All engineers worth their bits know that a program won’t
ever function correctly if its logic is based on false assumptions. Unfortunately, politicians’ careers do not
depend on the airtight validity of their assumptions like those of engineers. Senator Ron Wyden makes a false assumption
that the declining participation rate of women in computer science can be
mostly explained by discrimination, which “[pushes] women into traditional
female roles, such as teaching.” Who is
doing the discrimination, Ron Wyden? In
my university, the only step between a woman and a seat in an introductory CS
course is an online class registry sheet waiting for her consent. If a conscious choice not to study a certain
field is unequivocally the result of discrimination, shouldn’t we also be
concerned about the fact that only 18.3% of middle school and high school
teachers were men in 2011? Should we
also be concerned that the prospect of fatherhood pushes men into more
traditional male roles, such as engineering?
Maybe we shouldn’t be concerned, since it is not politically beneficial
to discuss those disparities.
There are unfortunate biases in both of those examples. Men that want to teach or do anything with children are often thought of as creepy or perverts, even though many of them just love teaching. The same thing happens in computer science, it's seen as full of creepy guys with their own geeky culture. The barriers aren't present in the institutions, it's in the perception of the people in and around them.
ReplyDeleteAnswer: we should care about those things.
ReplyDeleteAnd there is certainly more than just a registration form between a girl and that first introductory computer science class.