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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!loren
From: loren@megatest.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: computing and gender
Message-ID: <117@megatest>
Date: Sun, 11-Sep-83 21:30:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: megatest.117
Posted: Sun Sep 11 21:30:39 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Sep-83 01:09:32 EDT
Organization: Megatest Corp., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 37

I have always been interested in the question of why there are fewer women
programmers. Back in my teaching days (I was a teaching assistant for
several lower division computer science courses for several years, at UCSD)
I gave some thought to the matter, and came to the following conclusions.

1. there were a least as many very sharp female students as male students.
If anything the best women were more than a match for the best men.
Furthermore, many of the best TA's were female.

2. on the other hand far more of the really struggling students were female.
One of the main reasons for this was psychological: computer science and
programming is a difficult subject, for people of both sexes. To succeed in
it usually requires a good deal of persistance and self-confidence. If your
program fails the first few times, and it usually will for beginning
students, it's very easy to conclude that you're just no good at the
subject. Even more distress occurs when you later realize just how stupid the
bugs you had were. Many of the women had the feeling that they were "just no
good at computers". This became a self-fulfilling prophecy when they
encountered the inevitable beginner's problems. I spent most of my efforts
as a TA helping these students discover that they really were able to
program computers. Many went on to get A's or B's in the course once they'd
gotten over the psychological hurdle.

3. Sexist comments were rare enough to be seen as shocking. 30-40% of the
CS majors were female.

4. It's well to remember that, aside from the math aspect of programming
(which males are acculturated to excell at) there is a stronger verbal
aspect (after all, they're programming LANGUAGES), and this is something
that females are acculterated to excell at.

I'd be interested to hear concurrance or disagreement from anyone (alumni,
are you out there? sdcsvax?).

loren rosen

{sun, fortune, ucbvax!lbl-csam} !megatest!loren