Posted on 12/18/2005 7:00:11 AM PST by A. Pole
[...]
Today, Souvaine chairs the Tufts University computer science department, which has more female professors than male. But few younger women have followed in her generation's footsteps. Next spring, when 22 computer science graduates accept their Tufts diplomas, only four will be women.
Born in contemporary times, free of the male-dominated legacy common to other sciences and engineering, computer science could have become a model for gender equality.
[...]
When Tara Espiritu arrived at Tufts, she was the rare young woman planning to become a computer scientist.[...]The same men always spoke up, often to raise some technical point that meant nothing to Espiritu. She never raised her hand.
''I have not built my own computer, I don't know everything about all the different operating systems," she said. ''These people would just sit in the front of the class and ask these complicated questions. I had no idea what they were talking about."
[...]
On a broader level, the National Science Foundation will soon announce a new set of grants to universities, high schools, and industry groups with creative ideas for attracting women to computer science. A two-year-old organization called the National Center for Women & Information Technology has designated several schools and groups, including the Girl Scouts, to identify solutions.
[...]
The goal is to inspire more students like Katie Seyboth of Tufts. She loved math and science, but had never been interested in computer science before she took, on a whim, one of the school's introductory classes for people with no previous experience.
Soon, Seyboth was procrastinating on her other class work in order to do computer science assignments. Still, she found it ''really intimidating" when men used terms she didn't know and talked about complicated programs they wrote in their free time.
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Gender discrimination bump!
Explain your use of "discrimination", regarding the field of omputer science.
As a senior computer science major at a top 5 ranked school in that field, how the hell is there gender discrimination? If there is any discrimination then it started long before college because I had zero girls in my high school programming classes too.
What are the "omputers"?
Explain your use of "discrimination", regarding the field of computer science.
Ask what they mean. Write your own programs in your free time. Stop being a victim.
How about second sentence, Boston Globe, Major Barf alert!
This is the same woman who wants to know why the "men" got raises and promotions for exceptional innovation while she got 1.5% because she arrived on time daily without Cheetos stains on her fingers.
When the universities began demanding higher and higher GPAs and changed their focus to coding, they effectively destroyed the development of a curricula meaningful in today's (and tomorrow's) computer environment.
That's why so many of our best people keeping all our systems running, and implementing the next newest thing to come along, have not yet completed any college degrees, nor do they have any intention of doing so.
Foreigners, without the systems integration skills and command of English really needed to make a valuable contribution, readily take over the increasingly meaningless university computer engineering programs.
As long as companies and government agencies are willing to keep paying for the training and "experience acquisition needs" of the folks doing the job, this is not a problem.
I'm not in computer science, but I've been in network administration for going on 16 years now. I also consulted for a few years during that 16 years.
I've met hundreds of men in the field, and I'd have to say the bulk of them were competent, at least to some degree.
I've met less than a dozen women in the field, and two of them were competent.
I don't know if my experience is indicative of the rest of the field, or of other areas in the broad computing-related disciplines.
However, my observation has been that in order to be successful in networking and computing, you have to be able to think logically. Sure, you can excel if you have a good memory, have lots of experience, or are very intelligent, but to be minimally competent, you have to be able to think logically.
I just haven't come in contact with many women, both in the field and out, who can or will think logically on a consistent basis when solving problems.
In other fields, this isn't a problem, and in the creative fields, it can probably be a detriment. I've met a lot of very creative women in web design, for example, who can do some amazing things. I've also met some great women who excel in project management and organization - something with which many technical guys are sorely lacking (myself included).
In my narrow area of the field, where supporting critical systems is the bulk of the job, part of the work includes scheduling regular maintenance during off hours, and responding quickly to outages or problems. Most women (in my experience) aren't willing to work these sort of hours, or can't because of family commitments.
Put the two together, and it effectively rules most women out of the field. Its not a question of not being able to do it from an absolute perspective, its a question of not willing to do what it takes to be compentent, and not willing to do what it takes to be available. Its a choice, just like any other, and most women don't seem to want to choose to do what it takes to be a part of the industry.
Just my humble observations.
"The argument of many computer scientists is that women who study science or technology, because they are defying social expectations, are in an uncomfortable position to begin with."
Utter nonsense. My Daughter is getting her masters in computer science. From my talks with her, she has an "edge" because she is female. Not that her grades are shaded, or anything like that, rather she has a slightly better chance at opportunities, because she is a woman. She says that if she were the right minority, she would never have to worry about paying for school.
I've met very few women in the field who are worth anything.
To complain is like whining that "blacks discriminate against the Klan, so blacks should change their attitudes."
1. Why not let the people who are interested in and good at something do it? What law/rule/convention says that everything has to be equitably divided along gender/racial/lifestyle lines?
2. Ladies (and gents), don't be snowed by someone who uses a term you don't know! If someone in a non-technical conversation, uses a word you don't know, what do you do? Look it up/ask/figure it out from context... Same thing with tech stuff. There are so many words and sub-specialties out there that you can't know them all. I'm sure you know some stuff that the speaker doesn't.
3. Be aware that a lot of the tech-speak among these guys is for 2 purposes. One is to establish a pecking order, similar to guys who have to drive faster cars with bigger stereos. (Mine is bigger than yours.) Another is to "impress babes". They are flexing their intellectual muscles for your benefit. I'm not saying this as a putdown and I'm glad for whatever it takes to motivate the techies. I once had 2 guys get into an argument in front of me about which operating system was better (I think it was between 2 flavors of Unix) and after a while I realized that the entire argument was for my benefit! As I sat and watched this argument unfold I could see the 2 guys as 2 animals with their antlers locked.
generally technical
Woman are not stupid.
Why should they train for a career in a field that is being outsourced to china, india and eventually kenya?
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