Girls get geekier
- 29 Feb 08, 17:41 GMT
Any time I come across software developers or visit an IT business, one thing immediately strikes me 鈥 where are the women? For all the talk of girl geeks, computing - and technology more generally - is still a very male-dominated business. Even a few months back at a meeting of would-be Facebook application developers 鈥 a very young crowd - there must have been ten men for every woman.
But that could be about to change. A new survey out today from a major supermarket (no, I鈥檓 not going to name them 鈥 but the research looks reasonably sound) suggests that girls may now be better at some computing tasks than boys. The survey of more than a thousand 7-16 year olds found that girls were more likely to know how to create a word document, put a profile on a social network or upload a video onto YouTube. And whereas 10% of the boys said they were not confident with computers, the figure for the girls was just 6%.
I visited Brentside High School in West London today to film a report on this subject 鈥 and found an ICT class where the girls seemed at least as clued-up as the boys. They were 13 and 14 year olds who seemed confident about everything from using a spreadsheet to building their own websites.
The teacher herself, Varinder Randhawa, said much had changed since she left university a couple of years ago. 鈥淚 remember I was one of five girls out of a class of 160,鈥 she told me. 鈥淎nd in the programming classes I was the only one there鈥. Now, though, she is finding that her female pupils are just as keen on asking questions in class as the boys, and more and more of them are opting to study ICT.
What appears to be happening is that Web 2.0 鈥 the social internet 鈥 is breaking down the gender barriers. Girls are more keen on using computers as communication tools, rather than bashing orcs and stealing virtual cars in the games which occupy the boys for so many hours. But in ten years鈥 time will the girls from Brentside High be competing for jobs as software developers? Let鈥檚 hope so.
UPDATE:
Some of you have suggested 鈥 with some justification 鈥 that a survey carried out for a supermarket may not provide rock-solid evidence for my theory that gender barriers are coming down in computing. Well here鈥檚 something rather better 鈥 a report from the respected which found that teenage girls were far more likely to create content on the internet than boys 鈥 though in this report boys were more prolific when it came to posting videos. This is about American teenagers, but I would be surprised if the same pattern is not repeated in the UK.
And some of you have dismissed this kind of activity as trivial compared with the hard grind of writing code. I suppose it comes down to where you think the whole technology industry is heading over the next few years 鈥 and whether the sort of skills that girls are now developing will be in demand. I think they will be.
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Rory Cellan-Jones is the 大象传媒's technology correspondent.
Maggie Shiels is the 大象传媒's tech reporter based in Silicon Valley.
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Comments
I am in high school.
Look at my IT class for another example.
The class do a qualification equivalent to 2 GCSEs, I have finished that and do another that is equivalent to 4.
Next to me, two girls complete a qualification worth 3 (with lots of help and support from me, whether they like it or not!)
The teacher is female, but doesn't know why she teaches ICT, as she is a Business Studies teacher, and Key Skills manager. She can do everything, but is by no means an expert, and regularly calls me over to ghelp her with things.
The rest of the class aren't worth mentioning, they are all a mixture of male and female, and spread across all different grades!
One point though, according to the Head of ICT, more boys than girls study the subject at A level, but girls do much better overall!
I get home, sign into Bebo and see more girls than boys, (but that MIGHT say more about me than who is using the technologies). Girls seem more into sharing their photos than boys, boys seem to adopt the 'can't be bothered' attitude!
Mind you, I had one friend on Facebook, and all I used it for is Scrabulous until very recently, now however I have no friends on Facebook, and all I use it for is playing with the developer tools. (I won a game, and lost a friend!)
And for the record, I AM male and saying that!
Seems to be that these results are skewed... programming is a very math intensive pursuit and as we have observed in the past many more boys than girls pursue maths to the highest levels...
Let's get some critical thinking going here guys and not just regurgitate the stats from a supermarket of all places...
It should be noted that there is a difference between ICT, primarily taught at school and college, and computing science taught at University. While software development has been made more accessible over the years with the introduction of IDE's (eclipse/visual studio etc) and scripting languages for application style websites(Javascript) there is still a large gap between using word/excel/internet services and development of said systems( incidentally not the full scope for computing science nor software development). Computing science still has the stigma of only being for smart people and computer geeks. However the industry is increasingly looking for more well rounded individuals who can still program at a high level but interact with 'normal' people.
An interesting subject that was brought up by the Head of Department when I was at uni was that prior to computers in schools there was a reasonably even male/female balance doing computing courses in maths departments.
As those who had access to computers increased the number of females taking computing courses reduced.
Presumably this being that it is technology so it's a boys thing.
At work just now it is a 8 females to 22 males (Ignoring those doing non-IT roles).
It would be wonderful to see more women in our industry...but are women really that keen on geeking out over code? Given that I suspect a significant number of great coders are borderline Asperger's sufferers - a condition far more common in men than women - there isn't going to be any significant change in the sexual mix of developers.
Of course, women can bring extra skills to the trade and should be encouraged...in particular they're better than most male developers at understanding the needs of end users.
"girls were more likely to know how to create a word document, put a profile on a social network or upload a video onto YouTube"
Honestly, those aren't really great indicators into how many of them are really interested in computers. Those tasks are basically turning into the equivalents of using a phone or being able to use a pen. In other words we're heading toward a society where those tasks are common and everyone knows how to do them.(or at least I think we are) So while they might have been good indicators at how many people are interested in computers 10 years ago, they don't really say much any more.
Also, you're 10% and 6% figure means absolutely nothing. What exactly feeling confident with computers means will quite likely vary wildly from person to person.
Don't get me wrong, things are changing, I think. But as far as I can tell your statistics and single case study don't really show this.
Hi,
I am a 19 year old guy, and have been successfully freelancing as web developer for about 6 months now - I started "geeking out" when I was about 13, and am entirely self-taught.
The UK IT curriculum is designed to teach people how to do the menial "office drone" tasks, and my experience shows it heavily discourages any experimentation or outside learning - I was accused of cheating because my work for "creating a website" was too professional.
My experience of the industry as a whole is that women are much more predominant in the "design technologies" and it is almost exclusively men in the "heavy technologies" (programming).
If the UK continues to discourage innovation in IT the skills shortage can only get worse.
I am going on to study Computer Science at Liverpool uni next year.
Hi,
I am a 19 year old guy, and have been successfully freelancing as web developer for about 6 months now - I started "geeking out" when I was about 13, and am entirely self-taught.
The UK IT curriculum is designed to teach people how to do the menial "office drone" tasks, and my experience shows it heavily discourages any experimentation or outside learning - I was accused of cheating because my work for "creating a website" was too professional.
My experience of the industry as a whole is that women are much more predominant in the "design technologies" and it is almost exclusively men in the "heavy technologies" (programming).
If the UK continues to discourage innovation in IT the skills shortage can only get worse.
I am going on to study Computer Science at Liverpool uni next year.
re Girls Get Geekier - Beg to differ from the conclusions drawn....
I think that the assumption that uploading videos or computer literacy has a strong correlation with becoming a software developer is entirely mistaken. Tenacity and a curiosity in how things work inside are much more important factors. Teenage girls are more socially motivated, that is why they are more adept at using computers. But a software developer or engineer has to have the ambition of an applied scientist. Females reading this may be taken aback, but the fact of the matter remains - women always had and continue to have little interest in technology and science for its own sake. Now if someone can provide me a reasonable explanation why that is so (other than blaming men for keeping them down) i'd be really interested to know.
There's a massive difference between being able to use a word processor, or frequenting social networking sites to becoming a software developer.
There's also a very clear connection between boys who "bash orcs" and "steal virtual cars" and boys who become software developers.
My observations concerning the fairer sex and IT, is that although women could be equally as talented, if not more so, the interest is often simply not there.
A desire to "get under the hood" and tinker is an absolute prerequisite.
Socially, males are far more prone to "tinkering" than women are, whether that extends to actual physicality and genetics, I really don't know.
I am a network manager at a 'bullish' secondary school in Yeovil. It has been my observation that the use of technology is driven and learnt becuase of 'an end result'.
Girls on the whole focus mostly on communication technologies, MSN, Yahoo etc and spend many hours creating a portrayed 'image' on Bebo, Facebook and alike. It is 'fashion' and expected.
People of my generation (40ish)barely remember the introduction of a computer a school, let alone the internet, but for students today it represents a tool, nothing more - like the telephone for us.
A 'stand alone' PC to a student is a broken PC!
So does this make girls more adept then boys? Maybe.........in the creation of their social networking sites they are exposed to various technologies from photo editing to web creation - here lies the crux of the issue. Where as using such tools may seem amazing to older generations, to the younger generation it's as base as pressing the digits on your mobile phone.
You may spend 80k on a brand new car, know how to drive it, use it's features and maybe even change a wheel, but does that mean you want to become a mechanic? For most the answer is probably not.
The use of PCs is no different.
I have an amazing technician, she's 23 and has a natural aptitude for 'IT', hardware, sofware, networking, cabling etc and he was a complete 'misfit' as school. She is now doing a degree in computer science which covers everything from project management to coding; I have no doubt in my mind she will move on to earn a good income. If you ask her if her school helped to influence her decision in moving to IT, she will laugh and answer 'No'.
The education sector on the whole is lacking - in most part, and apologies for using a wide brush, this is down to staff who are to old to want to learn new tricks. In time and through natural wastage, older IT inept staff will be replaced by younger, better trained, more dymanic staff who will be able to carry the torch for both sexes and show them the oppertunities that IT presents because they will actually understand themselves!
Software development is a world away from creating a word document. Isn't it true as a general rule that men tend to be more logical in their thinking. That's why a room full of programmers will be dominated by males. However, of course there are exceptions. Also as far as the IT world is concerned there's a magnitude of diverse roles. In which there are many far more suitable for females.
In my school we have a general opinion from the students that stems from their parents which is 'I dont need IT'. Although we are making links with local companies we could always do with more help. If there are any companies out there that might offer students some experience of IT in the work place could you please leave ideas.
Given that Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) is credited with being the first computer programmer, it hardly seems in doubt that women have the ability. But software development tends to be a solitary pursuit with more interaction with machines than with human beings. Showing that women have an interest in the social uses of computers isn't any kind of proof that there will be a surge of female software developers, rather the opposite. It implies that they will go into professions that make use of computers, which doesn't narrow the options much these days. I think the software industry would benefit from more women but it is hard to change the existing culture.
I suspect Web 2.0 is indeed having such an effect - but then again Facebook Apps is about as Web 2.0 as one could ask for and if THAT is a male-oriented crowd, it's clear we're some years from the sea change.
Boys are only capable of "bashing orcs and stealing virtual cars", while girls "communicate".
I'm disppointed to see you succumbing to anti-male sentiment, Rory. But it doesn't surprise me to find it on this website.
This sort of prejudice from the 大象传媒 and other liberal media causes major damage. One article on its own can be ignored. But the steady drip-drip of reports suggesting that boys and men are worth less eventually makes them believe they are indeed worth less.
Doubtless you won't agree. It would take a considerable effort to rotate your thinking 180 degrees and understand another perspective. I'm sure you mean well when you write approvingly of "breaking down the gender barriers".
If you get the chance, I'd recommend Googling for a 2006 Newsweek article called "the trouble with boys". It's a good starting point, and might lead you to discovering the work of the respected psychologist William Pollack, what the Bill Gates Foundation is doing, and Michael Gurian's work.
Women in IT? There used to be lots of them!
When I joined the IT department of a large company in 1979 the male/female ratio was somewhere about 40/60 (more women than men). Between then and when I left in the mid nineties the place became more and more male dominated. Basically what happened was that far from the exciting career they'd expected, many of the women just found the whole business very, very BORING. Sensibly, they decided there's more to life than sitting in front of a computer screen.
In our experience ICT literate women outnumber men in the more creative and visual professions within computing such as Graphic Design, Web Design and Animation - approximately 10-1. On your point of girls and the social internet I think you would agree all these professions have a significant communication element in them.
Whereas men vastly outnumber women in the more logical and pragmatic professions within computing such as IT Support, Software Development and Training - approximately 15-1. So on your point of boys being occupied by playing and competing in games, how successful they are comes down to understanding the rules within the game engine - a more logical element.
I guess it boils down to (as it always seems to with the sexes) the differences in the representation of the left hand side and the right hand side of the brain - we all play to our strengths!
The examples of producing word documents and uploading videos have little to do with computing jobs such as programming, so the survey is pretty meaningless.
I am currently studying electronic engineering and part of the course includes a class in programming, and while I excel in and enjoy maths nd physics, I find programming the most intensly boring thing I have ever done...
To me it seems you'd need a very one track mind to cope with it at a professional level, something possessed by mainly men, the top programmer in our class talks of only cars and computers
But remember the first programmer was a woman!
I work as a software developer for an internet company. We have a very large team, with around 150 programmers, of which maybe three or four are women. I tend to agree with what Matthew wrote above, that most women just aren't interested in programming, any more than they are with car engines or electronic circuitry.
Having said that, when I was at university a few years back, there was large contingent of Chinese students on my computer science course. I noticed that while amongst the western students the percentage of women was probably about 2%, amongst the Chinese it rose to about 30%, which made me wonder if the tendency for women to avoid technical fields isn't at least partly cultural.
Computers and the internet are still very much dominated by men on the technical side of things and at one time men vastly outnumbered women also in internet use. Howevever as the Internet has been used increasingly as a market place and somewhere to shop and compare prices then women have become very significant users of the internet as they often find it convenient to shop online when they have very busy lives.
Although more women than before are involved in programming and web development, and certainly like myself in online business, I think this remains more male dominated but not so much as before. This is a good thing because women bring a different perspective to things like web design.
Creating Spreadsheets, profiles on google etc only the most incompetant persons would consider that anything at all to do with working with IT.
That is using IT in it's most simplest form and I doubt that it has anything to do with the sex of the child and more to do with their exposure to computers at home.
You people should'nt even be writing about IT because you haven't got a clue.
More accurate and to the point is the fact that most male children are distracted with games when they use a computer and when they grow out of that distraction they far exceed the level of knowledge and understanding of the average female in IT related fields.
Let's not even get into the dumbing down of IT education in our schools to a point where we now consider the simplist tasks such as setting up a spreadsheet to be of any significance.
I was one of those unfortunate enough to study at an engineering school surrounded by hundreds of male students. I have worked with female mathematicians, programmers, engineers, etc in the past. As a male, I actually really like the systematic task breakdown a female professional brings into a project. In my opinion, the female brain is more than capable of problem solving, even better than the male brain. However, the only drawback they have is that they aren't as geeky as we are. Geekiness is what makes us more dedicated and excited about technology.
A friend of mine once told me, if little girls are given toy trains instead of dolls, they might turn out to be geeks as well. I'm not sure how accurate this claim is.
I have to agree with the majority of comments on this page - the tasks mentioned in the article do not correlate at all with what seriously takes place behind the scenes on the internet or on a desktop PC.
Web 2.0 has made it easier for the user, but the work is just as hard if not harder for the developer - uploading videos to YouTube is a very simple task that anyone could do if they were given a quick 15 minute tutorial on the subject.
I'm a bit of a computer geek myself and as soon as I talk technical to many of the girls (or boys) I know, they get completely confused and change the subject. Many teenage girls aren't interested in the technicalities taking place behind the scenes and don't have any enthusiasm for this - they simply want to be able to use the computer as a tool to interact with their friends. There's nothing wrong with that, but drawing a connection between using YouTube or creating a Word document, and using computers for developing etc. is something else.
On my college course, we started with 2 girls out of 30 students. 1 of them has now quit - the ratio of roughly 1 female to 10 males on Computer Science courses is still with us and I'd say it isn't changing dramatically any time soon
I think there's a big difference between understanding how to create and work with documents and understanding how the actual computer works, or how the software you're using is created.
I'm not entirely sure we can make the logical step from opening and saving Word documents to creating software.
Experience has shown me that many people simply do not understand how to use their computers efficiently (where do documents live when I save them? Where do I find them to back them up?), or how to troubleshoot them when they go wrong (why can't I download the photos from my digital camera, or how do I sync my mobile to my PC's address book?).
Despite the PC (both Mac and Windows) being pretty common in the home as well as the workplace, such machines are still quite a way from being the domestic appliances the manufacturers would lead us to believe.
I really think some fundamental understanding of the hardware and how to connect stuff to it is the kind of thing that should be taught in ICT - as well as using the software children may encounter in the workplace. You have to be enthused about the hardware to become an IT engineer, or to want to learn how to write software. Being trained as a cubicle drone is not the way to do it, I fear.
This seems to be more a study of people using social networking sites. Any idiot can start their own blog nowadays.how about a study in a third level institution of computer science undergraduates
"teenage girls were far more likely to create content on the internet than boys"
You can just barely call creating a facebook account a skill. What does it involve? A few clicks and you're done.
And its obvious why girls use these sites more often, they are more inclined to keep in touch with friends.
And why exactly would employers be interested in people who spend all day interacting with friends online or posting trashy videos onto youtube?
Real skills come from understanding the underlying technologies not from interacting with applications which were designed to be as user friendly as possible.
I have to say as a female software developer I agree with most of the comments here. ICT is not a link into females in Computing Science. There is a huge difference from using a website to creating one.
ICT is about creating computer literacy, about being able to write reports, and generally survive in the world of work. It much more likely to be useful to a secretary than a software developer.
Ok, we all agree that the tendency to use social networking sites and make pretty 3D chat characters is not a sign of females becoming more tech savvy.
What it may help with is actually portraying to females that it is actually not that difficult, not a crazy magic that is out of the reach of the XX.
Women are incredibly logical by nature and great at giving out sets of instructions, programming is a natural progression!
im in my 40's and have always loved technology in general - however i think that the basic assumption here is wrong - it is computers that have got more "girl friendly" . if you examine the uses the different genders put pc's too you would notice 1/ the pc has replaced the typewriter so in th workplace the transition to pc was obvious for women - hence they need to be able to use word - 2/ the spread of home internet use - shopping and social networking by often lone parents stuck home in the evenings has massively increased- all girl stuff mostly - games however are still predominantly made and marketed for boys and more men are involved in the higher levels of useage eg programming , website building than women - likewise the building and maintenence of pc's is still dominated by men - women tend to buy a pc at tescos - men like to build from scratch - these are generalisations i know but i think all that has happened is that the market has expanded to incorporate levels of use that appeal to women rather than increased interest at technical level
The long hours of coding and debugging required of a software developer, I think, can be tougher on girls than on boys. Creating a spreadsheet is one thing, but coding and the long hours that it entails is a whole different ball game.
I simply don't understand the point of this articles angle. It means nothing in the development industry if more girls than boys are creating content on the Internet, or more confident with word or excel. These are applications and designed for everyday use. It's the equivalent of saying why are there not more female Television repair technicians because a statistic shows that more woman watch TV than men, or why are there not more pilots because more woman fly as passengers than men?
I also notice a lack of woman in the IT industry and to be honest I simply cannot understand why. It is a new technology and a new industry - a clean slate so to speak. Maybe it all comes down to less interest still in the technical side? Hopefully that will change in the future. Maybe at school level there should be more work done to interest girls into the technological paths. Maybe what we should be looking at is the number of girls in school reading science fiction ;O)
But let's not confuse users with developers. A person looking at a photograph doesn't make them a photographer.
This article fails to mention one thing. ICT is not a male dominated business. There are plenty of women working in this business. Women in this business may not work directly as a software developer, but you will find many Female Software Project Mangers which requires a different set of skills.
>* planner wrote:
>The long hours of coding and
>debugging required of a software
>developer.. can be tougher on girls
>than on boys.
As a female computer scientist I find comments that imply women cannot do computing because of their basic makeup highly laughable. The above comment is the most outrageous. Women have been nursing babies round the clock with no sleep forever, have been coding/following knitting patterns for centuries, and were THE computer programmers during WWII. Women are equally attracted to mathematics at uni level and could easily move into computing but are discouraged to do so by the nature of the computing courses in the UK, the advertising of computing/gadgets as male oriented and general gender stereotyping as confirmed by many of the comments above.
One thing I cannot abide by is the brush of laziness men/boys are tarnished with of "can't be bothered". Men are more bothered about a lot of things (especially the technical) that women aren't. Women might be bothered to do a lot more simple interactions in their daily lives than men. But for the world to continue turning it takes the many men willing to "get under the hood" and get to grips with the technicalities of all the worlds major networks not just those of an IT nature but the utilities sector etc. It is the males ability in "being bothered" to focus and dedicate ones time to learning something in its entirety that creates this one sidedness. For me the "can't be bothered" attitude is more prevalent in the fairer sex. If something breaks they can't be bothered learning how to fix it they would rather pay someone who has been bothered to learn how to fix it.
I'm a seventeen year old girl, and taught myslef how to program in C++, Ajax, PHP, Ruby...
The ICT courses offered my schools and colleges require no knowledge of how a computer works; using Frontpage doesn't help you understand how a website works; learnnig how to use Microsoft Office is not a particularly taxing skill.
I took computing last year, and was one of only two girls in a 20ish strong class. the other girl failed, I got an A.
And yes, I still have a Facebook, use forums, use XBox live, and love web 2.0.
But I feel it is a crying shame more girls aren't interested in how computers work, don't want to create programs or become hackers (in the 80's sense of the word).
There is a whole world out there, that most people don't learn in schools, and for some reason, girls aren't as attracted to it.
From my experience, apart from the odd time, I've been judged on what I know, not my gender, race or bra size. Gender stereotypes are all but gone; more girl geeks!
Hi,
I've been reading this post with interest, girls should be encouraged to 'make it' in the IT and technology industries.
I work in video games, as a assoicate producer, I have been working in video games for more than 8 years now and I have met woman lead programmers (who are very good at thier jobs) and other women in technical jobs.
we need to stop type casting IT industries as a men-only jobs, and start recongnising that women can do the same jobs as men, no matter what industry.
Keep up the good work girls, we need you!!!
As part of the age group this article is addressing, here is my input: yes, the I.T curriculum is very, very boring. That's why I dropped it going into the GCSE years, no other reason. That being said if I had been introduced to the world of coding and web development I probably would've carried on with it, as since being given more access to computers and the work that goes into making the websites I think it would be an incredibly valuable skill for the future; although maybe that says more about me than my gender. Despite that, I know leagues more about computing than my mother does even if I'm not a coder, and so do a lot of my female friends - that is the point this article is trying to get across. More women outside the professional circle know more about computers. Maybe the word 'geekier' in the title has just been misleading.
Jules picks up on an interesting point on social stereotypes here in the comments, she points out a LOT of assumptions that people are making.
Technology and the process of creating software is totally gender agnostic, anyone can learn it so long as they have the passion and drive to learn how. Social stereotypes, lazy advertising and assumptions are incredibly dangerous and alienate people interested in technology. I don't just mean women either, some men are put off by the nerdy image and lack of social interaction and women put off by the gender assumptions placed upon them on top of this.
How do I know this... there has been years of research on this subject in the current tech industry and every time the same things come out. There is no point looking at this as a womens problem or a mans problem. This is an industry issue where old stereotypes are still playing a role. In countries where this isn't the case such as areas in China and Japan you will find that there aren't the same gender patterns in the industry.
People in this country need to look at their own social stereotyping and challenge it. Quite often such stereotypes are based on old facts that have changed. Holding onto the past is dangerous sometimes and can hold back an entire industries innovation.
I would like to see schools, colleges and universities encouraging anyone with an inquisitive mind and good problem solving skills to consider a career in the technology industry.
There's been no mention of girls picking up ICT skills as portable skills -- and so, yes you can go into a deveoping/programming environment and not see any girls, despite the higher levels of girls studying and succeeding in ICT.
Every girl I have known doing Computer Science at university moved away from Computer Science, doing post grad qualifications in business etc. Women appreciate ICT as a skill in the modern world -- just as one would take maths or science but not a mathematician or a research scientist. It ahs eben found time and again that women prefer careers where they have more impact on peopel -- even in a possibly disconnected way through banking etc -- but there is arguably no effective way of interacting and affecting peoples lives for the better through working exclusively through internet/computer technologies.
Personally I disagree that any of the reports and findings are indicating that girls are getting geekier.
Instead what I think is happening is that the accessibility of computing on the whole is improving, across both genders and ages.
I'd suggest that Girls are not becoming geekier, and instead that computers are becoming less geekier.
"... in ten years` time will the girls from Brentside High be competing for jobs as software developers?"
I am no social expert, but I would expect to see overall computer litracy increasing, and a more computer aware workforce in the future.
I do however doubt that this 'computer aware' workforce will see an increase in females working in the IT/Computing industry, mainly because I dont think they will want to.
A study/survey on what High School kids want to do when they grow up would probably be a much better indcator of this.
Without turning this post into a novel or being accused of mass stereo-typing, another train of thought could look at the fact that females/girls are generally more social than males.
I'm sure there are some studies to support this, so simply put I'd expect to see an increase in girls interested in how they can upload content onto facebook etc. and all of the skills required to do that.
Please bear in mind that this post is simply from my own view point as an IT professional who enjoys "bashing orcs" when I am not working or spending time with my family.
#34
Whilst I can understand your fustration at some of the comments here (since you're a female computer scientist), I do feel you've falling into the same old trap of blaming it ALL on men squeezing women out of a male dominated industry, and therefore ignoring the fact that at some level, women are responsible (how much so is argueable of course).
The fact is, it is accepted that men and women ARE different mentally (generally speaking), and it's that difference which often sets the dominance of one sex over another in a particular field/area. I believe it's the mindset of men that make them more suited to the technical/logical aspects of computing compared to women (again, this is generally speaking). Nick in comment #18 summed it up well imo.
Today, no-one thinks twice about saying women are better at multi-tasking than men and therefore concluding that women are better than men in certain areas (such as management skills). No-one has a problem with that, however... the fact that men are, for example, better at putting all their energy into a focussing on a single task to a very high level (however mundane it may be) is often dismissed or even ignored, and therefore to highlight that men are better than women in certain areas is all too easily labled as sexist, or the result of men oppressing women at some level.
Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but I do get tired of seeing EVERY area of male dominance equated with sex distrimination, where females are the victims (and yet never vice-versa).
I'm not sure I would agreewith the idea that being more proficient at posting and creation of certain online media means being more proficient with a computer in general. Activities such as uploading content or creating a blog are generally services made to be extremely user-friendly, lest they drive away many who want to use the service. Though I've never tried posting to YouTube or using FaceBook, I know that it could be figured out in a matter of minutes. More important than being able to do a few certain tasks is having a general knowledge and experience level with computers and the applications that run on them. After you have used enough of them, picking up any other will be easy stuff. And though it's only an opinion and a hunch, I think you would find girls are much more likely to be capable in online media while guys are more likely to be hardware and system-capable (tweaking the OS, configuring new devices, setting up server services, setting up the home network). That said, maybe I just don't know your average crowd regarding users.
I don't think the trend shows that there will be more female programmers in the future. But perhaps that isn't the issue.
A previous post talked about the desire to tinker as a prerequisite to programming. In the current world of software development, this is often a highly solitary task, so the anti-social boys who play games online and create mods for them, yeah, they'll easily transition to programmers if they have the discipline.
But most women, and society in general, are more interested in social interaction. We like to chat and work in groups and so on. We don't feel like staring at code for hours, even when perfectly capable of the job. However, a good grasp of workings of the technology combined with social skills allow people to function exceptionally well as designers and managers.
As girls move into more IT training and usage, you will see them move into the IT world not as programmers, but in roles that shape the development of IT.
Why does aptitude and interest in computing have to depend on gender? What would be the response if comments about aptitude were based on race, religion, sexual orientation etc rather than gender? People would be outraged at the suggestion that a race of people were not suited to computing, but somehow when it is gender it's ok?!
I don't want computing to be made "fluffier" just because I am female - how patronising is that? Rather, we should examine why 1/2 the population is put off not just computing, but science, engineering and many other "technical" disciplines? When do women "learn" that technical disciplines are considered less female and communication-based ones are more "suitable"? From birth girls are all to often encouraged to communicate/emote and be passive - not to explore their surroundings and experiment. Boys are often encouraged to be active and physical explorers of the world - to be brave. In my opinion this conditioning leads to the previously mentioned "tinkering" behaviour that is more common amongst men?
When we expect more of our female children than simply to be polite, passive and pretty, then more women will be interested in technology!
Nothing has been said here to convince anyone that girls face a barrier entering ICT. There are no mobs of angry chauvinists waving sharpened motherboards, no hypermale geeks with their model samurai swords standing between any female that wants to learn ICT and the learning.
Jones writes, "But in ten years鈥 time will the girls from Brentside High be competing for jobs as software developers? Let鈥檚 hope so."
Why? Why should we hope the sexes to be equally represented in ICT?
If the answer has something to do with the future being largely played on that stage: then fine. I too hope everyone in the world, irrespective or sex, plays whatever role they wish in the theatre of life.
But if you want equal representation for its own sake I beg you, for once just stop and think.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
I don't see why this is such a big deal. I am a 20 year old girl, I got an F in IT in school, but I can use Word, Spreadsheets etc, all the boring menial corporate stuff, I am use Photoshop every day, and i like a bit of orc bashing and virtual car stealing too :D School ICT has nothing to do with REAL computer skills, I learnt everything i needed to know by myself. My boyfriend is a self taught programmer who gained no GSCEs at school, but is working in a company developing websites and programs.
I think it is just how my generation, and younger ones, has grown up, learning to use the tools we have been given.
And for the record, I don't use facebook or myspace!!
This is a very stereotypical comment based on a study which seems to prove that very stereotype.
All that the study and some of the comments seems to prove is that girls/women, still like to shop, still like to gossip and still like to show pictures to their friends.
This is no different now than before it's just that there is now a new medium to do this, as somebody else said, it has nothing to do with girls getting geekier and more to do with girls being more catered for to pursue their social interests, some women used to have coffee mornings, now they have facebook.
Confidence, confidence, confidence. That's the reason why men feel they can "tinker" and women are reluctant to do so.
Until we can get everyone to see the world in shades of yellow rather than blue or pink we'll be stuck with this silent discrimination that scares off the less confident women.
I work in the softer side of IT but am pretty sure if I wanted to I could code. The only women I know who do code are either not British or went to girl-only schools. I'm sure that says something.
I've been an avid online gamer for the better part of 6 years now. I've noticed a major influx of females in the past 2 years t games like world of warcraft and other MMO's. At the start, in my guild, I was the only female, now there seem to be nearly as many women interested in gaming as men, which is fantastic to see!
I'm really surprised to hear that Rory doesn't meet many women when he visits IT businesses. I've been working in IT and Telecoms companies for over 10 years, and there are LOADS of us there!
It seems to me that out in the real world, it's the application of software that really matters, and (beyond a certain established level of competence) not necessarily the creation. Commercially, no one is interested in code unless there is a problem with it. The critical point is always about the benefits to the customer and the impact on the business's bottom line.
In most IT companies, the techy department is relatively small in comparison to the rest of the business, and (as a result perhaps of the Asbergers tendencies among these kind of staff) is also often pretty uncommunicative to anyone outside their immediate team. As an example or this, I spend inordinate amounts of time as a project and programme manager having to translate conversations between techies and the rest of the business. Consequently, by the standards of the rest of most businesses, these are not sociable teams to work in, and (as a non-geeky female) I can't imagine their members having been a bundle of laughs to be socialising with at Uni either. Therefore it's not a vast surprise that these teams don't contain too many women.
In fact industry is increasingly seeking people with soft (people and communication-based) skills, because these are the ones which make a real difference to business efficiency. Therefore perhaps ICT should be taught at secondary school level in relation to this, as well as providing a technical grounding. People will always specialise at A'Level and Uni if they want to - I don't thinks Computer Science or Applied Maths courses would be under-subscribed as a result.
So, if we combine this commercial direction and it's extremely favourable implications for women with the fact that technology unmistakeably becomes less geeky and more intuitive with every week that passes (iPhone, anyone?), and the general concept of Moore's Law with regard to ever increasing output versus reducing cost over time, then who'd want to be a computer geek in 10 years time? Do you think there'll be as many jobs? Sorry, but I doubt it.