What Has Driven Women Out Of Computer Science
(I found this article on Slashdot today)
I think these researchers have it wrong. It's not games.
When I was in high school, they made us take all these aptitude tests to find out what kind of job we would be suited for. I thought it was kind of fascinating and probably sparked my interest in personality tests.
Anyway, the test came back and said I was well-suited to be an engineer. My dad really wanted me to go to Tech, and it was the most-viable out-of-state solution I could have gone with (since Dad said even if I was accepted to MIT I couldn't go because we couldn't afford it). He wanted me to go into environmental engineering, which I just wasn't into. But they had software engineering as a major and I thought, "Hey, I took a programming class in high school and that was fun, let's do that."
I was bored in that programming class in high school because I could get a week-long assignment done in an hour. But it was something that I was good at and it was fun to see immediately if your idea worked or not.
I never said to myself, "Gee, I played with Barbie dolls as a child, I shouldn't go into a math or science field."
If you want to know why women get scared out of computer science, just read the comments in the Slashdot article. I don't think it's as simple as socially-undeveloped men scaring women, because engineers and scientists are just as socially-undeveloped. Plus, the women I saw majoring in engineering and science tend to not be like the women who majored in, say, nursing.
You want to know what really intimidated me in college re: my major? I had a bad professor who made everyone feel like an idiot. I know a lot of people in my class dropped out or transferred after his Discrete Structures class. Granted, a lot of people probably would have dropped out after Discrete Structures anyway (it's hard and brain-hurting at times), but there was a girl who was doing the best out of the entire class who transferred to Bozeman to study something else. Going through a couple of classes with that guy wasn't really conducive to learning.
Obviously this was just a case of one, but I would bet there are assholes everywhere.
Computer science is a hard enough field to study, the people teaching it (and sometimes the people learning it) don't need to make it harder.
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2 comments:
I started and finished my liberal arts (English/Literature) degree out of pure spite: some asshat of a professor said that nothing good ever came out of a lib arts degree, and that I'd better get used to being poor.
Don't get me started on tenure, either. It's like a union mentality - it's a structure that exists to protect the ineffective and useless.
I might have gone into teaching had it not been for the education department head. I stayed away from it because I didn't want to have to endorse this guy entering into (his) program/ world. I was paying the bill and no way did I want to pay to kiss his butt. It's too bad as I think I would have made a good teacher, but I didn't have too many realistic options for higher education.
I heard much the same thing as sideon with regard to being poor, when I was getting my liberal arts degree. We sort of understood this to be true in art however. That was what was being taught anyway.
I agree with sideon on tenure too.
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