Women in Computer Science - An Endangered Species of a New Kind?
January 31st, 2008 by
gennipher
This year I have decided to finally go back and take a course at my local college. I already have a Computer Science Degree. I graduated in the spring of 2004. The course that I’m enrolled in, Operating Systems, I have already taken, but now that I’m an Oracle DBA and I am responsible for some Linux System Admin, I figured that retaking the course would be good for me and help refresh my memory on some concepts related to system processes, process scheduling, etc, general stuff really that can be applied to Oracle tuning. So here I am sitting in this 400 level senior course on the first day of class, looking around at my fellow classmates, and feeling grossly out of place. Feeling so, because I am the only woman in the class. Out of 31 students, I am the only woman, and to make it worse, I have already taken this course so I am not really a part of this graduating class! The first time I took the class, I distinctly remember at least 5 chicas out of 30(ish) students. Where are all the women? Did they just take the class a year early? The class is only offered once a year, so that’s even more disconcerting. Hopefully this graduating batch of women were just smart enough to take it a year earlier than what is recommended in the student handbooks. But now I’m starting to think about how my beloved Computer Science department was combined with the Industrial Technology department in 2005. Not that there is anything wrong at all with Industrial Technology, but the two fields are completely different! I am wondering if this departmental change may have scared off wonderfully potential female candidates.
Back in high school, my senior year, our math class was working on proofs. The teacher was assigning specific problems to students and they would work the problem out on the board. This one proof she let 2 students solve it on our dry-erase boards (which we had 2 of). Student 1, male, solves the problem taking up the entire dry-erase board. Student 2, also male, also solves the problem using the entire dry-erase board. I start to panic, because it only took me 3 lines to solve this proof! Did I do it wrong? So I go back and read over it a couple of times, and I just can’t see anything wrong with it. My hand shot up, and the teacher comes over. I showed her my answer, and pointed to the boards asking her, did I miss something? Am I looking at this wrong?? She takes a minute or two to look at it, and reassured me that I had not done anything wrong and that my answer was right. She was very impressed because even she didn’t see the route I took to solving the proof, until she saw my answer. It was elegant and clean. She asked me if I would put it on the board and show the class how I did it, which I was delighted to do (who doesn’t love a little ego rub). So after I wrote my 3 lines on the board, and took a few minutes to explain how I got to the solution, I looked back at my classmates to see if they had any questions, and found myself looking at wrinkled noses, tilted heads and perplexed faces (one guy actually slapped his forehead to acknowledge his realization). Slowly but surely they began to see this simple route to the answer. It is funny, because I remember the feeling of how impossible it seemed to me that out of my entire class, including my teacher, I was the only one that saw the answer this way. But it just was.
Having this memory, perhaps this is why I find it such a bitter pill that I am the only female in my class this semester. Not that I am trying to be an ultra feminist, but how are we supposed to reach simple and graceful solutions when our classes are only being represented by a majority of white males. And I certainly am not saying that white men don’t have simple and graceful solutions, just that diversity plays a very important role in everything. So I am thinking about pulling some resources (my boyfriend has plenty of statistics at his disposal since he is a Business Consultant) and doing some research on my college and the female representation in Computer Science and how that relates to my city and the women in the workforce here. I’d also like to know how these women compare with the male classmates, i.e. top of the class, middle or failing. Although, admittedly, this might be greatly skewed for inappropriate reasons. Which may or may not be discussed, depending on the relativity to this topic as I get further along with my research.
I’d love to hear from the readers as well, what are your thoughts/comments/suggestions? Is there an idea you have on what you would like to see discussed in my research?
January 31st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Only thirty students in a class offered once a year? Was it a core class? Your observation is disturbing for the ladies but it’s disturbing overall.
When I hired into my organization as an intern, 20+ years ago, the intern ratio was close to 40 women - 60 men. As a DoD engineering organization, there were two entry points (civilian and former military) and two career paths (engineer w/degree and communications specialist/OJT). At that time the organization’s five female engineers were all interns. The rest of the women gained entry primarilty through an upward mobility program.
Now, there are only two female engineers (residual from that intern program) and we don’t even see women applying for jobs either as engineers or IT specialists.
But maybe even more discouraging, our last round of intern resumes was comprised almost entirely of middle-aged men and no women at all.
I know the essay was about the trend of the disappearing technical woman but from here it seems bigger. Where are ANY young people of either gender?
I had dinner with my 20-yo neice and her boyfriend the other night and we talked about college. She’s intelligent, well-organized, and petrified of math. Although she is fascinated by biology and microbes she’s planning to quit college and switch to cosmetology. He wanted to major in computer science/engineering but the math scared him off and he’s majoring in architecture, instead.
It’s a small, subjective sample but I wonder what’s happening to kids today that they don’t believe themselves capable of mastering the gatekeeping concepts in order to pursue their preferred careers.
Maybe if we can figure out what’s discouraging the boys now, we’ll better understand how to encourage all of them.
Elisa
January 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Yes, it’s an epidemic in the field, at least in this country (I’m not sure how it is in too many other places, but I know when I was dealing with companies doing Indian outsourcing there were never any female voices). It’s definitely a blogged about issue, but every little bit of awareness and attention helps. Some cool new stats certainly wouldn’t hurt anything.
My 300 person CS classes had well under 10 woman in them. After a decade in Utah, I now work in San Francisco, where I expected things to be radically different and our company of 10 or so now, in downtown SOMA, is all male, almost entirely white. And I know we haven’t been turning down candidates on basis of gender or race. The field is just predominately made up of white males. Out of the maybe 50 developers who have been my colleagues over the years, 1 of them was a woman. Women seem more prevalent in the “acceptably artsy” fields of UX and design, but there is a scarcity on the programming/SA side of the fence.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Maybe it’s a freudian slip to use the singular in that last sentence, but would you mind correcting that typo (woman for women)?
February 1st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I’ve heard from a few friends at different U.S. universities that, along with the decline in CS enrollments in general that has happened over the past few years, there has also been a decline in the number of women. Percentage-wise or a proportional drop, I don’t know. I think there is a trend here that is worth getting real statistics on. I believe the Computing Research Association collects this data.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I went to RIT for my CS degree. The ratio of girls:guys for the entire school was pretty scary, but doubly so for the CS program. There was a fair ratio of girls:guys among the CS professors, but with few exceptions, the only girls in any of my classes were grad students, usually from outside the country.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Thanks for the excellent comments. I want to state that the University that I attend has an average of only 15K students enrolled, and that it is mainly a Nursing, Teaching and Business school. That is why, perhaps, it seems odd that the core class only has 30ish students in it that I’m speaking of.
After reading the comments, I do think that this may be more affected by the general down-turn of the tech industry in general, being a less popular degree than it was 5-10 years ago. So perhaps the ratio of women:men in the curriculum is directly proportionate to this trend. I am going to try and get more information on # of enrolled students now vs. when I was in the curriculum.
On a side note, just in speaking with a professor of mine from when I was in college and the new department head about this problem, I may be asked to do recruitment to bring in more women to the CS curriculum, YAY! Anyways, thanks again and I should have another post within the next week or two.
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Women in Open Source: a focus group in March…
Thanks to one of Audrey’s RSS feeds, I read Women in Computer Science - An Endangered Species of a New Kind? this afternoon. About the same time, I received email from a professor at UMD who is helping organize PostgreSQL Conference East. She wou…
February 4th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Another organization that has been pondering the growing issues related to pulling more girls and women into tech fields is the American Association of University Women.
For example, back in 2000 they published this: Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age ( http://www.aauw.org/research/tech_savvy.cfm ) and they are currently sponsoring what they call their STEM project (Opening Opportunities for Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math - http://www.aauw.org/education/ngcp/index.cfm ).
Just thought these resources and research might be of interest to those pondering these issues.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
There are 41 people in one of my CS classes, and assuming the foreign names that end in “a” are all female (best guideline I’ve got), there are 13 girls. They aren’t all from the same year, though. I know at least one girl is a senior. They’re also not all comp sci majors. Some have other engineering majors that require that they take that class. Based on how many there’ve been in every other CS class I’ve taken, I’d say there’s probably more like 6 girls in my year in CS.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I graduated in 2005 with a linguistics degree (and minor in computer science [well among other minors]). I took well beyond a degree’s worth of computer science classes (just not the ‘correct’ classes to get a degree :) ), and the thing that amazed me was the disparity in different types of classes. All of my computational linguistics courses were basically 50/50 gender ratio, my AI classes in the computer science department were near 50/50 as well mostly (minus the neural networks class), and the classes i had to take for my minor had at worst only 1 girl, and at best (classes that crossed over with MIS requirements) maybe a half dozen girls out of a class of 40.
To girls (anyone actually) entering (or already in) university for the first time, i advocate joining a technical field that’s -not- in a computer science department. Go get a statistics degree. A computational linguistics degree. A math degree, that focuses on data intensive work. There are other places where your technical skill is appreciated, and you will not be ostracized for being the odd-man out (forgive the pun). And (usually) none of that prevents you from taking courses in computer science anyway. (As an aside, i didn’t like how my male peers in my classes behaved, especially regarding some of the bad behavior directed at my female friends, which also drove me further away from wanting to share a computer science program with them)
As a Rails developer, i’ve been depressed to discover that there are even fewer women in the line of work i ended up in. As much as a love my coworkers, it’s nice to be able to talk about work to someone who’s not a man. Part of this is obviously a social problem, as a lot of my communication takes place over text (irc, email, im) where gender information is not immediately apparent, and women have a disincentive to letting that information slip (wow a woman programmer! :P )
If you’re looking for questions to ask women regarding their opinion of computer science (and likelihood of going into the field), you need to get at the question of perceived benefit vs perceived cost. I’d be interested to see to what degree this ratio changes over the duration of a student’s academic career in CS. I found that that there were a lot more women in MIS than in CS, and all the women in CS were really quite bright. I also knew a good deal of women who were bright enough, and could have definitely gotten through a CS degree, but just didn’t feel like it was worth it (and instead went into MIS or something else). The question of what “worth it” means is really the meat of the subject, and whether those are simply economic (i.e. do you think this is a viable career path, and that your education is preparing you for that path), or whether there is a significant social component to it (i.e. dealing with regularly being stuck in a group coding project with boys who become totally passive aggressive when you make it clear you have no interest in dating them).
February 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I always had a “fun” theory about the women in CS that I know. Roughly 95% of the ones I know have brothers. And probably about 90% of the friends I had all through school who easily could have gone into the CS field, but didn’t, only had sisters. A few of them I can name right off as those who didn’t go into the field because it was too awkward socially for them; too far out of their comfort zone to be the only female in the room, or one of a handful.
Thankfully, I always fit right in with the guys, and wasn’t intimidated or awkward, and I knew how to interact appropriately — I felt like having a big brother around really made it easier for me to work in a male-dominated field later on… even if I had to endure my share of wedgies and wet willies.
I always joked about my theory but it would be fun to find out what the real percentage is. :)
February 7th, 2008 at 8:46 am
I lied. All the girls I thought were CS majors are electrical engineering or systems engineering majors. They seem to hate the CS classes we have together too. My friend Rachel and I thought we were the only girls our year (class of 2010) majoring in CS. A Facebook search says there’s one more who we’ve never seen in any of our classes and who isn’t active on Facebook (so she could’ve set that a while ago and switched schools or majors since then which would explain us not having seen her).
Only 2 or 3 girls. Now this is disappointing.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
well I’m planning to do a cs degree but reading your negative comments has really put me off. If you want women in the field then stop saying how bad it is and talk about the good things.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:18 am
@geek-girl: This post was not negative in any way. I am trying to identify a trend at my university, and get to the bottom of why there aren’t MORE women in computer science. I’m not sure where you thought I was talking bad about it, and I’m sorry for the misconception. Don’t let this post disuade you from getting a computer science degree, it’s a great degree, and I know because I already have mine.
@Jeanne: Thank you for those links. I have been reading their article and I’m on Chapter 3 right now. Great insight!!! I love how they have points of view from high school students and teachers alike. The article brings up so many issues that should all be addressed.
I should have my second post on this topic in the next 2 weeks.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Well, I found more interesting reading in the comments than in the original post (meant to be kudos to the comments, not a dig againt the original).
First of all, it is true that the percentage of women enrolling in CS in North America is declining, meaning that each year, the ratio of men to women is getting more and more unbalanced. Additionally, the number of applicants into CS programs is declining. I don’t have a source for these numbers, but have heard them cited by Google recruiters and know that they are behind some efforts within Google to fund programs to encourage interest in technical fields amongst children, especially girls, with the belief that these trends start before people reach university age.
Secondly, I had no idea women felt so isolated within the field. Lack of sexism means to me, amongst other things, not paying attention to gender and gender differences. Sure, there are different washrooms but we’re all using the same keyboards? IM and e-mail do a good job of allowing communication focused on the content and not the delivery (flames aside).
As someone who’s been trying to lose weight for a while, I have had the inverse experience - of being in groups dominated by women (men, by and large, don’t appear on most diet sites). It took me a little while to notice that ‘one of these is not like the others - and it’s me!’ but it’s never particularly bothered me. I don’t feel like it’s a shame dieting is so female dominated, and if only I had another man to talk to I’d be better off. However I’ve often been asked by female candidates how many women are at my workplace, so I know it’s a concern of women in the field.
I wish I knew what to do about it. Since I don’t, I thought I’d just dump my thoughts here, in case they’re useful.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Honestly, I don’t see such a big deal.
It’s like asking why in my last dance class I was the only guy among about 15/20 girls.
There are several books on the subject, more or less approved or controversial.
I remember a woman saying “aside from all theories, I have two very young babies, I boy and a girl, and when I put them in the box, the girl plays with dolls and the boy with tools.”
In the “tooling” (CS ;-)) course in my university the ratio was about 10:1.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 pm
@Saverio: Honestly, it is a really big deal. The fact that men outnumber women in CS classes and later on in tech work environments creates a weird social dynamic within the field and I am always amazed that this is not perceived by most men.
For example, I can corroborate Ted Han’s story of tech boys getting passive agressive when tech woman makes it clear to them that she is not interested in dating them.
Also, Gloria recently wrote an article explaining differences between all-female or female-friendly groups vs. the rest of the tech world in more detail. Maybe this will help you understand why you were so happy in your dance class.
http://www.devchix.com/2007/06/09/let%e2%80%99s-all-evolve-past-this-the-barriers-women-face-in-tech-communities/
March 11th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I am a girl in computer science at University of Michigan, and I am the only girl in most of my classes. Additionally I am the only african american in most of my classes.
Honestly, I am really having a hard time now, I transferred from another engineering school because my parents moved and there were maybe 2-3 girls in the cs classes there, but that’s better than none.
I had difficulty getting a group partner and they are often rude and uncooperative. I would assume it was me, except all my group partners from my old school are still my friends.
Professors do not give you the benefit of the doubt and you are labeled, quite often, incapable over similar questions that other students have. There are dumb questions apparently, girls ask them.
Most recently a group partner allocated group work in an uneven manner and then ditched me when the project was complete in the middle of the next project when he no longer felt he needed me or I would no longer allow him the uneven distribution credit.
I look like a big whiner if I complain to anyone, because of course no one else is having any problems. I really feel like going back to my old school only Im out of state there and cant go back.
This is my last year and its really hard. Since I am throwing my own pity party I should add that I cant afford tuition and it is constantly worrying me what I will do next semester. My parents cant and have not been able to provide financial support and paying out of state tuition has depleted my federal funding.
Sorry to vent here, but these types of issues are the reasons I would probably tell others not to go into computer science, although its a great field many times women are not accorded the same sense of accomplishment for the same work. :(
March 14th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Hello
First of all, thank you so much for a fantastic article overall.
A few comments:
(1) I am an engineer by training, and I realize that while the social differences between engineers and CS guys is a chasm that is more deep than wide, I personally do not mind it when my colleages (male or female) say something nice about the way I look; in fact it sometimes cheers me up when I am having a bad day! I sometimes compliment them as well. I don’t see it as a come on from either side, just work friends being nice to each other. Nor do I take offense if someone does not say anything at all.
(2) I am taking a computer science course this semester (work-related), and was struck by how the instructor can be quite (and I think unknowingly, as he seems to be a pretty nice guy)
condescending. He once was talking about how C arrays are stored in memory, and I got lost (yes, we tend to still use fortran for scientific codes). At the end he asked, “does this make sense to everyone”? I said “no”. He looked at me and said “are you serious?”. I thought that was weird, and I felt like *($#. There are other examples too, not just involving me. Anyways I was really excited about this class at the beginning and by last week was about to drop out, just because of how I felt in the class, not because of some innate ability or lack thereof.
But I decided to stick with it.
As a whole I think that CS guys (with the exception of the ones from Asia, in my experience)
can be socially inept.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:04 am
P.S. I am a different Elizabeth from the earlier poster.