The New York Times has an interesting article about colleges trying to reverse a steep decline in the number of women taking computer science:
For decades, undergraduate women have been moving in ever greater numbers into science and engineering departments at American universities. Yet even as they approach or exceed enrollment parity in mathematics, biology and other fields, there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science.
Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.
The article goes on to talk about how women are the “canaries in the coal mine” and the factors driving us out of computer science will eventually drive away men too. And it talks about some of the things colleges are doing to try and attract more women back to the field. The Times also hosted a discussion. The comments range from the inane (computer programming = addictive behavior, and women are less prone to addiction) to the hopeful (if women saw how amazing and useful CS was, you’d have more women in the field).
One of the interesting (and controversial) statements in the article and discussion: more women would be attracted to computer if there was less of an emphasis on programming. Some commenters at Slashdot compare this to taking the math problems out of a mathematics course, provoking this comment:
For fucks sake, I think a lot of people here in slashdot should go and study Computer Science to realize that CS is NOT all about programming, there are countless branches of Computer Science where programming has *nothing* to do. … It is completely possible to study in a subfield of Computer Science (in fact in many of them) without knowing how to program (in fact, many of my fellow PhD students do exactly that, oh, and my own supervisor [a Prof. in Comp. Science] does not “code”).
In some ways, the changes to the computer science program at Carnegie Mellon sound as if the department has learned something from programs like Mills College’s interdisciplinary studies program. There’s more of an emphasis on looking for well-rounded students instead of students with tons of programming experience. They’re looking for “high overall achievement and broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders.”
Ah, the old “dumb down the major/lowering standards” argument comes back!
I really wish that articles like this would focus less on “how can we let women know how cool CS is?” and more on “gee, maybe we should, you know, look at changing the overall culture of CS?” Because I think the latter is more of a problem than the former.
btw, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Carnegie Mellon learned from Mills College – CMU has been at this work for a long time and done extensive research on the subject. Check out Margolis and Fisher’s book Unlocking the Clubhouse for more information on their efforts.
jane, i hear ya. it’s like we’re 5 years old and need to be convinced to put the barbie down and start using the computer for our state of the art recipe program.
maybe women don’t like to work with people who treat them like crap for stupid reasons and abuse them. naaaah… we must just be shortsighted and dumb.
There is a very relevant Mills-Carnegie Mellon connection – Lenore Blum, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at CMU since 1999, founded the Department of Math and Computer Science at Mills College in 1976. Dr. Blum is also one of the founders of the Math/Science Network, which developed and currently licenses and coordinates the annual Expanding Your Horizons conferences. Still, it is also true that CMU was already taking steps to bridge the gender gap before Dr. Blum joined the SCS faculty; the program described in “Unlocking the Clubhouse” started in 1995.
You know, I have a passion for programming. I took Pascal and C++ in high school, would constantly be found in the science/computer shack at camp, and when I was in college I taught myself PHP and MySQL so I could more effectively program my websites.
I even had hopes of getting a comp sci minor. What prevented me, however, was that I had been constantly stunted in math and so I didn’t have the background to pass calculus. My only other option was to take a no credit pre-cal class and then retake calculus. Taking a no credit class is pretty much a waste of money, and since my first year comp sci class fulfilled my science requirement, I went on to do a minor in Classical Myth and Religion.
In the end it’s worked out — if I had gotten a programming minor, I might have fallen back on that, rather than seeking out schools in Japan that offer video game planning/design courses. But I do wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had been discouraged from math at every turn, or had had the will to fight for a proper math education, and had been able to do a comp sci minor.
Do not believe that being well-rounded in CS is the way to go. It is all about specific skills sets. What drives most people out of CS are the insane standards of ‘2 years experience with version 9 or 10′. You WILL NOT get the job if you have 5 years of experience with version 8.5. nuts … and also a lot of the “b” word. I am frequently the only woman in development/engineering/testing and have been called ‘a fuxxing douche bag’ and a ‘bixch’.
Yah, most of the pioneers are decidedly non-well-rounded and weird to boot. C’mon, Linus Torvalds crunched raw pasta while developing Linux.
The thing you’re not going to like, and you’ll probably censor my comment for saying, is that the eccentricity of a lot of the top performers is part of what drives women away. Many women don’t want to be around weird guys who don’t bathe and can’t make eye contact. You’re probably fine with it, and some women do like geeks, but most don’t. And given the enormous importance placed on conformity and social skills in mainstream society (excessive in my view…we took the ‘cool’ Bush over the ‘geeky’ Gore and look what happened to our country) I think the weirdos should have at least one refuge.
Sorry, this is something I’m passionate about even though I am no longer even considering a computer science career.