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From: smb@achilles.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: computing and gender
Message-ID: <614@achilles.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Sep-83 11:08:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: achilles.614
Posted: Tue Sep 20 11:08:10 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Sep-83 06:32:23 EDT
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 18

This week's Science News (9/17) has a article on computing and gender.
According to Stanford psychologists Irene Miura and Robert Hess, girls
begin to fall behind at an early age.  A survey of 87 children ages
5-8 showed that only boys in that age group owned home computers.  This
changed somewhat in groups of older children, but boys still outnumbered
girls two-to-one when the psychologists studied junior high school students.
In a typical home with a computer, boys would spend two to three hours a
day using the machine, the fathers would routinely use them for business,
and the mother wouldn't use them at all.

In computer camps, girls made up 27% of the enrollment in beginning
classes, but that dropped to 5% in the most advanced ones.  The female
enrollment seemed to be correlated with cost, which the researchers
interpret as evidence of parental involvment.

A third study tried examined the appeal of software titles.  Children and
adults agreed that over one third of the titles were of greater interest
to boys, while only 5% were perceived as interesting to girls.