3 ms·

NPR had an excellent piece on this a while back. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/

NPR had an excellent piece on this a while back. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when... tldr: home computers were gendered male (because video games) and cs 101 curriculums started presupposing extensive computer exposure.

kragen 7y ago
I've heard that argument, but I'm not convinced by it. I think the shift to being male-dominated was well underway by then. The Algol-60 committee was all male, for example.
- lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
  You can't deny the drop in women entering the field. The touchy feely "oh it's man's field, something something society" explanation isn't really supported by data (or by other similar fields). I'd say the shift in education is the biggest factor in why we see so few women in CS today. For sure a myriad of other shifts were pushing women out 5 decades ago, but it's telling how absolute the demographic shift has been despite not seeing the same shift in other white collar professions.
  - kragen 7y ago
    Yes, I agree that the number of women entering the field has continued to drop as the field has continued to gain in prestige. My friend Ann, who wrote an operating system in assembly which for several years provided the bulk of the revenue for the cloud computing startup where she worked, has explained that when she got started with programming, it was because IBM was trying to convince its customers that computer programming was so easy that even women could do it. In an environment that sexist and in that particular way, it was inevitable that the dawning recognition of the intellectual challenge of programming would be accompanied by women being excluded from the field by unjustified prejudice. I don't think law and medicine have a similar stereotype of being purely for geniuses (which fortunately is starting to soften for software), and certainly haven't newly acquired it since the 1960s. Fields that do have such a stereotype, such as math, physics, aeronautical engineering (“rocket science”), and medical subspecialties such as neurosurgery, continue to have very few women. You can readily verify this; one book that goes into some depth about the mechanisms of exclusion is my friend Linley’s Who’s Afraid of Marie Curie.
    - lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
      I have no idea where you're from that computer science has a "stereotype for geniuses". And I'd also go so far as to say computer programming still isn't a high prestige position. My best friend's mother still asks if "I'm still doing IT", this article was written in 2011 talking about how bad for your career calling yourself a programmer is[0]. . What this industry does benefit from is exposure and general tool knowledge, which, what do you know, is easiest to get when you're a bored teenager with too much time. The idea of the "missing semester[1]" is so prevalent mit put a whole thing together. In the states at least, we've built a self fulfilling system that excludes highly qualified people for no good reason. There's nothing natural about this state of affairs, and imo, nothing good about it. [0]https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... [1]https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/
downerending 7y ago
Without taking a position on the rest, it seems like madness to expect a novice to walk into CS101 at 18 and become a master programmer. It's like learning to play a musical instrument or learn a foreign language. If you're not already well into by 18, you're never going to be really great at it and certainly won't catch those that started early.

kragen 7y ago

I've heard that argument, but I'm not convinced by it. I think the shift to being male-dominated was well underway by then. The Algol-60 committee was all male, for example.

lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
You can't deny the drop in women entering the field. The touchy feely "oh it's man's field, something something society" explanation isn't really supported by data (or by other similar fields). I'd say the shift in education is the biggest factor in why we see so few women in CS today. For sure a myriad of other shifts were pushing women out 5 decades ago, but it's telling how absolute the demographic shift has been despite not seeing the same shift in other white collar professions.
- kragen 7y ago
  Yes, I agree that the number of women entering the field has continued to drop as the field has continued to gain in prestige. My friend Ann, who wrote an operating system in assembly which for several years provided the bulk of the revenue for the cloud computing startup where she worked, has explained that when she got started with programming, it was because IBM was trying to convince its customers that computer programming was so easy that even women could do it. In an environment that sexist and in that particular way, it was inevitable that the dawning recognition of the intellectual challenge of programming would be accompanied by women being excluded from the field by unjustified prejudice. I don't think law and medicine have a similar stereotype of being purely for geniuses (which fortunately is starting to soften for software), and certainly haven't newly acquired it since the 1960s. Fields that do have such a stereotype, such as math, physics, aeronautical engineering (“rocket science”), and medical subspecialties such as neurosurgery, continue to have very few women. You can readily verify this; one book that goes into some depth about the mechanisms of exclusion is my friend Linley’s Who’s Afraid of Marie Curie.
  - lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
    I have no idea where you're from that computer science has a "stereotype for geniuses". And I'd also go so far as to say computer programming still isn't a high prestige position. My best friend's mother still asks if "I'm still doing IT", this article was written in 2011 talking about how bad for your career calling yourself a programmer is[0]. . What this industry does benefit from is exposure and general tool knowledge, which, what do you know, is easiest to get when you're a bored teenager with too much time. The idea of the "missing semester[1]" is so prevalent mit put a whole thing together. In the states at least, we've built a self fulfilling system that excludes highly qualified people for no good reason. There's nothing natural about this state of affairs, and imo, nothing good about it. [0]https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... [1]https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

downerending 7y ago

Without taking a position on the rest, it seems like madness to expect a novice to walk into CS101 at 18 and become a master programmer. It's like learning to play a musical instrument or learn a foreign language. If you're not already well into by 18, you're never going to be really great at it and certainly won't catch those that started early.