đź“–Female pursuit of computer science with Jennifer Wang

authors
Jennifer Wang
year
2016
url
https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/06/13/female-pursuit-computer-science-jennifer-wang/
  • Jennifer Wang co-authored Wang…2015 and this podcast mostly speaks about it.
  • 2:55 why pursuit of computer science by women is important for everyone?
    • provides a way of thinking growth as an individual so you can problem-solve
    • empowers you, so you can be more creative
    • relevant and useful, no matter what’s you field
    • it is important for scientists and creators of technologies to represent the users, so we advance technology for everyone, and not only the group who create these things
    • diversity leads to better and more innovative problem solving
  • the percentile of women studying computer science has dropped by ~50% since 1980s (currently, ~20% are women)
    • why?
      • one of hypotheses: personal computer started to be more widespread, computer games targeted boys more, so boys got more exposure
  • are there any
    • trends are possibly reversing
  • societal factors accounting for 95% (for girls)
    • encouragement: from family, educators, media
      • huge influential variable for girls (~29% of cases)
    • career perception
      • girls have more extreme positive/negative perception
    • academic exposure: being exposed to computer science
    • self-perception: as someone who tinkers with things, as a problem-solver, as interested in math
  • encouragement and exposure are the most important things
  • lack of encouragement ≠ discouragement
    • very few boys and girls were discouraged
  • encouragement is important regardless of parents’ background
  • families purchase legos for boys but not girls
  • stereotypes of a nerdy lone programmer
  • ~35:30 the gender gap in computer science in some Muslim/mid-east countries is smaller (even though we have a perception that there is a huge gap there). also, more gender-parity countries like Sweden have a huge gender gap in computer science and some other fields