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Women used to be more prevalent in STEM fields. In the 80's there were actually more female programmers than males. Something changed in the mid 80's and the

Women used to be more prevalent in STEM fields. In the 80's there were actually more female programmers than males. Something changed in the mid 80's and the culprit might have been gender stereotypes in advertising. If the reason for less women in STEM is biological, they would never have outpaced males at any timepoint.

kerbalspacepro 9y ago
It may also have been the type of computing that was going on. Pre-80s computing involved mainframes, data entry... secretarial tasks. Post-80s computing involved building businesses, getting heavily involved in the science, and generally hiding out in a dark room programming alone for weeks at a time. What evidence is there for advertisement stereotyping being the causal factor? Wasn't advertisement stereotyping just as powerful in non-STEM fields like law? medicine? journalism? Why did they break the gender curse whereas STEM did not?
- kamaal 9y ago
  This reminds me of government R&D institutes in India. Where every one gets the title of a 'Scientist'. So there are levels like 'Scientist-1', 'Scientist-2', ... In reality most of these levels have only clerical work to do. Sometimes things like writing down on a register that you issued somebody a Screw gauge. So basically book keeping, secretarial work, data entry etc etc. But yeah, on the ground every gets to be called a 'Scientist'.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > Pre-80s computing involved mainframes, data entry... secretarial tasks. ...sending rockets to the moon...
tzs 9y ago
You are assuming that the change in the 80s was something that made programming less attractive to women. But that's not the only change that could explain what happened. It could be that one or more other fields changed to become more attractive to women. Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming, or even figure out if there actually is a problem with programming. There's a graph here [1] showing percent of bachelor's degrees going to women in several different fields over time, from 1970 through 2010. The decline in women getting CS degrees starting in mid '80s really stands out. However what also stands out is that nothing else seems to have gotten a noticeable bump around the same time, so assuming that those women who are missing from CS did not leave college entirely, where are they? It's possible that there is a bump but we just can't see it. There were only about 40000 BS CS degrees granted per year in the middle '80s. Some other fields beat that by a large factor, and so it is possible the missing CS women could have been absorbed into a few of those big majors where the bumps might be small enough to be lost in the noise. Another interesting thing is that if you look just at CS, the total number of CS BS degrees was growing through 1985, then started falling [2]. If you look at just men, and just women, the same thing happened for each. For both, from 1970 to 1985 they were on an accelerating growth curve (almost exponential), and then for both it turned around and fell quickly (also almost exponentially) then leveled off. During that growth phase the women's growth curve was accelerating more than the men's curve. During the decline phase, the women's decline was faster, too. [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/ http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... [2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/women-computer-science-grads--the-bump-before-the-decline.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wome...

kerbalspacepro 9y ago

It may also have been the type of computing that was going on. Pre-80s computing involved mainframes, data entry... secretarial tasks. Post-80s computing involved building businesses, getting heavily involved in the science, and generally hiding out in a dark room programming alone for weeks at a time. What evidence is there for advertisement stereotyping being the causal factor? Wasn't advertisement stereotyping just as powerful in non-STEM fields like law? medicine? journalism? Why did they break the gender curse whereas STEM did not?

kamaal 9y ago
This reminds me of government R&D institutes in India. Where every one gets the title of a 'Scientist'. So there are levels like 'Scientist-1', 'Scientist-2', ... In reality most of these levels have only clerical work to do. Sometimes things like writing down on a register that you issued somebody a Screw gauge. So basically book keeping, secretarial work, data entry etc etc. But yeah, on the ground every gets to be called a 'Scientist'.
zimpenfish 9y ago
> Pre-80s computing involved mainframes, data entry... secretarial tasks. ...sending rockets to the moon...

tzs 9y ago

You are assuming that the change in the 80s was something that made programming less attractive to women. But that's not the only change that could explain what happened. It could be that one or more other fields changed to become more attractive to women. Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming, or even figure out if there actually is a problem with programming. There's a graph here [1] showing percent of bachelor's degrees going to women in several different fields over time, from 1970 through 2010. The decline in women getting CS degrees starting in mid '80s really stands out. However what also stands out is that nothing else seems to have gotten a noticeable bump around the same time, so assuming that those women who are missing from CS did not leave college entirely, where are they? It's possible that there is a bump but we just can't see it. There were only about 40000 BS CS degrees granted per year in the middle '80s. Some other fields beat that by a large factor, and so it is possible the missing CS women could have been absorbed into a few of those big majors where the bumps might be small enough to be lost in the noise. Another interesting thing is that if you look just at CS, the total number of CS BS degrees was growing through 1985, then started falling [2]. If you look at just men, and just women, the same thing happened for each. For both, from 1970 to 1985 they were on an accelerating growth curve (almost exponential), and then for both it turned around and fell quickly (also almost exponentially) then leveled off. During that growth phase the women's growth curve was accelerating more than the men's curve. During the decline phase, the women's decline was faster, too. [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/ http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... [2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/women-computer-science-grads--the-bump-before-the-decline.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wome...