brought up" to enjoy computing. Is there harm in girls having different preferences, even if they are driven by the culture? Aren't most preferences driven by culture? You raise interesting points. I believe we should be motivating girls who show interest, but is there harm if no interest is shown?
- Pharylon 9y ago
  > I believe we should be motivating girls who show interest, but is there harm if no interest is shown? The question then becomes why interest isn't shown in the first place. You could argue, as the "manifesto" writer did, that there's some kind of innate biological explanation. To me, that's a pretty extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary proof. It's true that there are some differences between the sexes. Women do a bit better on some mental tests than men and vice versa. But how much of that is biology and how much is upbringing? For instance, from an early age, studies show parents make girls say "please" more than they do for boys, and emphasize sharing. So do women fair better on some emotional tests because of some innate biology or because we've emphasized that kind of thing literally since they could talk? It's really really hard to tease these things apart. And it's so hard because those differences are tiny. If we assumed those differences really are 100% biological (again, a big assumption), it might explain why Computer Science would be 55% men, and 45% women. It wouldn't explain the huge disparity we see today. So if the reason women don't show interest isn't biological, what is it? A further complicating factor to the whole discussion is we're talking about why women aren't in computer science now. It hasn't always been this way. Historically, the field of computing had lots of women. A lot of women went from "human computers" who did math by hand to programming the early mainframes (the movie Hidden Figures shows a time at NASA when this was happening). While a gender gap has always existed, it used to be a lot smaller. Women made up about 1/3 of people with CS degrees in the late 70s and early 80s. But as the STEM gender gap has been closing everywhere else, it's actually gotten wider in CS, and only CS. Why? The "it's biology and girl brains are different" argument can't account for that. Biology didn't change. What did change was society. Movies like Weird Science and War Games (my favorite) came out. The "cool hacker" entered Pop culture, and the stereotype they settled on was a boy. Girls were a lot less likely to have computers in the home as well. This is an interesting article (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-...) that talks about how early home computers were marketed as a toy to buy for boys. It's like we as a society decided that computers fell into the "boy stuff" category with GI Joe and baseball, not the "girl stuff" category like Barbie and softball. I think it all adds up to a pretty convincing argument that biology has nothing (or very, very little) to do with it.
ralfd 9y ago
Jurassic Park is one of THE seminal movies of the 90s and the female kid in the show saves the day because she "knows Unix". That was pretty cool. Though it was only a small role, not the lead like in War Games.

FeepingCreature 9y ago

> If you're like me, you probably thought of yourself as smart, and had a short list of "smart things that would be cool when I grow up." Astronaut, doctor, computers, stuff like that. I think it was magazines. Which weren't gendered. I don't think I've seen any male programmers on TV, and I don't have family members who were programmers, and I was interested in computers before I knew that programming was a job. As far as I can tell, computers were just innately interesting.

Pharylon 9y ago
Well, there's gendered and then there's gendered. Some things are explicitly gendered, like GI Joe or Barbie. Some things are implicitly gendered, like Legos. There's nothing about then that makes them "for boys." But most stores put them in the boys aisle. Lego started making "girl sets" that are all pinky not too long ago just so they could go in the girl section. As a kid, where were the magazines with computer stuff in the store? Were they next to Tigerbeat? Probably not. It's little stuff like that. That's not the whole story, of course. But what we find interesting is at least partly due to society.
- FeepingCreature 9y ago
  The magazines were all together in a single magazine rack. I'm not saying there's not gendered influences, I'm saying my personal life story doesn't have positive-reinforcing gendered elements that I can tell.

rodiger 9y ago

Is this inherently bad? That would imply that, for systemic reasons, girls are not "brought up" to enjoy computing. Is there harm in girls having different preferences, even if they are driven by the culture? Aren't most preferences driven by culture? You raise interesting points. I believe we should be motivating girls who show interest, but is there harm if no interest is shown?

Pharylon 9y ago
> I believe we should be motivating girls who show interest, but is there harm if no interest is shown? The question then becomes why interest isn't shown in the first place. You could argue, as the "manifesto" writer did, that there's some kind of innate biological explanation. To me, that's a pretty extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary proof. It's true that there are some differences between the sexes. Women do a bit better on some mental tests than men and vice versa. But how much of that is biology and how much is upbringing? For instance, from an early age, studies show parents make girls say "please" more than they do for boys, and emphasize sharing. So do women fair better on some emotional tests because of some innate biology or because we've emphasized that kind of thing literally since they could talk? It's really really hard to tease these things apart. And it's so hard because those differences are tiny. If we assumed those differences really are 100% biological (again, a big assumption), it might explain why Computer Science would be 55% men, and 45% women. It wouldn't explain the huge disparity we see today. So if the reason women don't show interest isn't biological, what is it? A further complicating factor to the whole discussion is we're talking about why women aren't in computer science now. It hasn't always been this way. Historically, the field of computing had lots of women. A lot of women went from "human computers" who did math by hand to programming the early mainframes (the movie Hidden Figures shows a time at NASA when this was happening). While a gender gap has always existed, it used to be a lot smaller. Women made up about 1/3 of people with CS degrees in the late 70s and early 80s. But as the STEM gender gap has been closing everywhere else, it's actually gotten wider in CS, and only CS. Why? The "it's biology and girl brains are different" argument can't account for that. Biology didn't change. What did change was society. Movies like Weird Science and War Games (my favorite) came out. The "cool hacker" entered Pop culture, and the stereotype they settled on was a boy. Girls were a lot less likely to have computers in the home as well. This is an interesting article (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-...) that talks about how early home computers were marketed as a toy to buy for boys. It's like we as a society decided that computers fell into the "boy stuff" category with GI Joe and baseball, not the "girl stuff" category like Barbie and softball. I think it all adds up to a pretty convincing argument that biology has nothing (or very, very little) to do with it.

ralfd 9y ago

Jurassic Park is one of THE seminal movies of the 90s and the female kid in the show saves the day because she "knows Unix". That was pretty cool. Though it was only a small role, not the lead like in War Games.