I was never harassed, more so I never heard about it at any of my 9 places of employment in the past 34 years. D. (MD) never was harassed or heard of it either. I never heard of it from my DIL (graphic designer) either or from my SIL (engineer). Pretty stupid to let few of those infractions to be an obstacle in your goal in professional career. I cannot believe that one young girl would say to herself: “I would not want to go to the CS / engineering / whatever because there is a slight chance of being harassed.” I also cannot believe that TV shows would influence anybody’s decisions either, would be kind of silly. I assume that those in the science related fields do have brains of at least average capacity. Am I overestimating the young scientifically inclined girls’ brain power and ability to withstand the brainwashing?
Have you listened to the Planet Money story or at the very least looked at the graph, @MiamiDAP ?
I do not care about any stats on internet, I always base my decision making on my own experiences and the experiences of my family. If I listened to others, I would be absolutely nowhere in my life right now at the end of my professional career. I would be in my kitchen cooking dinners, not my favorite activity at all. And that is how I raise my own D. It looks silly to me to follow all this garbage. But if others prefer all these outside influences, then go ahead, let your dreams be demolished and experience the consequences of it.
We are in free country, may as well use this freedom while it lasts.
Medicine has already been outsourced. My radiologist is in Mumbai- the imaging center I use gives results within an hour, because they’ve got docs working overseas who read films and send back a report in real time. I imagine a radiologist earns 1/2 of what a doc earns in the US? Telemedicine is real and it’s coming to your local hospital my friends. An acquaintance who is a gastro-- with a successful practice and owns his own surgical center- just came back from a conference where every speaker hammered home the need to compete with overseas providers- cosmetic surgery, dental surgery, even bypass… all cheaper outside the US.
@sevmom wrote
At the time, we would hide our tools and our VEX parts in our boots or purses so they couldn’t take them. We also wrote my last name on the big parts that couldn’t be hidden, and I would go around to the other teams, find the pieces with my name on them and say “these don’t belong to you, take them off your robot.” We would find our robot partially disassembled all the time, so I started bringing it home with me at night rather than leaving it in the classroom.
The dad that was the co-head coach with the teacher had his kid doing ALL the programming for the robots originally, and he programmed our robot to run backwards. That’s when my older D stepped in and took over the programming for our robots, and teaching it to the rest of the team. I had a big argument with that dad over just who was allowed to program. I went and bought the software, installed it on my laptop, and brought my laptop in so they could use it to program because the dad insisted only his kid could do it.
We did address it with the teacher, he just shrugged and said “that’s what it’s like in robotics” (baloney). We talked to the (female) principal and she said that the entire VEX robotics was a volunteer, after school program run by the teacher, so her hands were tied-if she didn’t let him do what he wanted, there would be no robotics program at all.
So, it was challenging, but we learned to be tough and help ourselves, and several of the girls are still doing robotics. Our two all-girls teams (out of 8 total teams) took home more trophies those two years than any other teams in the history of the school.
Both my girls emailed the teacher once they were in high school offering to mentor teams DESPITE really not liking the teacher, because they wanted to help. He ignored them. I’ve heard that it has really gone downhill, which is a shame. I really hope they make it part of the curriculum at the middle school so it’s subject to more oversight.
What really bummed me out the most is that the boys, for the most part, were great kids, and they were inculcated into this type of behavior by the two adults. I would say to them “why would you steal our parts?” and they’d shrug and say “Coach told us to take them.” They were being taught that our robot was less important than their robot.
So not cool to do that to kids.
Yes, MiamiDAP, we know. That’s okay, but you seem to think that other forum members should also base their decision making on your recollections of your experience.
DW has had only a few instances of outright harassment. She has done well, some would say very well, in her career. I believe with every bone in my body that her prodigious talents would have elevated her even higher were it not for sexism. I also believe that she would have encountered less resistance in medicine, law, architecture, etc.
I’ve been reading with interest about the culture of cs, and I don"t know if I can adequately articulate my thoughts. I"ll try. There are 10 CS interns at the government facility where d spent the summer. Nine are men. Eight of those seem to be nice guys. One tried to take credit for some of D’s work. (She called him out on that with the mentor PDQ.). The one guy is probably just a horse’s patootie, so I can’t look at him and say the whole culture is anti-woman. But here’s the thing…he didn’t try that with any of his male colleagues. Something in the culture making him feel like he can go after the different member of the herd? Or just him?
Definitely agree with whoever said a lot of CS kids are really focused on their computers…spend their off hours gaming and hacking and whatnot. Makes it hard for anyone who wants to leave work at work sometimes (or who doesn’t p,at video games) to break in.
Ok, here’s a question. You brag about not listening to others, yet you have 16,000 posts on here.
So we should listen to your TENS OF THOUSANDS OF POSTS, but you’re not going to listen to any of ours?
Does that seem rational to you? Or does that seem really selfish? This is not a rhetorical question.
@MotherOfDragons , wow! Thirty years ago, I was not allowed to take physics in HS because the teacher would not teach girls. My father, an engineer at a national lab, agreed. Girls were not engineers. Thirty years later, your teacher is teaching the same lesson. I actually think the school would be better off wo the robotics club vs the what your teacher is teaching. He could have been a student in my teacher’s class.
@GTAustin, That is crazy that you were not allowed to take physics in HS. 40 years ago, I really enjoyed physics in HS. It was one of my favorite classes, taught by a fairly young guy , who made it interesting and fun. His dad was a roller coaster designer and the teacher was an interesting guy.
I agree about the Robotics club-better oversight is needed if it is going to continue. Sorry you had to go through that @MotherOfDragons . The dad sounds awful.
The original chart shows the number of women majoring in computer science equal to the number of women majoring in physical sciences in 1988 with comp sci majors on a downward trend and physical science majors on an upward trend since then. We have an article from the atlantic magazine describing blatant sexual harrassment which I completely belive but I have to note that all the examples are in physical sciences. I had thought that the majority of comp sci grads do not continue with graduate school and get involved in post docs and professor recommendations and all that stuff where these documented abuses seem to occur. Back to the original chart, I’m not understanding why the documented abuse in physical sciences grad school would cause computer science to be shunned and more majors physical sciences. Also, is robotics in the computer science department now or is all this bad behavior in the robotics area (which I also completely believe) a sidebar to the original question regarding computer science majors?
Well, over years I have seen more and more girls went into medical field, not even just medical schools, but also to Physician Assistance programs, Physical Therapy, nursing, with the first two still requiring the Graduate school education. The only logical explanation for this is that smart girls realize that they want a greater job security. CS does not provide a great job security, maybe on the coasts, but not in economically depressed places, that still are short in medical personnel, the problem that seem not to go away. I became more aware about this problem after my kid started her residency. I had no idea about horrendous hours the residents work for the little pay that they receive. But this is not the point. The point is that medicine as a field will provide secure employment with the level of security much higher than in any other field.
“That’s okay, but you seem to think that other forum members should also base their decision making on your recollections of your experience.” - the other forum members should base their decision making on whatever they wish. Nobody should listen to me, I have different experience than others and all others have their own unique experiences. Nobody is making decisions here on this post anyway, the name of this thread is “…STORY…”, it does not suggest solicitation of any advice.
Again, my DD, a rising senior in CE/CS, has found a very discriminatory, bigoted attitude with the CS undergrads. Much more than in her engineering classes. In engineering, she is an oddity but respected. In CS, she has derogatory and condescending remarks made even though she is in the top 10% of her class. She has not found this attitude in her 3 internships, 2 in CS.
My daughter (who was not a CS major - although I was back in the 80s) hangs out with all computer engineering and computer science majors. They all grew up playing video games (as did she - as we have had video games in our home since they were invented). However, she is the oddity - most girls her age (and the girls she knew as a kid) did not play video games. This has been cited as one reason for the gender gap - boys who grew up with video games and legos are going to become engineers and CS majors and girls who did not get these toys are not.
Glad to hear, as wife of an engineer and mom of two male engineers, that at least the engineering students are treating your daughter with respect. Sorry she is having a problem with the CS undergrads. That is unfortunate, but glad she has not found problems in her CS internships.
My D16 is planning to major in CS. When we visited the college she will attend they had a lunch with professors where you sat with a professor from the department you were interested in. The CS professor we sat by was female but all the other students were male. They were asking the typical brown nosing questions so I leaned it and asked (the admittedly brown nosing for a female prof. question), “What is it really like to be a female in CS here?”
She said, “I love it here but we desperately need more women in CS.” She then launched into the story of how Apple failed to put a period tracker in it’s health app. We had a great, long, animated three way discussion (prof, D16 and me) about the issue while the guys and their dads around us all turned green.
My younger DD is entering college next year going into CS. Based on my older DD experience, I did look for schools that appear to support women in CS to a greater degree. At the school she choose, one of the top professors is a woman who is very involved in getting women into CS. She takes undergrad women to conferences, has started a platform for women in cybersecurity and they have a strong Women in Computing club. I know that sounds sexist but I do think there is strength in numbers. I know there will still be issues but she will have a better support system then my older DD.
@user4321 – The original chart shows the percentage of women in CS. At the following site you can see the total number of CS degrees issued over time (includes men and women):
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-science-education-explosion/
There are huge cycles in the number of CS degrees corresponding to the early 1980s recession and the dotcom bust. Graphs I’ve found for other majors don’t show this at all. When you compare this to the original % of women in CS, each of those cycles correspond to a significant and permanent drop in the % of women in CS. It seems like more than pure coincidence.
This is an article that talks about the mid 80’s and the initial marketing of PC’s to boys, and the rise of the “techie” culture. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news-/what-happened-all-women-computer-science-1-180953111/
Curious if many of the posters on this topic are from a certain region of the country…as cc tends to be. And are the references here happening at older established firms? (I realize IBM is better than it use to be, it had to get that way or dissolve, old boy networks aren’t gonna survive going forward. But there are still old thinking workplaces out there.) My student’s best friends are 2 girls majoring in CS - they are loving it and doing fab in amazing internships in silicon valley. At young high tech companies, they are happily not seeing what is being discussed, at all. If you ask them about this issue, they look at you like you are speaking a foreign language. Gender is irrelevant in their world and how they are treated, at least so far. And yes, they play Pokeman Go.