Posted on 04/03/2012 5:37:44 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
[Computer science] students are overwhelmingly male. In 2010, just 18.2 percent of undergraduates in the field were women, according to the National Center for Education Statistics — in spite of gains in chemistry, biomechanical engineering and other so-called STEM fields (the acronym stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
“It must be the unique area of science and technology where women have made negative progress,” said Nicholas Pippenger, a mathematics professor at Harvey Mudd, who is married to Dr. Klawe.
Dr. Klawe and others say the underrepresentation of women in the field is detrimental in a larger sense. Computer science, they say, is as vital to propelling society forward in the digital era as mechanical engineering was in the industrial age.
“If we’re not getting more women to be part of that, it’s just nuts,” Dr. Klawe said. At Mudd, she continued, “we’re graduating 20 female computer science majors a year, and every one of them is a gem.” In 2005, the year before Dr. Klawe arrived, a group of faculty members embarked on a full makeover of the introductory computer science course, a requirement at Mudd.
Known as CS 5, the course focused on hard-core programming, appealing to a particular kind of student — young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. This only reinforced the women’s sense that computer science was for geeky know-it-alls.
“Most of the female students were unwilling to go on in computer science because of the stereotypes they had grown up with,” said Zachary Dodds, a computer scientist at Mudd. “We realized we were helping perpetuate that by teaching such a standard course.”
To reduce the intimidation factor, the course was divided into two sections — “gold,” for those with no prior experience, and “black” for everyone else.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No, those are called "hobbies" and they don't pay well. It would be hard to look at my kids and say "I can't provide much for you but I enjoy my low stress hobby job. Too bad for you all". Couldn't live like that.
Where are the articles decrying the lack of men in early education???
Women having careers doesn’t stop them from having kids.
“Women having careers doesn’t stop them from having kids.”
You just hate men!!! (just kidding, nice to have a civil discussion)
Of course women have choices now. They can work, and not have kids; they can work and have kids; they can work and delay having kids and then have very few kids.
The problem isn’t with the individual decisions, but it’s with the collective effect. Before women were widely in the workforce, there was not a whole lot to do, and women had kids early, and had a lot of them. Once they could work, for many (not all, of course), kids become a career burden. When you add up the total effect, you find birth rates take a dive. In the US, the main reason we’re not going down yet is immigration. We’re also helped because we still have some people (Christians and practicing Catholics) that believe in large families. In Europe, they’re basically flat, but their native populations are in a dive. It’s Muslim immigration there that’s hold up their populations - which is not good.
In Asia it’s even worse - before women could work, they had no chose but to marry and have kids. Now that they can work, they look at the guys over there and say “why do I want to spend time with one of them” and simply never marry and never even come close to being married. The guys aren’t much better - they spend their days playing video games and barely realize that life is passing them by. In those countries they are either losing population, or about to.
At the same time the countries where women are treated like dirt still have hugely growing populations. So the bottom line is that the West is getting killed in the demographic war, and that will cannot end well...and there’s not much that can be done about it now (it’s too late).
If it continues that way, things will get worse.
There’s not much that can be done about it now
Of course, there are things that can be done: ban abortion, make it easier to raise big families, and severely restrict immigration, just to name 3.
“Of course, there are things that can be done: ban abortion, make it easier to raise big families, and severely restrict immigration, just to name 3.”
Ban birth control too (LOL). In Japan, they’ll need something like 8 kids from every woman now, just to have a population in 2050 that matches today (i.e., there are VERY FEW women of child-bearing age in existence now). That’s what I was getting at.
But, yes, there are still things that can be done. But they are drastic. First, we either have to make women barefoot and pregnant again - or we have to accept the FACT that children are, to many women, simply another career option. If we choose to accept that, we have to pay women (or really couples) LOTS OF MONEY to have multiple kids, as in $5,000 per year for the second kid, $10,000 per year for the third kid, and $15,000 per year for additional kids. Then we have to, somehow, make sure that we don’t just send all of that money to minority cultures that would have had boatloads of kids anyway. Not easy to do, at all - that’s why I worry so much.
welll. if somebody wants to be a dentist, why try and convince them to be an engineer? just because of their gender?
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