I don’t have one other than institutionalized and covert sexism and misogyny.
Does computer field attract misogynists or the nature of the work converts good men to misogynists?
“The misogynists. You may have heard of them. But what you may not realize is that they can be anywhere around you. They are notoriously hard to spot. They do not come with a label attached”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mysteries-love/201502/12-ways-spot-misogynist
Having watched this closely for a few years, I think that there are many aspects to this issue of getting more women into CS and retaining them. I know there are misogynists, but I think there are many other aspects to the problem than just that. I hope that the the percent of misogynists at work is relatively small.
Other contributors are:
- Girls less likely to be encouraged to make math a priority and fewer end up in advanced math.
- Girls are also more likely to be guided by influencers toward more social activities over pursuits like computer science in middle school and high school.
- Girls are often interested in jobs that help people. Many girls do not realize how much CS and engineering jobs help people.
(because of sexism)
(speculative, but even if true, it’s a proximal cause, at best, and almost certainly a function of sexism)
(Speculative & gender essentialist, and if you’re not arguing that this is biologically deterministic, then it’s cultural, and also a function of sexism)
@marvin100 The Internet is free, PC’s ubiquitous and the number of free educational coding sites myriad. Kids self-select when they start developing computing skills as early teens. Girls just don’t take advantage of these resources in the same numbers or intensity as boys. That’s not the fault of Silicon Valley or the university system.
@patertrium - yes, but it is a function of gender expectations.
D21 enjoys working through Art of Problem Solving" math curriculum to build both conception and procedural fluency. However, she has no interest in learning how to code. She has been to several coding summer camps. She has no interest in working on it at home.
I do think she was intimidated at camp with the boys being very advanced.
Also, while she enjoys stretching her brain with math, she does not want to do any math competitions.
@marvin100 It’s a function also of evolution and teen development. Early teen girls are becoming fertile and need to develop social intelligence that will result in making good choices for safety and optimal passing on of genes. They’re every bit as intelligent and capable. In fact they may have some advantages for math and comp skills. But mucking about with code for hours on end may not be the biological imperative of that time period. And at that time boys are racing ahead.
"Much2learn wrote:
Other contributors are:
- Girls less likely to be encouraged to make math a priority and fewer end up in advanced math.
(because of sexism)
2. Girls are also more likely to be guided by influencers toward more social activities over pursuits like computer science in middle school and high school.
(speculative, but even if true, it’s a proximal cause, at best, and almost certainly a function of sexism)
3. Girls are often interested in jobs that help people.
(Speculative & gender essentialist, and if you’re not arguing that this is biologically deterministic, then it’s cultural, and also a function of sexism)"
I agree with your comments on the first two. It is clearly sexism, but I would add that I think that much of it is unintended.
With the number three, I am not arguing that it is or isn’t biologically determined or cultural. I honestly do not know enough to comment on that. I would not rule out the possibility of a combination of the two, but I am guessing.
Biased much? Read “Much2learn”'s post and others. The supposed “misogyny” some see is most likely due to awkward, tactless nerds being around women. I have no doubt there are some real jerks out there … but “institutionalized”? Nope. I worked with several women in my software career and never saw them treated different than anyone else. Of course, now that the big buzzwords have been thrown at the profession, any woman who is in it will think “institutional misogyny” when they get the inevitable “what were you thinking” criticism when they screw up something (which I heard when I screwed up).
So, when I’m trying to gently encourage my daughter, a junior in HS, to explore CS I’m having to battle both the “nerd” stigma and the “institutional misogyny” stuff. She’s doing great in AP-CSP and thinks it’s easy. I can see that she has the mind for programming, which few do. The last thing I need is for people to tell her that it’s hopeless to continue due to some sort of institutionalized bias.
Sure. I have no interest in disentangling intentional and unintentional sexism, and women subjected to it probably don’t care too much about the answer either.
That’s awesome, and I don’t at all think it’s “hopeless”–in fact, I see a lot of reason for hope, and conversations like this one are part of why I feel that way. Best of luck with your daughter! May her path be smooth and fulfilling.
This sort of evolutionary psychology is almost entirely speculative–we have almost no idea how our prehistoric ancestors lived. But more importantly, we’ve done a great job of proving that we’re not slaves to biology, thankfully.
@marvin100 Yes my evolutionary psych explanation is indeed speculative. However it does fit with my personal observation of some highly motivated computer kids and their cadre of extremely bright and achieving friends - female and male.
But blaming “institutional sexism” has a still higher VooDoo quotient and as noted by Much2learn harbors a poison pill of “why try” whining.
Quite the contrary–claims of biological determinism suggest inescapable fatalism whereas identifying cultural biases and privileges points out that they’re not inescapable “facts of nature” and, like all other cultural values and tendencies, they can be changed. @patertrium
As for the kids you know, well, anecdata, etc.
(I’ll also add that we really only know like three things about human nature: we’re hardwired for language (Chomsky, Pinker, Nicaraguan Sign Language), we’re hardwired for math (Dehane), and we’re hardwired for some sort of moral judgment (Bloom)).
If I had had a daughter, I would have tried to get her coding more at age 9, 10. But I would encourage wherever her interests led her. I definitely wouldn’t cripple her with excuses like “institutional sexism”. She’d be too busy discovering and creating. I’m confident she would have succeeded. But I’ll never know for sure having propagated all XY.
Totally agreed–institutional sexism shouldn’t hold anyone back and certainly shouldn’t be used to prevent women from breaking those barriers and maintain the (sexist) status quo; quite the opposite–it should be used to drive us forward to social change.
@patertrium @marvin100 "I definitely wouldn’t cripple her with excuses like “institutional sexism”.
I have gone the other way with my approach to this, and challenged her to forget excuses and meet it head on. I have told her that this environment means that ties are likely to go against her, and so to stand out and get credit, she needs to be better than the boys. At least for her, that has been effective.
Hear, hear, @Much2learn !
Came across this article today and thought of this thread…
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-harvey-mudd-tech-women-adv-snap-story.html