

How does biology explain the low numbers of women in computer science - DanielRibeiro
http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-numbers-of-women-in-cs-hint-it-doesnt?player=js

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nickolai
Um... That was remarkably content-free. _Almost everyone_ i've met in CS so
far knows that 'men are better than women at math and/or CS' is an mountain-
sized stereotype with possibly a sand-grain sized nugget of truth to it.

Yes we men do have our share of die-hard macho morons, but symmetric attitudes
are not that hard to find in the feminist ranks either. In fact I think that
_in proportion_ to the number of men, we have less of these problematic types
in CS than in some other fields.

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zeteo
The Eastern European countries seem to be very good at getting women into
math, for some reason. I've met a disproportionate number of female math PhDs
who were from Eastern Europe, and the first woman to win the Putnam was from
Romania, I believe. It's just a question of education and societal
expectations, I think.

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leeHS
I'm male. My field is Forensic Science. It consists of about 80% women.
Doesn't matter which lab I go to, or which forensic education program I visit,
the percentage stays the same.

Why?

On a daily basis I'm dealing with very violent crimes. Why does this sort of
work appeal to women more than men?

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billybob
I'd be much more interested in a presentation that takes the following tack:
we know that some professions are mostly male, some mostly female, and some a
mix. Lets pick a bunch of careers from each category. Can we find any common
characteristics in those three groups? Can we form a model based on that with
predictive power - one that lets us say "based on what we know, we predict
that X% of radiologists will be female" and be reasonably accurate?

That would be much more useful than the constant "men are better at math" vs
"no they're not!" argument. And if there were interesting findings, someone
else could try to determine how much of the difference was social or
biological.

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billybob
TL;DR - "It doesn't. Women and men are about equally good at math. Also, CS
doesn't require much math ability."

Actually, I don't see how those two ideas form a coherent argument.

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jerfelix
It becomes more interesting if you add a third: "This logic was presented by a
female mathematician."

(Before I get modded down into oblivion, I should state that I agree with both
points: Women and men are about equally good at math. Also, CS doesn't require
much math ability.

I just think it's interesting to analyze the argument's logic.)

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ja27
There are less women going into computer science because there are less women
in computer science. It's an issue of the social norm, not math ability,
biology, or anything else. Most people, male or female, will pick colleges,
majors, careers, etc. based on what their friends do and think. If none of
your friends are going into computer science, you'll feel uncomfortable
choosing it and will go into microbiology like your friends.

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ghc
I thought this was going to be about how effective recruitment by Biology
programs is responsible for reducing the female enrollment in CS programs.

Instead it just tells us what we already know.

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DupDetector
There are some comments from the submission two years ago when this was new:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=889353>

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Tichy
So even though more men study maths, there are not more men who are good at
maths than women (according to the chart)? That seems a bit depressing or at
least disillusioning with respect to higher education. Maybe men are on
average worse in math and only by studying more they can keep up with women?

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tuananh
Programmers - not so much math skill. Computer Scientists - hell yeah

