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Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

242 points by uladzislau 13y ago

hayksaakian 13y ago
Not 2 years ago, it was at least 90% male. Although towards the end of the term, it trended towards a balance. ----- On review, the article is NOT about what you'd consider CS1 "Introduction to Symbolic Programming was reborn as Beauty and the Joy of Computing." This is a CS class in the loosest sense of the word. It fulfills no prerequisites towards a CS degree. OTOH I could just be cynical, and this class is just what's needed to get more females into the subsequent CS classes. At least anecdotally, I know a few people who had no real interest in CS start with this class, but then proceed to take proper CS classes they may otherwise have ignored.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  Into to Symbolic Programming hasn't been replaced. http://general-catalog.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=Computer+Science&p_dept_cd=COMPSCI&p_path=l http://general-catalog.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_re... Compare the descriptions for CS3L (Intro to Symbolic Programming) to CS10. They both still exist and seem very different.
  - praxulus 13y ago
    It's in the catalog, but CS3 doesn't show up on schedule.berkeley.edu for last semester or this one.
  - sqrt 13y ago
    CS3L hasn't been offered for the last couple of years. The catalog includes classes that haven't been offered for a long time.
    - wutbrodo 13y ago
      Oh...weird
iopq 13y ago
... and they all promptly changed their majors when they found out forgetting a semi-colon made their programs not compile.
- cantbecool 13y ago
  There's some truth to this. I took a few intro classes to boost my GPA and the majority of women in my group begged for me to help them just pass the class since it would look good on their resume.
  - LordKano 13y ago
    I hope that you told them 'no' or charged them appropriately for tutoring.
    - lmm 13y ago
      Nothing wrong with helping people out, and it can help you master the material yourself.
    - budde 13y ago
      Yes, because helping people is just the worst.
      - omegaham 13y ago
        There's a difference between helping someone with the class and walking them through their assignments, line by line. The former is great; the latter is dishonest. I tutor coworkers in exchange for food and beer. My policy for math and CS is this - if you give me an example, I will walk you through the example with as much detail as you want, but I will not do anything other than proofread your assignments after they've been created. Good: Student has an assignment to do quicksort on an array of integers. He has difficulty with array syntax and asks me to walk him through basic array operations. He then has difficulty grasping what exactly quicksort is doing and asks me to walk him through a quicksort operation by hand. After this, he feels kind of confident and tries making a function. It doesn't work, and he can't find the problem, so he asks me to help debug the program. Bad: "Oh man, I don't get this quicksort stuff at all. Can you, like, help me?" (Cue frustrating half hour where the person shows that he barely grasps the concept of a variable and doesn't give a fuck about the class) "Uh, I gotta turn this in at 11:59 tonight. I need this now." The person who pulled the latter with me was male. I said "no" and watched him fail the class.
jychang 13y ago
This is talking about CS10, not CS61a. CS10 is a class designed mostly for non majors, who are interested in Computer Science; CS61a is the first required class for the major. I know of a bunch of CS guys with their girlfriends in CS10. A lot of people who are already set on taking CS as their major go directly into CS61a, skipping CS10, and this accounts for a lot of the gender ratio difference in CS10. If you look at a class like CS162, you can see the gender ratio of the people who are actually sticking through the major. This doesn't mean as much as graduation rates, etc.
- ry0ohki 13y ago
  That's what I was thinking. I remember CS101 at my school had a decent amount of women, but by the time you reached 3rd year they all had disappeared.
  - tubbzor 13y ago
    This is the case at my uni. I'm currently a senior and my first intro java class was around 1/5th females. There are now 2-3 in any upper-level class.
  - clarky07 13y ago
    At our school, by the time you reached 2nd year most everyone disappeared, male and female. Fall semester sophomore year was about 25% of fall semester freshmen.
    - presidentender 13y ago
      As it turns out, making video games has little to do with playing them.
      - clarky07 13y ago
        Haha right. Almost everyone flushed out in CS1. "I want to make games!" to "This shit is hard, I'm gonna get a business degree." As it happens when you have projects that take about 4x (or more) the amount of time as your friends majors that takes a toll. People would rather be partying than writing code. Maybe our CS1 was a bit too hard (we've had many discussions with the profs about this and the attrition rate and what to do about it), but everyone who finished freshmen year graduated in our class. It prepared us well, but it was too hard for most.
Pxtl 13y ago
It sounds like it's one of those "programming for non-programmers" courses and not really the full entry-level course into the CS program, but it's still encouraging that so many young women are interested in dabbling with code.
thejteam 13y ago
I've kept in touch with the Math/CS department at my alma mater and they've told me the male/female balance bounces around significantly. There have been years where the department is 90+% male and years where the balance has been close to 50-50. I was primarily math and I took upper level math classes that were 75+% female but were closer to two-thirds male the following year. The year I graduated about 40% of the CS graduates were female, today it tends to be closer to 25%. I'll also add I went to a small liberal arts college with 60% women total.
univalent 13y ago
Not bad even though it's just an intro course. There was one girl in my EECS grad school year so anything is an improvement.
southphillyman 13y ago
Gaining on Ya! Hopefully one day the minorities will outnumber the majority for the first time. :)
- rubiquity 13y ago
  Think about that last sentence you wrote some more.
  - aiiane 13y ago
    A lot of people use 'majority' when they mean 'plurality'.
- adamsrog 13y ago
  Does not compute.
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  Careful, once the majority becomes the minority, they'll be able to turn all your playbooks right back at you.
- altero 13y ago
  Womens are already 51% of population because they live longer.
geebee 13y ago
I recently read the "top jobs" on the us news and world report website. http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... Computer jobs were well represented, but so were health sciences. Here's the full list 1. software developer - san jose - 116K (93k natl avg) 2. computer systems analyst - (couldn’t find it in SF, best anywhere was $116k in bridgeport, 84k nation avg) 3. dentist - couldn’t find SF, can be up to $250K in best cities. 163K natl avg 4. nurse practitioner - san jose - $125K 5. pharmacist - highest of 160K in el centro ca, 115k natl avg 6. registered nurse - 122k in san jose, natl avg 65k (I think it’s about 112k in SF according to sfgate) 7. physical therapist - natio 81k, vegas 117k 8. physician - national around 190k, high paid regions about $250k 9. web developer - national 62k, san jose/sf around 90k 10. dental hygenist - 70k national, in SF 106k It was eye opening to see how highly paid some of the health care degree fields, which generally enroll more women, are in the bay area. For instance, nationally, nursing is about 90% women, and in San Jose (and San Francisco, according to a different survey), RN's (registered nurses) actually outearn software developers. There are a large number of factors here (growth potential, job security, the possibility of age discrimination at 40 or younger, where, when and how you like to work...), so I'm not saying that this tell the whole story - but there's a decent argument to be made that nursing may be a better paid and more stable field than software development over the course of a career. Would women be well served by reducing that 90% to 50% to free up more women to become software engineers? Another interesting thing to note - since we're talking about flagship UC's here, the entering medical school class at UCSF is 58% women, and at boalt law school, it is 54%. I couldn't get exact numbers for pharmacy, but nationally, it skews female over male. Again, would women be well served by diverting some of these students to computer science rather than remaining in health care? A friend of mine who is an emergency room physician probably earns over twice the average software developers salary with fewer hours and very flexible shifts. I can't possibly claim she would have been better off in computer science. I have a tough time with this, for a couple of reasons. First, I have no right to claim sour grapes for someone else. If women want to go into computer science, and feel that it is a great field, they should not have to put up with gender discrimination. Second, it's unclear as to whether software development is wonderful field. So not only do I have no right to tell others that the grapes are sour, I can't say with certainty that they are sour. However, I do think that there is, at least a very clear case to be made that the grapes in health care are a lot sweeter than they are in the high tech world. We need to consider, seriously, the possibility that avoidance of high tech in favor of health fields is a very rational choice from an earnings, working conditions, job security, and social prestige perspective. Young women are, in many ways, outperforming young men. Perhaps appreciating the beauty and joy of computer programming as a short detour on your road to emergency medicine or dermatology is a far more rational way to go through life than majoring in CS and getting a grad degree in a STEM field, or working for as series of startups or bigco's. I'm not asking people to accept this conclusion, but rather to recognize that this question needs to be part of the debate.
paulwithap 13y ago
What is up with the obsession to get women coding? Why does it matter? You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.
- marquis 13y ago
  Yes, you do. Nursing: http://www.minoritynurse.com/tags/men-nursing http://www.minoritynurse.com/tags/men-nursing Teaching: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/23/advocates-say-schools-need-more-male/ http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/23/advocates-say... ".. who bring a different perspective to the job, may connect better with some children and can provide positive male figures in their lives." Same goes for women in technology or any other misrepresented field.
  - paulwithap 13y ago
    Yeah, those are reputable sources.
    - marquis 13y ago
      I'm not maled so I google 'male advocacy' and picked what came up first. Want some equivalent sources on women? I can pick a few hundred off the top of my head. As a feminist I completely support such groups for men also in careers where women are over-representing.
      - cobrausn 13y ago
        How do you actually determine what is 'over-represented' and not just the result of individual agency en masse?
        saraid216 13y ago
        Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution, which results in a proportionate representation within reasonable error margins. Not having this suggests that there's another factor besides individual agency factoring into decisions. It could be something acceptable, like men can't biologically give birth (yet), or it could be something unacceptable, like blacks being targeted by police solely on suspicion of race. This is one of the ways in which you recognize that something weird is going on with American politics. While it's a good thing to have lawyers in Congress, it's kinda weird that they're overwhelmingly lawyers.
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pg_is_a_butt 13y ago
"intro to computer science" is the class before you get started in "real" computer science. basically they teach you turn on the computer and make an excel spreadsheet. in most colleges that class is CS101, but the "real" curriculum starts with CS120. tell me when more women are in that class than men. more women in CS101 is more of a confirmation that girls don't know anything.
appliedluck 13y ago
I'm particularly glad to read that UCB is changing up the curriculum and introducing open source. Speaking from my time there and my discussions with EECS alumni, it felt like a lot of the curriculum was outdated and many felt ill-prepared for the modern advancements in computer science introduced to them in their day-to-day jobs.
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theautocrat 13y ago
CS10 TA here: I have been involved in the development of this course for almost 4 years and in that time I watched it grow from a small 80 student pilot course to a 220 student CS goliath. In my opinion the growth in popularity of this course is representative of an underwhelming high school CS education. For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. This fact spurred the creation of a course designed to give prospective CS majors a first foundation. This is by no means a thin foundation. CS10 has students learning concepts including complex tree recursion, implementation of Map Reduce, Lambda functions, as well as techniques for processing large sets of data and understanding the effects of concurrency. In just one semester a student can go from not knowing what variables and “if” statements are, to building complex projects involving game-tree searches and parallel processing. CS10 represents an opportunity for those who never considered Computer Science until they reached a university setting. For many the study feels unapproachable, and the inviting environment of CS10 allows anyone with a curiosity to explore their capacity. In the ongoing debate of “should everyone program”, while I am uncertain about the prospect of making CS education a compulsive requirement, I do believe a net should be cast out to catch those who perhaps never realized their interest and potential. CS10 is that net. It is often the beginning of a student’s journey and inspires a life long love. It’s easy to joke that about CS10 as a CS daycare. A place where the “non-serious” can feel like they are involved in a trendy field of work. But this does not recognize the success of CS10. With a majority of CS10 alums continuing on to CS61A, the demographic of students (including female enrollment rates) will begin to change. This is a new course and it will take time to percolate up to graduation rates, but the student’s in CS61A with a background in CS10 are not only prepared, but often far beyond those who directly jump into CS61A. CS10 was the first experience I ever had with Computer Science and inspired me to pursue a career in the field. I love CS and sharing that love with my students in CS10 is my passion.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  > For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. CS61A hasn't been the intro course for inexperienced students for as long as I can remember: What about CS3? I came into CS having never touched or seen a piece of code, and I took CS3 because my understanding was that it was supposed to be the gentle introduction for complete neophytes. I found CS3 to be enormously easy and hand-holdy (it was a little _too_ easy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for a course meant to be a gentle intro). What was wrong with CS3 that necessitated the introduction of a new course that (AIUI from the catalog) focuses more on things like the social implications of computing and its relevance to society?
stefan_kendall 13y ago
I've started flagging these stories. It doesn't matter how many men or women work in particular careers. Technology is only singled out because the pay is high. Where are the articles about the lack of women in welding?
- jpwright 13y ago
  On sites other than HN, which has nothing to do with welding? I'm sure it's very easy to say that gender inequality in the workplace doesn't matter at all when you are not the one affected by it. see: http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130125/aik0101/130129691 http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130125/aik0101/130129... http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/articles/rosie-the-welder http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/articles/rosie-the-weld... http://awo.aws.org/2013/12/women-in-welding-meet-karen-gilgenbach/ http://awo.aws.org/2013/12/women-in-welding-meet-karen-gilge... http://www.advanced.edu/blog/more-women-entering-the-welding-profession/ http://www.advanced.edu/blog/more-women-entering-the-welding...
- DanBC 13y ago
  "Where are the articles about Women in Y" or "where are the articles about men in X" is a common comment in these threads. Those articles are written, and linked to in those threads. They're not posted to HN because they're not of interest to HN which has few welders or nurses but many coders.
- Fomite 13y ago
  Oddly enough, I know some people in the welding industry, and it's discussed.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Women may not be welding, but they are riveting.
peterwwillis 13y ago
(sorry, ranty opiniony comment) Why do people care about the numbers of women in Computer Science classes? Because, they say, it shows some inherent discrimination against women in the industry. (which totally exists, but mainly as a bigger cultural issue that affects everyone along gender lines) If you ask how that could be (as nobody is actually barring women from signing up for classes) the most popular theory is that gender stereotypes combined with an antagonistic male environment leaves women with little choice but to abandon the field. So the answer has been to make more opportunity for women to join the industry by making it more attractive to them or reducing gender-related friction. Many employers are pushing to find more women in technology/computer science and give incentives to hire them, and in cases like this, change curriculum for schools to make the subject seem more "beautiful & joyful". And it seems like it might be working - more women are now in classes, and one would assume, may some day soon be evening the gender gap in tech jobs. But what's the end result to merely bringing more women into the industry? Has the culture shifted? Are salaries evening out? Is sexism dead? The people pushing for more women in technology seem to think that by merely increasing the number of women in the field, all of these things will happen. But realistically, none of these things are accomplished just because there's more women in technology. Compare it to when President Obama was elected, and certain people claimed "racism is dead" because we finally elected a black President. Is racism really dead? Did the culture shift to become more understanding? Did the overall quality of life for black people increase? Did they get higher salaries, or more economic or political power? My casual observation indicates these things did not happen. The culture was not affected, and so, the same institutional problems caused by problems in the culture persist. And this is what will happen regarding women in technology. Anyone can change their experiment to fit their expected results, and then when they get those results claim they had success. But that's not a cause for celebration. What would be good is if we actually attack the cause of inequality - our cultural differences and biases - to make it so that women are not an exception to a rule, but an equal part of a common community. Merely adding more women to computer science classes is the equivalent of a misogynist saying "Sure, you can have a computer - in the kitchen." The sexism, gender stereotypes, and cultural conflicts will continue to exist until those are addressed directly.
- jpwright 13y ago
tool 13y ago
More women than men? Gender equality has been achieved.
altero 13y ago
Mission completed! Now we can stop that positive discrimination nonsense.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Surely logically - if you support discrimination [in favour of minority groups based on irrelevant characteristics (like skin colour relative to computer programming)] - you have to switch to supporting the same for the group that is now in minority [within this very limited geo-political locus]. Coming soon to HN ..., boys only code classes, special boys only STEM days, toys designed to interest boys in STEM, books with male characters doing computer-y stuff, etc..
malandrew 13y ago
I'm interested in seeing the racial breakdown here for intro to computer science enrollment, because I would imagine that that is the reason Berkeley is the exception. Something like 40% of the student population is asian [0], and IIRC, in computer science only two races are disproportionately represented per capita, caucasians and asians. For this reason I think Berkeley CS enrollment hardly counts as a data point indicative of a larger trend in CS enrollment. FWIW, before a flamewar starts, this observation is not to be construed as bigotry, but simply descriptivist. [0] http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/enrollmentdata.html http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/enrollmentdata.html (I found it interesting that the Berkeley enrollment statistics lump all latinos/hispanics into figure, but break out the individual percentages for each asian subgroup.
MadManE 13y ago
Why is this a news-worthy headline? Shouldn't we be more concerned with the total number of Computer Scientists rather than how many have which genitals? Unless, of course, having a particular set of genitals determines the quality of the degree. . .
snizzysnaps 13y ago
Women are usually pretty awful programmers and engineers. Sorry, but the cats out of the bag. I don't care how many classes women take, men will still rule the technology world. If it's any consolation there will always be charity positions for under-qualified women, like Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, and that clueless simpleton at Yahoo!, who can't even get their email client to work. If I offended any ladies here, let me apologize. Perhaps I can fund the next Spanx start-up.
cookiecaper 13y ago
Hate to burst your bubbles, but this isn't the result of more women getting interested in compsci... it's the result of far, far fewer men getting interested in post-secondary education.

242 points by uladzislau 13y ago

Not 2 years ago, it was at least 90% male. Although towards the end of the term, it trended towards a balance. ----- On review, the article is NOT about what you'd consider CS1 "Introduction to Symbolic Programming was reborn as Beauty and the Joy of Computing." This is a CS class in the loosest sense of the word. It fulfills no prerequisites towards a CS degree. OTOH I could just be cynical, and this class is just what's needed to get more females into the subsequent CS classes. At least anecdotally, I know a few people who had no real interest in CS start with this class, but then proceed to take proper CS classes they may otherwise have ignored.

wutbrodo 13y ago
Into to Symbolic Programming hasn't been replaced. http://general-catalog.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=Computer+Science&p_dept_cd=COMPSCI&p_path=l http://general-catalog.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_re... Compare the descriptions for CS3L (Intro to Symbolic Programming) to CS10. They both still exist and seem very different.
- praxulus 13y ago
  It's in the catalog, but CS3 doesn't show up on schedule.berkeley.edu for last semester or this one.
- sqrt 13y ago
  CS3L hasn't been offered for the last couple of years. The catalog includes classes that haven't been offered for a long time.
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    Oh...weird

iopq 13y ago

... and they all promptly changed their majors when they found out forgetting a semi-colon made their programs not compile.

cantbecool 13y ago
There's some truth to this. I took a few intro classes to boost my GPA and the majority of women in my group begged for me to help them just pass the class since it would look good on their resume.
- LordKano 13y ago
  I hope that you told them 'no' or charged them appropriately for tutoring.
  - lmm 13y ago
    Nothing wrong with helping people out, and it can help you master the material yourself.
  - budde 13y ago
    Yes, because helping people is just the worst.
    - omegaham 13y ago
      There's a difference between helping someone with the class and walking them through their assignments, line by line. The former is great; the latter is dishonest. I tutor coworkers in exchange for food and beer. My policy for math and CS is this - if you give me an example, I will walk you through the example with as much detail as you want, but I will not do anything other than proofread your assignments after they've been created. Good: Student has an assignment to do quicksort on an array of integers. He has difficulty with array syntax and asks me to walk him through basic array operations. He then has difficulty grasping what exactly quicksort is doing and asks me to walk him through a quicksort operation by hand. After this, he feels kind of confident and tries making a function. It doesn't work, and he can't find the problem, so he asks me to help debug the program. Bad: "Oh man, I don't get this quicksort stuff at all. Can you, like, help me?" (Cue frustrating half hour where the person shows that he barely grasps the concept of a variable and doesn't give a fuck about the class) "Uh, I gotta turn this in at 11:59 tonight. I need this now." The person who pulled the latter with me was male. I said "no" and watched him fail the class.

jychang 13y ago

This is talking about CS10, not CS61a. CS10 is a class designed mostly for non majors, who are interested in Computer Science; CS61a is the first required class for the major. I know of a bunch of CS guys with their girlfriends in CS10. A lot of people who are already set on taking CS as their major go directly into CS61a, skipping CS10, and this accounts for a lot of the gender ratio difference in CS10. If you look at a class like CS162, you can see the gender ratio of the people who are actually sticking through the major. This doesn't mean as much as graduation rates, etc.

ry0ohki 13y ago
That's what I was thinking. I remember CS101 at my school had a decent amount of women, but by the time you reached 3rd year they all had disappeared.
- tubbzor 13y ago
  This is the case at my uni. I'm currently a senior and my first intro java class was around 1/5th females. There are now 2-3 in any upper-level class.
- clarky07 13y ago
  At our school, by the time you reached 2nd year most everyone disappeared, male and female. Fall semester sophomore year was about 25% of fall semester freshmen.
  - presidentender 13y ago
    As it turns out, making video games has little to do with playing them.
    - clarky07 13y ago
      Haha right. Almost everyone flushed out in CS1. "I want to make games!" to "This shit is hard, I'm gonna get a business degree." As it happens when you have projects that take about 4x (or more) the amount of time as your friends majors that takes a toll. People would rather be partying than writing code. Maybe our CS1 was a bit too hard (we've had many discussions with the profs about this and the attrition rate and what to do about it), but everyone who finished freshmen year graduated in our class. It prepared us well, but it was too hard for most.

Pxtl 13y ago

It sounds like it's one of those "programming for non-programmers" courses and not really the full entry-level course into the CS program, but it's still encouraging that so many young women are interested in dabbling with code.

thejteam 13y ago

I've kept in touch with the Math/CS department at my alma mater and they've told me the male/female balance bounces around significantly. There have been years where the department is 90+% male and years where the balance has been close to 50-50. I was primarily math and I took upper level math classes that were 75+% female but were closer to two-thirds male the following year. The year I graduated about 40% of the CS graduates were female, today it tends to be closer to 25%. I'll also add I went to a small liberal arts college with 60% women total.

univalent 13y ago

Not bad even though it's just an intro course. There was one girl in my EECS grad school year so anything is an improvement.

southphillyman 13y ago

Gaining on Ya! Hopefully one day the minorities will outnumber the majority for the first time. :)

rubiquity 13y ago
Think about that last sentence you wrote some more.
- aiiane 13y ago
  A lot of people use 'majority' when they mean 'plurality'.
adamsrog 13y ago
Does not compute.
nsxwolf 13y ago
Careful, once the majority becomes the minority, they'll be able to turn all your playbooks right back at you.
altero 13y ago
Womens are already 51% of population because they live longer.

geebee 13y ago

I recently read the "top jobs" on the us news and world report website. http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... Computer jobs were well represented, but so were health sciences. Here's the full list 1. software developer - san jose - 116K (93k natl avg) 2. computer systems analyst - (couldn’t find it in SF, best anywhere was $116k in bridgeport, 84k nation avg) 3. dentist - couldn’t find SF, can be up to $250K in best cities. 163K natl avg 4. nurse practitioner - san jose - $125K 5. pharmacist - highest of 160K in el centro ca, 115k natl avg 6. registered nurse - 122k in san jose, natl avg 65k (I think it’s about 112k in SF according to sfgate) 7. physical therapist - natio 81k, vegas 117k 8. physician - national around 190k, high paid regions about $250k 9. web developer - national 62k, san jose/sf around 90k 10. dental hygenist - 70k national, in SF 106k It was eye opening to see how highly paid some of the health care degree fields, which generally enroll more women, are in the bay area. For instance, nationally, nursing is about 90% women, and in San Jose (and San Francisco, according to a different survey), RN's (registered nurses) actually outearn software developers. There are a large number of factors here (growth potential, job security, the possibility of age discrimination at 40 or younger, where, when and how you like to work...), so I'm not saying that this tell the whole story - but there's a decent argument to be made that nursing may be a better paid and more stable field than software development over the course of a career. Would women be well served by reducing that 90% to 50% to free up more women to become software engineers? Another interesting thing to note - since we're talking about flagship UC's here, the entering medical school class at UCSF is 58% women, and at boalt law school, it is 54%. I couldn't get exact numbers for pharmacy, but nationally, it skews female over male. Again, would women be well served by diverting some of these students to computer science rather than remaining in health care? A friend of mine who is an emergency room physician probably earns over twice the average software developers salary with fewer hours and very flexible shifts. I can't possibly claim she would have been better off in computer science. I have a tough time with this, for a couple of reasons. First, I have no right to claim sour grapes for someone else. If women want to go into computer science, and feel that it is a great field, they should not have to put up with gender discrimination. Second, it's unclear as to whether software development is wonderful field. So not only do I have no right to tell others that the grapes are sour, I can't say with certainty that they are sour. However, I do think that there is, at least a very clear case to be made that the grapes in health care are a lot sweeter than they are in the high tech world. We need to consider, seriously, the possibility that avoidance of high tech in favor of health fields is a very rational choice from an earnings, working conditions, job security, and social prestige perspective. Young women are, in many ways, outperforming young men. Perhaps appreciating the beauty and joy of computer programming as a short detour on your road to emergency medicine or dermatology is a far more rational way to go through life than majoring in CS and getting a grad degree in a STEM field, or working for as series of startups or bigco's. I'm not asking people to accept this conclusion, but rather to recognize that this question needs to be part of the debate.

paulwithap 13y ago

What is up with the obsession to get women coding? Why does it matter? You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.

marquis 13y ago
Yes, you do. Nursing: http://www.minoritynurse.com/tags/men-nursing http://www.minoritynurse.com/tags/men-nursing Teaching: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/23/advocates-say-schools-need-more-male/ http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/23/advocates-say... ".. who bring a different perspective to the job, may connect better with some children and can provide positive male figures in their lives." Same goes for women in technology or any other misrepresented field.
- paulwithap 13y ago
  Yeah, those are reputable sources.
  - marquis 13y ago
    I'm not maled so I google 'male advocacy' and picked what came up first. Want some equivalent sources on women? I can pick a few hundred off the top of my head. As a feminist I completely support such groups for men also in careers where women are over-representing.
    - cobrausn 13y ago
      How do you actually determine what is 'over-represented' and not just the result of individual agency en masse?
      - saraid216 13y ago
        Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution, which results in a proportionate representation within reasonable error margins. Not having this suggests that there's another factor besides individual agency factoring into decisions. It could be something acceptable, like men can't biologically give birth (yet), or it could be something unacceptable, like blacks being targeted by police solely on suspicion of race. This is one of the ways in which you recognize that something weird is going on with American politics. While it's a good thing to have lawyers in Congress, it's kinda weird that they're overwhelmingly lawyers.

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pg_is_a_butt 13y ago

"intro to computer science" is the class before you get started in "real" computer science. basically they teach you turn on the computer and make an excel spreadsheet. in most colleges that class is CS101, but the "real" curriculum starts with CS120. tell me when more women are in that class than men. more women in CS101 is more of a confirmation that girls don't know anything.

appliedluck 13y ago

I'm particularly glad to read that UCB is changing up the curriculum and introducing open source. Speaking from my time there and my discussions with EECS alumni, it felt like a lot of the curriculum was outdated and many felt ill-prepared for the modern advancements in computer science introduced to them in their day-to-day jobs.

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theautocrat 13y ago

CS10 TA here: I have been involved in the development of this course for almost 4 years and in that time I watched it grow from a small 80 student pilot course to a 220 student CS goliath. In my opinion the growth in popularity of this course is representative of an underwhelming high school CS education. For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. This fact spurred the creation of a course designed to give prospective CS majors a first foundation. This is by no means a thin foundation. CS10 has students learning concepts including complex tree recursion, implementation of Map Reduce, Lambda functions, as well as techniques for processing large sets of data and understanding the effects of concurrency. In just one semester a student can go from not knowing what variables and “if” statements are, to building complex projects involving game-tree searches and parallel processing. CS10 represents an opportunity for those who never considered Computer Science until they reached a university setting. For many the study feels unapproachable, and the inviting environment of CS10 allows anyone with a curiosity to explore their capacity. In the ongoing debate of “should everyone program”, while I am uncertain about the prospect of making CS education a compulsive requirement, I do believe a net should be cast out to catch those who perhaps never realized their interest and potential. CS10 is that net. It is often the beginning of a student’s journey and inspires a life long love. It’s easy to joke that about CS10 as a CS daycare. A place where the “non-serious” can feel like they are involved in a trendy field of work. But this does not recognize the success of CS10. With a majority of CS10 alums continuing on to CS61A, the demographic of students (including female enrollment rates) will begin to change. This is a new course and it will take time to percolate up to graduation rates, but the student’s in CS61A with a background in CS10 are not only prepared, but often far beyond those who directly jump into CS61A. CS10 was the first experience I ever had with Computer Science and inspired me to pursue a career in the field. I love CS and sharing that love with my students in CS10 is my passion.

wutbrodo 13y ago
> For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. CS61A hasn't been the intro course for inexperienced students for as long as I can remember: What about CS3? I came into CS having never touched or seen a piece of code, and I took CS3 because my understanding was that it was supposed to be the gentle introduction for complete neophytes. I found CS3 to be enormously easy and hand-holdy (it was a little _too_ easy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for a course meant to be a gentle intro). What was wrong with CS3 that necessitated the introduction of a new course that (AIUI from the catalog) focuses more on things like the social implications of computing and its relevance to society?

stefan_kendall 13y ago

I've started flagging these stories. It doesn't matter how many men or women work in particular careers. Technology is only singled out because the pay is high. Where are the articles about the lack of women in welding?

jpwright 13y ago
On sites other than HN, which has nothing to do with welding? I'm sure it's very easy to say that gender inequality in the workplace doesn't matter at all when you are not the one affected by it. see: http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130125/aik0101/130129691 http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130125/aik0101/130129... http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/articles/rosie-the-welder http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/articles/rosie-the-weld... http://awo.aws.org/2013/12/women-in-welding-meet-karen-gilgenbach/ http://awo.aws.org/2013/12/women-in-welding-meet-karen-gilge... http://www.advanced.edu/blog/more-women-entering-the-welding-profession/ http://www.advanced.edu/blog/more-women-entering-the-welding...
DanBC 13y ago
"Where are the articles about Women in Y" or "where are the articles about men in X" is a common comment in these threads. Those articles are written, and linked to in those threads. They're not posted to HN because they're not of interest to HN which has few welders or nurses but many coders.
Fomite 13y ago
Oddly enough, I know some people in the welding industry, and it's discussed.
dllthomas 13y ago
Women may not be welding, but they are riveting.

peterwwillis 13y ago

(sorry, ranty opiniony comment) Why do people care about the numbers of women in Computer Science classes? Because, they say, it shows some inherent discrimination against women in the industry. (which totally exists, but mainly as a bigger cultural issue that affects everyone along gender lines) If you ask how that could be (as nobody is actually barring women from signing up for classes) the most popular theory is that gender stereotypes combined with an antagonistic male environment leaves women with little choice but to abandon the field. So the answer has been to make more opportunity for women to join the industry by making it more attractive to them or reducing gender-related friction. Many employers are pushing to find more women in technology/computer science and give incentives to hire them, and in cases like this, change curriculum for schools to make the subject seem more "beautiful & joyful". And it seems like it might be working - more women are now in classes, and one would assume, may some day soon be evening the gender gap in tech jobs. But what's the end result to merely bringing more women into the industry? Has the culture shifted? Are salaries evening out? Is sexism dead? The people pushing for more women in technology seem to think that by merely increasing the number of women in the field, all of these things will happen. But realistically, none of these things are accomplished just because there's more women in technology. Compare it to when President Obama was elected, and certain people claimed "racism is dead" because we finally elected a black President. Is racism really dead? Did the culture shift to become more understanding? Did the overall quality of life for black people increase? Did they get higher salaries, or more economic or political power? My casual observation indicates these things did not happen. The culture was not affected, and so, the same institutional problems caused by problems in the culture persist. And this is what will happen regarding women in technology. Anyone can change their experiment to fit their expected results, and then when they get those results claim they had success. But that's not a cause for celebration. What would be good is if we actually attack the cause of inequality - our cultural differences and biases - to make it so that women are not an exception to a rule, but an equal part of a common community. Merely adding more women to computer science classes is the equivalent of a misogynist saying "Sure, you can have a computer - in the kitchen." The sexism, gender stereotypes, and cultural conflicts will continue to exist until those are addressed directly.

jpwright 13y ago

tool 13y ago

More women than men? Gender equality has been achieved.

altero 13y ago

Mission completed! Now we can stop that positive discrimination nonsense.

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Surely logically - if you support discrimination [in favour of minority groups based on irrelevant characteristics (like skin colour relative to computer programming)] - you have to switch to supporting the same for the group that is now in minority [within this very limited geo-political locus]. Coming soon to HN ..., boys only code classes, special boys only STEM days, toys designed to interest boys in STEM, books with male characters doing computer-y stuff, etc..

malandrew 13y ago

I'm interested in seeing the racial breakdown here for intro to computer science enrollment, because I would imagine that that is the reason Berkeley is the exception. Something like 40% of the student population is asian [0], and IIRC, in computer science only two races are disproportionately represented per capita, caucasians and asians. For this reason I think Berkeley CS enrollment hardly counts as a data point indicative of a larger trend in CS enrollment. FWIW, before a flamewar starts, this observation is not to be construed as bigotry, but simply descriptivist. [0] http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/enrollmentdata.html http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/enrollmentdata.html (I found it interesting that the Berkeley enrollment statistics lump all latinos/hispanics into figure, but break out the individual percentages for each asian subgroup.

MadManE 13y ago

Why is this a news-worthy headline? Shouldn't we be more concerned with the total number of Computer Scientists rather than how many have which genitals? Unless, of course, having a particular set of genitals determines the quality of the degree. . .

snizzysnaps 13y ago

Women are usually pretty awful programmers and engineers. Sorry, but the cats out of the bag. I don't care how many classes women take, men will still rule the technology world. If it's any consolation there will always be charity positions for under-qualified women, like Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, and that clueless simpleton at Yahoo!, who can't even get their email client to work. If I offended any ladies here, let me apologize. Perhaps I can fund the next Spanx start-up.

cookiecaper 13y ago

Hate to burst your bubbles, but this isn't the result of more women getting interested in compsci... it's the result of far, far fewer men getting interested in post-secondary education.