
Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech - mirandak4
https://backchannel.com/melinda-gates-has-a-new-mission-women-in-tech-8eb706d0a903#.o4p0eghbt
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bonniemuffin
Melinda Gates says: "Some of the best programs, UW, Stanford, Berkeley — or
what [president] Maria Klawe is doing at Harvey Mudd — are finally looking at
that very first CS course. If it’s completely geared towards an 18-year-old
white male, and they are not thinking about role models for women or problem
sets they get for women, how do we keep [women] in the course?"

I can really see myself in this -- as a teenager I wrote a lot of code
recreationally, writing scripts to automate playing text-based computer games
("go north. a monster attacks!") and writing my own games.

It was the first CS classes that drove me away from it, and led me to think:

\- CS isn't for people like me

\- CS problems aren't interesting

\- CS doesn't do anything to make the world a better place.

It took me many years to come back around to the coding career I'm in today. I
really believe that small changes to the classes could've prevented me from
developing those misconceptions and being driven away from it.

~~~
tw04
Can you expand? Because I really, really don't understand. How do you "gear" a
programming course towards a gender? I can't recall a single example in any CS
course I ever had that was anything more than writing code. I honestly can't
even fathom how you would make that gender or race biased. It's mathematics
and programming.

~~~
bonniemuffin
Here's just one example of how little moments in class can impact student's
ideas of whether CS is interesting and whether they "belong" in it.

It's easy for CS teachers to get boys excited by introducing a new topic with
something like "these algorithms are important in VIDEO GAMES!" Boys are
vastly more likely to play video games than girls, so this example will likely
be much more motivating to boys than girls.

Girls are often socialized to highly value a career that helps other people.
An example like "these algorithms are important for helping doctors determine
which patients have cancer" may be more inspiring to them.

~~~
VeejayRampay
I think the male to female ratio in gaming at large is pretty much 1:1 now.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demograp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demographics_of_female_players)

~~~
bonniemuffin
Right there in your link:

"While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game,
only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers.
This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age
group."

They might play a game now and then, but women are less likely to identify
themselves as "gamers" or to think of gaming as a part of their identity. When
we think about creating an inclusive environment where students can see
themselves in the career, this is the sort of statistic to consider.

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jkot
> _fewer than one in five CS degrees are earned by women_

Boys born today are 40% less likely to graduate than girls. I think this
'problem' will solve itself.

EDIT: I was not very clear. This is not success rate after joining college.
Today 60% of all students are women and this fraction is rising. In 18 years
men will be a small minority at university education.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Anecdotally, I had five woman in my CS program out of 100 students (I know,
pathetic)... but all five of them graduated. Can't say the same for the men.

My wife was an Electromechanical engineer, in her program they had the same
number of woman but a higher percentage because there were fewer students in
the major in general. I think they all graduated although a couple of them had
to retake some courses so they didn't finish on time.

But my guess is it is a cultural thing not an aptitude thing. Woman have
certain standards they need to live up to that aren't necessarily expected of
men. Especially in male dominated majors where I have definitely observed the
attitude where woman need work harder to prove they deserve to be there than
men.

Edit: summary: my hypothesis is men fail out due to apathy since they are told
from birth that college is their right and expectation whereas woman have
something to prove. As that changes I expect either the woman will become
apathetic too or the men will step up their game. Either way, a system out of
equilibrium seeks balance.

~~~
jkot
> _Woman have certain standards they need to live up to that aren 't
> necessarily expected of men._

Could you name some? I have opposite experience.

~~~
throwaway2016a
I can't quantify it. Sociology is not my field.

However, it has been my experience that men are expected to have a fair amount
of recklessness and irresponsibility that woman are not.

Examples:

\- Men being with many woman during college is considered experimenting,
whereas for woman it is considered slutty.

\- A man answers wrong on a question in class and people just move on. A blond
woman does the same and she's a dumb blond. (I've seen this happen)

\- A man fails it's OK, failure happens and is a part of learning. A woman
fails, and it's because maybe women aren't cut out for this.

Again, not my field just going by conversation I've had with woman I know.

~~~
jkot
> _Men being with many woman during college is considered experimenting_

Or it is considered a rape. General advice today is to treat college as a
workplace and date girls outside, who are not students.

> _A blond woman does the same and she 's a dumb blond._

I seen many dumb men

> _A woman fails, and it 's because maybe women aren't cut out for this._

...or maybe it is because of environment, conditioning.. When women fails we
need to raise awareness, funds...

When men fails it is natural, no help is needed.

~~~
throwaway2016a
For the record I don't agree with any of those things at all. Far from it. I
married a feminist and it is hard not to be one myself :)

~~~
jkot
I am feminist myself. It is about gender equality after all. Anyway, good luck
;-)

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mystique
It's easy to dismiss the push for diversity by saying that women themselves do
not want to go into tech. I used to believe the same when I saw most of my
girlfriends opt for non-tech majors - their reason being this is not my cup of
tea. Made me feel superior for not only choosing tech, but also being
successful academically and later in career.

Now that I have kids, I realize how early the push for conformation to some
societal ideals starts. 3-4 yr old kids in day care already have this notion
of how girls are not supposed to play with boys, they should look pretty all
the time, they should not play rough with each other or other boys. Girls in
1st grade paying more attention to how their hair looks than how good they are
reading/writing. I remember that many of my girlfriend's families passively
discouraged them from going into male dominated majors, saying it would be
easier for them in the long run.

Once, in a line at gamestop, I saw an altercation between a pre-teen girl and
a pre-teen boy. The pre-teen boy was adamant that the girl should not be
allowed to purchase a game he thought was meant just for boys. Neither of them
knew each other. The girl's father interjected and made it clear to the boy
that she can choose to play whatever game she wanted and it was not his job to
keep her out of it. This is not abnormal in gaming world, grown men even today
scorn on female gamers.

IMO, the best way to combat this problem is to have parents actively push
their daughters into tech education from early years. Dads spending time with
their daughters and giving them confidence that they can be as good as boys
will work wonders. And I say Dad specifically because when the most important
man in a girl's life shows her that she is as capable and can compete against
other boys who will eventually become men, she cares less about fitting
societal norms.

~~~
zakk
Besides your anecdotal evidence, there are strong proofs that the society is
NOT influencing a woman's choice too much.

A gigantic survey (I could find references if you are interested) has shown
that from ultra-repressive environments (Muslim or African countries) to
ultra-liberal countries (Northern Europe) the percentage of women going into
CS is about the same. It actually decreases a bit in progressive countries.

This strongly supports the fact that the environment does not matter,
biological differences do.

~~~
matthewowen
It doesn't strongly support that at all.

A similarly plausible argument is that despite a lack of overtly regressive
policies towards women in the West, there are still a number of cultural norms
that influence their behaviour. Which is exactly the point the parent comment
is making.

~~~
MollyR
There was research done in various nordic countries that when men and women
are free from severe economic selection pressure, They naturally prefer
different roles something like nurse vs construction worker.

Also area's like India,when men and women are under more economic pressure,
there is more gender equal distribution in fields.

I've had this explained to me as the "Nordic Paradox".

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RandyRanderson
I wonder what the relation is between "We need more <gender> in <sector>" and
the average salary of workers in a sector?

~~~
ralusek
Let's see some more females in the coal mines.

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fjjrxcbdhx
Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school
teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more
important than all these other imbalanced fields?

~~~
M_Grey
Or coal miners! /s

Seriously, the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in
tech, money, success, and influence. The general thinking is and has been that
you try to fairly populate the mid-top range of jobs, and that's more
effective than trying to shoehorn in more women driving dumpsters.

~~~
forgottenpass
_the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech_

Because they're nerds?

 _[...]money, success, and influence._

Oh. Well, I'm sure they'll stay in the field when the find themselves crammed
into an open office, working on yet another webapp, with little to no control
over product direction. And a wage trajectory of a field that is leveraging
it's current cultural cachet to drive a huge recruitment effort.

Once the jig is up, and exposed as just a way to drive down wages, we'll be
back to being seen as the hate-worthy nerdy fuckers in the basement. And
society will go back to encouraging girls away from the field.

~~~
M_Grey
I think you're overestimating the relative glamour of waste disposal.

------
ben_jones
Are we encouraging or shoving? Just the other day I heard a counselor tell a
student she should enter tech not because she wanted to but because it was
'needed'.

------
jimmywanger
The main question for me is whether people accept there are basic biological
and neurological differences between men and women?

Women consistently score higher in empathy and lower in spatial recognition
tasks than men. Maybe that's something you shouldn't fight against?

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TheLilHipster
I don't really think there's much of an issue here. Equal opportunity ≠ equal
outcome.

I truly believe equal opportunity exists and the issue is more cultural than
institutional.

~~~
rimantas
Yes, one thing I constantly miss in discussions is understanding that
equilibrium does not mean 1:1 ratio.

------
atombath
Good on her. My regular disagreement w my feminist friends is their SJW stuff
does them more harm than good and the only way forward is our having more
female engineers. Clearly then, I think this initiative is really tackling the
core of gender issues.

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voidr
I like the idea that she wants to look at data, however, I'm not convinced
that she'll look at right data and draw the right conclusions.

In my CS class, the women had better grades in general, I was barely passing.

Looking at the data you would expect the high performing women to have amazing
careers while I'm drowning in my sorrow on where it went wrong.

Turns out: the opposite happened.

They had better grades, what they didn't have though was: love for the craft.
Their goal was to get good grades, they didn't have any love for it.

I enjoyed coding, for them, it was work, for me it was fun. Maybe this is a
social construct or maybe it's biological, either way, I feel that who care
about this should shift their perspective. If you shut down all programming
jobs, I will still code in my spare time, can you say the same thing about
people who only care about coding because it makes a lot of money?

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truetaurus
Has she got nothing better to do?

~~~
throwaway2016a
The nice thing about having money and freedom at the same time. She gets to
choose what to do based on what she wants to do not what other people thing
she should be doing. Within the bounds of the law, hopefully.

