15 ms·

Of Geeks and Girls

136 points by araneae 17y ago

Alex3917 17y ago
The obvious followup is to try to figure out what it is about the Star Wars posters and messy environment that makes women uncomfortable. My guess is that women feel like they are biologically different than men, and geek paraphernalia is seen as a signal that the environment will be dominated by men who don't understand women. Any women here want to agree/disagree?
- stjarnljuset 17y ago
  I had a pretty immediate negative reaction when I just read about the room described. Now, I'm trying to figure out why I had this reaction. I think the room communicates an environment of obsessive and messy people, and that really isn't the kind of people I'd like to be around. I would have felt better if it wasn't just Star Trek, but various posters of stereotypically nerdy things. If it had been all posters of Harry Potter, I'd still feel uncomfortable. Also, a life-size bust? Really? I would think a life-size bust of anything to be weird, even if it was Zachary Quinto or George Washington. A messy environment does make me uncomfortable. (Does it not make you uncomfortable?) The article described a mess of discarded computer parts. At a past company that I worked for, I got to visit the IT room, which had neat piles of spare computer parts organized in the middle of the floor. Although I did think it was weird that the stuff was just lying on the floor, I did have to resist an urge to crawl along the floor and check out everything (I totally would've done it if the HR people weren't watching me). If it had been a disorganized pile of discards, I wouldn't have given it a second glance. > My guess is that women feel like they are biologically different than men Um yes. I do feel that I am biologically different than men. > and geek paraphernalia is seen as a signal that the environment will be dominated by men who don't understand women Hmm, I think the closest place of "geek paraphernalia" that I've been exposed to is my school's linux lounge. The place has a bunch of working computers and some old computers to be stripped for parts, bookcases of CS textbooks, posters of the Linux penguin, signs made of the reflective side of compact discs, but there's nothing about this environment that turns me off. If the room had instead been covered with something I had zero interest in (like Star Trek) then yes, I would be a little put off.
  - Retric 17y ago
    A messy environment does make me uncomfortable. (Does it not make you uncomfortable?) A messy environment does not make me uncomfortable. I wonder how much people’s dislike for disorder relates to the amount of time they look for things. It seems like the people that keep the most ordered desks spend the most time looking for things. However, I rarely need to find physical stuff in my environment so it's just not that important to me.
    - stjarnljuset 17y ago
      Yes, but this isn't your mess, this is someone else's mess.
      - Retric 17y ago
        I am generalizing that your willingness to tolerate disorder in your personal environment relates to your tolerance for a generic messy environment.
    - pavelludiq 17y ago
      My room only looks disorganized and messy. Its actually highly optimized. My clothes stay on one pile on one end of the room. Naturally, they are piled in the order i took them off, so its easy to put them back on, its a stack. My desk doesn't have any junk on it, but the area around my immediate workspace is full with stuff. I have a lot of empty soft drink bottles, flattened and put in bags, all the leftover food and trash i have is in bags, on a separate pile, which i trow away when it gets too big, or starts to smell. There are NO objects on the floor, because i like to walk around my room and think. The environment looks unwelcoming, dirty and messy, but its effective. I know where everything is, and everything is either where it has to be, or is thrown relatively near the place it has to be. Holly shit, my room is like software.
  - Alex3917 17y ago
    "A messy environment does make me uncomfortable. (Does it not make you uncomfortable?)" Nope. That's an established difference between men and women. I suspect it's because for men are on average better at using the part of the brain that processes abstract patterns, and worse at using the part of their brain that processes sensory data and emotion. So the mess is more salient for women and thus drains more cognitive cycles. Also, I suspect people of both sexes getting better at using the other part of their brain as they get older. So it would possibly bother older men more, or possibly older women less. Just another one of my crazy theories though. :-)
yummyfajitas 17y ago
I'm very surprised to see feminists studying the 'Roissy' [1] theory of female career choices. In short, the theory is that women are extremely intolerant of low status men and try to avoid working in fields where they are prevalent, and particularly in fields where they are respected. It actually has a reasonable amount of predictive power, certainly more than the sexism theory. I'll be blown away, however, if we actually follow the theory to it's logical conclusion... [1] Roissy in DC is an extremely sexist, but insightful blogger. He didn't state this theory, but I've heard it described as the 'Roissy' theory since it follows his line of thinking.
- spamizbad 17y ago
  How the hell did this well-understood sociological phenomena get called 'Roissy' theory? It doesn't just apply to women: it applies to everyone and has more to do with culture than gender.
  - Ixiaus 17y ago
    I'm only discussing conjecture because I don't have any sociological studies to back me up. </forewarning> In general, yes, it does apply to all humans as a culture. I've seen men brush other lower status men away as I've seen women do. However, I can say, women tend to fill that category much more than men do. I think it has more to do with the instinct to mate, than anything else. Women desire to project their masculine self onto a male figure that can most closely match the features of that masculinity. The masculine self having been created by the father figure, most women will seek out men that can fulfill those needs. Hence why women generally date men older, with more social status, and more financial resources and freedom than they. There are obvious exceptions, so please consider those when reading this.
    - foldr 17y ago
      > Women desire to project their masculine self onto a male figure that can most closely match the features of that masculinity. Oh, they do?
- 17y ago
Tichy 17y ago
From the article: “No matter what we do to that room, even if we make it all female, women just don't feel like they belong there.” Could it be that is is just computer science that many women don't feel attracted to? The statement above seems to contradict her own research, and she fails to see it. The stereotypes seem really outdated, too. Or maybe women just tend to be intolerant... ducks
- iron_ball 17y ago
  Intolerant ducks? That's a pretty strange epithet.
- memetichazard 17y ago
  How does it contradict the research? By 'no matter what we do', it doesn't mean she's swapping out the geeky material for the magazines (which makes women more comfortable, apparently), it means she's doing everything without changing the requirement that the room needs to be filled with nerdy/geeky material. The second part of the sentence reinforces the fact that even if it's made clear that it will be an all-female room/team, they still feel uncomfortable.
  - nixme 17y ago
    It's a poorly worded sentence. I felt it contradicted the research on first-read as well. Since they specifically placed objects rated with high masculinity in the room, the "even if we make it all female" sounds as if doing the opposite doesn't help.
    - Tichy 17y ago
      Yes, I understood it like that - even if the decor is "female" women won't like it. So I guess I misread it.
- araneae 17y ago
  By "make it all female" she means, fills the room with only females. The nerdiness of the room remains the same. The implication is that the percentage of women in a CS class matters less than the decorations on the wall.
barrkel 17y ago
Gah! The article contains yet another misrepresentation of what Lawrence Summers said: > former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested that men are hard-wired to be more analytical than women What he said was that there was more variance in IQ in males than in females, thus there are both more stupid males and more intelligent males - there are more males at either ends of the spectrum. Given a filter for extra-high IQ, you would then expect that there would be more males in that sample.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Minor nit: what Larry Summers said is that there might be more variance and it was worthy of study. He never drew any conclusion.
  - dhimes 17y ago
    Exactly. In fact, I wasn't convinced that he actually considered it anything more than speculation, but brought the point up in a very academic, even devil's advocate, way.
    - pgbovine 17y ago
      yup, unfortunately he learned the hard way that as a public figure (e.g., university president), any statements that could possible be misconstrued to fit an agenda against you will probably be :/ he already had lots of political enemies around the time he was ousted, so that statement was the straw that broke his back ...
    - btilly 17y ago
      Given the evidence that already exists, I would be surprised if he considered the idea just speculation. The fact that men have a greater variance in ability than women has been repeatedly confirmed. Depending on which characteristic of intelligence is being measured, the variance among men is generally 1.07 to 1.17 times as great as the variance among women. Vocabulary is an extreme, there the variance is 1.4 times greater among men than women. See http://precedings.nature.com/documents/3238/version/1/files/npre20093238-1.pdf http://precedings.nature.com/documents/3238/version/1/files/... for verification of that. The open and difficult question is how much of the over-representation of men at the top echelons of society can be attributed to this variation of ability versus sexism. While the question is going to offend and be controversial, I agree with Summers that the principle of academic freedom says that academics should be free to ask it.
ErrantX 17y ago
The problem I have with this sort of research is that I think it makes too much of the "because your female you dont like that sort of stuff" myth. Im a guy, I love all things tech (and am a bit geeky about it). However I never liked Star Trek and whilst I read Science Fiction / Fantasy the whole D&D and more mainstream Warhammer type stuff makes me squirm. I imagine that same room would put me off too; unless it had something cool in it (for example a complex lego "star trek" model) that appealed to the engineer in me. I know a fair few CS majors - most are men. But there are easily as many women as hardcore star trek style geeks. Some of the most hardcore geeks are women. I really think this is a lot more complex than star trek :)
- jimbokun 17y ago
  I find it odd that you are appealing to your anecdotal experience, when they had studies where the actually subjected actual women to these environments and observed their reactions. Also, they quote some of the hardcore geek women or which you speak, so I do not understand where you find yourself disagreeing with the research or the article.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    Firstly I cant see any information about who was tested etc. and how many. To really refute it I would need to see that. My main point was r.e. the Star Trek thing. I agree entirely that it might put women off (as I said, it even puts me off) but I am not sure it is good evidence that this is how women [or anyone] perceive cs (and so puts them off). The test doesn't cover that issue at all. It's like saying "we did a study where we found all men were unable to breast feed babies. As a result we conclude only women can get pregnant" :)
    - whatusername 17y ago
      Realise it's completely off-topic - but did you know that men actually can breastfeed? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation
mmt 17y ago
"I said, 'Where's my phone right now? It's over there, in my purse.' I basically said, 'You're not designing your phones for women."' It startles me just how pervasive some stereotypes are. The quoted assertion appears to depend on two generalizations. The first is that women use purses instead of pockets , and the second is that they leave purses "over there." The implied converse generalization is that men don't leave their phone or its container "over there." It makes me wonder if the inclusion of this quote was intentional foreshadowing on the part of the author.
- jlees 17y ago
  I've seen guys leave their phones in jacket pockets on the backs of chairs, but that's way rarer than women not having a phone within arm's reach. To generalise, of course, but pretty much every other woman I know uses a handbag (purse) of some sort and won't always have it glued to their arm. Even I do, occasionally -- skirts don't have pockets, y'know, and it's more comfortable not having a giant iPhone in a tiny pocket. I used to be considered 'blokeish' for not having a bag and keeping my cash/phone/keys in my jeans or coat pocket. It's a fair enough generalisation in my experience.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    Bonus points for using the term 'blokeish'.
    - jlees 17y ago
      Er, at least in certain contexts, calling a woman blokeish is implying she's a butch lesbian. I used to be a female computer scientist with a buzzcut (and the pockets thing). Everyone thought I was gay. (I'm not.)
      - ynniv 17y ago
        Certainly not implying that, just appreciating diverse vocabulary.
      - tomjen2 17y ago
obvioustroll 17y ago
In other words, once again we are told that men are responsible for women's problems.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  I disagree. I was all prepared to wince at this article when I read the title. However, the researchers go out of their way to say that some middle ground should be found that welcomes women without rejecting current geek culture. They made a point of quoting geek women who embraced computer science in least in part because of its geekiness. Ah, having typed this far, now I notice the obvioustroll username. Trolled, indeed. :)
amichail 17y ago
I think a major problem is that much of computer science is not interesting. And indeed, almost all jobs that you get after graduation are not interesting either. It's too much like a "pen science" -- focusing too much on implementation and not enough on application. Imagine a science where students learn to write as quickly as possible with a pen and to fill the page with as much writing as possible. Who would want to get a "pen degree"? The fact that many men want to major in CS reflects poorly on men. The CS curriculum needs to be redesigned to be more applications-oriented and the major needs to be renamed to reflect that change.
- pgbovine 17y ago
  i haven't RTFA yet, but i'd be interested in seeing whether the same gender gap exists in other countries; from talking with friends who grew up in places like Eastern Europe, it seems like it wasn't as 'nerdy' for women to like engineering, math, or computers, so more talented women got into the field in college and as a career
  - bct 17y ago
    Malaysia has much higher proportions of women in Computer Science (~50%). It's almost as if it's purely a cultural and social issue...
  - rick888 17y ago
    "haven't RTFA yet, but i'd be interested in seeing whether the same gender gap exists in other countries; from talking with friends who grew up in places like Eastern Europe, it seems like it wasn't as 'nerdy' for women to like engineering, math, or computers, so more talented women got into the field in college and as a career" This is a very interesting point. When I was in college, many of my 300 level or higher CS classes had more women than men. The women were either from China, Taiwan, Japan, or India. I rarely ever saw an American woman in any of these classes.
- shaddi 17y ago
  Much of computer science may not be interesting to /you/, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting generally. I am sure there are lots of things you find interesting that wouldn't appeal to others.
archon 17y ago
I'm actually rather surprised that the researchers had as much luck as they did (with either gender) in the "dentist office waiting room"-like environment. I personally cringe every time I have to go to my dentist office, precisely because I have to look at his horribly generic, lifeless waiting room. At least the nerdy-gamer room had some personality. Perhaps my feelings about generic, lifeless rooms are just atypical.
- TheSOB88 17y ago
  They were expecting a class to be taught in it, so it wasn't the vile pit of hour-long silent pastel neutrality.
jff 17y ago
Here's some anecdotal info that bothered me when I saw it. I've graded several CS 1 courses and found that out of the class of 20-30, there might be 2 or 3 women, tops. Fine and good, since my school's engineering dept is 87% male and the CS dept is 92% male. However, the thing I noticed was that too many of these girls did poorly in the first few weeks and frequently dropped the course altogether; I'm not sure what they did then, since you can't really do any CS/IT/SE/CE degree without CS 1. Of the guys, maybe 1 or 2 would drop. Why does this happen? My school is trying hard to get more women in CS and engineering fields, which may mean poorly-qualified girls are being accepted and pushed into these degrees; are we just a statistical anomaly? The numbers in the article would seem to indicate otherwise. Anyone else have insights from their own grading/teaching experiences? Oh, and regarding pair programming, it's the best possible way to make sure you won't want to see your friend's face for another week, because half the time one of you will want to do something the other one just doesn't "get", so you sit there and explain it repeatedly when you could have just implemented it by yourself, all the while watching your teammate type with a speed and error frequency generally associated with senile chimpanzees.
- notaddicted 17y ago
  The article mentions that the proportion of women in biology is 60%. So maybe the women that could be doing well in computer science are seeking out the greater competition and camaraderie of the biology scene. Self criticism: 1. Blame the victim? 2. 60% still isn't a supermajority like in CompSci/Eng. Self affirmation: 1. Personal experience affirms. I have met more (in number) intelligent talented female students taking chem and bio disciplines. Example: last weekend I met a girl whose father taught one of my computer engineering courses, wearing a shirt that said "neuroscience".
- araneae 17y ago
  The comment above you (well right now) indicates that women are less experienced coming into introductory classes. It makes sense that they'll have a higher failure rate, as it's difficult to compete against people who know more than you.
  - 17y ago
patrickgzill 17y ago
Does the heavy-equipment industry have similar discussions? "Hey, how come there aren't more wimmin running our Caterpillar D9s in the Brazilian rainforest?" Oh yeah, Philip Greenspun points out science is a dead end job for any ambitious woman: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
- sethg 17y ago
  You mean, like this? http://www.sistersinthebuildingtrades.org/ http://www.sistersinthebuildingtrades.org/ If you go to the "About Us" → "Our Supporters" menu item, you see a list of donations, and the majority of donors are labor unions.
  - patrickgzill 17y ago
    Donations for 2009 under $4k ; donations for 2008 under $15K ... sorry this is not a significant organization.
    - sethg 17y ago
      It's not the only group of people interested in the subject of getting more women involved in the traditionally-male building trades occupations. If you want to find more on the subject, you can Google for it yourself.
msluyter 17y ago
I'd like to play devil's advocate[1] for a second: why is the lack of women in CS a problem? Whatever the merit of all these explanations -- it's perceived as dorky, low status, overly masculine, etc... -- the one thing I don't see is a strong desire amongst women to be in the field. It'd be one thing if there were barriers like overt sexism (and perhaps there are), or if you often heard the refrain, "you know, I'd really like to be a computer programmer, but I can't because of XYZ..." AFAICT, the real culprit here appears to be self-selection. Assuming that's the case, who cares? Why all the hand wringing? One downside I see is the lack of a "woman's perspective," which, while admittedly important in many fields, seems mostly irrelevant in a field where stuff either works or it doesn't. The other is a lack of interest in the field overall, but it seems a constant source of debate (see any H1B visa thread) as to whether we have a shortage or a glut of qualified workers. [1] This shouldn't be read as a position I'm strongly committed to. EDIT: Criticisms of this post thus far are mostly along the lines of a) a woman's perspective matters more than I give it credit for and b) "works or doesn't" is too simplistic. Fair enough. I admit my argument wasn't particularly nuanced (purposefully), hence the "devil's advocate" label. Questions I would ask are: wrt point a), is this something we can empirically validate? Or should we just assume any gender imbalance is inherently problematic? I'm not necessarily against the latter view, but I'd like to see it addressed explicitly.
- pgbovine 17y ago
  > One downside I see is the lack of a "woman's perspective," which, while admittedly important in many fields, seems mostly irrelevant in a field where stuff either works or it doesn't. a particularly keen insight i got from talking to a female college friend (who was a CS major) is that the "women's perspective" might be more relevant than people think even in a supposedly objective field where things either work or don't ... because men and women see the world differently, women might be able to come up with different high-level design, low-level debugging, or software team management strategies that an all-male team might not think of ... of course, i don't have any concrete examples to back up this vague hand-wavy statement, but i think there's something there
  - anamax 17y ago
waynerad 17y ago
This article misrepresent's Samuel Gosling's research. It says that Gosling's experiments show that people can make "surprisingly accurate" assessments of strangers by looking at their personal space. In fact Gosling's research shows that people can form a more accurate assessment from a first impression (even a still photo) than they can from looking at someone's personal space (such as a bedroom or cubicle), and in fact people get many things wrong by looking at someone's personal space. If you want to know exactly what you can and can't tell about someone's personality from looking at their personal space, get his book.
- whimsy 17y ago
  You seem to be referencing this: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/scales_we.htm#Personal%20Living%20Space%20Cue%20Inventory http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/scal... Is that correct?
wushupork 17y ago
quote: "She interviewed at Motorola, a cell phone company, and Adobe, a graphic design company." - The person who wrote this article didn't even bother researching the companies. Motorola does a heck of a lot more than just cell phones. And saying Adobe is a graphic design company is like saying GE is a refrigerator company.
gcheong 17y ago
I would like to see a study that shows if the increase in women in other science and engineering fields can be attributed to anything those fields specifically did to attract more women or if it can be attributed to something else entirely.
srn 17y ago
I like this article because it points out women are also geeky and that it's OK to be geeky. Women just may tend to have a slightly different way of expressing that geekiness. You want girls to feel comfortable because you want the girls who are good at CS to go into CS. This is independent of how many women go in total. But since we're at it, let's talk about the biology arguments: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/17/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-numbers-of-women-in-somputer-science-hint-it-doesnt/ http://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/17/how-does-biology-explain-... http://www.mun.ca/cwse/Cannon,Elizabeth.pdf http://www.mun.ca/cwse/Cannon,Elizabeth.pdf according to the above study, undergraduate women in engineering showed comparatively a higher interest in math than men though slightly lower interest in engineering and yet lower interest in physics. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/ Through additional work CMU increased their percentage of women in CS from 8% to 1995 to 42% in 2000. One thing I recall is that women were not as experienced when they first got into CS and had to work harder. However they believed they had caught up by junior year.
- orangecat 17y ago
  But since we're at it, let's talk about the biology arguments The geekfeminism link addresses the almost-strawman argument that women don't have the math or analytical skills needed for CS. It doesn't address the possibility that there are biological reasons for differing levels of interest in the field.
  - srn 17y ago
    Yes, the first link addresses a strawman but I bring it up because other people still bring it up. The second link discusses interests and influences for female undergrads majoring in some kind of engineering, not CS, though I still think it is somewhat relevant. I find the influence on family members to be the most interesting. The third link has papers specifically related to interest. One is titled "The Anatomy of Interest." It discusses why women who started college enthusiastic about CS ended up leaving.
pavelludiq 17y ago
Heres some anecdotes for you. Im a guy, i gave up on programming for a while because i perceived it as both boring and dry. I didn't want to work in a cubicle, so i decided that maybe some of my other hobbies, like photography, drawing or writing could become my career. I knew i was a techie, I've grown up with dissembling stuff and figuring out how stuff works and making stuff, its just that i didn't see programming the same way i saw drawing in my notebook. I do now. If there are women reading this, and you LOVE making stuff, don't let stereotypes get in your way. If you don't like assholes don't work with them, if you don't like cubicles don't work in them, if you don't like smelly apartments with star trek posters on the wall, don't work there. Build your own environment, find like minded individuals and MAKE THINGS. I don't know if being a woman makes this harder, it probably does. Me, i can handle asshole nerds and their smelly apartments(i am one), but i avoid dry and sterile offices and bureaucracy as much as i can. Perhaps the extra effort isn't worth it, if i couldn't work in an environment of my taste, i probably wouldn't be a programmer, and be an artist instead, even though i SUCK as an artist a lot more than i suck as a programmer, and i don't find it as much fun as i used to when i sat bored in a classroom in high school.
jasongullickson 17y ago
Since when does science have anything to do with anyone feeling "accepted"? I just spent 12 minutes reading the dialog here and perhaps this post is a result of an emotional response but seriously, most people I know involved in computer science (that are any good) got there by persevering enormous social discomfort. If you have a love and a passion for this work you will do it and no amount of messy labs and Star Wars posters is going to change that. Maybe I'm missing the point and correct me if I'm wrong, but allot of computer science has already been created/invented/defined by women (the first compiler, arguably the first programming language, etc.). So if you have something to contribute, pull up a keyboard and start hacking; computer science is one of the few arts/professions where today you need little more than a computer and an internet connection to become as good as your talent, creativity and willingness to invest the time will allow. "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
derwiki 17y ago
Where do these uber nerdy programmers with poor hygiene habits work? I've worked at a large corporation and a small start up in Silicon Valley, and I'm hard pressed to think of any. Is this a minority that's somehow become the stereotype for everybody?
cadwag 17y ago
The overall lesson to learn from the article is "Both men and women decide if they belong in an environment based off cues from the environment itself." That seems clear enough, but I started to think about how the lessons learned here might be applied elsewhere. Namely, how could this lesson be applied to help us, my fellow geek friends, out with the ladies? Basically, what I'm saying is that if you want women to feel comfortable around you and in your surrounding (ie home or office), then you have to provide some cues to make them feel like they belong - barring that, at least remove the cues that make them feel like they definitely don't. I'm not saying redecorate your apartment with pink unicorns everywhere, but maybe just start off small: - Replace the 1-foot-tall Yoda replica with a potted plant - Replace the wall of empty Mountain Dew cans with a bottle of water on your desk Like I said, just simple things to make any potential women that might see your environment avoid the feeling that they "simply don't belong here." I know the article isn't really about how to improve your odds with the ladies, but I see no reasons not to apply the lessons they are learning with actual research to other areas of our lives - especially one that our demographic has historically had difficulty with. For once we are getting info on how to make women feel more comfortable that is backed by actual research as opposed to mere speculation and guesswork. Why wouldn't we try to make use of that information in as many ways as possible?
ja27 17y ago
There aren't very many women in CS because there aren't very many women in CS. It's a "social norm" issue. How many girls deciding on college can look to a woman in the field? How many of their friends are going on to major in CS? Or will even tell them that it's a good idea? It's similar to another question: Why aren't there more African-American backpackers? The number I see tossed around a lot is that only 4% of backpackers are African-American.
nzmsv 17y ago
A question for all the male programmers here. Do you really think that the single most important fact about you is your sex? I'm going to guess, no. So why are we trying to lump 50% of the population together into one bucket? There is no single unifying thing for every single woman out there. If there is, it will be either: a) something all (most) humans want, such as the desire to be respected, or b) something the woman herself considers relatively insignificant Guess what, CS will never appeal to "the generic woman", just like it won't appeal to "the generic man". This is simply because they don't exist. This may come as a surprise, but not all women like the color pink, or cooking. And I personally don't understand the appeal of watching football on TV. Both my wife and I enjoy our video game nights together though. So, in conclusion, don't market CS "for girls". Market "CS for smart people who want to make things". This is what's relevant, not gender.
elblanco 17y ago
This is a problem I've personally never understood well. Of all fields, the CS (I mean "software") field seems particularly eager to have female representation. Women generally score well in math and logic tests, perform well in school, etc. Anecdotally some of the better students in my CS undergrad coursework were female. In some industries (e.g. gaming), getting women into the development side of things would revolutionize the industries by opening the market to 50% of the population by producing products that cater to that demographic. It just seems that fewer women enjoy doing the kinds of things you have to do to be successful in this particular field than in some other. That's not to say there aren't women who participate in the field, but I've found, anecdotally, that they tend to view it as paycheck instead of passion (and maybe not insignificantly, the lions share appear to come from Asian countries with those country's concepts of work ethics and good jobs fueling most of those women). I think there are far more males who, for whatever reason, feel passionate about learning to build software. Related, I've found anecdotally that most "geek girls" I've met are not as much into the substance of geekdom as they are into the image of geekdom. I've met lots of women with Pac Man t-shirts and binary watches at Anime festivals who couldn't give a rats ass about clock cycle counts for MOV operations on different revisions of the 80486 chips, but I've met lots of guys in the same clothing who owned aged dog-eared copies of Intel's multi-thousand page CPU Guidebooks (and read them for escapism). For guys, seeing another guy dressed out of the ThinkGeek catalogue is a powerful signal of relevant knowledge, an ice-breaker of sorts as to how to relate. While there certainly are real geek women, their cultural appearance doesn't necessarily provide the same signaling. So when a geek chick shows up, the conversation switches basically to something less geeked out (at least in my experience) out of politeness. I suppose this has two sides to it, the geek chick isn't then immersed into the kinds of topical discussions about xyz algorithm so she doesn't learn about it which cascades into never really getting as good as the boys, but to the boys, they learned about this on their own, in isolation, because they enjoyed it, and can't understand why anybody has to really be "coached" into becoming a geek. full disclosure, I met my wife in a programming course, and she most definitely looks at it as paycheck

136 points by araneae 17y ago

The obvious followup is to try to figure out what it is about the Star Wars posters and messy environment that makes women uncomfortable. My guess is that women feel like they are biologically different than men, and geek paraphernalia is seen as a signal that the environment will be dominated by men who don't understand women. Any women here want to agree/disagree?

stjarnljuset 17y ago
I had a pretty immediate negative reaction when I just read about the room described. Now, I'm trying to figure out why I had this reaction. I think the room communicates an environment of obsessive and messy people, and that really isn't the kind of people I'd like to be around. I would have felt better if it wasn't just Star Trek, but various posters of stereotypically nerdy things. If it had been all posters of Harry Potter, I'd still feel uncomfortable. Also, a life-size bust? Really? I would think a life-size bust of anything to be weird, even if it was Zachary Quinto or George Washington. A messy environment does make me uncomfortable. (Does it not make you uncomfortable?) The article described a mess of discarded computer parts. At a past company that I worked for, I got to visit the IT room, which had neat piles of spare computer parts organized in the middle of the floor. Although I did think it was weird that the stuff was just lying on the floor, I did have to resist an urge to crawl along the floor and check out everything (I totally would've done it if the HR people weren't watching me). If it had been a disorganized pile of discards, I wouldn't have given it a second glance. > My guess is that women feel like they are biologically different than men Um yes. I do feel that I am biologically different than men. > and geek paraphernalia is seen as a signal that the environment will be dominated by men who don't understand women Hmm, I think the closest place of "geek paraphernalia" that I've been exposed to is my school's linux lounge. The place has a bunch of working computers and some old computers to be stripped for parts, bookcases of CS textbooks, posters of the Linux penguin, signs made of the reflective side of compact discs, but there's nothing about this environment that turns me off. If the room had instead been covered with something I had zero interest in (like Star Trek) then yes, I would be a little put off.
- Retric 17y ago
  A messy environment does make me uncomfortable. (Does it not make you uncomfortable?) A messy environment does not make me uncomfortable. I wonder how much people’s dislike for disorder relates to the amount of time they look for things. It seems like the people that keep the most ordered desks spend the most time looking for things. However, I rarely need to find physical stuff in my environment so it's just not that important to me.
  - stjarnljuset 17y ago
    Yes, but this isn't your mess, this is someone else's mess.
    - Retric 17y ago
      I am generalizing that your willingness to tolerate disorder in your personal environment relates to your tolerance for a generic messy environment.
  - pavelludiq 17y ago
    My room only looks disorganized and messy. Its actually highly optimized. My clothes stay on one pile on one end of the room. Naturally, they are piled in the order i took them off, so its easy to put them back on, its a stack. My desk doesn't have any junk on it, but the area around my immediate workspace is full with stuff. I have a lot of empty soft drink bottles, flattened and put in bags, all the leftover food and trash i have is in bags, on a separate pile, which i trow away when it gets too big, or starts to smell. There are NO objects on the floor, because i like to walk around my room and think. The environment looks unwelcoming, dirty and messy, but its effective. I know where everything is, and everything is either where it has to be, or is thrown relatively near the place it has to be. Holly shit, my room is like software.
- Alex3917 17y ago
  "A messy environment does make me uncomfortable. (Does it not make you uncomfortable?)" Nope. That's an established difference between men and women. I suspect it's because for men are on average better at using the part of the brain that processes abstract patterns, and worse at using the part of their brain that processes sensory data and emotion. So the mess is more salient for women and thus drains more cognitive cycles. Also, I suspect people of both sexes getting better at using the other part of their brain as they get older. So it would possibly bother older men more, or possibly older women less. Just another one of my crazy theories though. :-)

yummyfajitas 17y ago

I'm very surprised to see feminists studying the 'Roissy' [1] theory of female career choices. In short, the theory is that women are extremely intolerant of low status men and try to avoid working in fields where they are prevalent, and particularly in fields where they are respected. It actually has a reasonable amount of predictive power, certainly more than the sexism theory. I'll be blown away, however, if we actually follow the theory to it's logical conclusion... [1] Roissy in DC is an extremely sexist, but insightful blogger. He didn't state this theory, but I've heard it described as the 'Roissy' theory since it follows his line of thinking.

spamizbad 17y ago
How the hell did this well-understood sociological phenomena get called 'Roissy' theory? It doesn't just apply to women: it applies to everyone and has more to do with culture than gender.
- Ixiaus 17y ago
  I'm only discussing conjecture because I don't have any sociological studies to back me up. </forewarning> In general, yes, it does apply to all humans as a culture. I've seen men brush other lower status men away as I've seen women do. However, I can say, women tend to fill that category much more than men do. I think it has more to do with the instinct to mate, than anything else. Women desire to project their masculine self onto a male figure that can most closely match the features of that masculinity. The masculine self having been created by the father figure, most women will seek out men that can fulfill those needs. Hence why women generally date men older, with more social status, and more financial resources and freedom than they. There are obvious exceptions, so please consider those when reading this.
  - foldr 17y ago
    > Women desire to project their masculine self onto a male figure that can most closely match the features of that masculinity. Oh, they do?
17y ago

Tichy 17y ago

From the article: “No matter what we do to that room, even if we make it all female, women just don't feel like they belong there.” Could it be that is is just computer science that many women don't feel attracted to? The statement above seems to contradict her own research, and she fails to see it. The stereotypes seem really outdated, too. Or maybe women just tend to be intolerant... ducks

iron_ball 17y ago
Intolerant ducks? That's a pretty strange epithet.
memetichazard 17y ago
How does it contradict the research? By 'no matter what we do', it doesn't mean she's swapping out the geeky material for the magazines (which makes women more comfortable, apparently), it means she's doing everything without changing the requirement that the room needs to be filled with nerdy/geeky material. The second part of the sentence reinforces the fact that even if it's made clear that it will be an all-female room/team, they still feel uncomfortable.
- nixme 17y ago
  It's a poorly worded sentence. I felt it contradicted the research on first-read as well. Since they specifically placed objects rated with high masculinity in the room, the "even if we make it all female" sounds as if doing the opposite doesn't help.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    Yes, I understood it like that - even if the decor is "female" women won't like it. So I guess I misread it.
araneae 17y ago
By "make it all female" she means, fills the room with only females. The nerdiness of the room remains the same. The implication is that the percentage of women in a CS class matters less than the decorations on the wall.

barrkel 17y ago

Gah! The article contains yet another misrepresentation of what Lawrence Summers said: > former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested that men are hard-wired to be more analytical than women What he said was that there was more variance in IQ in males than in females, thus there are both more stupid males and more intelligent males - there are more males at either ends of the spectrum. Given a filter for extra-high IQ, you would then expect that there would be more males in that sample.

yummyfajitas 17y ago
Minor nit: what Larry Summers said is that there might be more variance and it was worthy of study. He never drew any conclusion.
- dhimes 17y ago
  Exactly. In fact, I wasn't convinced that he actually considered it anything more than speculation, but brought the point up in a very academic, even devil's advocate, way.
  - pgbovine 17y ago
    yup, unfortunately he learned the hard way that as a public figure (e.g., university president), any statements that could possible be misconstrued to fit an agenda against you will probably be :/ he already had lots of political enemies around the time he was ousted, so that statement was the straw that broke his back ...
  - btilly 17y ago
    Given the evidence that already exists, I would be surprised if he considered the idea just speculation. The fact that men have a greater variance in ability than women has been repeatedly confirmed. Depending on which characteristic of intelligence is being measured, the variance among men is generally 1.07 to 1.17 times as great as the variance among women. Vocabulary is an extreme, there the variance is 1.4 times greater among men than women. See http://precedings.nature.com/documents/3238/version/1/files/npre20093238-1.pdf http://precedings.nature.com/documents/3238/version/1/files/... for verification of that. The open and difficult question is how much of the over-representation of men at the top echelons of society can be attributed to this variation of ability versus sexism. While the question is going to offend and be controversial, I agree with Summers that the principle of academic freedom says that academics should be free to ask it.

ErrantX 17y ago

The problem I have with this sort of research is that I think it makes too much of the "because your female you dont like that sort of stuff" myth. Im a guy, I love all things tech (and am a bit geeky about it). However I never liked Star Trek and whilst I read Science Fiction / Fantasy the whole D&D and more mainstream Warhammer type stuff makes me squirm. I imagine that same room would put me off too; unless it had something cool in it (for example a complex lego "star trek" model) that appealed to the engineer in me. I know a fair few CS majors - most are men. But there are easily as many women as hardcore star trek style geeks. Some of the most hardcore geeks are women. I really think this is a lot more complex than star trek :)

jimbokun 17y ago
I find it odd that you are appealing to your anecdotal experience, when they had studies where the actually subjected actual women to these environments and observed their reactions. Also, they quote some of the hardcore geek women or which you speak, so I do not understand where you find yourself disagreeing with the research or the article.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  Firstly I cant see any information about who was tested etc. and how many. To really refute it I would need to see that. My main point was r.e. the Star Trek thing. I agree entirely that it might put women off (as I said, it even puts me off) but I am not sure it is good evidence that this is how women [or anyone] perceive cs (and so puts them off). The test doesn't cover that issue at all. It's like saying "we did a study where we found all men were unable to breast feed babies. As a result we conclude only women can get pregnant" :)
  - whatusername 17y ago
    Realise it's completely off-topic - but did you know that men actually can breastfeed? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation

mmt 17y ago

"I said, 'Where's my phone right now? It's over there, in my purse.' I basically said, 'You're not designing your phones for women."' It startles me just how pervasive some stereotypes are. The quoted assertion appears to depend on two generalizations. The first is that women use purses instead of pockets , and the second is that they leave purses "over there." The implied converse generalization is that men don't leave their phone or its container "over there." It makes me wonder if the inclusion of this quote was intentional foreshadowing on the part of the author.

jlees 17y ago
I've seen guys leave their phones in jacket pockets on the backs of chairs, but that's way rarer than women not having a phone within arm's reach. To generalise, of course, but pretty much every other woman I know uses a handbag (purse) of some sort and won't always have it glued to their arm. Even I do, occasionally -- skirts don't have pockets, y'know, and it's more comfortable not having a giant iPhone in a tiny pocket. I used to be considered 'blokeish' for not having a bag and keeping my cash/phone/keys in my jeans or coat pocket. It's a fair enough generalisation in my experience.
- ynniv 17y ago
  Bonus points for using the term 'blokeish'.
  - jlees 17y ago
    Er, at least in certain contexts, calling a woman blokeish is implying she's a butch lesbian. I used to be a female computer scientist with a buzzcut (and the pockets thing). Everyone thought I was gay. (I'm not.)
    - ynniv 17y ago
      Certainly not implying that, just appreciating diverse vocabulary.
    - tomjen2 17y ago

obvioustroll 17y ago

In other words, once again we are told that men are responsible for women's problems.

jimbokun 17y ago
I disagree. I was all prepared to wince at this article when I read the title. However, the researchers go out of their way to say that some middle ground should be found that welcomes women without rejecting current geek culture. They made a point of quoting geek women who embraced computer science in least in part because of its geekiness. Ah, having typed this far, now I notice the obvioustroll username. Trolled, indeed. :)

amichail 17y ago

I think a major problem is that much of computer science is not interesting. And indeed, almost all jobs that you get after graduation are not interesting either. It's too much like a "pen science" -- focusing too much on implementation and not enough on application. Imagine a science where students learn to write as quickly as possible with a pen and to fill the page with as much writing as possible. Who would want to get a "pen degree"? The fact that many men want to major in CS reflects poorly on men. The CS curriculum needs to be redesigned to be more applications-oriented and the major needs to be renamed to reflect that change.

pgbovine 17y ago
i haven't RTFA yet, but i'd be interested in seeing whether the same gender gap exists in other countries; from talking with friends who grew up in places like Eastern Europe, it seems like it wasn't as 'nerdy' for women to like engineering, math, or computers, so more talented women got into the field in college and as a career
- bct 17y ago
  Malaysia has much higher proportions of women in Computer Science (~50%). It's almost as if it's purely a cultural and social issue...
- rick888 17y ago
  "haven't RTFA yet, but i'd be interested in seeing whether the same gender gap exists in other countries; from talking with friends who grew up in places like Eastern Europe, it seems like it wasn't as 'nerdy' for women to like engineering, math, or computers, so more talented women got into the field in college and as a career" This is a very interesting point. When I was in college, many of my 300 level or higher CS classes had more women than men. The women were either from China, Taiwan, Japan, or India. I rarely ever saw an American woman in any of these classes.
shaddi 17y ago
Much of computer science may not be interesting to /you/, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting generally. I am sure there are lots of things you find interesting that wouldn't appeal to others.

archon 17y ago

I'm actually rather surprised that the researchers had as much luck as they did (with either gender) in the "dentist office waiting room"-like environment. I personally cringe every time I have to go to my dentist office, precisely because I have to look at his horribly generic, lifeless waiting room. At least the nerdy-gamer room had some personality. Perhaps my feelings about generic, lifeless rooms are just atypical.

TheSOB88 17y ago
They were expecting a class to be taught in it, so it wasn't the vile pit of hour-long silent pastel neutrality.

jff 17y ago

Here's some anecdotal info that bothered me when I saw it. I've graded several CS 1 courses and found that out of the class of 20-30, there might be 2 or 3 women, tops. Fine and good, since my school's engineering dept is 87% male and the CS dept is 92% male. However, the thing I noticed was that too many of these girls did poorly in the first few weeks and frequently dropped the course altogether; I'm not sure what they did then, since you can't really do any CS/IT/SE/CE degree without CS 1. Of the guys, maybe 1 or 2 would drop. Why does this happen? My school is trying hard to get more women in CS and engineering fields, which may mean poorly-qualified girls are being accepted and pushed into these degrees; are we just a statistical anomaly? The numbers in the article would seem to indicate otherwise. Anyone else have insights from their own grading/teaching experiences? Oh, and regarding pair programming, it's the best possible way to make sure you won't want to see your friend's face for another week, because half the time one of you will want to do something the other one just doesn't "get", so you sit there and explain it repeatedly when you could have just implemented it by yourself, all the while watching your teammate type with a speed and error frequency generally associated with senile chimpanzees.

notaddicted 17y ago
The article mentions that the proportion of women in biology is 60%. So maybe the women that could be doing well in computer science are seeking out the greater competition and camaraderie of the biology scene. Self criticism: 1. Blame the victim? 2. 60% still isn't a supermajority like in CompSci/Eng. Self affirmation: 1. Personal experience affirms. I have met more (in number) intelligent talented female students taking chem and bio disciplines. Example: last weekend I met a girl whose father taught one of my computer engineering courses, wearing a shirt that said "neuroscience".
araneae 17y ago
The comment above you (well right now) indicates that women are less experienced coming into introductory classes. It makes sense that they'll have a higher failure rate, as it's difficult to compete against people who know more than you.
- 17y ago

patrickgzill 17y ago

Does the heavy-equipment industry have similar discussions? "Hey, how come there aren't more wimmin running our Caterpillar D9s in the Brazilian rainforest?" Oh yeah, Philip Greenspun points out science is a dead end job for any ambitious woman: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

sethg 17y ago
You mean, like this? http://www.sistersinthebuildingtrades.org/ http://www.sistersinthebuildingtrades.org/ If you go to the "About Us" → "Our Supporters" menu item, you see a list of donations, and the majority of donors are labor unions.
- patrickgzill 17y ago
  Donations for 2009 under $4k ; donations for 2008 under $15K ... sorry this is not a significant organization.
  - sethg 17y ago
    It's not the only group of people interested in the subject of getting more women involved in the traditionally-male building trades occupations. If you want to find more on the subject, you can Google for it yourself.

msluyter 17y ago

I'd like to play devil's advocate[1] for a second: why is the lack of women in CS a problem? Whatever the merit of all these explanations -- it's perceived as dorky, low status, overly masculine, etc... -- the one thing I don't see is a strong desire amongst women to be in the field. It'd be one thing if there were barriers like overt sexism (and perhaps there are), or if you often heard the refrain, "you know, I'd really like to be a computer programmer, but I can't because of XYZ..." AFAICT, the real culprit here appears to be self-selection. Assuming that's the case, who cares? Why all the hand wringing? One downside I see is the lack of a "woman's perspective," which, while admittedly important in many fields, seems mostly irrelevant in a field where stuff either works or it doesn't. The other is a lack of interest in the field overall, but it seems a constant source of debate (see any H1B visa thread) as to whether we have a shortage or a glut of qualified workers. [1] This shouldn't be read as a position I'm strongly committed to. EDIT: Criticisms of this post thus far are mostly along the lines of a) a woman's perspective matters more than I give it credit for and b) "works or doesn't" is too simplistic. Fair enough. I admit my argument wasn't particularly nuanced (purposefully), hence the "devil's advocate" label. Questions I would ask are: wrt point a), is this something we can empirically validate? Or should we just assume any gender imbalance is inherently problematic? I'm not necessarily against the latter view, but I'd like to see it addressed explicitly.

pgbovine 17y ago
> One downside I see is the lack of a "woman's perspective," which, while admittedly important in many fields, seems mostly irrelevant in a field where stuff either works or it doesn't. a particularly keen insight i got from talking to a female college friend (who was a CS major) is that the "women's perspective" might be more relevant than people think even in a supposedly objective field where things either work or don't ... because men and women see the world differently, women might be able to come up with different high-level design, low-level debugging, or software team management strategies that an all-male team might not think of ... of course, i don't have any concrete examples to back up this vague hand-wavy statement, but i think there's something there
- anamax 17y ago

waynerad 17y ago

This article misrepresent's Samuel Gosling's research. It says that Gosling's experiments show that people can make "surprisingly accurate" assessments of strangers by looking at their personal space. In fact Gosling's research shows that people can form a more accurate assessment from a first impression (even a still photo) than they can from looking at someone's personal space (such as a bedroom or cubicle), and in fact people get many things wrong by looking at someone's personal space. If you want to know exactly what you can and can't tell about someone's personality from looking at their personal space, get his book.

whimsy 17y ago
You seem to be referencing this: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/scales_we.htm#Personal%20Living%20Space%20Cue%20Inventory http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/scal... Is that correct?

wushupork 17y ago

quote: "She interviewed at Motorola, a cell phone company, and Adobe, a graphic design company." - The person who wrote this article didn't even bother researching the companies. Motorola does a heck of a lot more than just cell phones. And saying Adobe is a graphic design company is like saying GE is a refrigerator company.

gcheong 17y ago

I would like to see a study that shows if the increase in women in other science and engineering fields can be attributed to anything those fields specifically did to attract more women or if it can be attributed to something else entirely.

srn 17y ago

I like this article because it points out women are also geeky and that it's OK to be geeky. Women just may tend to have a slightly different way of expressing that geekiness. You want girls to feel comfortable because you want the girls who are good at CS to go into CS. This is independent of how many women go in total. But since we're at it, let's talk about the biology arguments: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/17/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-numbers-of-women-in-somputer-science-hint-it-doesnt/ http://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/17/how-does-biology-explain-... http://www.mun.ca/cwse/Cannon,Elizabeth.pdf http://www.mun.ca/cwse/Cannon,Elizabeth.pdf according to the above study, undergraduate women in engineering showed comparatively a higher interest in math than men though slightly lower interest in engineering and yet lower interest in physics. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/ Through additional work CMU increased their percentage of women in CS from 8% to 1995 to 42% in 2000. One thing I recall is that women were not as experienced when they first got into CS and had to work harder. However they believed they had caught up by junior year.

orangecat 17y ago
But since we're at it, let's talk about the biology arguments The geekfeminism link addresses the almost-strawman argument that women don't have the math or analytical skills needed for CS. It doesn't address the possibility that there are biological reasons for differing levels of interest in the field.
- srn 17y ago
  Yes, the first link addresses a strawman but I bring it up because other people still bring it up. The second link discusses interests and influences for female undergrads majoring in some kind of engineering, not CS, though I still think it is somewhat relevant. I find the influence on family members to be the most interesting. The third link has papers specifically related to interest. One is titled "The Anatomy of Interest." It discusses why women who started college enthusiastic about CS ended up leaving.

pavelludiq 17y ago

Heres some anecdotes for you. Im a guy, i gave up on programming for a while because i perceived it as both boring and dry. I didn't want to work in a cubicle, so i decided that maybe some of my other hobbies, like photography, drawing or writing could become my career. I knew i was a techie, I've grown up with dissembling stuff and figuring out how stuff works and making stuff, its just that i didn't see programming the same way i saw drawing in my notebook. I do now. If there are women reading this, and you LOVE making stuff, don't let stereotypes get in your way. If you don't like assholes don't work with them, if you don't like cubicles don't work in them, if you don't like smelly apartments with star trek posters on the wall, don't work there. Build your own environment, find like minded individuals and MAKE THINGS. I don't know if being a woman makes this harder, it probably does. Me, i can handle asshole nerds and their smelly apartments(i am one), but i avoid dry and sterile offices and bureaucracy as much as i can. Perhaps the extra effort isn't worth it, if i couldn't work in an environment of my taste, i probably wouldn't be a programmer, and be an artist instead, even though i SUCK as an artist a lot more than i suck as a programmer, and i don't find it as much fun as i used to when i sat bored in a classroom in high school.

jasongullickson 17y ago

Since when does science have anything to do with anyone feeling "accepted"? I just spent 12 minutes reading the dialog here and perhaps this post is a result of an emotional response but seriously, most people I know involved in computer science (that are any good) got there by persevering enormous social discomfort. If you have a love and a passion for this work you will do it and no amount of messy labs and Star Wars posters is going to change that. Maybe I'm missing the point and correct me if I'm wrong, but allot of computer science has already been created/invented/defined by women (the first compiler, arguably the first programming language, etc.). So if you have something to contribute, pull up a keyboard and start hacking; computer science is one of the few arts/professions where today you need little more than a computer and an internet connection to become as good as your talent, creativity and willingness to invest the time will allow. "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

derwiki 17y ago

Where do these uber nerdy programmers with poor hygiene habits work? I've worked at a large corporation and a small start up in Silicon Valley, and I'm hard pressed to think of any. Is this a minority that's somehow become the stereotype for everybody?

cadwag 17y ago

The overall lesson to learn from the article is "Both men and women decide if they belong in an environment based off cues from the environment itself." That seems clear enough, but I started to think about how the lessons learned here might be applied elsewhere. Namely, how could this lesson be applied to help us, my fellow geek friends, out with the ladies? Basically, what I'm saying is that if you want women to feel comfortable around you and in your surrounding (ie home or office), then you have to provide some cues to make them feel like they belong - barring that, at least remove the cues that make them feel like they definitely don't. I'm not saying redecorate your apartment with pink unicorns everywhere, but maybe just start off small: - Replace the 1-foot-tall Yoda replica with a potted plant - Replace the wall of empty Mountain Dew cans with a bottle of water on your desk Like I said, just simple things to make any potential women that might see your environment avoid the feeling that they "simply don't belong here." I know the article isn't really about how to improve your odds with the ladies, but I see no reasons not to apply the lessons they are learning with actual research to other areas of our lives - especially one that our demographic has historically had difficulty with. For once we are getting info on how to make women feel more comfortable that is backed by actual research as opposed to mere speculation and guesswork. Why wouldn't we try to make use of that information in as many ways as possible?

ja27 17y ago

There aren't very many women in CS because there aren't very many women in CS. It's a "social norm" issue. How many girls deciding on college can look to a woman in the field? How many of their friends are going on to major in CS? Or will even tell them that it's a good idea? It's similar to another question: Why aren't there more African-American backpackers? The number I see tossed around a lot is that only 4% of backpackers are African-American.

nzmsv 17y ago

A question for all the male programmers here. Do you really think that the single most important fact about you is your sex? I'm going to guess, no. So why are we trying to lump 50% of the population together into one bucket? There is no single unifying thing for every single woman out there. If there is, it will be either: a) something all (most) humans want, such as the desire to be respected, or b) something the woman herself considers relatively insignificant Guess what, CS will never appeal to "the generic woman", just like it won't appeal to "the generic man". This is simply because they don't exist. This may come as a surprise, but not all women like the color pink, or cooking. And I personally don't understand the appeal of watching football on TV. Both my wife and I enjoy our video game nights together though. So, in conclusion, don't market CS "for girls". Market "CS for smart people who want to make things". This is what's relevant, not gender.

elblanco 17y ago

This is a problem I've personally never understood well. Of all fields, the CS (I mean "software") field seems particularly eager to have female representation. Women generally score well in math and logic tests, perform well in school, etc. Anecdotally some of the better students in my CS undergrad coursework were female. In some industries (e.g. gaming), getting women into the development side of things would revolutionize the industries by opening the market to 50% of the population by producing products that cater to that demographic. It just seems that fewer women enjoy doing the kinds of things you have to do to be successful in this particular field than in some other. That's not to say there aren't women who participate in the field, but I've found, anecdotally, that they tend to view it as paycheck instead of passion (and maybe not insignificantly, the lions share appear to come from Asian countries with those country's concepts of work ethics and good jobs fueling most of those women). I think there are far more males who, for whatever reason, feel passionate about learning to build software. Related, I've found anecdotally that most "geek girls" I've met are not as much into the substance of geekdom as they are into the image of geekdom. I've met lots of women with Pac Man t-shirts and binary watches at Anime festivals who couldn't give a rats ass about clock cycle counts for MOV operations on different revisions of the 80486 chips, but I've met lots of guys in the same clothing who owned aged dog-eared copies of Intel's multi-thousand page CPU Guidebooks (and read them for escapism). For guys, seeing another guy dressed out of the ThinkGeek catalogue is a powerful signal of relevant knowledge, an ice-breaker of sorts as to how to relate. While there certainly are real geek women, their cultural appearance doesn't necessarily provide the same signaling. So when a geek chick shows up, the conversation switches basically to something less geeked out (at least in my experience) out of politeness. I suppose this has two sides to it, the geek chick isn't then immersed into the kinds of topical discussions about xyz algorithm so she doesn't learn about it which cascades into never really getting as good as the boys, but to the boys, they learned about this on their own, in isolation, because they enjoyed it, and can't understand why anybody has to really be "coached" into becoming a geek. full disclosure, I met my wife in a programming course, and she most definitely looks at it as paycheck