Why are there so few girls in programming?
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Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming. I'm not very good at it yet, but I do like it. I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year. For those of you with a formal education I'm curious how many girls you had in classes, how they acted (shy? open for discussion?), ethnic diversity (we had a few foreign girls but i was the only "white" girl in most of my classes.) But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers? Other girls please give your feedback!
leckey wrote:
But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers?
Coz most of them don't like programming? :rolleyes: --- With best regards, A Manchester United Fan The Genius of a true fool is that he can mess up a foolproof plan!
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Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming. I'm not very good at it yet, but I do like it. I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year. For those of you with a formal education I'm curious how many girls you had in classes, how they acted (shy? open for discussion?), ethnic diversity (we had a few foreign girls but i was the only "white" girl in most of my classes.) But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers? Other girls please give your feedback!
leckey wrote:
how many girls you had in classes
A while back, when I learned the profession Fachinformatiker[^] (German word for somebody who learned an IT job for three years in a company an a school), we were five girls in my class, and about 20 or 25 boys. Two of the girls didn't get it and don't work in IT anymore. Today I'm just about to finish the next part of german IT education, in a few days I'm going to be Techniker für Informatik[^]. When the class started four years ago, we were five girls, two of them left the school during the first year, the third one left in her second year. So we are only two girls (and six boys) who'll leave the school with the full certification. One of the boys wants to go to university. All others are happy to be finished with that stuff. Seven years of IT school seem short, now, when looking back ... but it must have been hard enough to reduce the size of our class from 28 (first day) down to 8 (people you actually did the final exams).
leckey wrote:
why do you think so few girls go into programming
Most of the girls I know have more social and less technical interests, and they have strange ideas about the IT business. They say they want to work with people, or that they don't understand all that tech stuff. Well, an IT worker has a lot to do with people, software is only there to be used by people - anyway, the image of the pale hacker in front of the screen seems to be programmed into girl's minds. Another point is that most of the girls I kno think that programming would be complicated and hard to understand. They are afraid of the "challenge" ... lazy and badly informed are those ladies... Anyway, we cannot force girls to do programming. If they don't like computer, well, let them do the low paid "women's
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But still the number is pretty less if you think about programming. Best Regards, Apurva Kaushal
In a way yes. Perhaps, it is by law of nature too. Even after joining work, females shoulder a lot of family responsibilities, which reduces thier contribution on par with thier male counterparts. Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage namespace LavanyaDeepak
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The World of Deepak and Lavanya
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leckey wrote:
But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers?
Coz most of them don't like programming? :rolleyes: --- With best regards, A Manchester United Fan The Genius of a true fool is that he can mess up a foolproof plan!
Yes, that's a fact. But why don't they like programming? _____________________________________________________________________________ I don't expect too much, all I want is your vote for Halbsichtigkeit.
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led mike wrote:
I propose that we get you, me and as many of the other female CPians that are interested in this topic to meet in person
And yet in your profile you keep on referring to yourself as "He". Yeah, women do that all the time. :doh: Jeremy Falcon
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In a way yes. Perhaps, it is by law of nature too. Even after joining work, females shoulder a lot of family responsibilities, which reduces thier contribution on par with thier male counterparts. Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage namespace LavanyaDeepak
Personal Weblog
The World of Deepak and Lavanya
ViewPoint 24x7 -
apurva kaushal wrote:
but the things are changing rapidly
Yes... In 'Leaps and Bounds' :rose: Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage namespace LavanyaDeepak
Personal Weblog
The World of Deepak and Lavanya
ViewPoint 24x7 -
Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming. I'm not very good at it yet, but I do like it. I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year. For those of you with a formal education I'm curious how many girls you had in classes, how they acted (shy? open for discussion?), ethnic diversity (we had a few foreign girls but i was the only "white" girl in most of my classes.) But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers? Other girls please give your feedback!
Because nature and nurture conspire against them. Just this week I read a med sci piece on some bit of the brain that lights up like a christmas tree in autistic idiots savant and not at all in women, with blokes in the middle and nerdy engineers lighting up more than usual. That said, of the two (count them, two of forty) women in my computing course fifteen years ago, one was an oxygen thief and the other was so good it was scary. And she was a natural blonde with a radiant smile and a body to die for, with nice perky, oh wait wrong type of website. But you get the gist. I feel that we let down engineers everywhere when we failed to capture and clone her. Imagine, if you will, a world of hot chicks who like pizza, video games, programming computers and building gadgets, rode around on a trailbike... man, she even brewed her own beer! -- modified at 2:04 Thursday 22nd June, 2006
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leckey wrote:
Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming.
Sorry, i don't buy it. Hardly any girls like programming, everyone knows that - but plenty of programmers like to play fast and lose with the sex of their online personas. I suspect you are merely one of the latter... :suss:
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Hardly. But I personally know one who prefers programming to any other stuff. She's a bit tomboyish though, very independent, doesn't like make-ups and likes to wear her pants jeans. (No, she's not lesbian). "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner" - Ross Edbert Sydney, Australia
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led mike wrote:
I propose that we get you, me and as many of the other female CPians that are interested in this topic to meet in person
And yet in your profile you keep on referring to yourself as "He". Yeah, women do that all the time. :doh: Jeremy Falcon
Dude. Your SLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW.:-D He wants to hook up with all the programming chicks and hand pick the hotties for 5 days of fun and sun.
"You have an arrow in your butt!" - Fiona:cool:
Welcome to CP in your language. Post the unicode version in My CP Blog [ ^ ] now.People who don't understand how awesome Firefox is have never used CPhog[^]CPhog. The act of using CPhog (Firefox)[^] alone doesn't make Firefox cool. It opens your eyes to the possibilities and then you start looking for other things like CPhog (Firefox)[^] and your eyes are suddenly open to all sorts of useful things all through Firefox. - (Self Quote)
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That is not meant to suggest I am a girl ;)
"Just about every question you've asked over the last 3-4 days has been "urgent". Perhaps a little planning would be helpful?"
Colin Angus Mackay in the C# forumled mike
led mike wrote:
That is not meant to suggest I am a girl
Well I feel releived. :-D Jeremy Falcon
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Dude. Your SLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW.:-D He wants to hook up with all the programming chicks and hand pick the hotties for 5 days of fun and sun.
"You have an arrow in your butt!" - Fiona:cool:
Welcome to CP in your language. Post the unicode version in My CP Blog [ ^ ] now.People who don't understand how awesome Firefox is have never used CPhog[^]CPhog. The act of using CPhog (Firefox)[^] alone doesn't make Firefox cool. It opens your eyes to the possibilities and then you start looking for other things like CPhog (Firefox)[^] and your eyes are suddenly open to all sorts of useful things all through Firefox. - (Self Quote)
:doh::laugh: Oops. Jeremy Falcon
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apurva kaushal wrote:
but the things are changing rapidly
Yes... In 'Leaps and Bounds' :rose: Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage namespace LavanyaDeepak
Personal Weblog
The World of Deepak and Lavanya
ViewPoint 24x7 -
Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming. I'm not very good at it yet, but I do like it. I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year. For those of you with a formal education I'm curious how many girls you had in classes, how they acted (shy? open for discussion?), ethnic diversity (we had a few foreign girls but i was the only "white" girl in most of my classes.) But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers? Other girls please give your feedback!
I haven't seen many classes, but I remember one girl that was struggling desparately, I always felt she'll never make it, and I was torn between "tell her my opinion so she tries to find something else", and "not telling her because how should I know?" OTOH, a long term acquaintance turned out to be a real code geek after years 'knowing' her (gosh, a girl arguing about C code - I never thought I'd ever meet one, and there she was all the time). At least now I understand some of her personality quirks better. Being from east germany, ethnic diversity in tech jobs is still close to zero.
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighist -
Yes, that's a fact. But why don't they like programming? _____________________________________________________________________________ I don't expect too much, all I want is your vote for Halbsichtigkeit.
Corinna John wrote:
why don't they like programming?
Dunno... :doh: You tell me. :rolleyes: --- With best regards, A Manchester United Fan The Genius of a true fool is that he can mess up a foolproof plan!
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Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming. I'm not very good at it yet, but I do like it. I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year. For those of you with a formal education I'm curious how many girls you had in classes, how they acted (shy? open for discussion?), ethnic diversity (we had a few foreign girls but i was the only "white" girl in most of my classes.) But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers? Other girls please give your feedback!
leckey wrote:
I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year.
Maybe if you all didnt spend time researching the stats and doing some programming the numbers would increase ;P PS: joke, not generalizing :)**
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Intel PentuimM (aka Centrino) undervolting**
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leckey wrote:
how many girls you had in classes
A while back, when I learned the profession Fachinformatiker[^] (German word for somebody who learned an IT job for three years in a company an a school), we were five girls in my class, and about 20 or 25 boys. Two of the girls didn't get it and don't work in IT anymore. Today I'm just about to finish the next part of german IT education, in a few days I'm going to be Techniker für Informatik[^]. When the class started four years ago, we were five girls, two of them left the school during the first year, the third one left in her second year. So we are only two girls (and six boys) who'll leave the school with the full certification. One of the boys wants to go to university. All others are happy to be finished with that stuff. Seven years of IT school seem short, now, when looking back ... but it must have been hard enough to reduce the size of our class from 28 (first day) down to 8 (people you actually did the final exams).
leckey wrote:
why do you think so few girls go into programming
Most of the girls I know have more social and less technical interests, and they have strange ideas about the IT business. They say they want to work with people, or that they don't understand all that tech stuff. Well, an IT worker has a lot to do with people, software is only there to be used by people - anyway, the image of the pale hacker in front of the screen seems to be programmed into girl's minds. Another point is that most of the girls I kno think that programming would be complicated and hard to understand. They are afraid of the "challenge" ... lazy and badly informed are those ladies... Anyway, we cannot force girls to do programming. If they don't like computer, well, let them do the low paid "women's
Corinna John wrote:
Diversity, where???
My class was similar - there was more ethnic diversity in the lecturers than in the students. As I recall the class make up was 90% Scots, 5% English, 5% miscellaneous other English speaking countries.
Corinna John wrote:
Seven years of IT school finally done
Congratulations - I stopped after 4 years of school.
Scottish Developers events: * .NET debugging, tracing and instrumentation by Duncan Edwards Jones and Code Coverage in .NET by Craig Murphy * Developer Day Scotland: are you interested in speaking or attending? My: Website | Blog
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Because nature and nurture conspire against them. Just this week I read a med sci piece on some bit of the brain that lights up like a christmas tree in autistic idiots savant and not at all in women, with blokes in the middle and nerdy engineers lighting up more than usual. That said, of the two (count them, two of forty) women in my computing course fifteen years ago, one was an oxygen thief and the other was so good it was scary. And she was a natural blonde with a radiant smile and a body to die for, with nice perky, oh wait wrong type of website. But you get the gist. I feel that we let down engineers everywhere when we failed to capture and clone her. Imagine, if you will, a world of hot chicks who like pizza, video games, programming computers and building gadgets, rode around on a trailbike... man, she even brewed her own beer! -- modified at 2:04 Thursday 22nd June, 2006
Peter Wone wrote:
one was an oxygen thief
I'm not familiar with that expression - Care to explain?
Scottish Developers events: * .NET debugging, tracing and instrumentation by Duncan Edwards Jones and Code Coverage in .NET by Craig Murphy * Developer Day Scotland: are you interested in speaking or attending? My: Website | Blog
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Okay, I'm a girl and I like programming. I'm not very good at it yet, but I do like it. I've done research on women in science and the number of girls going into "computer" (whether programming, IT, etc.) keeps dropping significantly every year. For those of you with a formal education I'm curious how many girls you had in classes, how they acted (shy? open for discussion?), ethnic diversity (we had a few foreign girls but i was the only "white" girl in most of my classes.) But why do you think so few girls go into programming/computers? Other girls please give your feedback!
Its not that strange, in our western society girls are fostered to think that beeing cool and beautiful is really really important. lots of girls gets breast implants just to fit in with this image of how a girl should be. And beeing a programmer that sits infront of a computer eating burgers and thinking about the fastest way to sort a list of polygons is generally considered geeky, anyone who does that are associated with the steriotype fat geek boy with big glasses. so the steriotypical image of the programming trade is the oposite of the western girls ideal. in our society its uncool for girls to deal with programming, they will be considered oddballs. Im sure things are quite different where those ideals dont exist.. for guys in the western world things are quite different, our ideal is just to be successful, and that just means earn as much money as possible. so Id say its all about culture.. (and I didnt say that _every_ girl/woman cares about those ideals, but very many do..) http://www.puzzleframework.com
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Its not that strange, in our western society girls are fostered to think that beeing cool and beautiful is really really important. lots of girls gets breast implants just to fit in with this image of how a girl should be. And beeing a programmer that sits infront of a computer eating burgers and thinking about the fastest way to sort a list of polygons is generally considered geeky, anyone who does that are associated with the steriotype fat geek boy with big glasses. so the steriotypical image of the programming trade is the oposite of the western girls ideal. in our society its uncool for girls to deal with programming, they will be considered oddballs. Im sure things are quite different where those ideals dont exist.. for guys in the western world things are quite different, our ideal is just to be successful, and that just means earn as much money as possible. so Id say its all about culture.. (and I didnt say that _every_ girl/woman cares about those ideals, but very many do..) http://www.puzzleframework.com
And now, the stranges observation of all: If a girl ignored those rules and became a successful progammer, the other girls forget that she was an uncool outsider. A certain amount of tech skills seem to be accepted as a replacement for perfect looks. I still don't know where this mysterious turning point is, but it exists. :suss: _____________________________________________________________________________ I don't expect too much, all I want is your vote for Halbsichtigkeit.