Letter: Female CS concentrators misrepresented – The Brown Daily Herald
March 30, 2011 at 11:50 am 2 comments
The below article appeared in Brown University’s Daily Herald newspaper, in response to the article I blogged about a few weeks ago (thanks to Steven Sesko for this). I don’t see “unflattering statistics” in the original article, but I’m not a female in CS at Brown — some of the statistics about under-representation might be perceived as “unflattering.”
It’s a hard place to be in. In highlighting the many who aren’t there, and bemoaning the small numbers, we may make those that are there feel diminished. I think we should highlight how male CS has become, and ask if there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. NCWIT is fighting a good and noble fight. But I understand that it’s a fight that must be fought delicately, trying hard not to be unflattering to the women in CS now.
There are fewer women than men in the CS department. Yet quantity and quality are not one and the same. The excellence of female students’ departmental contributions is in no way limited by the number of female students — nor is our love for the subject. Writing articles that broadcast the unflattering statistics regarding women in CS and fixate on the trials and tribulations they face, but that do not also mention their joys and successes, is a damaging and reactionary way to dishearten potential computer scientists. The two of us love what we do and want others to join us, not for the sake of boosting the numbers, but so that they can experience first-hand a subject that is uniquely exciting and rewarding. We sincerely hope that after reading this piece, no student — male or female — feels discouraged from exploring the fascinating field of CS.
via Letter: Female CS concentrators misrepresented – The Brown Daily Herald.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: BPC, computing education, NCWIT, women in computing.
1.
Kathi Fisler | March 31, 2011 at 9:57 am
The heart of the letter lies in this comment:
As an undergrad, I was the only female CS major across 3-consecutive class years. I only became conscious of this after others started drawing attention to it (and it made me self-conscious for a while thereafter). Being female simply didn’t define my experience in the department or the discipline.
So as we think about diversity, perhaps we should think about what non-gender characteristics are underrepresented: different ways people interact with technology or the discipline itself. While many of those may be statistically correlated with “female”, we might do better not using gender as the substitute.
It is also worth understanding how gender-identification changes over time. It may be that girls do identify with gender at a young age (when we are trying to engage more of them in technology). In that case, a “female” lens might make more sense. But if that identification weakens in high-school, for example, we might approach diversity differently. Anyone know good pointers to literature on this question, especially in educational contexts?
Kathi
2.
Mark Guzdial | March 31, 2011 at 10:27 am
I don’t know any literature on this question, Kathi, but it’s a really interesting one. I’d not thought about the issue of gender-identification changing over time. I wonder if it’s non-monotonic. For example, the literature I’m hearing about from NCWIT and the Anita Borg Institute suggests that women have a very different experience in early career through mid-management levels than men, and it’s often due to family pressures. Would that suggest that gender identification is greater at a young age, less in undergraduate years, and perhaps more in early adulthood? It’s an interesting question when a gender lens is useful for drawing research distinctions, and when it’s not.