Re: male-female student ratio mix ... more bad news

Neil Bauman [[email protected]] quoth:
*>
*>            Girls Don't Feel Left Out--They're Opting Out of IT
*>            Information Week
*>            A recent study by the American Association of University
*>Women Educational Foundation determined that girls consider IT
*>careers uninspiring, computer programming tedious and dull, and video
*>games redundant and violent. Oh, dear. "There's valid concern about what
*>will happen in 10 to 20 years-- these ideas exacerbate the IT labor
*>shortage"

Funny that they don't mention the URL of the study itself at
http://www.aauw.org/2000/techsavvy.html. They make some good and valid
points but it smacks of over-generalisation and cheerleading. Much the
same as I feel about people telling women they can have it all and, in
reality, it's a rare case. They toss around a lot of ideals yet offer no
plausible ways to effect these changes and make no acknowledgement of the
current social atmosphere. This isn't a simple problem where you can take
barbie and put her in a machine room with a pink sparc and such expecting
a engineer to emerge from the cocoon in five years.

Also, I find the basing the numbers on how many female CS degree
candidates there are bad. Many, if not most, of the men as well as women I
know in this business aren't of the CS flavour. It is a misleading as well
as incorrect metric.

There is a shortage of skilled labor in IT already and this will give 
women some unusual opportunities for advancement much like the labor 
situation during WWII did. Two things that need to change are a lot of 
social reinforcements that start early and a near primal fear of many women 
that being a geek seals your fate of being a spinster.

When social expectations of both genders start to change, so too will
much of the demographics. Until then, most girls are taught in many subtle
ways that science and math are hard, that boys don't like smart girls, if
boys don't like you then you won't get married and have kids and you'll
die a lonely spinster. And, when girls don't buy into this there are many
subtle and not quite so subtle ways that people try and herd you back into
the fold. Girls who can fix the fuel injectors on a dates' VW Beetle while
he stands to the side doesn't do much for his ego and doesn't get asked
out again....

The problem really isn't about the computers, or estrogen, it's mostly
social....at least this is how I see it. Of course, having quake-like
games with some sexy scantily clad viking named sven instead of lara croft
might help too. Next time you read through a technology magazine, count
how many ads use women or eroticised images to sell software and other
products...I think you'll be surprised by how many there are. 

"Joan of Arc was burned at the stake today. Message to young women: You
can be anything you wanna be." - Dennis Miller

e.
(who is still quite shocked to find out that as recently as 1970 women
were thought to be incapable of running more than 2 miles and were barred
from running in the Boston Marathin until 1972)