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From: liz@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.social,net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: Is Computing Gender Specific?
Message-ID: <2282@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Aug-83 02:33:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2282
Posted: Wed Aug 31 02:33:48 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Sep-83 04:19:59 EDT
References: <527@houxm.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 36

Well, I'm female and a hacker -- I maintain our version of Franz
lisp, and we've done >lots< of hacking on that as a group.  But,
I know I'm kind of unusual.  I'm not sure why...

As far as students at the Univ of Maryland are concerned, I think
the number of female undergrad students in Computer Science is
growing constantly and has been out ahead (percentage-wise) of
areas like math and engineering for a long time.  I think that the
percentage of female grad students is also going up.  at AAAI, I
was surpised at the number of women that were there.  Especially
the number of younger women.  There also seemed to be more women
giving talks than at past conferences.

I don't know if there's anything so gender specific about computing.
As far as it's mathematical/engineering, in our society (at least),
it favors men, but in so far as it requires attention to a lot of
small details, it may favor women (think about secretaries...).
I hope the gap is narrowing instead of widening...

As far as getting girls interested in computing goes, I suppose
improving teaching in the schools is probably the best thing.  A
lot of elementary teachers are women, and a lot of the teachers
are not very interested in math and science.  Where those two sets
intersect, it doesn't give many role models of women showing a lot
of interest in math, etc.  That also gives some clues as to why a
lot of kids in general don't go in for math or science...  (I could
start flaming about our educational system here real easily...)

I got into it because I really liked math, etc, but it required a
bit of determination to push it through (not because of being a
girl as much as because of things like not having a math teacher
most of my eighth grade year -- talk about frustrating!!)
-- 
				-Liz Allen, U of Maryland, College Park MD
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