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It's perfectly acceptable for me to see fewer women or men or people of a particular socioeconomic or religious background in one field or another. That alone d
by DaniFong 17y ago
It's perfectly acceptable for me to see fewer women or men or people of a particular socioeconomic or religious background in one field or another. That alone doesn't bother me, except insofar as it can be a signal to another problem.
One thing that does concern me greatly is that there are many women who are interested in science and technology, and especially computer science, who are at some point turned off. It appears to really begin around junior high and high school, and it continues through college.
My concern is that we're losing a lot of interested and bright minds, who might be excited in the course of actually working in technology, who are being turned away for some reason.
I think it's important to try to understand the reasons before we pass judgment upon them.
But it might raise some questions and inspire some solutions that generally makes work in technology more enjoyable. Not just for women; for everyone. Consider the reaction to pair programming. Both women and men just plain tended to like it more. That seems to show that there are many people out there who would enjoy working in technology were it not as solitary. That's a major discovery. And I think we've just scratched the surface.
- pm 17y agoAnecdotally, I've found working through and solving a difficult problem together reinforces social bonds. Even introverts crave some form of social interaction. It almost seems obvious after the fact.
- Ruchira 17y agoI'd recommend _Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing_ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262632691?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwruchir-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0262632691 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262632691?ie=UTF8&tag=... by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. They studies reasons why fewer women were enrolled in the CMU CS program, and successfully applied their findings to raise enrollment while maintaining graduation rate. They found that what was detrimental for women was detrimental for everybody, but women tended to be on the margin and so were more severely impacted. One issue was that women were much less likely to have spent a lot of time with computers before arriving. Another was that women were more concerned about practical applications.
- elblanco 17y agoGreat recommendation, I'm looking forward to reading it. Hopefully this will fill in some obvious gaps in understanding I have on the subject.