“The rationale for selecting female programmers was partly due to the scarcity of qualified male labor during the war, but another significant factor was the expectation that women would be uniquely suited to this position, which demanded great ‘patience, persistence, and a capacity for detail’ – qualities that many employers attributed to the feminine sex.” (Taylor references Denise W. Gruer, “Pioneering Women in Computer Science,” 1, from the Adele Mildred Koss papers, 1993-1998, 1 folder, Schlesinger Library)

Despite this auspicious beginning, the participation of women in computer science declined steadily from the 1940s to the early 1980s. One factor that Taylor identifies is the association of computer science with engineering schools. Unlike the hard sciences and mathematics, the engineering discipline was particularly hostile to women. While noting that degrees awarded to women in computer science grew from the 1960s to the 1980s, Taylor points out the overall low participation of women in the field, relative to its beginnings in the 1940s.

The contrast between Taylor’s thesis and the chart above is not adequately explained. It is interesting to note the sharp decline in women in CS from 1966 to 1967. I wish I had the source data from this graph, but the early data set my be so small so that the decline is not significant. There were only a few universities which had computer science departments in the mid-60s. (Purdue University had the first in 1962, followed by Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1965. However, I think Taylor’s point is that the number of women in the field declined after the war from a majority of women programmers to a small minority. The increase in women from the mid-70s to the mid-80s merits further study. If we could replicate such a phenomenon, we could create a more balanced environment in the field.

The whole article is worth reading for it includes a number of interesting historical quotes and offers a rare insight into the early beginnings of computer software development. I’ll quote the conclusion below:

It is doubtless the case that there are more nuances to the masculinization of computing than what could be covered by this short analysis, but the main components of the transition seem clear – that the early advantage of women in computing was largely diminished by a post-war society trying to return to “normalcy,” that the establishment of male-dominated academic and corporate structures marginalized women’s working habits and culture, and that the ubiquity of computing in the home triggered early gender socialization of computers as being a male domain. The positive outcome of this history, however, is the strong evidence that computing is not inherently a male domain, that it is indeed a socially constructed stereotype, and that women’s interests and technical capabilities are not a matter of “innate” differences. The historic accomplishments of the generations past are proof that women can succeed in computing, and understanding the forces that caused their decline is the first step toward fixing the today’s continuing gender inequalities in computer science.

read the original article

The NYT article also includes a graphic from an oft-cited UCLA survey about what entering college students list as a probable major.

While that trend is interesting, I find that the data about the number of degrees awarded in various fields is more significant. In the graph below, you can see that there has been a steady decline in women receiving undergraduate degrees in computer science since the peak in the mid 80s at almost 40%, while overall the number of women receiving degrees in technical fields and in all fields is increasing.

[While I’ve seen this graph many times before, I found this version in a very excellent article by Jennifer Jennings]

I was in high school in the mid-80s. At the time most people believed that you had to learn how to program a computer to be able to use these emerging tools in the future. I then went to college and studied computer science (as a practical balance for my Visual Arts degree, not realizing that I would grow to love software engineering). I remember more than one woman who told me that her father had encouraged her to study computer science, even though he was not in the field or even an engineering or scientific field. It seemed similar to your parents saying you should become a doctor because they think it’ll ensure a good future for you. I don’t think that most people today (outside the industry) believe there is any job security in the field. I also think the basic skills are not intrinsically valued, like studying history, literature or math. Of course, I disagree on both points.

A computer science degree does not just teach you to code in a specific programming language that may be obsolete in ten years. You learn a specific way of thinking: problem solving, debugging, patterns of solutions to technical problems. This way of thinking makes you more adept with modern tools and can be applied in any job you might have in the future. There are also a wide array of jobs that you will then be qualified for from standard IT and software development to scientific research to web publishing.

I believe that every child should have a semester or two of learning a programming language and that every college freshman should be encouraged to take a computer science course that teaches practical software engineering as well as some of the more abstract concepts. These basic skills can then be applied to problem solving for research, whether it be journalism, chemistry or just to learn more about the world (like Jon Udell’s (like Jon Udell’s question about us oil imports).

Many thanks to my friend ptw who sent me this article and regularly alerts me to similar ones. I’ve always been puzzled and frustrated about the minority of women in my chosen field, while at the same time understanding intuitively that it make sense that this is so.

Here’s my take on the problem and what we should do about it. Note: this is not a problem that just affects women or just affects people in the field. It affects everyone. You want the software you use written by people who are representative of the general population; otherwise, I believe, it will never really work well for the general population.

1) More *people* should study computer science. Programming is a skill that has ever-growing uses in the information age (see above).

2) Computer Science has a marketing problem. (This is a quote from a Grace Hopper talk. I’m sorry I don’t have the reference.)
   2a) see #1 above
   2b) the geek image really needs to be reclaimed in a positive light
   2c) women in computer history need be be recognized (e.g. the eniac programmers and the like)
   2d) Computer Science curriculum should include real-world applications, not just prepare folks to be computer science professors. Working in the industry offers significantly different challenges than academic research which tends to be pretty abstract. (an insight from a conversation with Oliver Steel)

3) Sexist behavior needs to be eliminated. This is even more important if you are a man. Don’t let those comment slide. If there is only one woman in the room, see if you can make sure she is heard as much as the guys. But don’t overdo it, being heard *because* you are a woman is almost as bad as not being heard because you are a woman. Make it so everyone feels welcome to participate.

4) Sexual behavior needs to stay out of the office. I consider this completely distinct from sexism. Both women and men enjoy porn, and many women are not offended (and are sometimes entertained) by frank discussions or jokes of a sexual nature. However, when you are the only woman in the room a comment or joke that would be generic to another man can be predatory or simply a come-on. Suddenly instead of being amongst colleagues, you are marked as subordinate, as an object, or simply as different. It’s no fun and no one wants to be in a position where deflecting such situations is needed on a regular basis.

It’s pretty awesome that people are collecting and publishing resources for conference organizers. I find the focused lists most effective:

• Flash Goddess has the a great women speaker list , with topics and details about each speakers area of expertise
• LinuxChix offers Chix who Speak
• BlogHer, of course, has great women who talk about blogging 2007, 2006

Other lists are very broad, and it is hard to see what exactly people are expert at.

Know any lists I missed? Please comment and I will pass them on.

Community managers are often women. Someone noted that this project had more women than any other open source project she had been involved with. Is this a great thing where we’re seeing more women in open source? or is this the-women-taking-care-of-the-kids thing again? — ouch. I’d say yes, to both questions.

…coding is fun, and it is an awesome feeling to fix a bug or add a feature, but the human connection is even more rewarding. — yeah, I like the human connection stuff too, but sometimes it is really hard to carve out time to code. It certainly isn’t one of those socialized female traits to ask whether this newbie’s future contribution is really more valuable than whatever you are working on.

…Women may be drawn to these roles, but there are also a lot of men are very good at that. Absolutely.

…gnome love mailing list offers a great approach. People will give you something bite-sized to work on. The neat thing about these tasks is that it’s not just easier for the new contributor, you also need a much smaller commitment from the mentor. It is a way for a contributor to start small and many folks start there and then take on more central tasks.

…should we target some kind of stamp-of-approval for a women-friendly project? No, we should lower the barrier for all contributors. Frankly, with open source, you do need to elbow your way in. It is pretty intimidating to a lot people not just women. If you make it less intimidating to join your project, you will get more kinds of people, not just women.

Invisible Computers: The Untold Story of the ENIAC Programmers.
Thursday, November 8, 2007 6pm
Google Headquarters
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

This is a fundraiser for Kathy Kleiman to complete a full-length film telling this important story. I saw this short film at Grace Hopper many years ago. Last year, when I was doing research on ideas for our elementary school technology classes, I remembered the stories of these innovative early programmers, who received little or no recognition of their significant technical achievements at the time. I wanted kids today to realize what I didn’t know until I was all grown up and a programmer myself. I had no idea of the strong women innovators who came before me.

If you enjoyed reading about Mary Houbolt, one of the first generation of human “computers,” you must come to this event. Even if you can’t come, please, please blog about this one. This is a very important fundraiser. The full-length movie absolutely must get made, so that these stories can be told to a wider audience and future generations.

Please register for this event if you can come and forward the info to people you know who might be interested. If you can’t come, but still want to support the making of this documentary, you can also make a donation.

“Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.” The point is not that standards are being lowered, but rather a change in focus from drawing only those who already know how to program vs. an emphasis on “high overall achievement and broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders.”

Other tactics that are working…
* materials for tell high school students about computer science, that will be provided to teachers of math, science and English because girls have already opted out by then (Dr. Lazowska and Dr. Blum)
* a Web page for prospective students showing what computer science is for: “everything from designing prosthetics to devising new ways to fight forest fires” and deliberately featuring all women in the photographs (University of Washington)
* a college group called Women in Computer Science runs a program which brings ninth-grade girls from nearby schools to the university campus for five weeks each summer. It creates a “in a positive and encouraging environment.” for learning both concrete computer skills and abstract computer science concepts (Brown University, Artemis Project)

This discussion reminds me of Shirley Malcom’s declaration at Grace Hopper 2004 that computer science has a marketing problem, referencing the well-known Edsger Dijkstra quote: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” If girls got the picture that computers aren’t about programming, but that it is a powerful way to do accomplish incredible things, then maybe we would have more women getting CS degrees and appearing in software industry.

I’ve written about this before. Perhaps I should not be surprised that there are so few women in the field, since what I most love about it is not easily seen from the outside. Oliver Steele once summed it up well in conversation, when he said that in college they teach how to be a computer scientist, learning to be a software engineer is a side-effect. It is perhaps unavoidable that university classes are all taught by professors who are interested in computer science as an end unto itself, rather than as a means to an end — you need to do computer science research to qualify. Most of us who are practicing programmers do it for fundamentally different reasons. Sure, programming is fun, but that’s not the point. The point is to change the world in some small or large way, to have an impact on something or someone outside of the machine.

I would love to hear about more tactics that are making a difference … what else is going on? do you know someone who is making a difference? are you? if you are a woman in CS, what made a difference for you?

William Saletan defends Summers and provides some details about what he actually said in his recent article Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Head, The pseudo-feminist show trial of Larry Summers:
“He spoke after the morning session of a conference called “Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce: Women, Underrepresented Minorities, and their S. & E. Careers.” He offered three possible reasons for this gender gap. The biggest, he suggested, was that fewer mothers than fathers are willing to spend 80 hours a week away from their kids. The next reason was that more boys than girls tend to score very high or very low on high-school math tests, producing a similar average but a higher proportion of scores in the top percentiles, which lead to high-powered academic careers in science and engineering. The third factor was discrimination by universities.”

Summers’ words may have been blown out of proportion, but I would expect a University president to frame a better argument.

1) Spending time away from your kids. Girls and boys decide whether or not to pursue math and science long before they are aware of the details of how much time different careers might require of them per week. Also, more women these days decide not to have children. I would guess that if you lined up those stats, it would still not explain the disproportionate number of women. And most importantly, why must we assume that you have to work 80 hours per week to be successful?

2) High test scores in high school. Setting aside the fact that biology now has a far greater number of women than men pursuing undergraduate degrees, with respect to other fields that are still dominated by men, it would have been fantastic had Summers used the opportunity to highlight that the problems really start in elementary and high-school education. By the time students get to Harvard, there are already fewer women than men pursuing engineering and computer science. Perhaps Summers sees this as inevitable, but discrimination against girls in early education is well-documented. We could do a lot better in educating all children in math and science in this country. I also wonder: do high test scores in adolescence necessarily correlate with great scientific research later in life?

3) Discrimination by universities. Why spend 80 hours away from your kids if you aren’t going to get anywhere in your career? People who underestimate the effects of discrimination have probably not experienced it themselves.

There is clear evidence of biological differences between men and women, aside from the obvious sex organs and hormonal fluctuations, some research has shown that the corpus callosum (the major pathway that connects left- and right- brains) is more developed in women. While some might argue there is biological evidence that women are smater, I feel strongly that the debate is inane. Some people are smarter than others. We must teach each of our children as if he or she were the next Albert Einstein or Marie Curie.

In closing, William Saletan notes: “But the best signal to send to talented girls and boys is that science isn’t about respecting sensitivities. It’s about respecting facts.”

“Facts” like our innate differences cause girls to not excel at math and science. Seems like fuzzy science to me.

poster from one angry girl designs

p.s. actually, I’m not so shy of using the f-word to describe myself, but I really liked this poster which I saw on my travels

Choosing between family time and professional interests is not a women’s issue, yet these choices are more often intensely difficult for women than for men. I just read “Do Women Lack Ambition?” by Anna Fels (via danah at misbehaving.net):

Women now experience the most powerful social and institutional discrimination during their twenties and early thirties, after they have left the educational system and started pursuing their ambitions. At the age when women most frequently marry and have children, they must decide whether to try to hold on to their own ambitions or downsize or abandon them. Often, a young woman must make this decision at the moment when she is just learning to be a parent, with all its attendant fears, pleasures, insecurities, and around-the-clock work.

Although it is not stated as such, the focus of the article is on ambitions to succeed professionally in fields traditionally reserved for men. More women than men have ambitions to raise the next generation and to create that special relationship with a child that can lead to a healthy happy grown-up. One could argue the clear biological basis for this imbalance. After all, men are ill-equipped for the bearing of children. However, I know many men who value relationships and family and struggle against common expectations and sexism that limits the role of a man in our society.

“Downsizing” professional ambition to be a parent is a different ambition, not a lack of ambition.

I enjoyed reading “Women Don’t Ask” by Linda Babcock and Sarah Laschever after reading about it on misbehaving.net. It was refreshing to read results of research on gender differences along with some practical suggestion on how to affect change. The gender divide can be so stark at times, that it can feel like there is little we can do to affect change.

“Is is essential to remember, however, that the restraints placed on women are ‘socially constructed.’ They aren’t physical principles like the law of gravity…which can’t be altered. They are products of our culture… They can be loosened and changed completely if we want them to change.”

Sometimes the simple actions of presence and voice are radical enough. Sometimes we can do more when we play a decision making or decision influencing role.

I used to frequently interview engineering candidates. I noticed a few gender differences. First, resumes from women were almost invariably more impressive than resumes from men. I do not believe that women typically write better resumes or that women are inherently better engineers. I do believe that it is just not worthwhile to pursue a career in engineering as a woman if you are not very good at it. I imagine its not worth the hassle.

The other big difference I saw was in the interview process itself. When asking a man about what he can do, he will typically answer with respect to what he thinks he could do given the opportunity; whereas, a woman will speak with respect to what she has already proven she can do. Both are reasonably and honest responses, but you can imagine how much more effective the former response would be. After I noticed this, I learned to ask not only how the candidate would approach a particular problem but to provide specific examples of how he or she would apply past experience. In this way, I was able to compare candidates effectively without being biased by different communication styles.