
Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University - denzil_correa
http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/09/computer-science-is-now-the-top-major-for-women-at-stanford-university/?utm_content=bufferc8924&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
avivo
This is also true of MIT.
[http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html](http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/gender/index.html)

According to the article "It was unclear if Stanford is the only major U.S.
university where computer science is the top major for female students."

That link was the top hit for
[https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment](https://www.google.com/search?q=mit+women+enrollment)

This is a pretty sad thing to see in something purporting to be journalism. I
can't blame the really writer though. They probably only had 30 minutes to get
something out the door to drive their view count...

~~~
lancewiggs
Sure the journalist could do that search for every university - but why would
she start with MIT? She (Sarah McBride from Reuters, not a click-bait agency)
also talked to UCLA and Harvey Mudd, both Californian schools and on her beat
(as a SF-based journalist). Harvey Mudd had a reputation for high female
enrolment in STEM and was a more logical first call than MIT, on the other
coast.

~~~
avivo
The article tries to present Stanford as relatively unique in this light —
which is great for Stanford but potentially bad for the overall ecosystem. It
shores that up with the vacuous statement about how it is "unclear if Stanford
is the only major U.S. university [...]".

A few minutes of online research (or perhaps an hour(s) of calls to
registrars) would have resolved that. Then she could have made a concrete
informative statement like "[?All] of the top 10 ranked schools (via US News
and World Report) have seen a significant increase in female computer science
majors." and/or "MIT & [...] also reported that CS is the most popular major
for women."

------
jlees
This is cool, and interesting in a couple of ways. The declarations are
preliminary, meaning (I presume) that students may change their minds;
according to some studies (e.g. [1]), women tend to transfer out of CS at a
higher rate than men. Some anecdotal reasons behind this include a hostile
atmosphere/alienation [2], sexism from students and teachers, unequal
backgrounds due to pre-college factors [3] and so on (of course, there are
plenty of non-gender related reasons why someone might switch majors).

The flip side is, these are upperclassmen, which I understand to mean they
probably have been taking CS classes for some time already at Stanford. Most
of these factors would have been encountered already if they are indeed
present at all, which is cheering in its own way.

[1]
[http://www.academia.edu/5317313/STEM_Switching_Examining_Dep...](http://www.academia.edu/5317313/STEM_Switching_Examining_Departures_of_Undergraduate_Women_in_STEM_Fields)

[2] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-
business/11182833/Ho...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-
business/11182833/How-She-Did-It-Girls-I-dropped-out-of-Computer-Science-so-
you-dont-have-to.html)

[3]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

------
java000
I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to
it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as
medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women
seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if
they lack prestige (electricians would be an example).

If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets lamenting the lack of women
in CS are actually partly to blame for it for their ongoing denigration and
belittling of those already in the field. For example, someone in this thread
cited an NPR article titled "When Women Stopped Coding." Does "coding" sound
like a prestigious job activity to you? How many news articles have you seen
lately that casually refer to psychiatrists or psychologists as "shrinks," and
how many have you seen that refer to us as "coders," "geeks," or "nerds?"

~~~
carbocation
As a physician, I don't think any of us have the perception that programming
is lower status. Our in-jokes are usually about how we can't find housing on
our salaries because the former computer science majors are driving up the
prices.

~~~
_yosefk
Driving up housing prices is in itself indicative of income, not status.

Of relevance is the following snippet from
[http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/)

"Does the staggering wealth of particular engineers and programmers mean that
there is any chance for nerds to rise socially?

Stammbach worked with a colony of longtailed macaques. In the paper cited
above, the running header is "Responses to Specially Skilled Java Monkeys."
Stammbach took the lowest-ranking macaque out of the society and taught him to
operate a complex machine and obtain food. When the nerd monkey was
reintroduced to the society, the higher ranking macaques stopped kicking him
out of the way long enough for him to complete operation of the machine and
obtain food for the community. I.e., society cooperated to create the
conditions under which the nerd could toil for them. However, the monkey who
acquired these special skills and provided for the society _did not achieve
any rise in his dominance status_."

Phil Greenspun's title for the above was "Java Monkeys."

(I personally don't have an opinion about the status of programmers relative
to other professionals and how it affects women, so just commenting on your
remark.)

~~~
yoha
Original article: [http://www.loper-
os.org/pub/codemonkey.pdf](http://www.loper-os.org/pub/codemonkey.pdf) .

------
hendry
I don't quite understand if "Majoring" means completed degrees or not.

In my old University, women were common in the first year of Comp Sci, as it
was the easiest department to gain entry to for them as females because of
quotas or whatever positive discrimination is called.

However in the second year, they would typically transfer out to another
department they were more keen on, but probably wouldn't have won a place at
initially.

~~~
discodave
Do you actually have any evidence of it being easier for women to get into CS
because of quotas?

~~~
r0naa
Isn't quota and affirmative action the very definition of making it easier for
a certain group to get access to a particular institution?

~~~
richmarr
I think discodave is asking for evidence that quotas are in use for these
courses, as oppposed to evidence that quotas increase numbers of otherwise-
underrepresented groups

------
rahimnathwani
~50% of undergrads at Stanford are female. ~30% of new Stanford computer
science majors are female.

~~~
ngoel36
Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's
alright for now.

What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than _any other major_ ,
and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's
incredible.

~~~
001sky
In all fairness, this is likely a structural data anomaly. ie, it is driven by
the number of majors at the school, and their level of abstraction. Here are
some historical data points.

Notice the arbitary abstraction of, eg

Bio Sciences Human Biology

1955 1\. History 2\. Economics 3\. Psychology 4\. Political Science 5\. Bio
Sciences

1965 1\. History 2\. Political Science 3\. English 4\. Psychology 5\.
Economics

1975 1\. Psychology 2\. Bio Sciences 3\. Economics 4\. History 5\. English

1985 1\. Economics 2\. Human Biology 3\. Bio Sciences 4\. Electrical Engr 5\.
English

1995 1\. Bio Sciences 2\. Human Biology 3\. Economics 4\. Psychology 5\.
English

and now we look at 2010 (from quora)

Biological Sciences (1.32%) but Human Biology (12.58%) Biology (5.74%)

=~20% of Standford majors in 2010 are "biology majors" in plain language
usage.

 _Based on data on Bachelor 's Degrees conferred in the 2009-2010 school
year[1], the top majors are:

    
    
        Human Biology (12.58%)
        Economics (8.10%)
        International Relations (6.20%)
        Biology (5.74%)
        Computer Science (4.94%)
        Engineering (4.71%)
        Psychology (4.54%)
        Political Science (4.25%)
        English (3.96%)
        History (3.62%)
        Management Science and Engineering (3.39%)
        Mechanical Engineering (3.10%)
        Science, Technology, and Society (2.30%)
        Communication (2.18%)
        Electrical Engineering (2.07%)
        Mathematics (2.01%)
        Earth Systems (1.84%)
        Physics (1.84%)
        Sociology (1.49%)
        Biological Sciences (1.32%)*

~~~
eitally
I suspect that differentiation would make more sense if they replaced "human
biology" with "pre-med".

I graduated from UVA In '99 and the biggest majors _by far_ were psychology,
sociology, history and economics, possibly in that order, but definitely each
having ~500 graduates (out of a class of perhaps 2800-3000). I think the
entire engineering school only graduated about 300-400 people each year (at
that time).

The current enrollment seems to match Stanford's stats, interestingly:
[http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/](http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/)

------
revelation
With their high number of (rejected) applications and subjective criteria they
can of course shape these statistics any way they want.

So is this _progress_ or Stanford _appearing progressive_? There is no way to
tell.

~~~
sloanesturz
At Stanford, undergrads are admitted generally to the school, then they get to
pick whichever major they like. Most students don't pick a major until
sophomore or junior year.

Stanford accepts 50% women and more of those women are picking to become CS
majors after they get in, when they didn't just a few years ago. This is
actually progress.

~~~
argonaut
To be fair, applicants indicate major areas that they're interested in. The
admissions committe may or may not take that info into account in deciding on
applicants.

------
userium
This is great news. One issue is still how to retain these women in tech as
over 40% of women leave tech mid-career [1] [2].

[1]
[http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-...](http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-
Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-
technology.pdf)

[2]
[http://keepwomen.com/static_pages/subscribe](http://keepwomen.com/static_pages/subscribe)

------
randyrand
As a foreigner, can someone explain me why this is important?

~~~
j-l-
As a foreigner, I guess it is similar to importance of a labor in previous
socialism. Maybe there is some "The Part played by CS majoring females in the
Transition from Ape to Man" on the way. Who knows :)

------
samfisher83
How many of them are just doing it for money since salaries are high right
now? How many of them actually would do it if it paid 50k instead of a 100k?

~~~
sridca
Not to discourage the female of the species from having fun hacking away like
the rest of us do ... but you do make a good point.

Where were the "women in tech" back when computer programming was some "weird"
hobby of the outcast nerds? What has always bothered me was that feminists
have conveniently painted this lack of interest (prior to the financial
incentives of current times) as some evil intent on the men. Sexist industry?
Give me a fsck'ing break! All of their perceived sexism is in their own minds.

One would do well listening to actual female nerds than wannabe immitator-
warriors. [https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-
collide-31895b01e68c](https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-
collide-31895b01e68c)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> Where were the "women in tech" back when computer programming was some
> "weird" hobby of the outcast nerds?

Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was
seen as lowly-paid "women's work". Later it became a male profession.

But you're talking about the non-professional setting. Well, that started with
the home computer revolution. There were few teenage girls programming at home
because the means of doing so - home computers - were marketed almost
exclusively to boys. Alas, parents seem to avoid buying boys 'girl toys' and
vice-versa.

~~~
sridca
> Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was
> seen as lowly-paid "women's work". Later it became a male profession.

I just glanced at Wikipedia on this topic ... and, apart from the convenient
mention of Ada Lovelace at the very beginning of both the articles[1] (makes
you curious why they do this), history of programming is evidently a mostly --
no, nearly all -- male profession.

Just what kind of "programming" was it that the _exclusively_ female
professional partook on, whose profession was to later become a male
profession (and what kind of "programming" are the male professionals
partaking on)?

> There were few teenage girls programming at home because the means of doing
> so - home computers - were marketed almost exclusively to boys. Alas,
> parents seem to avoid buying boys 'girl toys' and vice-versa.

\- Marketers will target whatever that can be easily influenced to make a
purchase.

\- 'girl toys' are neither superior nor inferior to 'boy toys,' ... and
feminists are the last group of people to acknowledge this distinction. As a
generalization, girls learn to manipulate people from a early age (hence
playing with barbies)[2], much as boys learn to manipulate tools. Toys merely
fulfill this instinctual desire of humans; they are not being enforced by the
hypothetical patriarchal parents and society.

\- Thus, it seems far more likely that despite parents'/peers' encouragement
to play more with the tools (such as computers) "teenage girls" continued to
opt to play with "girl toys" out of their own instinctual preference. Perhaps
because they knew deep down that the real power lies in manipulating people
and not computers.

[1] Two links:

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages)

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science)

[2] Diana Davidson describing this in detail:
[https://youtu.be/mk_WaTdhyT0?t=1m16s](https://youtu.be/mk_WaTdhyT0?t=1m16s)

~~~
kevinpet
In the early days, hardware was men's work, and programming was women's work.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Programming)

ENIAC started with an exclusively female group of six programmers.

This Cosmo article is from 1967: [http://boingboing.net/2015/07/31/the-
computer-girls-1967-c.h...](http://boingboing.net/2015/07/31/the-computer-
girls-1967-c.html)

In a line sure to make heads explode, it quotes Grace Hopper explaining how
programming is just like planning dinner.

~~~
magicalist
> _In a line sure to make heads explode, it quotes Grace Hopper explaining how
> programming is just like planning dinner._

It is just like planning dinner. Programming isn't magic and it's wankery to
suggest otherwise.

------
baldajan
Really glad to see these trends, not only at Stanford, but other universities.
Diversity in any field makes it richer.

~~~
eru
> Diversity in any field makes it richer.

In a testable way?

I'm really interested to see which of diversity's claimed benefits hold up to
scrutiny. Perfectly happy to see diversity as an end and not a means.

~~~
reagency
Do some Googling for research papers and report back what you find

~~~
yummyfajitas
Unfortunately finding a contrary result is a career limiting move. Consider
Robert Putnam, who suppressed his research (showing that diversity harms
social cohesion) for 6 years while trying to "develop proposals to compensate
for the negative effects of diversity".

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract)

~~~
kelukelugames
Here's the abstract from your link. A bit more complicated than your summary.

 _Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by
sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are
likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental
benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to
reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests
that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to
‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one 's own race) is lower, altruism and
community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however,
successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating
new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing
identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn
from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American
immigration._

~~~
yummyfajitas
If you read the paper itself, it's basically empirical work describing the
negative effects, followed by an essay claiming the positive ones. As I said -
he spent 6 years looking for _something_ to counter his empirical results, and
published when he came up with it.

Note also that I'm not strongly endorsing this work - I'm just pointing out
the strong desire to not publish a result against diversity.

~~~
kelukelugames
Thanks for explaining. I guess people are still wary since The Bell Curve.

------
raziel2702
That's percentage wise, but which university has the highest number of cs
majors I wonder? Stanford is a comparatively small university no?

------
tracker1
What are we going to do about the lack of boys/men in higher education?

~~~
douche
Write NY Times op-eds bemoaning the scarcity of quality marriageable men in
ten years.

~~~
tracker1
In 10 years, I'll be a 50yo graybeard, and definitely not concerned about
writing any such op-ed.

------
sunstone
Oh jeez, there goes the neighbourhood :)

------
ivanca
What's with the obsession of gender equality by women in high paying jobs?, is
never about lack of women in sewer maintenance or coal mining, or bugs
exterminators, or firemen (firewoman? Is that even a word?). Is always CEOs or
STEAM jobs at silicon valley. That's a very narrow and convenient definition
of "equality" isn't it?

~~~
zasz
Believe it or not, women have had to fight for the right to work in coal
mines. You probably hear only about the fight to get more women in tech, since
you are in tech. But anyway, here you go: [http://www.women-in-
mining.com/news/1389309](http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309)

Proof that there used to be laws on the books banning women from working in
mines, and feminists went and fought them. It's quite possible that the other
reason you don't hear about female coal miners asking for more representation
is that tech is worse at hiring women than coal mines are by now.

~~~
ivanca
Actually I know that, I was talking about _modern feminis_ where this kind of
jobs get a lot more attention by them than any other "gender gap"

~~~
SolaceQuantum
There are plenty of organizations that push for women representation in a
variety of jobs. Check the organization Blue Collar Women in USA.

In China just recently in 2014, women led a massive Sanitation Worker strike.
[http://www.labornotes.org/2014/10/women-lead-sanitation-
stri...](http://www.labornotes.org/2014/10/women-lead-sanitation-strike-
massive-education-complex-china)

And also in the news in 2014 a female is head of NYC's Sanitation department.
[http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/kathryn-garcia-named-
ne...](http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/kathryn-garcia-named-new-york-
city-sanitation-commissioner-1.7401963)

