Why Women Stopped Coding

[summer]

Interesting.  Stupid gendered commercials.


www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=357629765


DAVID GREENE, HOST:



The field of computer science is dominated by men. It has not always been that way. On this program recently, NPR's Laura Sydell told the story of some pioneers of computing, women who programmed the first digital computers. For decades, the number of women in computer science grew faster than the number of men, but then we get to 1984. The percentage of women in computer science flattened and then plunged. Steve Henn from NPR's Planet Money team has been learning about what happened.



STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Patty Ordonez was a math geek in high school. When she got to Johns Hopkins in 1984, she figured comp sci would be no problem.



PATTY ORDONEZ: I had that first class of minicomputers back then. I remembered this one time, I asked a question, and the professor kind of looked at me. And he just stopped, and he just said, you should know that by now.



HENN: Which was weird. This was an introductory class. It's not like many high schools at the time were teaching computer science. And yet Ordonez was already behind.



ORDONEZ: And I thought to myself, I'm never going to excel.



HENN: A lot of the kids in this class seemed to know the answers before the professor even asked the questions. And actually there was this one kid, one guy in particular, named Lee Van Dorn.



ORDONEZ: I just thought he was a freaking genius. Oh, can I say that word. (Laughter) Sorry, I just thought he was a genius. So I - I mean, he just looked like he knew so much.



HENN: Ordonez got her first C ever in that computer science class. Soon she dropped out of the program. Van Dorn, the genius, got an A. I tracked him down. He's now a tech consultant in Seattle. Lee remembers that time, and he says Patty was wrong. He wasn't some kind of genius. He had something Patty didn't - a home computer.



LEE VAN DORN: I walked into a RadioShack, and there sitting on the counter, the front counter, there on the right side, there was a TRS-80 Model 1 computer.



HENN: It had games. It was awesome, and it was actually the key to his college success. By the time Lee got to Johns Hopkins, he had spent thousands of hours programming the thing. So this was one of the big changes that happened around 1984 - small, home computers. There were starting to be computer haves and computer have-nots. So why did Lee have this advantage and Patty didn't? Well, in 1984, ads for personal computers were really just targeted at boys.



(SOUNDBITE OF TV AD)



UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: This morning, Brian Scott made a career decision. He decided to be an astronaut; his first, giant step - learning to use an Apple.



HENN: The first home computers are sold as toys. And like toys everywhere, there was a strong gender preference.



(SOUNDBITE OF TV AD)



UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Singing) In a world of fun and fantasy.



HENN: In one ad, for the Commodore 64 in the early '80s, there are a half dozen guys using the machine with only one woman in the commercial. She's wearing a bathing suit, and she's jumping into a pool.



(SOUNDBITE OF TV AD)



UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Singing) Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you.



HENN: Jane Margolis is an education researcher at UCLA. I asked her if ads like this had an effect on who ended up using computers. She said absolutely.



When computers entered the home, they entered the home the same way, like, Tonka Trucks entered the home...



JANE MARGOLIS: Exactly. Exactly, they entered the home as all the toys that involved working with tools.



HENN: Now, it's hard to say if this is straight-up sexism or computer makers just had data that boys were a more receptive audience, but whatever the reason, this fed on itself. In the mid-'80s, you could turn on the TV and see women doctors on "St. Elsewhere." Claire Huxtable was a lawyer on "The Cosby Show" - cops? - "Cagney & Lacey." But pretty much anytime a computer was turned on, it was a male nerd running it. Think "WarGames," "Revenge Of The Nerds," "Weird Science."



(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WEIRD SCIENCE")



UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) OK, look, you know how you're always talking about how you can simulate all that stuff on your computer? You know, what's the difference? Why can't we simulate a girl?



HENN: By the mid-'90s computer science departments had been transformed. Carnegie Mellon, which had one of the best programs in the country, was 93 percent men. The number of women entering the field had slowed to a trickle, but Patty Ordonez was one of them. Even though she dropped out of her comp sci class in '84, more than a decade later she went back. Today she has a Ph.D. in the field and teaches introductory computer science. Tomorrow on MORNING EDITION, what some in tech are doing to turn around this industry and bring more women into the fold. Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.

[lulu13]

Very interesting! Coincidentally on our way to school today DD (11 y/o) told me that she wants to be an engineer. I guess they had to rate their interests in class yesterday and she rated math and science with 1's which is the highest rating. She does have a strong female influence in regards to engineers because we live in the Silicon Valley and plenty on the moms and dads at her school work at tech companies so that could be a factor. I was so thrilled to hear her say that though..I think her amazing math and science teachers this year are also having a huge impact.

[Deleted]

I went to a university that was 65-70% female. I was one of 6 women out of 300 students in the Computer Science department.

Women are not encouraged to go in to computer science the way men are. It's anecdotal, but the men I spoke to from other majors always seemed to have a better basic grasp of what CS was as opposed to the women. I can't believe that it's willful ignorance on the part of most women. I have to think that scientific careers are just not even presented as an option to women in a lot of cases.

I'm hoping that as more women get involved in the gaming community (despite what #gamergate supporters want) we'll see a shift in the way women interact with computers and a greater shift towards the hard sciences.

[Deleted]

DH tries to hold on to the (very few) female students he gets in his high school comp sci classes. It can be hard, even at that level, to convince girls to enroll and then to continue on through the classes.

[2curlydogs]

"The field of computer science is dominated by men. It has not always been that way.
"

Ok, seriously with this shit?

Yes. Yes it has been. The rate of growth means nothing because you're STARTING with a fraction of the population.

Additionally, Computer Science is a BROAD discipline. It covers everything from Information theory to artificial intelligence to computer architecture and engineering to computational programming and mathematical modeling. For some reason, I am doubting their numbers looked at much beyond the stereotypical "computer programmer" (which, even there, BIG UMBRELLA).


While the advent of the PC undoubtedly had an impact, it's not like the guys who went out and bought the Commodore or Apple just were walking past their local Radio Shack and went "Huh, I wonder what that thing is." Nobody window shops at Radio Shack! These were guys who were already HEAAAAAAAVY into the culture. They had probably already built a computer or two. They probably already owned their own soldering irons.

And they were encouraged in their hobbies by parents, by teachers, etc. because it was an acceptable male thing to do. Geeky, yes. But still acceptably male.

Fuck all, NPR, you're supposed to be better than this.

[2curlydogs]

Oh. Hey. Here's one of the Commodore commercial they're talking about.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_f3uIzEIxo

And another one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOV78CgbiYg

[downtoearth]

This article is disheartening, but thanks for posting b/c I was just talking to our local science museum and told them they should have a girls robotics class - maybe I can forward this to one of our former teachers who is on staff there.

Oh and I'm in engineering...maybe it's b/c we had a Commodore 64 when I was in first grade and remember turning in a 4 sentence report that I typed out on the computer and the teacher laughing b/c he didn't have access to a computer at school yet.

Oh and I totally programed from early on. Remember this - the "Logo turtle" that you could program to make designs like an electronic etch-a-sketch.

[2curlydogs]

I still own our Commodore. It's in our basement. Plus a shitton of bootleg games.

LOAD "MARIO BROS.", 8, 1

[ttt]

Oct 23, 2014 12:43:38 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

This article is disheartening, but thanks for posting b/c I was just talking to our local science museum and told them they should have a girls robotics class - maybe I can forward this to one of our former teachers who is on staff there.

Oh and I'm in engineering...maybe it's b/c we had a Commodore 64 when I was in first grade and remember turning in a 4 sentence report that I typed out on the computer and the teacher laughing b/c he didn't have access to a computer at school yet.

Oh and I totally programed from early on. Remember this - the "Logo turtle" that you could program to make designs like an electronic etch-a-sketch.

OH MY GOD I LOVED THAT TURTLE THING!!