
When Women Stopped Coding - ForHackernews
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding
======
nathan_long
This story makes a compelling case that women stopped programming because

\- 1. Computers started being sold as consumer products \- 2. They were
marketed almost exclusively to boys \- 3. Boys played with computers and
learned about them, while girls were made to feel that computers weren't for
them \- 3. Men showed up to college with more computer experience \- 4. Women
felt they must not be "naturally good" at computers, based on how men already
knew more

While I think people sometimes exaggerate how much of gender differences come
from society, advertising, etc, the facts of women's history in programming
are clear, and I think the cause is well-argued here.

We need to fix the perception that women aren't welcome to program. We're
missing out on talented developers.

~~~
grimtrigger
I find this explanation extremely hollow. Most programmers didn't start
programming when they were kids. They started when they realized it was a good
paycheck.

~~~
CalRobert
Hmm.. I wonder if that's true of younger programmers, but I don't think I've
met a single one around my age (early 30's, late 20's) who didn't start when
they were young. I got my start near the end of high school and I felt
_impossibly_ late. I still do, frankly.

~~~
frostmatthew
> I don't think I've met a single one around my age (early 30's, late 20's)
> who didn't start when they were young.

This is probably partly confirmation basis and partly insufficient data. I
doubt every time you meet a fellow developer you ask them how old they were
when they first started programming.

I'm 35 and didn't start coding until about four years ago (when I decided to
go back to school and switch careers) - there's another dev on my team that
started even _later_ , and I know several that never wrote a line of code
before college. So yeah we're out there.

------
inmygarage
I am a female born in 1983 and have always been deeply interested in
computers, but have nonetheless felt inexplicably out of place for it. I was
in advanced math classes my entire life and placed out of calculus in college.
I took a summer programming class at a different university in 2000 and fell
in love with programming. But when I got back to school, I took another CS
class that was exactly as described in this article. I can't quite articulate
the feelings of isolation and frustration I felt in that class, but they were
strong enough to drive me away from CS and engineering for a long time.

I have a History degree.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>I can't quite articulate the feelings of isolation and frustration I felt in
that class

Male nerd here. My god, I couldn't get along with 90% of my class. They all
seemed to be disagreeable in a "technically correct is the best kind of
correct" way, but also with lots of arbitrary fanboyism and a complete lack of
basic social skills or outside interests. Not to mention the petty
competitiveness and complete lack of any team player skills, and usually a
huge amount of attitude dismissing these types of skills as useless.

Meh, I suffered through it (and through many coworkers of this type) as the
price of business.

I'm not sure why women assume its all roses for men in these fields and
classes. I dislike jerks as much as you. Heck, when we do hiring, we aim for
social and inter-personal skills first and technical skills last. Its easy to
find a difficult non-team player misanthrope who knows x, y, z. He's just hell
to work with. I'll take the easier to work with the person who knows just x
and can eventually learn y and z.

Also, this female dominated computer industry of 1970s and 80s has been shown
to be something of a myth. A lot of those degrees and jobs weren't programming
heavy and in practice were mere data entry or computer operator jobs, not
necessarily coding. As the industry changed and those jobs moved towards
administrative categories so did the women with them. IT departments dont have
a team of data entry specialists anymore. They're put elsewhere, or have been
eliminated altogether. If anything we have more female coders, who actually
code, than ever.

~~~
brandonmenc
> Male nerd here. My god, I couldn't get along with 90% of my class. They all
> seemed to be disagreeable in a "technically correct is the best kind of
> correct" way

You got off easy.

I went to a top engineering school out of high school, and can't tell you how
many times I was berated, called names, and cursed at for being an "idiot" who
didn't know things like the resolution of certain VGA modes by heart (except
in that particular case, the other guy was wrong.)

I do understand that this would be more intimidating were I a woman, but
still.

------
cheez
Interesting link in the comments:
[http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/women-...](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/women-
in-cs/graphs/csbachelors.jpg)

This graph shows that the drop off was nearly identical for men.

Maybe the initial bump was just people getting overexcited for this computer
thing and then hearing from their friends that it's kind of nerdy.

 _Edit_

Another interesting link seems to show that women receive degrees at a
significantly higher rate than men, and that the gap is widening:
[http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72)

Why is this?

~~~
cscheid
Read the graph again. The dropoff for women is much larger.

$ python

>>> 20000.0 / 17000.0

1.1764705882352942

>>> 12500.0 / 7000.0

1.7857142857142858

CS enrollment for women in 1984 was 78% larger than in 1996; For men, it was
17%.

~~~
cheez
I'm not sure where you're picking these numbers off and from which graph. The
graph I linked has the following values(ish):

* Men: 27,500 - 17,500 -> 1.57 ~ 36% drop * Women: 15,000 - 7,500 -> 2 ~ 50% drop

So yes, you're right that women did seem to drop off more but not as much as
you say.

~~~
cscheid
The graph you linked to. I'm comparing the 1984 numbers to latest available,
since 1984 is what the linked piece talks about (and which I mentioned in the
original comment)

> drop off was nearly identical for men

> women did seem to drop off more

These two statements cannot be both true at the same time.

~~~
tibiapejagala
What are you trying to prove with this cherry-picked time points?

Author notices that number of women in CS significantly went down in 1984 and
searches for reasons. According to the graph provided in the parent comment it
was actually CS as a whole which went down. Both lines on the graph are
awfully similar, and one can assume that there wasn't any sudden catastrophe
for women in CS at that time.

When analyzing 'What Happened To _Women_ In Computer Science?' the absolute
number is not important, but the ration of women in CS and when that went down
(and why).

------
001sky
"This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story
we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks
were and it created techie culture."

The facts seem to (rather) be that computers were no longer just toys, they
were becoming serious tools. As such, "tool geeks" gravitated to computers.
This hypothesis would explain the inevitable sexist outcome of the field with
a simple explanation. It can also be verified objectively and orthogonally by
looking at other "tool" drivem occuplations that seem to share a heavy gender
bias. See, eg

[http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-male-dominated-
indus...](http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-male-dominated-industries-
and-occupations-us-and-canada)

Playing with tools and machines is not so much sexist as it is anti-social
more broadly speaking.

It's not clear the both genders share similar preferences in thus regard.

If you look at more "social" industries (or business functions) like in
Media/publishing/advertising you tend to find a significant number of very
successful/world class etc women in very high powered jobs.

The bigger question is when did coding become so anti-social? And is/was this
anti-social nature somehow necessary or functional?

~~~
Dewie
> Playing with tools and machines is not so much sexist as it is anti-social
> more broadly speaking.

 _Asocial_ is a better term. Unless you're talking about the "mad scientist"
(mad engineer is a better term...) that builds machines in order to take over
the world.

------
rayiner
The "women just aren't as interested in programming" trope rings hollow when
the participation of women in CS majors is about half of what it was in 1985,
a time when, by all accounts, programmers were far less socially mainstream
than they are today.

~~~
istorical
Why? Don't really follow your logic.

My hypothesis is that women (specifically teenage girls) just aren't
interested in the field / profession so they decide not to study it in school
or search for jobs in the field.

Perhaps this is because they are discouraged from trying it by their teachers
or media, perhaps its because they don't have the confidence to believe
they'll succeed, perhaps they think it's not cool, perhaps they don't think
it'll be a fun job.

But I guess, I see "women aren't as interested in programming" as a very
likely cause for the disparity. And I don't think that's a sexist observation.
I believe if we can find ways to get more girls interested we should pursue
them, and indeed I root for organizations like Black Girls Code.

We live in too politically correct a world if we think it's bad to suggest
that maybe girls _aren't_ interested in the field. I'm not sure that it's the
biggest contributing factor, but if it could be part of the story, why are we
so afraid to admit that possibility? Because it's not something we'd like to
believe?

~~~
stdgy
What does 'not interested' connote? And how do you frame it?

Consider these two statements: 1) The female sex is
intrinsically(biologically) uninterested in Computer Science. 2) Girl's are
raised in an environment that pushes their interest away from Computer
Science.

In each statement, girls are not interested in Computer Science. But the first
statement carries a tremendous amount of baggage with it, and comments on
significantly more than cultural interest. It is, to put it lightly, a
fantastic claim. And fantastic claims require fantastic evidence.

I don't think anyone is afraid of admitting that girls have been less
interested in pursuing Computer Science than men. That's not really at issue.
What's at issue is the cause and context guiding the group's interest.

~~~
guard-of-terra
How about "Computer Science field has innate properties that discourage the
female sex (biologically) from it"?

Why is it fantastic? Because last time I've checked, women were also less
interested in recreational fishing than men.

~~~
cauterized
And why should recreational fishing be biologically less appealing to women
than men either?

\- from a woman who quite enjoys fishing, tyvm

~~~
Dewie
"Should"? They "shouldn't" be one thing or the other. They, as a group, seem
to be, but why is that a threat to you if you like fishing? Just because there
is a pattern to something, doesn't mean that that pattern is good (or bad, for
that matter).

Why do we take such offence when people point out a trend or pattern, and we
ourselves are an exception to that pattern (I say "we" as in many people,
including myself)? Is it because we think being normal is superior to being
unusual, and that we not being part of something that some other person thinks
is _normal_ is an implicit threat to our threat as _normal_ people?

------
TheMagicHorsey
This story just isn't convincing. If anything, the legal field has always been
more hostile to women, and now it is becoming dominated by women. The same was
true of advertising, PR work, sales, and any number of other fields previously
dominated by men, and now slowly being taken over by women.

More than 50% of my law school class (top ten law school) were women. In law
school the know-it-all assholes were still mostly men. And that didn't seem to
dissuade the women one bit from pursuing a career in law. In my first legal
job, more than 50% of the first year associates were women. In my wife's firm,
70% of the first year associates were women.

When I was an undergrad (early 90s) there were about 40-50% women in the CS
introductory classes, but by the 200 level classes, there were only about
10-15% women. I was pre-med for a time. Pre-med classes were just as hard ...
the attrition did not change the sex ratio in the pre-med classes.

Why do people insist on making up all kinds of just-so stories to explain the
discrepancy in numbers of women and men programmers. Isn't it possible that
women might not be interested in programming in the same numbers as men. Even
within the male population, those genuinely interested in programming seem to
be a pretty small number.

Most of my classmates in the CS program did not stay programmers. Many of them
went to work for places like Goldman, McKinsey, etc. In fact, those were the
preferred jobs in those days. Only a very small number of us wanted to
actually program for a living.

~~~
jonny_eh
Then why the drop off in the 80s? Did the female genome change at some point?

~~~
TheMagicHorsey
I don't know, but here are some possibilities: 1) Change in competition in
classes that were graded on a curve. If CS became more popular, it could have
become more difficult to be an A student. 2) Change in curriculum. CS could
have gone through a change in subject matter. At my alma mater in the early
nineties, CS included a huge amount of math. The Math and Physics majors also
had the same kind of ratio distortion as CS. There were no advertisements to
boost male enrollment in Math and Physics. 3) A few new majors were created
(like Operations Research and Industrial Engineering) that offered admission
into lucrative jobs like banking and consulting, while being much lighter on
the algorithms and math. A large number of people from CS went into those
majors (both male and female). There were certainly a lot more women in
Operations Research. People used to comment on how OR had all the women, and
CS had all the immigrants from Asia.

------
colomon
I think the graph here -- [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-
of-bachelor...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-
degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/) \-- provides an interesting
contrast. Seems like what has happened is the percentage of women in CS was
tracking along with that in architecture or the physical sciences, and
whatever happened in the 80s caused it to gradually move down towards (but so
far always above) the percentage of women in engineering.

~~~
seanflyon
I think that when CS was a newer field it was treated more like Math and less
like engineering.

------
freshflowers
Maybe just a total coincidence, but the mid-80's is also the time when media
and authorities started their witch hunt against hackers and the word "hacker"
became equal to "criminal".

Basically, in the mid-80's the predominant media image of computer engineers
was either social outcast of criminal.

Gee, wonder why women weren't attracted to that.

~~~
inclemnet
This argument seems to rest on the assumption that women are fundamentally
more susceptible to decisions based on stereotypes than men are. Do you have
any evidence both that this is the case, and that any measurable difference
(if there is one) is significant enough to blame for this effect?

~~~
waterlesscloud
No, it suggests that men and women both are both susceptible to media
stereotypes.

He's just suggesting that the "outsider outlaw" is more appealing to men than
to women.

------
brandonmenc
> And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.

They give two piddly links to commercials aimed at boys.

Explain these ads, then:
[http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342](http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342)

Or Commodore ads like this one:
[http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1325832/commodore-765.jpg](http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1325832/commodore-765.jpg)

In the 80s, computers were marketed to the whole family, boys and girls
included.

~~~
guyzero
Were you there? I was. Computers were marketed to boys and families for
whatever reason reinforced this as well. It may not explain everything, but it
explains the genesis of the situation.

~~~
brandonmenc
I was born in the 1970s so yeah, I was there.

The article implies that, in the 80s, home computers were considered nothing
more than glorified pong machines and girls were never seen in any of the ads,
which is simply incorrect.

There are countless ads featuring Commodores, Apples, and Trash 80s displaying
spreadsheets, and quite a few with girls at the keyboard.

Is there an exhaustive study of computer marketing from that time? I ask in
all seriousness, because two links and hazy memories from NPR isn't very
convincing.

------
kazinator
Note that Autism and Asperger's Syndrome are "male dominated". Something like
4:1.

If you have a field toward which nerds gravitate, it will become male-
dominated.

What happened around 1984? Yes, home computers were becoming much more common
as the article aptly notes.

But what else? It was becoming obvious that the people who flocked to these
things most, who outright _related_ to these computers, were nerds.

Popular culture latched on to this instantly!

What was on the big screen and on TV?

\- War Games (1983)

\- Superman III (1983) - Major character is a computer nerd played by Richard
Pryor (August "Gus" Gorman).

\- Riptide TV Series (1983) [1] - Major character Murray "Boz" Bozinsky is an
utter nerd

\- Whiz Kids TV Series (1983) [2]

When 1984 rolled around the trend went all out:

\- Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

Nerd stereotypes were in the spotlight, as well as the connection between
nerds and technology, especially computers. And that of course is going to
have some effect on enrollment in fields of study having to do with computers.
Young people respond to stereotypes in mass culture.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riptide_%28TV_series%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riptide_%28TV_series%29)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_%28TV_series%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_%28TV_series%29)

~~~
bane
I think it's also important to note that the timing. Some of the first real
mainstream home computers started selling around the time people who were
graduating college in '83 and '84 were in middle school or starting high
school, ripe time to start monkeying around with a computer.

The Atari 8-bits were released in '79

The TRS-80 Model 1 - '77

VIC-20 - '80

TI-99/4 - '79

------
tonyplee
I have 15 year old daughter and would love to get her more interested in
computer science. She is doing good in school getting A in math/science, etc.

Any suggestions from HN on how best to guide her interests?

Extra project? incentive?

For now, her interests are typical teenage - school clubs, facebook, youtube,
tumblr, etc.

~~~
Jare
Encourage her to build and create things. If she chooses the computer as her
tool, all the better, but provide her with as many avenues of creation as
possible (paper, sound, words, images, code, wood, ideas, etc) and she will
find the one that's right for her.

She is a teenager, I believe you are not her guide anymore, but you can (and
should) be an amazing facilitator and her #1 fan.

------
lnanek2
Romantic story telling for a line graph, but really it is more like the
profession of computer operators, originally drawn from the largely female
secretary pool, disappeared as computers evolved from big buildings where you
submitted decks of punched cards to their modern form.

Nowadays we have IT, EE, CS, etc. but these are really different professions
than what was originally mostly women. The first crop of nearest equivalent
computer scientists usually majored in mechanical engineering, simply because
there were no computer majors yet and the computers were much more mechanical,
and had the same gender imbalance we see today.

------
shamimj
I had a very similar experience when I entered one of the best universities of
Iran in 2000. Although the number of female students were almost as much as
males, every professor assumed that students should at least know one
programming language and be familiar with all the basic concepts of computers.
and many students, especially female ones did not have that knowledge prior to
university which was a great turn off as they realised they would be easily
judged by their lack of knowledge. The sad thing is that all of these students
were great in their high school in order to get in in the first place.

------
balls187
I'm curious to know:

* Rates of women in Computer Science jobs.

* The number (not just %) of women studying computer science. Did those numbers fall, or stay the same? Was it just that more men entered the field of Computer Science?

My hunch (clearly not backed by any data) is that prior to the mid 80's,
Computer Science was a niche field, so there weren't many people who went into
CS.

As CS jobs became more mainstream (given the advent of the personal computer)
more men went into Studying CS, instead of other fields they had been in. With
more men studying CS, more men ended up in CS jobs, and eventually you end up
with male dominance.

I would love to compare these rates, with what were the top
engineering/science jobs in those times, and see of there is a correlation
between the decrease in manufacturing/engineering, and the increase in
Computer Science jobs.

Perhaps it's also cause and effect. There were more medical and legal jobs, so
women entered those professions, and were able to fight to get equality. Since
CS was relatively new, the barriers that women face hadn't been knocked down.
As time goes on, there were more female doctors and lawyers for girls to have
as role models, leading to more women studying in those fields.

------
waterlesscloud
The National Science Foundation study that this is all based on has the raw
numbers, as it were, for each degree (at each level Bachelor, Masters, PhD),
for each year.

If you want to do some digging on your own, it's in XLS and PDF formats here-

[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/)

------
Mandatum
Wasn't the early-mid-80's when programming/computers held much of a social
stigma (ie nerd, geek, etc were insults). The market followed that trend and
instead of offering a computer as a consumer gender un-biased product, it was
marketed at men.. But even then, if you look at ads from around that time for
computers.. It's a computer. It's not something that you can assign a gender
to in advertising very effectively. It's the social aspect surrounding
computers that does that.

Also I disagree with what nathan_long said regarding "Women felt they must not
be "naturally good" at computers, based on how men already knew more". To me
that is absurd to assume that woman would think that "men know more than us,
so why try"? His third point would be nullified by the associated social
stigma during their teen years.

------
adventured
Has anyone considered that programming in the 1970s and 1980s was in fact less
hostile and more open than many other fields for women in terms of being merit
based? Emphasis on that being a relative scale (less hostile than many other
fields at the time).

And that during the 1960s through the 1980s, fields such as law or advertising
were the opposite: openly hostile to women. With there being a critical
difference being between aggressive and passive hostility.

As women gradually found it easier to move into fields such as law, they chose
not to pursue computer science. That shift pulled women from pursuing computer
science, perhaps because women found those other jobs more fulfilling for any
number of reasons.

Nerds are typically not as aggressive in any sense, as the guys that would
have worked in advertising or law, circa 1985 would have been.

------
SiVal
If unequal access to home computers in the 1980s was the main cause of loss of
interest in CS degrees, why is it that every _improvement_ in access equality
has been accompanied by more loss of interest in CS?

I suspect that the article might be right about the sharp turn in the 1980s
being the result of personal (as opposed to corporate) computing, but we've
now collected thirty years of data that suggest that access isn't the issue.

Instead, I think it's the inherent lack of appeal of the activity itself. Only
a small percentage of boys can maintain any interest in programming after the
novelty wears off, and it's only the fact that even fewer girls stay
interested that accounts for the gender imbalance.

------
zxcv731
This same graph used in the article was extensively discussed on reddit 3 days
ago. [1]

I want to quote some of the comments, which I think is extremely important to
this discussion.

" The far simpler answer is that the 1970's "explosion" of women into the
(purported) field of "computer science" was largely women obtaining degrees in
(what were then "computer science" courses) the subfields of "Data Processing"
and later on "Word Processing". (Edit: see the Google Ngram on the transition
of terminology from "Data Processing" to "Computer Science"[2] ). With the
ending of punch cards, and the increasing decentralization via personal
computers (and networks of them) and subsequent later software improvements
(spreadsheets, advanced databases, WYSWYG word processing), those functions
ceased to be viable degrees and lost their status as "computer science"
related functions... everyone became (in one form or another) involved in
data-entry and/or word processing. The plain truth of the matter is that women
were NEVER highly represented in the true "computer science" fields of
programming (and later network & database administration). "

Although I believe the comment author can use a better tone, I think these
facts are extremely important to this discussion. There were more people
echoing that their grandmum got a CS degree in data entry[3]

Edit: Data processing are indeed counted towards computer science. Although
there is no data on the relative weight

[4]
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf)

[1][http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what_happened_to_women_in_computer_science_of/cldob83)
[2][https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=data+processin...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=data+processing%2Ccomputer+science&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cdata%20processing%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bdata%20processing%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BData%20Processing%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BData%20processing%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BDATA%20PROCESSING%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Ccomputer%20science%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BComputer%20Science%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bcomputer%20science%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BComputer%20science%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCOMPUTER%20SCIENCE%3B%2Cc0)
[3][http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2joexk/what_happened_to_women_in_computer_science_of/cldqkih)

~~~
jamesaguilar
The views in that comment are _completely_ unsubstantiated. There was no
evidence presented that "data processing" was ever taught as part of or
categorized as computer science. In fact, later comments debunk that
viewpoint. Also worth noting that the person who wrote that subscribes to the
Men Going Their Own Way movement [1] (his username is thrownaway_MGTOW), which
while not an outright debunking of his claims, should give you further cause
for suspicion.

[1]
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Regardless of the source of the comment, it would be interesting to have the
source data to know exactly what they're classifying as "Computer Science"
programs. That term has certainly increased in usage over the last several
decades, and was not always in use in the decades prior to the 1980s.

So what did the study use in its place?

That's a valid question regardless of who raised it.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Sure, but "we don't know, therefore let's provisionally go the MRA's unsourced
claims," is not a sound interim position.

~~~
waterlesscloud
As I said, it's an interesting question, regardless of the source.

So I went and looked it up, since that seemed more productive than fighting
endlessly over it.

The NSF study helpfully includes an appendix that shows what fields they
counted as "Computer Science", and it turns out that "Data Processing" and
"Data Processing Technician" were indeed counted in that category.

Of course, that says nothing about the relative numbers and how they changed,
but it does raise a possible explanation for the shift in numbers as Data
Processing died out as a field.

[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tabb1.pdf)

------
wuliwong
I'm don't know that any real explanation is gonna be much more than
speculation but it certainly is an interesting graph. I'm actually really
surprised by the percentage of women in the physical sciences. I studied
physics and sadly, I'm afraid that if you split out physics from the other
branches it would be significantly lower than the other physical sciences. My
own anecdotal experience (undergraduate and graduate school) would put it at
10%. But that is just two snapshots in time at two schools. I would guess the
average HAS to be higher, but still below 40%.

------
daveloyall
[...] _when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes_ [...]

Doesn't anecdotal evidence suggest that children quickly exceed their mentors
(parents) when exposed to 1980s consumer hardware? (That hardware was
deterministic--same key sequence means same result every time. You know, like
video games from the same era.)

Being exceeded by your child can be a dramatic emotional event. Are the
feelings that a father or mother experience different when the child is a
little girl vs. a little boy?

</speculation>

~~~
cortesoft
I am pretty sure all computer hardware is deterministic? (unless we are
talking about quantum computers?)

~~~
daveloyall
The deterministic nature of computer hardware used to be apparent during
interaction with the computer.

Novices would quickly learn to carry out common actions 'blind'.

You could memorize a sequence of keystrokes and experiment with changing
parts, or leaving out parts, to develop variations, or shorter but equivalent
sequences.

The user interfaces of older computers were also orders of magnitude faster.
If you were to time travel back to the 1980s and try to show off a smart phone
to 8-bit hobbyists, I predict that they'd frequently attempt to remove the
battery: "It seems to be stuck in a loop!"

Some might blame multi-threading, some might blame storage and communication
latency... I blame planned obsolescence and the 'Halloween Documents' come to
mind.

Most users were not introduced to real computers. They were introduced to
products, products engineered to optimize for profitability.

------
rverghes
Mathematically, isn't this a guaranteed result?

The article said that the share of women in other programs kept rising. So
doesn't the share of women in different programs need fall to balance? If more
women become lawyers, aren't there fewer women left for other programs?

I really wish these types of articles would show absolute numbers. Percentages
can be so misleading.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Absolute numbers here -
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/)

------
crazy1van
This seems like a feedback loop without a clear beginning or cause. Marketing
affects behavior. Behavior affects marketing. Repeat.

Does Hasbro market GI Joes to boys because boys tend to like GI Joes or do
boys like GI Joes because Hasbro markets them to boys?

I'm not so sure how useful wondering about finding the "Cause" of this. It
isn't that simple.

~~~
omonra
I have a 2yo who has been obsessed with cars from the time he could crawl. We
never encouraged it (don't own a car or a tv, no siblings) - actually got him
a few dolls to try and balance it out.

I think that once you have kids and observe them do gender-specific things
from a very early age, you dismiss all the talk of 'marketing is responsible
for it'.

------
jgrahamc
I did Mathematics and Computation at Oxford starting in 1986. There were four
women on the course (something like a total intake of 30). Three of the four
switched to mathematics at the end of the first year.

I don't have any real explanation why.

------
ps4fanboy
It always amazes me when groups post stats but never post the source
statistics? Where did they get the data, etc. Also why is it by Major and not
by Degree?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Data source here -
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/)

------
staticelf
I don't think girls ever completely stopped to program, but for sure there are
less girls in those kinds of subjects at higher education levels. But from my
view, it all comes down to interest and I have no real explaination to why
girls are less interested in computer science.

However, I can tell my story on how I got intersted and why I do not think
girls at that age would have any issues having the same story.

I can only answer for my experience, but here it goes:

When I were younger (I'm still in my 20s) I started with computers and mainly
to play computer games which I quickly realized was a lot of fun.

Later on, and surely labeled as a "nerd" by my fellow classmates (girls and
boys) I started to take interest in cheating in games and wondered how the
hell to do it. That made me walk out on the internet learning about how
programs work in the first place and I discovered modding.

I understood that I can change the game data which was saved on my local hard
drive in order to gain powers in the game. Cheating quickly became boring so I
wanted to know how to mod a game so bosses would spawn more powerful to meet
my newly crafted gear that could beat anything. So I started to mod the client
with programs that were available on the net.

At this point, I barely understood all the english grammar that was used but
the interest in learning on how the stuff works eventually led me to learning
to program and awoken an interest I didn't even know existed. Previously to
this, I had no idea how computers really worked like I had no idea how a car
engine worked. I didn't examine this until I really wanted something done.

I am sure my story is like many stories in the early 00's of people who
eventually learned to program. I don't think any girl that did the same during
this period would have any specific attention except good ones. Maybe the
girls in my school did not learn to program because they were less interested
in games, maybe something else. But what I am totally conviced of, is that
there were no sexism hindering these girls to learn if they wanted to.
Actually, I would think that most boys would not care as much if a girl was as
interested as me.

I were labeled a nerd (and had really no problems with it) but I do not think
that a girl would be labeled the same. Of course there were girls labeled as
nerds but not because they were interested in computers, but because they did
"too much homework" or "took school too seriously". The funny thing is that I
were not labeled as a nerd because of my interest in computers, I am pretty
convinced that it was only because that I had a nerdy look and sat a lot in
front of computers. In fact, most of them when I showed some tricks were
actually impressed and had no issues with that. Children can't hate on
something they do not understand and in my experience a kid always goes on the
visual things or very basic information that they do understand (i.e. do too
much homework / sit a lot in front of computers).

I am sure there are some sexism out there still, but in my experience the
sexism has been reversed. I have always felt "second picked" or less important
because of my gender. I don't understand why girls need "extra attention"
regarding computer interest anymore and I actually think it's damaging for
several reasons.

My question remains the same, why can't we just try to treat everyone equally?

------
Dewie
> Movies like Weird Science, Revenge of the Nerds, and War Games all came out
> in the '80s. And the plot summaries are almost interchangeable: awkward geek
> boy genius uses tech savvy to triumph over adversity and win the girl.

Movies like Revenge of the Nerds are not about nerds triumphing over adversity
and getting the girls _because_ they are nerds... it's about triumphing over
adversity and getting the girls _in spite of being nerds_. Or, if the key to
their success was really their brains, they used it to overcome an adversity
that was _caused_ by being nerds. If they weren't being nerdy and brainy,
there would be no adversial story to begin with.

To implicitly suggest that movies like that are supposed to inspire people to
become _and continue to be_ nerds is asinine. It's a role reversal concept;
not something that people believe happens in real life. The whole _point_ is
them being unlikely heroes and winners.

> Ordóñez got through the class but earned the first C in her life.

I guess this is supposed to evoke some "hitting a low" sentiment? The sheer
horror of getting a grade that is technically right in the middle? Long live
grade inflation, I give it an A+++.

------
maybe_maybe1
Maybe, just maybe, they got out because they could see far ahead at the mess
coding would become in the future. They were there at a time when the computer
staff were more respected members of an organisation, rather than just a cost
centre to be minimised and offshored. Maybe, just maybe, they could foresee a
horrendous time when technology was chosen as it was the flavour of the month,
regardless of how good the technology actually was (see: Ruby on Rails, and
about every single JS framework to date).

Mostly though, they could probably see the fact that most coding work was
going to be mundane, bug fixing, and working in an industry that never seems
to learn, but throws away knowledge and experience, and focuses solely on the
new shiny, and keeps thinking it has invented something new, when it is really
just a poor rehash of something earlier, something that was probably more
solid and more robust.

Maybe.

