In February 2006, I published “Women in Science”, a response to the theory that America’s smartest women were too dumb to spend years getting PhDs in science when the prize at the end was a $40,000 per year job. A loosely related New York Times Article appeared this weekend: “What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science”. It is an interesting read, but possibly could be summarized in one sentence: “It is better to be an MD or cardiac nurse collecting Medicare reimbursement checks than one of the 6000 laid-off engineers from Sun Microsystems.”
One thought on “Women shunning computer science”
Comments are closed.
I think comparing the early 1980s to now is a poor comparison. I went to college during that time, and we had a number of students (both male and female) who were doing computer science because it was the hot new place to be, but these students for the most part didn’t have the aptitude to do the job. There’s less of that effect now, as computers are “old hat”.
I also wonder whether there is interest in a lot of non-programming internet jobs that might skew towards girls.
Having said that, there’s still something cultural going on. MDs and cardiac nurses, while very technical jobs, are also very people-oriented jobs, while the hardcore programming jobs are much less people-oriented. If that was a driver, we’d expect to see women more often filling the program management/project management roles in software firms, and it’s been my experience that that’s true.