Posted on 11/15/2008 8:33:25 PM PST by neverdem
Digital Domain
ELLEN SPERTUS, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? She published a 124-page paper, “Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?”, that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field. The year was 1991.
Computer science has changed considerably since then. Now, there are even fewer women entering the field. Why this is so remains a matter of dispute.
What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.
When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling. In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. Data collected by the Computing Research Association showed even fewer women at research universities like M.I.T.: women accounted for only 12 percent of undergraduate degrees in computer science and engineering in the United States and Canada granted in 2006-7 by Ph.D.-granting institutions, down from 19 percent in 2001-2. Many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates.
In 1998, when Ms. Spertus received her Ph.D. in computer science, women received 14 percent of the doctorates granted in the field...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
this article doesn’t say much.
Quick answer: The men in computer science.
Just ask Larry Summers..... and then shoot the messenger!!
Imagine starting at $100K per year ... and basically the laws will not change all that much for the rest of your life.
Now contrast with computer science, where things change every 5 to 10 years, you have no job security and relative to the amount of years you spent studying you are paid little. Plus, your job could be outsourced at the whim of your company.
Women like to enjoy their work, and Computer Science has a very high Jerk/gentleman ratio.
First Confronting the Racial Barriers Between Doctors and Patients and now this?
Hey, you beat my post by 18 seconds!!
Games have considerable promise for attracting women into the field -- except for the fact that they have totally failed to do so.
Sigh.
>>>Now, there are even fewer women entering the field. Why this is so remains a matter of dispute.
Maybe because women can get dates.
“Women like to enjoy their work, and Computer Science has a very high Jerk/gentleman ratio.”
Compared to what profession? Where is the evidence for this?
If you have to read a 124 page paper to find out why there are so few female computer scientists, then I guess not many people are gonna find out. Now if it was a short, concise 75 page paper..well..that’s a different story.
What has driven men out of HR?
The computing field (and the profession) is young, tough, demanding (and I'm not talking about just plain ol' IT here), and rather ill-defined (in that it spans and includes folks from just about every other field).
If anything, though, the inclusion of more students in the field may be accomplished through the employment of different teaching methods that take into consideration the learning styles of different students.
It’s the socks.
They couldn’t be trained to leave toilet seats up?
My daughter wanted to go into computer programming. She got her bachelor’s degree 5 years ago. After 2 years working in the field, she decided that she hated it. She was also disappointed at the low pay for someone with a 4 year degree. The field is saturated in the States and most of the work is contracted out to India. She’s got 13 months left now until she gets her nursing degree. With any luck she’ll be happy as an RN.
This is all part of the dem push to place math and sciences under title IX
What has driven white people, period, out of HR?
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