Computer programming once had much better gender balance than it does today. What went wrong?

SatchelSF · February 2019

I found this ironic in the article, regarding the very first successful woman they profiled:

But even as Wilkes established herself as a programmer, she still craved a life as a lawyer. “I also really finally got to the point where I said, ‘I don’t think I want to do this for the rest of my life,’ ” she says. Computers were intellectually stimulating but socially isolating.

Could it just be as simple as males on average prefer working with things and females on average prefer working with people?

OHMomof2 · February 2019

I suppose the question I have about that idea is, what changed? Women used to enjoy working on things but around the 1980s most stopped wanting to?

OHMomof2 · February 2019

@yucca10

This may be attributed to more opportunities for women to have a decent salary and be respected in fields other than STEM in rich European countries.

It might indeed be that there are simply more and better options for women now, over software coding.

I'm not sure I believe that is the reason there are fewer now, and here, but it probably contributes.

It doesn't mean women are less capable to go into STEM fields, or might enjoy them less.

Agreed. But STEM as a whole is a different thing, this article focuses on software coding - computer programming - specifically. Because lots of women used to do it and now far fewer do (as a % of majors and jobs vs men).

lookingforward · February 2019

Interesting, @Data10 . I think we need to ask where these women are going. At one point, late 80s?, I wanted to shift into a more engineering role (including returning to school to make it official) and the engineers around me were adamant that the earnings potential and the variety of challenges were much better in marketing, (which was the broad category for what I was doing, in a hybrid role.) At that time, engineers tended to top out early. Maybe in the 50k range, while marketing allowed a lot more.

What I did find remarkable about my role was that the need for highly qualified staff was high and *no one* stopped to say, "But she's woman." True in other companies Iworked for, as well. I mostly worked for start-ups and appreciate that.

Maybe the question is, why do more men stay in CS, keep coding, not branch out. ?

roycroftmom · February 2019

I don't think it is a pipeline problem at all. Few high school girls study or college women major in CS, so it won't just naturally fix itself in the future. CS coding can be very well paying, and it is unfortunate that many women don't even think of it as a career option. Hackathons may appeal to some, but bear very little relation to the actual work world, so I'm not sure why participation in them is considered desirable by employers.

1NJParent · February 2019

Hackathons may appeal to some, but bear very little relation to the actual work world, so I'm not sure why participation in them is considered desirable by employers.

Hackathons are about collaboration and solving problems, and major ones generally have well-known corporate sponsors (Googles, Facebook, JP Morgan, etc.). The companies sponsor these events for their own benefits (e.g. discovering new talents), but most student seem to participate primarily out of their intense interests. For some of them, it certainly doesn't hurt to establish relationships with the sponsors via these events.

1NJParent · February 2019

Maybe the question is, why do more men stay in CS, keep coding, not branch out. ?

Perhaps these men are passionate about CS? Don't we encourage our kids to pursue their passions?

Anyway, coding is only a small part of CS. CS is not about coding but solving problems computationally. AI, a branch of CS, will likely make many of the programming jobs themselves disappear. Some of those who pursue these programming jobs may become disappointed.

kiddie · February 2019

This topic fascinates me and I even had a thread about this a while ago when another study on this topic appeared.

When I studied math and computer science in the late 70's I was in the minority as a woman. However, there were several women in the company where I worked who were above me and could serve as role models. I was successful and did not feel that the culture was negative towards women at that time.

Things definitely shifted, as the article states and I think the article is correct in saying lots of it is cultural. Horrible sexism in the high tech companies, which is not only allowed but encouraged. In what other industry could managers get away with only hiring those who are "like" them (as is discussed in the article). Why would an intelligent woman want to subject herself to this type of behavior when another pursuit would welcome her and her skills?

My daughter, a recent college grad with a Math degree, was in a smaller minority than I was. Many tough Math classes started out pretty even but ended up overwhelmingly male (so many women dropped the class). She had only one female Math teacher in her entire college career (so no female role models). She currently has a quantitative job (not coding), and is again in the minority. However, her company's culture is fair and women are welcome and respected.

She had an internship in a tech company where she clearly saw that her boss as a woman was treated disrespectfully. Nothing her boss said was taken seriously by the male engineers in the room. It was obvious, blatant, and an accepted part of the company culture. She knew that she wouldn't ever want to work in that type of environment and sought something different when she graduated.

I think the college programs are a good start, as are the initiatives for younger girls ("girls code programs"), but the industry will need a huge shake up from the top down to make any significant changes. Tech companies need to stop being run by the "boys only" nerd club.

ProfessorPlum168 · February 2019

The problem is pretty simple. CS is still rooted in math and science. From empirical evidence, females in general start losing interest in math and science by the time as early as junior high, even in our area which is 70-90% Asian. We see this in our school numbers year after year. I would say that for my kid’s HS Calc BC and Physics C classes, 80% were male.

kiddie · February 2019

I can't find the data (my google skills are failing me), but women in other sciences is much higher than CS or Math. So the argument about girls not being interested in science is wrong. I even saw an article (again with charts that showed the numbers), saying that CS and Math were losing bright science-loving women to Bio because Bio was more welcoming to women. The numbers of women in Medical school is also high.

1NJParent · February 2019

To succeed to in math and science (including computer science) often require single-mindedness. Most girls just aren't "wired" that way, perhaps because of cultural and societal biases. Girls tend to do well, and in fact better than boys, in math and sciences in HS. But how many of them win, or even participate in, Olympiad-level competitions in those subjects? Competitions at these levels require extremely high levels of dedication and single-mindedness. Looking for sexism is not the answer.

ProfessorPlum168 · February 2019

@kiddie https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/28/technology/girls-math-science-engineering/index.html

This applies in the US as well.

kiddie · February 2019

Found it - from data from the national science foundation between 1991-2010 - "we find that there is no gender difference in the biosciences, the social sciences, or mathematics, and not much of a difference in the physical sciences. The only STEM fields in which men genuinely outnumber women are computer science and engineering."

1NJParent · February 2019

CS and Math were losing bright science-loving women to Bio because Bio was more welcoming to women.

Biology is much less math-intensive than CS or physical sciences. In fact, you can't even compare. Biology has always attracted more female students and one of the reasons is precisely because it doesn't need as much the hardcore math and physics.

allyphoe · February 2019

That trend is even true at the high school level.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-1/at01-10.pdf

Girls as a percent of all AP test takers in the HS graduating class of 2012:
Biology: 59
Environmental: 55
Statistics: 52
AB Calc: 49
Chemistry: 47
BC Calc: 41
Physics B: 35
Physics C Mechanics: 26
Physics C E&M: 23
Comp Sci A: 19

kiddie · February 2019

I think the problem is not with ability but opportunity or perceived opportunity. In 1975 only 22% of medical school students were female, in 2017 it was over 50%. Did women get better at bio in the past 40 years, or did the perception of success and opportunity change?

In the 70's when a larger percentage of women went into CS was it because they believed it was a field in which they could succeed, or because women then were better able to do the necessary "hard core" math than women today?

belmom · February 2019

As a former programming mom, with 2 math/CS kids, one boy one girl, I feel I have a little insight here. I left programming in the late 80's because, well, the Wall Street money was better for women in finance (front office) vs. being a quant jock/programmer (back office) in the late 80's; then I moved into financial management. Now things are different.

My kids both like fintech, but son took the CS route and it looks like daughter will take the math/econ/data route, because her HS computer clubs and AI circles and the like are not girl-friendly. When she walks into CS Club meetings (which her brother was president of in his day) they say "this is for advanced programmers" assuming that girl=non-programmer. She does online contests like USACO, girl-only hackathons, and many math competitions, but the CS ones with lots of boy teams just won't take on girls, no matter how many years advanced their programming skills over the guys. Their loss.

mathmom · February 2019

I think the problem is not with ability but opportunity or perceived opportunity. In 1975 only 22% of medical school students were female, in 2017 it was over 50%. Did women get better at bio in the past 40 years, or did the perception of success and opportunity change?

Or did women decide that they would fight the sexism in med school and hospitals? In the early 1970s a pair of Duke professors published a truly appalling anatomy text book. Enough women objected that it is no longer in print. I really think the only way CS culture will change is for enough women to work at the badly behaving companies and changing them from the inside. It's no fun and it's not fair, but I really think that's the way change happens.

Back in 1975 I took an intro CS class, but I just didn't like the fiddly stuff required to debug code. It never occured to me it was a boy's field. I ended up in architecture instead - another male dominated field. My architecture class in the early 1980s was 50/50, but if you look at stats for women in positions of power in architecture it's still mostly men.

1NJParent · February 2019

In 1975 only 22% of medical school students were female, in 2017 it was over 50%. Did women get better at bio in the past 40 years, or did the perception of success and opportunity change?

Perhaps women have become more passionate about bio and medical careers? There's nothing wrong with that, even if women take the majority of jobs (equally good paying jobs, btw) in those areas. Why do we have to have equal representation in every single area? We all have different talents and we should be allowed to do the things we're most talented in and passionate about, regardless of our gender (or anything else).

ucbalumnus · February 2019

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/cracking-the-code:-why-aren-t-more-women-majoring-in-computer-science may be of interest.

It does note that "A paradoxical finding is that even when men’s and women’s achievements are similar, women typically have lower confidence in their programming abilities than men."

Computer programming once had much better gender balance than it does today. What went wrong?

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