
So Where Did All the Women Coders Go? - nagrom
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2014/10/23/so-where-did-all-the-women-coders-go/
======
scoofy
Here the articles points to childhood experiences with hardware, commodore
64s, etc. However, i think this is absolutely nonsense. Now, many people go
into college with little idea of what they want to do. Perhaps this is a
result of the expansion of college from building a unique skilled career path,
to simply being expected.

When talking about demographics and college degrees, i think popular culture
is certainly relevant. We are talking about high school and college freshmen
discovering themselves. Thus, i'd like to point out that 1984 is the same year
the film Revenge of the Nerds came out.

Thus, i'll throw out the hypothesis that, since 80's popular culture was a
very regressive era in terms of anti-intellectualism, desire to enter STEM
probably took a serious hit at the time in general, much more so with women.
That is not to say that previous generations were much better, but gone were
the days where the space race inspired tons of kids to pursue STEM education
regardless of gender.

~~~
flomo
As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I think the pop-culture argument could go
both ways, as the nerds got their revenge, and there were also movies such as
War Games (1983) and many other portrayals of genius computer hackers. 'It's
hip to be square', as the song went.

More importantly, the PC industry crashed in 1984 as did the video game
industry. To some extent, it was all perceived as as a pop-culture fad akin to
disco and it retreated into the underground. There was also a general cultural
shift within the computing world from mainframe systems to UNIX/DOS/C, and I
suspect that may have had a greater effect on women's CS enrollment than
anyone has identified.

~~~
scoofy
Look, as is the case with nearly all of pop culture tropes, we could argue the
details ad nauseum, but i hardly think that the nerds of the eighties were
positive role models. Even if they were, they were far from anywhere close to
those of Houston mission control.

In War Games, our protagonist is the one tech savvy kid who "gets it" while
all the other technology experts are villains who put the world in peril
because they are bumbling fools.

In Revenge, the nerds were still rejects who, against all odds, won a talent
show. One of them, in the process, literally stalks and eventually rapes his
unrequited love interest, though, for the sake of a happy ending, she ended up
"liking it." Talk about a huge marketing disaster for making CS attractive to
women.

With Houston, the term "rocket science" became synonymous with extreme
intelligence. The entire country was lining up to buy those "heroes" beers.
Astronaut was something akin to Fireman for children hopes and dreams. There
has never been a CS moonshot for all to see, as the last war hero we know of
was Alan Turing, who's accomplishments remained classified long after his
public humiliation and death.

This is all to say, for better or worse, that CS, STEM, and intellectualism in
general, were not lionized. Indeed the opposite was the case.

~~~
flomo
Yes, and that disturbing plot line was present in a number of other
contemporary movies, so I acknowledge your point. How much of direct line you
could draw to CS in particular is debatable though, especially as it was
hardly the glamour degree at the time, versus say aerospace. Were there
similar drop-offs in women enrolling in other engineering degrees? (Honest
question, I don't know. But there were only about 4 women in my introductory
physics class, so the intake funnel was clearly broken.)

I do think the author's premise that PC culture was seen as a "boys club" (or
solitary macho hackers, as they perhaps saw themselves) is a simpler and more
direct explanation. Which is to say I'd rather point at the actual nerds
rather than the movie portrayals.

------
orionblastar
In order to learn how to program, you have to have an interest in learning how
to program.

When I grew up in the 1980's girls and women didn't have an interest in
learning how to program as much as boys or men had. When I went to UM Rolla in
1986 there were very few women in my computer science classes, and for some
reason they were most likely to drop out of college before freshman year or
change to a different university or different major.

I asked and I was told that the classes were designed for males to learn, but
not for females to learn. That because of this women and girls had a harder
time to learn math and science because the books were written by men and not
women and thus were sexist. That I am only a programmer because I have this
male privilege?

I really don't know what to say about that, I always thought males and females
had the same potential to learn, and never thought of any book I read or class
I took as sexist towards women and girls.

But now more and more women are taking arts degrees instead of science and
majoring in women's studies, politics, communications, and other areas.

Just because they don't study computer science does not mean they aren't
smart, just smart in other areas. They never developed an interest in learning
how to code and I don't know why.

------
jameshart
Would be interesting to see the equivalent analysis of enrollment in CS
degrees in China and India. I work with dozens of female coders; 90% of them
are from China, India or Russia.

~~~
tomp
I imagine that being a programmer is a much more lucrative job in China and
India than being a lawyer/doctor, compared to the US. Programmers are always
present on the global market, while lawyers and doctors are inherently local.
I might be wrong though, this is pure speculation/no data.

~~~
jameshart
That's... true, I guess. What impact do you think it would have on gender
ratios?

~~~
tomp
The better paid the job is, the more ambitious people choose it against their
preferences (e.g. lawyer/doctor/banker). The push for low gender ratios
correlates quite nicely with salaries - the push for more women in programming
has only started after programming became a more lucrative job, and there is
much less push for more women in construction/men in nursing. I imagine being
a programmer was comparatively better paid in India than in the West.

------
m1117
They apparently went to biology field
[http://archive.aacu.org/ocww/volume39_1/images/StRoseGraph1....](http://archive.aacu.org/ocww/volume39_1/images/StRoseGraph1.jpg)

------
cliftonk
Law, medicine and natural sciences are very different than computer science
(plus the latter two are graduate degrees). I'd like to see the same graph but
with applied mathematics and physics added.

~~~
Jare
This may help a bit (from a previous HN thread)

[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/)

------
hajile
My answer is that women were never there to begin with and the number of women
has always been fairly constant.

My mother started her degree in the 70's because CS was a relatively new field
and seemed interesting (let's not forget the "computers will solve the world's
problems" marketing of the time). She took lots of programming courses and
discovered that she was good at programming (and sometimes did a bit of coding
at work), but preferred administering the machines and doing keypunching (and
later other forms of data entry) where programming is minimal. From what she
has told me, this was fairly common for the women she knew (not a matter of
sexism nor of ability -- only of preference).

As the 80s progressed, computer jobs shifted. Data entry no longer required a
CS degree, so although the number of women doing that job increased, they were
relegated to other non-CS degrees (and weren't really interested in CS to
start with).

As a more general idea, I think former Harvard president Larry Summers was
potentially correct when he said that studies have repeatedly shown that men
and women are different in many ways and some of these (IQ for example) have a
huge impact on STEM (he was then forced to resign -- not because anyone
disputed the numerous studies in this area, but because it is politically
incorrect).

For example, men outnumber women in the top and bottom of IQ spectrum (a
couple standard deviations either way) note: the AVERAGE is very similar.
There are good evolutionary reasons for this. Dumb women were a greater
liability to children than dumb men and the tradeoff of some really smart
visionaries (and dumb muscle if you would) worked well for human advancement
(but was only possible in men).

As a quick aside, though IQ does not accurately reflect overall intelligence,
it does reflect many of the most important the parts of intelligence needed in
STEM fields.

At the top of the IQ spectrum (the place where the most successful STEM people
tend to be grouped), men outnumber women 2-4 to 1 (depending on the study).
The total number of STEM jobs in the USA is 4-5% of the population. If most of
those people are in the highest IQ quartile, then we would expect men to
greatly outnumber women with women accounting for 20-30% of the people "smart
enough" to perform the job. This is very closely reflected by reality and also
explains why programs to "create more STEM talent" are largely doomed to fail
because you can't train people to be more intelligent. Programs to recruit the
best and brightest in impoverished and under-educated communities (where IQ
scores represent lack of education instead of lack of intelligence) would reap
results, but those don't seem to attract the attention of the powers that be.

Another point of interest is that a higher Asperger's quotient (AQ) seems to
correlate to programmers in particular (with most programmers being much
higher on the autistic spectrum than the average person). Similar to high IQ
ranges, Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) favor men 4 to 1 over women.

A final note about sexism: Sexism exists in every job (and goes both
directions to one degree or another). The degree to which it exists in CS is
dependent on several interesting factors (for example, that AQ factor which
means that it may just be bad social skills rather than actual sexism), but
does not necessarily correlate to a significant difference in women and
technology (that is, if differences such as IQ are a limiting factor, removing
all sexism against women would still result in more men in STEM).

This is true before we even account for women simply making the life choice to
NOT be stuck in a tiny cubicle working excessive hours and weekends due to a
salaried job while dealing with a pointy-haired boss who has the personality
of an agitated wolverine. My mother chose to step out of the rat race and
spend time with her children as we grew up (and my father picked up the slack
-- despite it's effect on our relationship). When we were gone and she decided
to go back to work, she needed to go back to college again because CS changes
a lot in a very short time. I suspect that many other women face similar
choices and make similar decisions (or simply opt to never try because those
intelligent enough to do the job are more likely to make that life choice
before entering college).

~~~
maxerickson
This story links Planet Money, which leaned on NSF statistics, I guess the
ones published here:

[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/content.cfm?pub_id=42...](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/content.cfm?pub_id=4266&id=2)

If you grab table 33, you ostensibly have the number of computer science
degrees awarded between 1966 and 2010. If you grab the xls, hey, you can add
them up. Between 1966 and 1985, there were ~195,000 bachelors degrees awarded
in computer science fields (exactly what fields would depend on the NSF
methodology). About 61,000 went to women.

If you look here:

[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-08-02/news/870226065...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-08-02/news/8702260658_1_data-
entry-operators-labor-force)

You have an article talking about keypunching requiring minimal training, with
about 324,000 data entry keyers working in the U.S. in 1984.

I have trouble believing the narrative that the women earning CS degrees in
the 70s were, as a group, ignorant of the opportunity to just go directly to
data entry (which was obviously there, there were more people doing data entry
than had university CS degrees).

~~~
hajile
The specific concern I was addressing in the first part of my post was the
drop in female CS majors that occurred in the mid 1980s. I was only addressing
the difference in graduates between then and now (not all female CS graduates
by any means) and only what I believe to be the largest factor (as there were
certainly other economic and social factors that affected the situation).

Considering 1985 and 2007 (1985 having the largest amount of female graduates
in math and CS), we see women going from 38.8% to 25.4% of the labor force.
All we need to show is that the difference in female math and CS graduates in
1985 were primarily mainframe operators and/or keypunch operators (although
the number of graduates in math could affect the CS numbers). In addition, I
nowhere stated that women of that period were ignorant of the requirements of
keypunching.

My mother's earnings as a mainframe operator and keypunch operator with a
degree in CS far outstripped the earning potential of someone with just a
keypunching certificate. If others were aware of this difference, then getting
the degree would be worth the extra work (keeping in mind that a degree also
carries the possibility for promotion). This is not much different from women
getting bachelors degrees only to work at secretarial positions today or
pursuing a masters in Nursing when an associates degree suffices for all non-
management jobs.

The second part of my post was focused on the overall numbers (that remaining
25% of women who have always worked in CS) and a potential reason for the
relative stability of that number over time (presuming the peak and decline in
the 1970-80s can be accounted for independently).

~~~
maxerickson
You spent a whole paragraph saying _As the 80s progressed, computer jobs
shifted. Data entry no longer required a CS degree, so although the number of
women doing that job increased, they were relegated to other non-CS degrees
(and weren 't really interested in CS to start with)._ but now are talking
about "keypunching certificates".

Which is it?

Note that the Tribune article discusses a woman who learned keypunching at a
commercial high school in 1972.

 _All we need to show is that the difference in female math and CS graduates
in 1985 were primarily mainframe operators and /or keypunch operators_

So get to it.

------
aninteger
Maybe they didn't go anywhere? I honestly believe the rate has been a steady
15-20% for the past 30-40 years. It's possible women had degrees in computer
science but then pursued careers as system analysts, data entry, QA, "web
masters" or IT. None of these are pure software development positions, but
maybe they were classified as that in the 80's.

