
Tech's Gender and Race Gap Starts in High School - saiprashanth93
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/techs-gender-and-race-gap-starts-in-high-school/282966/
======
subjectsigma
Can someone please explain to me why I am supposed to care about equality in
gender and race representation in this field? Because quite frankly, I don't,
and everywhere I look on the Internet, people are universally accepting this
as a disastrous problem which must immediately be fixed.

The comments on this article (and the article in general) all seem to imply
that women in technology are bullied or ignored into oblivion. For the record,
there were several girls in my high school AP Computer Science class, two were
not white, and they all did pretty well for themselves both in the class and
after it. They were not given any special treatment, positive or negative.
Maybe I just happened to have had a great experience, but all these claims
about how "There's a higher obstacle to overcome in the perception of computer
science for girls" seem flaky at best.

It seems to me that we should universally encourage people to do what they're
good at, regardless of race or gender, or the field they want to enter. Giving
so much attention to women/minorities in technology just feels unnecessary.

~~~
theorique
Because programming and technology is a current source of good jobs that pay
well and provide social prestige. Women and racial minorities want a larger
cut of that action.

You can sugar coat it in any fancy words you like, but ultimately it comes
down to this.

------
hawkharris
A story about Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world-renowned astrophysicist and
science communicator, comes to mind.

Tyson's first TV appearance came when he was in graduate school. A local
network asked him to explain a meteor shower. Initially, Tyson felt shy and
uncomfortable with the publicity.

After he did the interview, he became more observant of the media and noticed
something strange: he didn't see any other black men featured in segments that
didn't have to do with being black. Sure, there were well-intentioned pieces
highlighting the struggles of black Americans, but there weren't _any_ other
segments in which an expert, who happened to be black, discussed science.

That realization is part of what inspired Tyson to pursue physics and speak to
audiences about science. I think his story speaks volumes about the tone with
which we, members of the "tech community," discuss the race and gender gap.

Tyson's message was simple: show, don't tell. In other words, don't just
examine why certain groups are underrepresented and dwell on the inequality.
Instead, counterbalance these types of stories with stories that _show_ how
members of the underrepresented groups are making progress.

During the past few days I've seen dozens of articles about the disadvantages
that women in tech face. But I haven't seen a proportionate number of stories
about the women who are succeeding in the industry.

Tyson said that, for many American TV viewers, seeing one "smart black man"
discuss science was enough to overturn deeply ingrained stereotypes. Stories
about female founders succeeding are equally powerful, and we should highlight
them in addition to focusing on the inequalities.

~~~
streptomycin
_Tyson said that, for many American TV viewers, seeing one "smart black man"
discuss science was enough to overturn deeply ingrained stereotypes. Stories
about female founders succeeding are equally powerful, and we should highlight
them in addition to focusing on the inequalities._

And how has that resulted in reducing the race disparity in science? Our
problems run far deeper.

Similarly, the idea that tech disparities are rooted in high school is
absolutely laughable. Socioeconomic differences manifest in HUGE easily
observable differences in education, well before kids even start kindergarten.

~~~
mcv
> And how has that resulted in reducing the race disparity in science?

Well, for one thing, he may inspire a lot of black kids to pursue science,
when they otherwise might have decided that science isn't for black kids.

Examples and inspiration are powerful things.

Similarly, I suspect a lot of girls and non-white boys in school might feel
that tech isn't fashionable/cool/otherwise acceptable for them, while it is
for white boys. Such preconceptions need to be disproven.

------
001sky
_In California, home of Silicon Valley, a slightly higher-than-average
percentage of the test-takers were women: 22 percent. But the percentage of
African-American students taking the exam was far lower: just one and a half
percent._

That 1.5% participation rate for blacks is about the same as their attendence
at Yosemite National Park.

Of course, very few are actually aware of the Sierra Club's racist history.
The irony should not be lost: not only is the sierra club a supposedly
"progressive" organization, it was founded and lead from the heart of the
culture that begat silicon valley. Its earliest and most prominent members
were products of Stanford and Berkeley, and influential lawyers and academics.
Interestingly, however, they were not sexists in the exclusionary sense. The
tended to bring their wives along, at least the more adventurous ones, who
were on a variety of recorded early expiditions. Of course, this was still
before women could vote.

------
nationcrafting
Why does everything have to be evaluated in terms of encouraging one gender to
do X or encouraging one race to do Y? Why not just generally encourage humans
to be open to learn things they may find interesting or useful?

~~~
sp332
It seems like that's not happening, and until we figure out why and fix it,
we're at least trying to compensate.

~~~
poorelise
The women I know learn and learned a lot of things, just not computer science.
Why is computer science better than other things?

~~~
woah
Because people with technical knowledge are considered in many humanities
circles to be a priveleged group that is oppressing others. (Especially in the
Bay)

~~~
krakensden
The Bay protest scene is hilarious. White people with trust funds yelling at
Indian immigrants on the behalf of black people.

------
mcfunley
You should certainly click through and just look at the data:

[http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/556](http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/556)

Basically nobody takes this test. I think producing a finely detailed list of
observations like "no females took the exam in Mississippi, Montana, and
Wyoming" is a little weird. Because only twelve students total took the test
in all of those states put together!

I certainly agree that more women and minorities should be encouraged to take
it. But a prerequisite is probably getting it on the curriculum in schools at
all.

------
etler
I think it starts far earlier than that. I know the reason why I and many
others are in programming. Legos and video games. Your interests are shaped
from the toys you play with and the activities you do from infancy. Stop
giving girls dolls to play with and give them a toy that requires them to
think more.

~~~
poorelise
Are girls really not given Legos? I find that hard to believe. And while
perhaps they get dolls, boys get toy cars, which don't teach you anything
technical either.

I actually checked Amazon this christmas and if you looked at the "experiments
and science" stuff for example, the gift recommendations for boys and girls
where exactly the same. There were some boy/girl specific categories (like
"princesses"), but for the "normal" categories there was no difference for the
genders.

~~~
fuckpig
sssh... you'll interrupt the narrative.

------
crazy1van
Maybe women on average just aren't as interested in technology? My elementary
school teachers were overwhelmingly women.

Just because the sexes should be treated equally under the law doesn't mean we
should expect them to have identical preferences.

~~~
johnjlocke
Sure, Ivan. Just feed into the stereotypical myth that women just don't want
to program - because their female brains can't handle anything beyond cooking,
cleaning, and child raising. Is that what you're trying to say, broski?

~~~
crazy1van
> Sure, Ivan. Just feed into the stereotypical myth that women just don't want
> to program - because their female brains can't handle anything beyond
> cooking, cleaning, and child raising. Is that what you're trying to say,
> broski?

I did not say anything anything like that. Society is filled with people
completely capable of doing an activity who choose not to do it. Despite what
you suggest, preference and capability are different things.

Most of us on HN are lucky to live in a society where both sexes can choose
the career they pursue. Let's be careful not to fault one sex because on
average they chose to not make the same career choices that we made.

------
jamesli
Seriously? No Asians are mentioned at all.

~~~
khuey
Are Asians underrepresented in technology?

~~~
WesternStar
Personally, I think they are underrepresented in technology leadership.

------
Jeff_Almdale
I go to a "technical" high school, and the only useful CS course available is
Cisco Networking Academy. It's great and I've learned a lot taking it, but
it's a junior/senior level only class and younger students' only option is
Microsoft Office/Adobe courses. Additionally, the only girl in my class isn't
even planning on entering the tech field, and there aren't any girls at all in
the class below me.

------
hacknat
In High School?

Try: before you're even born.

~~~
VladRussian2
that depends on who you blame for development of the differences
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_gender_differen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_gender_differences#Male_vs._female_brain_anatomy)),
school district or evolution :)

------
vezzy-fnord
_Rather than focus on getting women and minorities hired at tech startups or
encouraging them to major in computer science in college, there should be a
push to turn them on to the discipline when they 're still teenagers—or even
younger._

Most movements and organizations dedicated to advancing minorities in CS have
largely focused on the former.

While starting off younger does have advantages (although your skills might
stagnate at a certain point where a person who started later has just caught
up with you), I'm not familiar with any push to do so.

There's a push to introduce compulsory coding classes, but that's distinct.

Unsurprisingly, the article's only source to this claim is PG's out-of-context
statement that already got beaten until it was a carcass.

------
ANTSANTS
I had a bad experience with my high school computer science classes (both the
AP Java curriculum and a teacher-designed curriculum). No one learned anything
in that class: You either already had some experience with programming and
were thus far beyond the scope of the curriculum, or didn't know anything and
were introduced to difficult new ideas by a horribly designed curriculum and
ineffectual teacher. `What does "public static void main (String []args)"[1]
mean? Why do I have to write all that?` `It's what you put at the start.`
`This is stupid, I'm going to play Quake and copy someone's work later.`

It was a pointless and discouraging experience all around. The only people who
came out of those classes and actually did anything related to technology were
already learning on their own in the first place. A neutral effect at best,
more likely negative.

I'd explain further, but instead of complaining more about my specific
experience, I'll just get to the point: the problem is not that the high
school compsci curricula are somehow biased against people that aren't white
and male, it's that the curricula are totally fucking useless and aren't
teaching anyone anything. The only way to do "well" in them is to have
preexisting programming knowledge, which just happens to mostly exist in
middle class boys privileged enough to own a personal computer.[2] The
whiteness and maleness of the kids in these classes is not the problem, it is
a _symptom_ of a greater problem.

I think to fix the gap, you have to introduce some level of computer science
education in elementary school. If you just leave it to kids to discover the
magic of computers on their own, it shouldn't be surprising that most kids
won't, and the ones with opportunities to use computers at home get a huge
head start.

The other thing: We need people in "tech" to be selfless and sacrifice their
cushy salaries to contribute to education. My teacher barely knew how to
program, and couldn't teach worth a damn either. One memorable moment that
stunted my growth as a programmer for a while: She actually, I shit you not,
told us that all the programming jobs were being offshored to India and that
we shouldn't bother. We believed her. If _that_ is the kind of teacher that we
have introducing kids to computer science, there is clearly a problem, because
just about _any_ CS undergrad could have done a better job. Given enough
freedom (that is sadly nowhere to be found in our bureaucratic education
system), they could easily design a curriculum that goes far further than the
AP curriculum while being more approachable and more exciting. Here's a start:
Ditch Java for Python, Lua, or even (barf) Javascript. Here's another idea
that can start as early as elementary school: Give kids ~50 megabytes on a web
server and teach them to make their own personal static web pages by hand in
HTML, Geocities-style. And another: either ditch Windows XP, or configure the
systems so that they aren't completely locked down and impossible to do
_anything_ on.

I think you see my point here: These are ideas that should be totally obvious
to anyone who cares about education and has basic programming experience, that
could make a big difference with very little effort, yet no one is doing
anything like them at all. This suggests that there are systemic problems that
will not be easy to correct: the early education system is hopelessly
bureaucratic, the tech industry has no voice in it, that smart programmers
aren't altruistic enough to give up relatively large salaries to work for
education...

If I seem bitter about this, it's because I am. My education system (and I
suspect many others) only focused on improving the racial divide, barely
making any effort to improve curricula, hire better teachers, or think outside
of the box in any way, to the detriment of _everyone._

[1] I don't speak Java, did I get that right?

[2] It's not just about middle class privilege, though: When I was in school,
I think it was actually more common for girls to have personal laptops than
boys, probably because parents believe that "if you give a boy a computer,
he'll just look at porn all day." Yet still there were very few girls truly
interested in computers or taking the computer science classes.

~~~
analog31
I think that starting kids earlier would be a massive improvement. A kid's
first exposure to any interesting subject shouldn't have to be a college level
course. Would we teach math that way?

Teaching programming in grade school would be so much better. If kids are 10+
years away from hitting the job market, in an area where technology turns over
every 5 years, then we don't have to pretend that we're teaching them a job
skill. This gives teachers the freedom to teach things within their own
limited skill sets, and to have fun with it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> A kid's first exposure to any interesting subject shouldn't have to be a
> college level course. Would we teach math that way?

I don't get it. We do teach math that way (unless you think that all math
classes are just blobs of an undifferentiated "math" whole).

~~~
ANTSANTS
We don't completely ignore math until high school, suddenly say "so there are
these things called numbers," expect to get along to algebra in one semester,
and then throw our hands up in the air when that doesn't work out.

------
Tycho
This article only cites evidence that the gap is _present_ at high school, not
that it actually _starts_ in high-school and not earlier.

------
poorelise
"So her message to girls is "Hey, you can create apps to use in emergencies to
help people."

Or, you could end up optimizing ads, working in some badly ventilated open
plan office. (This is what every developer in my city seems to be doing).

------
Dewie
I think the closest I got to programming before college was making summation
formulas in Excel.

