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 Women in Computing Talk
Title: "Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing"
Speaker: Jane Margolis & Allan Fisher
Introduction
Women in Computing is treated different then Women in Engineering
Factors that are independant of ability to be successfull are affecting the field
At the end of education, sucess rates almost identical
Women leaving had less to do with actual academic performance (unlike the men leaving) Biases invloving the producer
Voice Input example - Stuff found in beta were stuff doesn't work as well for women
VoiceMail
Speech Recogintion General "diversity is good when designing" Ability distributions are very simmular are much different then the Oreintation distribution ("Why are you here?")
Men more technology focused
Women more application focused Study
General Notes
Watching a class of women over thier (4 years) undergrad's at CMU (Fall of '95)
started with 89 students that class, 7 women
End pool of 50 male/50 females
Mostly interviewed based, but also classroom studies Interviews of students coming to Carnagie Mellon as freshmen
What was your experience with computing?
Both had an attachment starting at home
Men were "drawn" in early on, tinkering, etc. father involvement
Women usually saw it for aside, from thier brother or father. Anicdotally, famillies without a son. Lots of references of "he" is the interviews.
women tended to come to computing at a later point (normally a high school programming class, which is still heavily skewed)
not a social things like most of the boys This all leads to uneven experience with computing between men and women entering the program Why are you in this program?
Both enjoyment of computing,
However, women tended to see all the tangentially peices ("computing with a purpose")
for X research
for Y purpopse The first two years of the computer science program lacked the interdisiplinary focus. Leading to women more vulnerable for drop out
Women tend to get to programming in the high school programming courses but even then lower rates. Simmilar views to computing
24/7 living computers
Socially challanged, etc
Men didn't say "this isn't me" (range of activities), but felt confertable coexisting in the culture
Women found themselves allienated from this culture, quotes are resistant to the culture. High drop out rate for women
"I just don't think I'm intrested" (huge 360 from before they started)
What happens to the intrest?
Maps to drop of confidence
Less pre-school experience then the men
Usual crap: "You are only here because you are a girl"
poor teaching doesn't affect all students equally
class 211 (from the audiance) Asian women usually succeded (even when they have never touched a mouse)
American women tended to have the "gene" theory Actions Taken
Differences
Expeience
Motivations
Confidence Admissions change from experience to more talent/potential
Expanding ciriculum entry points to adjust better for experience
First actual intervention, (band aid) Introduction to CS: introducing lifestyle, applications, etc.
Ciriculum Changes
More integrated projects (real projects for real clients) "Poor teaching"
sample source with bugs
problem set 5X as hard as it should be
poor english speaking
"Insiders" don't tend reflect these issues onto themselves
General Organization Hygine stonger student womens group (reducing outsider mentality) Results
% Program Entry
trend used to be ~10% entry
Over time program entry moved to 40%
# of men were constant, increased the size of the class % Staying after the second year
'95 50% women stayed/90% mem stayed
now 80-90% women stay (not enough data points yet) The affect of this is more women, and more faculty attention which leads to more program impriovements
This is a feeback cycle that has started
© Copyright 2003 Ari Pernick.
Last update: 1/17/2003; 4:29:02 PM.
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