
When Women Stopped Coding - kasbah
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding
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curtis
_These early personal computers weren 't much more than toys. You could play
pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing. And these toys
were marketed almost entirely to men and boys._

It's not expressed explicitly, but this is clearly implying that the reason
men and boys were buying and using computers more than women and girls was
_because of the marketing_.

Let me suggest an alternative explanation: Computers were marketed to men and
boys because that was the part of the population that was most interested in
the things that computers can do. If you want to sell something, your best
prospects are going to be the people that already want that kind of thing.

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mining
Why not a bit of both?

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ralfd
But they also tried marketing to women/girls in the 80s. Buy a PC as the
"family computer":

[https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f7/63/7c/f7637cf9f...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f7/63/7c/f7637cf9fcf152d7f0b6e4eb42c9ddd2.jpg)

[https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f7/63/7c/f7637cf9f...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f7/63/7c/f7637cf9fcf152d7f0b6e4eb42c9ddd2.jpg)

~~~
ralfd
edit:

[https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/18/74/3a/18743a2a2...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/18/74/3a/18743a2a27013df83d4f88d67caa6535.jpg)

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thisrod
The thing that struck me was the data, not the attempts to explain it. Assume
the graph is right. From the 60s to the 80s, the gender mix in male dominated
degrees was equalising slowly but uniformly. Then, after 1983, computer
science very suddenly became a lot more sexist, while the other technical
degrees kept improving as before.

I don't really buy the explanation. The change happens too early: neither
schoolboys nor schoolgirls had their own computers in 1982.

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jasonm23
> neither schoolboys nor schoolgirls had their own computers in 1982.

Yes we did

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kpil
Yes, but you where not attending to university at the same time.

I too think that the article got the timing wrong somehow.

But it was probably computers as (and in) pop culture that turned away many
that saw computer science as a career path just as law school and medicine.

In the early 80s the white coat scientists where gone in the media, and
replaced by neerdy kids, culminating with the unlikly tale of Bill Gates.

The message was that you had ti be incredibly smart and geeky to be able to
work with computers.

\---

The reality is that you probably have to be just a bit over average, but
mainly just very stubborn and won't mind spending hours and hours solving very
stupid problems...

Edit: One way to get stubborn is to be inherently fascinated by computers and
self-controlling systems. At least it works for me....

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gedy
From my view growing up in the 80s - most boys preferred action and sports,
virtually all the girls wanted to talk in groups, and a very few boys (myself
included) would prefer to obsess over niche things like computers, DnD, games
that required tons of focus to the exclusion of social and physical
activities. This was innate imho - not from marketing!

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sn41
Just a side note: I think this is specific to some countries. In India, for
example, I do see a lot of women entering the programming field.

[http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-
gender...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender-gap-
where-are-the-female-programmers/)

has a link to an older ACM article on this.

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aaron695
Best reason I've heard is as women get more choices in life they choose
careers they want to do over careers based on income and jobs.

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gozur88
That's the only thing I can see that explains the data. It's not that women
(as a statistical group) can't code; it's that they don't want to, and when
they feel financially secure they don't.

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pitaj
tl;dr > [Computers] were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.

This certainly isn't a groundbreaking sentiment. There were some interesting
points in the article, though:

> [a study found that] families were much more likely to buy computers for
> boys than for girls — even when their girls were really interested in
> computers

Which caused the men to be far ahead of women where it came down to experience
with computers.

I'm not too confident in the accuracy of the aforementioned study, but if the
conclusion was correct, then that would certainly point towards the common
"social normality pressure" explanation for women being less common in at
least CS.

However, it doesn't really apply in present day as almost every family has a
computer, and every student entering college now had access to a PC to work on
when they were a teenager.

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juliendorra
Nacira Guerroudji-Salavan launched last year a "circle of women in cyber
security " in part because she was tending a booth at her kids' highschool and
when a girl wanted to check the booth because cyber security interested her,
the father said"No, this is for boys, for hackers" This is 2015/2016.

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pcurve
is it me or does it feel like the article stops abruptly?

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jbmorgado
If these early computers "weren't much more than toys" then how did they (even
putting aside that the article didn't give any source that they were really
directed to boys) give an advantage to boys using them later in computer
science?

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Somasis
Don't read the comments!

