Re: [Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL
In a message of Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:31:46 CDT, John Zelle writes:
As usual, I don't have time to comment on all the intriguing things that have come out of this thread. But gender balance is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about and working on as regards our own program. So I felt compelled to say something.
Laura Creighton wrote:
Why females shy away from math and science is no big mystery. It is deemed 'not useful' by them. See many posts by Anna Ravenscoft on the subject here in edu.sig archives. These days she is 'Anna Ravenscroft Martelli' having married Alex Martelli. (Hi Anna. cc'd to you so as to not talk behind your back, and in case you want to comment.)
I hear researchers say this at conferences, and I read it in the literature about gender balance in computer science, but I still don't understand it. Can you explain why when selecting majors women consider CS as "not useful" and therefore to be avoided when they seem to have no such qualms about, say, history or English literature? Here in the states, women are also severely underrepresented in natural sciences and engineering, also areas of obvious utility.
When we interviewed the chemistry students here at Chalmers, as to why they were 'bucking the trend' -- last years, decades, worth of female students who lead the way seemed to be the answer. I think that your question indicates your problem. It is not that women start with a list of 'everything is worthwhile' and cross things out. Rather, they start with a list of a few things that are worthwhile. Those not on the list are assumed to be worthless. The problem is to get programming (you will never get computer science as I know it on the list, since it is only done for the sheer joy of it, and is mostly unuseful) on the list of _useful applied sciences where women do well_. For some strange and largely not undserstood reason that happened here in Sweden about Chemistry. Lots of us are trying to understand this.
Speaking specifically to CS, both boys and girls are heavy users of computers now (although girls tend to start a bit later). So why don't girls perceive computing as a useful field of study? I don't think it's because it involves mathematics, because frankly, most entering CS majors (male or female) have no idea that CS involves much mathematics.
This is a new thing in the USA, then, and it has not spread here where 'you have to be good at math' is seen as necessary for a CS major.
I can understand this "usefulness" argument to some extent for mathematics majors, but at our institution (liberal arts school in rural, midwest US), we have little trouble attracting female math majors. On the other hand, it is extremely rare to find a female interested in CS, period. Virtually all of our female majors are recruited when they take our CS1 class as either a Gen Ed. class or a requirement for another major.
To my mind, the "useful" argument is a nonstarter. There must be something else going on. Any ideas on what that is?
<snipped part about Laura being a mutant>
But most women are not like this. They want concrete usefulness. Here at Chalmers in Sweden the women students outnumber the men in all the Chemistry departments. Chemistry is presented as concretely useful.
As I mentioned above, this is not the case in the US. Chemistry is still one of the fields where women are underrepresented.
Yes. But what we see is that chemistry is here perceived as 'being useful' while Computer Science is not. It is around here called -- 'Mental Masturbation' -- though actually something that is plenty ruder and less alliterative. I do not think that you understand the viceral dislike that many women have of girls who do things, selfishly, for no reason beyond that they enjoy them. I think that only girls who have fought this understand it, and for most, the path of 'make sure that what you do is immediately justifiable in terms of benefitting others' makes immediate sense. Most women have mothers who ingrain this overcompensation to prevent selfishness into all girls. But I was raised by my father and my grandfather. When Catholic Girls School was teaching me that I was being Selfish and Wrong, my elders were teaching me that as long as I did not actively hurt anybody, it was OK for me to be selfish. This is a very male thing. So -- math is cool, and dear God I am Good at it, so why not persue it? This is male thinking. For hundreds of thousand of years, the job for all women has been the raising of their own children. Childraising is difficult, and very few women have the natural talents to do this well. Thus the futhering of civilisation required the convincing of women that their best interests involved sitting around doing something they do not particularly enjoy and which they do poorly. There is a two proned attack on this. The first is to tell women that 'raising children takes no skill, or training, only love and unselfishness'. This is wrong. The second is to convince women that being selfish is the ultimate evil.
When I offered a night-course of three weeks at the Chalmers computer society (all chalmers students are automatically members) on compiler design, pypy, and how to hack ... only got 4 takers, and all male. A different 4 week course -- 'how to build a bot to take care of seeing if your favourite websites are announcing the things you want to know about -- NO PREVIOUS PROGRAMMING SKILLS NECESSARY' got me 57 takers, 35 of which were women.
This is interesting. But is the real difference here practicality, or is it something else like the web (i.e. communication) or the NO PREVIOUS SKILLS NECESSARY?
I don't know. But we have had other NO SKILLS NECESSARY courses without the turnout. This was a large shocker.
I speak to women all the time, and when I ask them why they're not in CS, they tell me it's because they don't like computers. I've never ever had one tell me they didn't find computers or computer progams useful.
What did they say to you when you asked them why they did not like computers? If your experience is like mine you will get some version of 'they are useful, yes, to other people but not useful to me'. Which counts as not useful in my books. Perhaps my questioning biases the sample about utility, though. This effect -- even if you try to not have leading questions, are you leading anyhow? -- is hard to measure.
As to why they don't see the Art and Joy, it's probably because they've never been exposed to it. It seems as if boys like using computers, and many of them, for whatever reason, are motivated to take a peek underneath and end up hooked on programming. Girls are using computers just as much, but don't seem to go that next step and try to see what makes them tick. Why? I don't know. Someone please tell me so that I can get my daughter interested in programming some day. (Not too soon though; I don't think there's a need for any kid to spend much time with a computer before at least Jr. High. But that's another thread entirely.. .)
When I was 3 I took apart my first clock 'to find out why it worked'. Over the next 4 years my grandfather taught me what it was that I broke and why I could not fix it. For my seventh birthday we celebrated by having the repaired clock, repaired by us, with mostly made by us pieces -- one cog had to be ordered special. I took this to catholic girls school. I was terribly proud of it, and was at the age when 'show and tell' was a common feature of class. So I 'showed and telled'. And was told that what I had done was prideful, and unchristrian. It seems that it was selfish to repair the clock rather than confess my sin to have broken it (somehow, in the breaking, it had never been a sin with my father or grandfather, just a very serious mistake and bad error of judgement on my part). I resolved at this point and time to be prideful in all things. But secretly. I think that this is the make legacy, what all boys are obligated to do -- but secretly. correct?
In Sweden we have laws preventing the sort of advertising that I think MSFT is doing in the USA -- targetting children is illegal.
Then how do your kids know what their parents need to buy for them ;-)
Exactly. However, 'my freind xxx has one' is still a good argument.
But given that you are stuck with it, I would be very interested in seeing if it has an effect in student sex ratios.
Perhaps that's one good thing that could come out of KPL-type efforts--- getting some girls to see the Art and Joy. Though I'm not holding my brea th.
--John -- John M. Zelle, Ph.D. Wartburg College Professor of Computer Science Waverly, IA john.zelle@wartburg.edu (319) 352-8360 _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig Take care all, Laura
Just a couple of data points for the discussion. My eight-year-old daughter loves math and computers and has asked me how she can make her own computer games. I've tried showing her what goes into making games and she lost interest for now. She also writes stories, draws beautifully, invents constantly (including how- to step-by-step sketches), and prefers to play roughhouse (and chess) with the boys than to hang out with the girls, who (at least last year) were more into psychological games and popularity contests than actual play. I also recently worked with a practicum student from Chile who was suprised to find her IT classes mainly full of boys here in Vancouver, apparently in Chile mostly girls study computer science and IT. On the rare occasion that I go to parties, men are more likely to be talking about computers than women, even if the women are programmers. Boys and their toys, I guess. I know a lot of great women programmers and women who like to *use* computers, but not very many women who are into computers for the sake of computers or who treat them as attractive gadgets. When I switched from the Creative Writing department to the Computer Science department, I found there was far *more* freedom of expression and creativity allowed, but I don't think that's widely known, and it may not be common in other schools. The women in my CS classes (not universally, but mostly) treated the classes as classes, and only did what was required to get through the class. Some of the men were the same, but a substantial proportion programmed because they loved computers and loved to make them do things. Computer programming was the closest thing they'd found to magic. Overall, I think there are a lot of reasons why boys choose CS more than girls, but I think they are culturally dependent, not universal, and I think some of it is just that both boys and girls have a poor understanding of what computer programming is (or can be) all about. --Dethe The laws of nature were not repealed on September 11. --Kathleen Tierney
OK, I think I'm getting some insight here, but something still doesn't quite ring true for me. I said:
I hear researchers say this at conferences, and I read it in the literature about gender balance in computer science, but I still don't understand it. Can you explain why when selecting majors women consider CS as "not useful" and therefore to be avoided when they seem to have no such qualms about, say, history or English literature? Here in the states, women are also severely underrepresented in natural sciences and engineering, also areas of obvious utility.
Laura responded:
When we interviewed the chemistry students here at Chalmers, as to why they were 'bucking the trend' -- last years, decades, worth of female students who lead the way seemed to be the answer.
I think that your question indicates your problem. It is not that women start with a list of 'everything is worthwhile' and cross things out. Rather, they start with a list of a few things that are worthwhile. Those not on the list are assumed to be worthless.
I think I understand what you're saying, but what I still don't understand is how majors like English lit and history _do_ get on the list. There are many "non-service" majors that do not seem to have this problem with gender balance. How are women getting the message that it's OK to pursue a "selfish" interest in literature? The obvious answer to me that they must get more enjoyment from literature than from computing. The question is why? Is it cultural, or is it a natural male/female distinction?
The problem is to get programming (you will never get computer science as I know it on the list, since it is only done for the sheer joy of it, and is mostly unuseful) on the list of _useful applied sciences where women do well_. For some strange and largely not undserstood reason that happened here in Sweden about Chemistry.
Lots of us are trying to understand this.
Computer science to you must only be theory. That's fine, but for the record, there's plenty of practical and applied CS as well. I think in Europe CS tends to be much more theory laden than it is here. Anyway, I think you are probably right that trying to understand why CS is not on the "useful list" is the key here (at least for me). Substitute programming and the problem is the same.
Speaking specifically to CS, both boys and girls are heavy users of
computers now (although girls tend to start a bit later). So why don't girls perceive computing as a useful field of study? I don't think it's because it involves mathematics, because frankly, most entering CS majors (male or female) have no idea that CS involves much mathematics.
This is a new thing in the USA, then, and it has not spread here where 'you have to be good at math' is seen as necessary for a CS major.
Again, I suspect this is a US/Europe distinction. CS here tends to be a mix of theory and practice that is much more "career oriented." <lots of good stuff cut here>
For hundreds of thousand of years, the job for all women has been the raising of their own children. Childraising is difficult, and very few women have the natural talents to do this well. Thus the futhering of civilisation required the convincing of women that their best interests involved sitting around doing something they do not particularly enjoy and which they do poorly.
This seems way too strong to me. I find it highly unlikely that humans would have survived if women weren't damn good at raising children. And I doubt that civilization would ever have evolved if it required somehow "brainwashing" women against their natural characters to take care of the children. Certainly, plenty of women (and men) find having and raising children to be enormously rewarding.
There is a two proned attack on this. The first is to tell women that 'raising children takes no skill, or training, only love and unselfishness'. This is wrong. The second is to convince women that being selfish is the ultimate evil.
Warning, I'm _way_ out of my element here. It seems to me that learning to raise a family only requires that people can learn how to raise children based on their experiences of how they were raised. Larger societal messages are only strictly necessary to learn things that can't be directly experienced by individuals. But everyone was raised in some way. How is the message about selfishness differentially taught to boys and girls? I certainly try to teach both my son and my daughter to behave unselfishly. And, of course, I encourage them both to pursue what interests them. I don't feel any compulsion whatsoever to treat them differently in this respect. Where is the coercive power structure that instills such apparently different values in boys and girls in our modern society? If I as a parent don't feel it, what causes it? If anything, it seems that men have traditionally had the burden of "having" to pursue externally useful skills because they were expected to be the bread winners. I just don't think it's as simple as girls being "taught" that they must always serve others. There still must be a reason that they prefer not to serve others by studying English lit rather than helping others by creating new technologies. Or maybe I'm missing something in this argument. It is true that I have no firsthand experience of the societal pressures that girls/women feel. --John -- John M. Zelle, Ph.D. Wartburg College Professor of Computer Science Waverly, IA john.zelle@wartburg.edu (319) 352-8360
participants (3)
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Dethe Elza -
John Zelle -
Laura Creighton