14 Feb
2019
14 Feb
'19
8:02 p.m.
There have been several studies. As I remember, girls in school do
indeed receive as much encouragement in computers as do males. And
girls do indeed have access to as many resources as males. So the
studies came to no conclusions.
My personal thought is that, in high school, it's the "nerd" factor. If
I were back in high school and saw the kind of guys that are getting
into computers now, I would stay a thousand miles away from them and
that field. But, alas, I don't think anyone has tried to research that
idea...
And/or: I have a friend who was a professor of CS in Amsterdam. She had
many grad students of both sexes. She says she had to practically force
the women to stay in the field. They would see the guys getting overly
focused on the computer details themselves, completely overlooking the
goals of the project. The women would get frustrated and complain to
the professor. She would have to convince them that the guys just did
that, and that the women should stay on track.
I do admit, I have a husband who does that. Personally, I have ALWAYS
looked at computers as a tool to accomplish something grander than just
being a computer. But I am usually out-shouted. ;-)
On 2/14/19 11:29 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
From: Deborah
Scherrer
In the early days of Usenix, I used to keep track
of the women.
Initially, about 30% of the organization was female. That dropped every
year.
Interesting. Any ideas/thoughts on what was going on, what caused that?
Noel