4 ms·

I wonder what the percentage of high school graduates who can program is, broken down by gender. My guess is there's close to an order of magnitude more 18 yea

by curtis 15y ago

I wonder what the percentage of high school graduates who can program is, broken down by gender. My guess is there's close to an order of magnitude more 18 year-old males who can program than there are 18 year-old females, at least in the U.S., anyway. Furthermore, I'd guess that many if not most 18 year-olds who can program (male or female) are largely self-taught. My thesis here is that teenage boys are much more likely to learn to program on their own than teenage girls are, regardless of raw aptitude. This might be true of technical skills in general, but programming (I would contend) is unusual in how easy it is to learn on your own. This is just a hypothesis on my part, and I don't have hard numbers to back it up. It's a question I'd like to see asked, though.

curtis 15y ago
To extend the argument, incoming freshmen who have an aptitude for chemical engineering are likely to start on a level playing field, regardless of gender. If you consider the CS track, though, the same is not true. Regardless of base aptitude, many more male freshmen will know how to program than will female freshmen. Females (on average) start out behind, and never catch up.
- klaut 15y ago
  that;s just so wrong. speaking from my experience, I was one of the 10 girls in a freshmen class at uni (100 of us) and yes, i was the only one that knew how to program (taught myself) but then, maybe only 10 out of all the other boys knew how to program.
  - thedufer 15y ago
    Which is simultaneously anecdotal and proving the point. A statistic like 1/10 can so easily be an outlier - those aren't numbers you can use to prove a point. And 1/10 is somewhat (although not statistically significantly, given your sample size) smaller than 10/90.
benmccann 15y ago
Except you don't have to be able to program to be accepted to a CS program, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on why there are so few female students interested in CS.
- curtis 15y ago
  This is true, but I'd contend that people who already know how to program are a lot more likely to enter a CS program, so you still get an imbalance. The situation I'm describing is based on my experience in the U.S. In other countries it might well be the case that hardly anybody male or female, learns to program before college. If my theory is correct, then there should be less of a gender imbalance in CS programs in those countries.
  - temp_id 15y ago
    Data point for one non-U.S. country: in India, computer programming (in BASIC/Pascal/C/etc.) (and also a bit of elementary computer architecture and elementary computer science) has been part of the schools' curriculum for some years now, AFAIK. High schools, that is, not colleges. (The use of the term "school" to mean college (as well as high school or lower) is an Americanism, I believe.) Also, even in schools that don't have computer subjects as standard, many students join private computer classes. I'm not commenting on the quality of those classes, which can vary widely - from hole-in-the-wall fly-by-night operators (cashing in on the software "boom") to quite good ones, that's another story entirely ... Also, I don't have specific numbers, but going by observation and reports, there are a good number of girls/women who go into the software field. It's seen as a good option for women workers here because it is a white-collar job, seen as prestigious - good office environments, at least in the mid- to high-end companies, air-conditioning, good pay compared to many other types of jobs, etc.)
- bad_user 15y ago
  But you have to know about what programming and computer science is about before WANTING to apply to a CS college. Or you can just rely on the media or your parents to tell you that CS pays good money - but that's just disastrous. I think that CS does not appeal to females simply because females are more social than males; spending endless hours in front of a computer is not really that attractive.

by curtis 15y ago

curtis 15y ago

To extend the argument, incoming freshmen who have an aptitude for chemical engineering are likely to start on a level playing field, regardless of gender. If you consider the CS track, though, the same is not true. Regardless of base aptitude, many more male freshmen will know how to program than will female freshmen. Females (on average) start out behind, and never catch up.

klaut 15y ago
that;s just so wrong. speaking from my experience, I was one of the 10 girls in a freshmen class at uni (100 of us) and yes, i was the only one that knew how to program (taught myself) but then, maybe only 10 out of all the other boys knew how to program.
- thedufer 15y ago
  Which is simultaneously anecdotal and proving the point. A statistic like 1/10 can so easily be an outlier - those aren't numbers you can use to prove a point. And 1/10 is somewhat (although not statistically significantly, given your sample size) smaller than 10/90.

benmccann 15y ago

Except you don't have to be able to program to be accepted to a CS program, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on why there are so few female students interested in CS.

curtis 15y ago
This is true, but I'd contend that people who already know how to program are a lot more likely to enter a CS program, so you still get an imbalance. The situation I'm describing is based on my experience in the U.S. In other countries it might well be the case that hardly anybody male or female, learns to program before college. If my theory is correct, then there should be less of a gender imbalance in CS programs in those countries.
- temp_id 15y ago
  Data point for one non-U.S. country: in India, computer programming (in BASIC/Pascal/C/etc.) (and also a bit of elementary computer architecture and elementary computer science) has been part of the schools' curriculum for some years now, AFAIK. High schools, that is, not colleges. (The use of the term "school" to mean college (as well as high school or lower) is an Americanism, I believe.) Also, even in schools that don't have computer subjects as standard, many students join private computer classes. I'm not commenting on the quality of those classes, which can vary widely - from hole-in-the-wall fly-by-night operators (cashing in on the software "boom") to quite good ones, that's another story entirely ... Also, I don't have specific numbers, but going by observation and reports, there are a good number of girls/women who go into the software field. It's seen as a good option for women workers here because it is a white-collar job, seen as prestigious - good office environments, at least in the mid- to high-end companies, air-conditioning, good pay compared to many other types of jobs, etc.)
bad_user 15y ago
But you have to know about what programming and computer science is about before WANTING to apply to a CS college. Or you can just rely on the media or your parents to tell you that CS pays good money - but that's just disastrous. I think that CS does not appeal to females simply because females are more social than males; spending endless hours in front of a computer is not really that attractive.