My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer
It’s no secret that females in Computer Science, both in academia and industry, are scarce. While the percentage of females in other male-dominated fields has been on the rise, that of females majoring in computer science has been on a downward spiral in the past few decades, currently sitting at about 12% to 20%. When I was at Princeton, it was on the lower end, with the class of 2007 having 2 women out of about 20, and the class of 2008 having about 5 out of 50. I don’t claim to know why the numbers are so low, though I think much of it has to do with the culture of Computer Science and the type of people that go into the field. I thought I’d share some of my experiences both in school and in industry.
In high school, I took two computer science courses– Intro to Computer Science using C++, and AP Computer Science. Had it not been for these courses and the confidence they instilled in me (due largely in part to my excellent teachers), I doubt I would have had the guts to major in Computer Science in college. I had some female friends that took the standard intro course in college, and liked programming, but never really considered majoring in it. I can understand why–if you’ve never programmed before, that course is really very difficult. It is also very intimidating to take classes where it seems like most people know all the material already and have been programming since middle school or earlier, especially when they are very vocal about their technical knowledge.
Despite my own pre-college experience with Computer Science, it was not an obvious choice for me. During my sophomore year, I was struggling to decide between majoring in Chemistry, Evolutionary Biology, and International Affairs and Public Policy, none of which I was particularly passionate about, when I realized one evening that I could still major in CS if I loaded up on prerequisites that semester. It was a sort of revelation for me–I was pretty good at most subjects, but here was the thing I could stand to work on (and enjoy) for 10 hours straight, forgetting to eat and losing track of time into the wee hours of the night.
Something that frustrates me about the field of computer science is that there are a lot of jerks who think that just because they’ve “mastered” some programming language or know some obscure unix commands, they are gods and you are nothing. My worst CS experience was when I was working briefly with someone like this. He blew up in the middle of a computer lab after I asked a very reasonable question: “This isn’t some 200 level course, you know!” he screamed at me. Those few minutes made me seriously question my abilities, until I realized he was just an asshole who probably wouldn’t get too far in life anyways.
Most of my classmates were not that extreme, and from my experience, most mean well but are just socially awkward. They can say something so simple as “Oh don’t you know that command?” but in an inadvertently condescending voice that makes you feel like you’re the only person who doesn’t know it. As someone just testing out the CS waters, that type of experience in every class can be very daunting. I think women are more susceptible to these feelings of inadequacy, and it can deter some potential CS concentrators from the department. From my limited experience, the ones that stayed with it were pretty strong-willed and generally kept to themselves.
One of my professors, Kai Li, had a profoundly positive impact on me. There were only 4 girls in my Operating Systems class, and at first we were pretty quiet. Professor Li would ask questions about the reading material every day in class, but would often say “Let’s hear from some of the girls” and wait for one of us to answer. I can’t speak for the other females in the class and how they felt about being “singled” out like that, but for me, it was very encouraging. He once told me that even though the females are fairly quiet, and the boys in the class showed off a lot, when it came down to projects and exams, the female average was often higher. When I walked by a departmental career fair, I paused to look at some of the companies I might want to apply for next semester, and he told me to sign up for some interviews for that day. I said I didn’t feel prepared and wanted to wait a semester until I felt like I had more of a basic foundation. He turned to a professor next to him and said “Jean doesn’t know how good she is.” He probably would not remember that exchange, but for me his support was eye-opening. I realized that while I did decide to major in CS fairly late in the game, I really was good at it, and my harshest critic was really myself.
My experience in industry has been very positive in that I have never felt any discrimination or judgment based on my gender, and people seem to be less condescending (I don’t know where those people ended up…) in general. One of the challenges for me while I was at Google was to speak up when I didn’t understand something, as I often assumed it was common technical knowledge and that people would pass judgment. Up until recently, I could strongly relate to the Impostor Syndrome, a psychological phenomenon in which you feel like an impostor, and that despite concrete accomplishments, your success is just based on luck. As I grow as a developer, I realize that hey, I am really good at what I do and I’ve gotten to where I am because of that.
I do wish more women would go into Computer Science though, since all the women I have worked directly with are freaking good at their jobs and are really nice to work with in general. I went to a DevDays conference a year or so ago, and of the 200 some people in the room, I think 5 were women. The numbers seem to be even lower in the startup world than at Google–when I tell people I work on the Android app for Pulse, a few have said “Oh as an engineer?” I suppose it is pretty unusual, since I personally know only a handful of women developers at startups. Despite the condescending culture that currently pervades some of the field (I really only experienced this firsthand in college and secondhand on online forums), it is a really fulfilling career, especially since there are so many opportunities to choose from. I don’t quite know what is the best way to increase the number of women in CS, but if anyone has suggestions, please let me know. It can be challenging at times, but I hate to think so many young girls and women are missing out on something they could really love to do as a career.
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- Thoughts about School and Work
Comments (373)
it is actually only partly because of our culture. genetics found out many years ago that male and female brains are sort of preprogrammed trough evolution. man are stronger therefore they were more likely to survive risky endevors like hunting and in general experimenting. females in return had to cover the more manual, monotone and mostly repeating tasks without taking risks (collecting berries).
through this evolutional behavior men just have no fear “breaking” things and women are rather scared of breaking things and try to handle situations on the emotional level instead of putting in risk. a good example is that women are prefered in factories doind repeating work. our brains are just wired like that.
result of those many thousand years of human evolution is the devider in the work space these days. im not sexist or think women cant do a “mans job” but its just precoded and unlikely. if it happens its great but as you see on statistics the evolutional behaviors are true and should be accepted for what they are.
in a couple thousand years those treats will be gone… just gotta wait, fighting for it will not cut it
Um… women founded the field of programming. And it was a female programmer who popularised the term debugging (which is the part of “breaking things” developers need to be good at).
So I’m not really seeing your point…
Say you have 200 random numbers. 100 are “coloured” blue, the other red. The blue ones have an average of 50 and a standard deviation of 15 and the red ones an average of 50 and a standard deviation of 7.5. From my ff the top of my head maths in about 95% of selected random number sets you should be able to find one red number that is higher than 95% of blue ones.
My point is this, one (or even a small set) of examples does not invalidate a trend. I’m not saying you are wrong, but I am saying that your argument holds very little water.
There is no trend. What you read has not been confirmed. Even according to that research, the odds of a particular guy being smarter than a particular woman is 50-50. Odds are good that you’re below average in your field, matt.
It’s always good to see statistical facts being ignored because they are politically incorrect. Unfortunately it is true that men have a greater propensity for mathematics and logical thinking. To be fair though, it’s not so great as to explain the entire problem. I think that both men and women are to blaim for the cultural problems.
Maybe my wording is not clear, but my maths is. What I suggested is that men tend to be bigger risk takers; therefore men will more likely be both higher flyers and “bottom of the barrel”ers. Ever wondered why there are typically more men at the CXO level than women, while at the same time that there are more homeless men than homeless women (even in countries with strong social support and education systems). Men’s behaviour tends to have larger deviations.
My main point still stands however, bringing up one example (or even a handful) is no way to prove or disprove a generalisation (or trend or any other kind of statistically significant inference) with such a large population.
Sarah:
The gap has not resurfaced (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1160364).
Previous disparities are most likely due to self-fulfilling prophecies when being told by parents and teachers (http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01841.x).
(Both links taken from this article: http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/07/are-boys-better-than-girls-at-maths.php)
As far as I am aware, the only substantiated difference between males and females are the standard deviations. Women tend to be clustered around the center of the normal curve while men tend to dominate both the higher and lower end of the intelligence spectrum.
Sarah, ignoring statistical fact is one thing. Overstating its significance (or misinterpreting its implications) is entirely another. Stating that the average man has a greater aptitude for mathematics than the average woman would be a misinterpretation of the statistics.
People don’t get their hackles raised by the ‘men are logical/women are multitaskers’ bit because it’s politically incorrect. They get their hackles up because the effect is both largely insignificant (particularly when applied to individuals) and its relevance and interpretation not well understood by most, and yet it pops up, everywhere, as an explanation for countless instances of imbalance between the sexes in one field or another.
Saying that differences in aptitudes may exist between the sexes is not politically incorrect. Telling someone that they, personally, are genetically predisposed to a poorer aptitude than someone of the opposite sex most certainly is. This is not what the evidence is saying, and it should not be interpreted in this way.
As always, someone says it better than me…
http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
To Matt:
The reason there are much fewer homeless women is that unless she were just incredible unattractive, she would always be able to find a man to trade sexual favors with in some way (i.e., wife, girlfriend, mistress, prostitute) to allow her to have a home.
never use grace hopper as a role model, she invented cobol
I guess he was refering to Ada Lovelace? who didn’t really did that much by the way, most of her ideas come from babbage, I’m not saying she did nothing, but most of what she did was actually heavily inspired/suggested by babbage. It’s still true that she was the one who kind of wrote code.
…and A, the first programming language. Ever. The person who *invented* the idea of an abstract programming language – as opposed to assembly, which is just aliases for machine code – in the first place. And, of course, the person who wrote the first compiler.
Seriously, Grace Hopper is in the top tier of people that made modern Computer Science.
Nitpick: Actual Grace Hopper wrote the first compiler, she did not design the first programming language, and therefore did not invent the idea of an abstract programming language.
Zuse designed Plankalkul much earlier, and while I believe this is generally regarded as the first high level language, I still wouldn’t say Zuse invented the idea of an abstract programming language.
Which at the time was a dramatic leap forward from the assembly-language programming at the time. The mere idea of systematically naming variables and letting the computer do the bookkeeping was a huge advance.
You are one of the male aholes she’s talking about. Dick.
The term “debugging” was around in electrical engineering and other engineering fields long before there computers were even on the scene and engineers still talk about “bugs” being in their designs.
You’ve got to remember that computers started out BIG and fragile. The first “bug” found was actually an insect that crossed a circuit and fried a component in a computer. Before that, they were just mistakes made in code until a ready made scapegoat was found. It would probably have been an electrical engineer that found the first bug and became a running gag about finding another one.
A minor correction: I think the ‘bug’ got into some relay and the relay contacts didn’t work because of it.
@T
hmm
“genetics found out many years ago that male and female brains are sort of preprogrammed trough evolution. man are stronger therefore they were more likely to survive risky endevors like hunting and in general experimenting. females in return had to cover the more manual, monotone and mostly repeating tasks without taking risks (collecting berries).
through this evolutional behavior men just have no fear “breaking” things and women are rather scared of breaking things and try to handle situations on the emotional level instead of putting in risk. a good example is that women are prefered in factories doind repeating work. our brains are just wired like that.”
What do you base that information on? I’d really like to see that research/study., but I think you’re selectively remembering something there…
“I’m not sexist but..”
.. well, it kind of sounds like you are without knowing. I’m not an asshole but I punch old ladies for fun.
(I’m a male myself btw)
arnorhs@gmail.com if you want to continue this discussion.
He is right about the difference in brains. It is well known and understood. http://academicearth.org/lectures/evolution-of-sex-reproductive-strategies
He is wrong about his having anything to do with the number of females in CS. Going into CS is a low-risk future-proof choice. It’s a just social-cultural thing that girls dont get into CS.
I think you’re right n this.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/intwomen.html
I agree with Pierre. When I went to the U, computer classes existed, but the term “CS” didn’t. Engineers were “physical science” people like Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical, and Civil. In one of our required orientation classes there were 500 students and only 3 were female. That had nothing to do with their aptitude, it had everything to do with attitude and being willing to fight the trend.
I am so very tired of seeing poorly considered generalizations about gender based on misunderstandings of evolutionary evidence.
The evidence is clear that men, in general, show wider variation, both good and bad. Put a different way: evolution seems more willing to risk maladaptation with males than females.
While the evidence of this is very clear, YOU CAN NOT F#%^ING USE IT TO PREDICT THE CAPABILITIES OF ANY INDIVIDUAL. Evolutionary tendencies are not equivalent to any individuals brain being “wired” in some way.
On top of that, the conditioning of human society is one profoundly powerful confounding factor.
It’s best to leave these evolutionary justifications out of gender discussions because to be accurate one must qualify them to the point of practical meaninglessness.
“YOU CAN NOT F#%^ING USE IT TO PREDICT THE CAPABILITIES OF ANY INDIVIDUAL.”
True. But the point of statistics is to infer more about a population. If the statistics says 99% of the population A are allergic to peanuts, clearly you can find someone who doesn’t allergic to peanuts in population A. and 100% of the population B are not allergic to peanuts. The set A and B have the same amount of people.
Now we are wondering why there are more people in B eating peanut butter sandwich than people in A.
That’s basically what T meant when he goes “im not sexist or think women cant do a “mans job” but its just precoded and unlikely.”
Except that even when we can consistently identify underlying cognitive differences, they’re more like 50.5% versus 49.5%. Wanna feed a peanut to someone in the second population now?
That is no small difference when talking about the human population.
You were drinking when you wrote this. Cheers!
Keep that attitude up and you’ll kill somebody with a peanut allergy. Or maybe just discourage an intelligent person from discovering programming.
I think I love you.
(Personally, I think there’s no good evidence about the genetic versus cultural components of the variance thing – but I’m happy to agree to disagree about things that are not just MADE THE FUCK UP.)
Why do we care what men and women choose to do? As long as no one is being held back, and it seems like this author wasn’t held back, why not just let people do whatever they like in their lives? We shouldn’t encourage women OR men to get involved in a field, we should encourage all people to get involved in it. If anything, we should be providing programs for children of low income families to increase college attendance rates. Lets give people who want to get involved in CS a chance before we bother encouraging people who don’t care about it.
We don’t see many woman becoming underwater welders, but you don’t see anyone up in arms saying they want women to join that field. It’s high paying, it’s fun… oh, but it’s not prestigious and we want women to take more prestigious jobs. Let people do what makes them happy and they will be happy in life.
It sounds like the “condescending” nature the author described wasn’t even about her sex, so why is this turning into a discussion about abilities of men and women? She said herself that the women she worked with are very talented. It doesn’t seem like there’s any lack of skill there.
I’m a male software developer, and I’ve gotten all the condescending comments she’s gotten. I’ve also gotten the surprise reaction to telling people that I’m a backend dev – they assume I’m in business because I dress normally, speak clearly, and socialize with women.
In case it’s not clear, I’m a different Matt than the one above.
Are we that different?
Unless one of you is changing around viewpoints in your replies, I’d say YES, you are different.
Wow. And the fact that this sort of gender-essentialist, ev-psych nonsense is the VERY FIRST RESPONSE to an extremely thoughtful post? Oh, yeah, the constant messages that women should go back to their “natural” work (read: taking care of men and children) definitely have nothing to do with women’s challenges in technology. Nuh-uh, it’s all about our genetic adaptations to pick up berries.
Go check the research, because you’re quoting a bunch of debunked bullshit. Worse, you’re doing it incoherently and inaccurately. Unfortunately for your intellectual development, I’ve got better things to do than argue with you, so you’ll have to do it on your own time.
I agree with Jess.
90% of the time when I see someone citing evolution as the cause of something, they almost ENTIRELY make shit up.
Did you live thousands of years ago when humans were hunting and gathering? NO. The little evidence that we have of those times long ago isn’t nearly enough to try and create the insanely specific and accurate predictions people try and make.
tldr- STOP USING EVOLUTION TO SITE SHIT AKA MAKING IT UP!
also, when it comes to intelligence, its almost ALWAYS nurture over nature, as in how you are raised being more important than your genetics.
why not running with 4 legs like horses, they run faster that way. Try put a horse run with only 2 legs and see why evolution counts for “something”. More to the point, wonder why dont they put man and women compete toghether in olympics? it’s plain stupid right?
I’m sorry but you lost any autority on the matter…
So, physical attributes determine mental acuity? I don’t think so. Yes, there are mental trends based on sex. I believe the research sides with nurture over nature being the major factor, but I don’t think either completely overrides the other.
I completely agree with the original posters conclusion and somewhat agree with his argument. He started off right anyway by mentioning both culture and genetics.
The fact is there glaring you straight in the face that women are not involved computer science and programming for the most part. I can’t name a single woman off the top of my head that does Linux junk. Gah, I really can’t! Genetics perhaps play a part, or perhaps just environment or culture or whatever you want to label it. Either way it’s one of the two. There’s no arguing that fact. Admittedly culture needs to change if it’s the problem.
Myself, as a long time sys admin, I’ve encountered many women who are plain bad with computers, and lets not even mention programming. Take my mother, who’s deathly afraid of the computer. I’ve made great strides with my mother, but there’s still no way I could tell her to just delete everything in C:\Windows and have her do it. Yet I guarantee you that 99% of boys ages 5-99 would do it in a heart beat and bask in the glory that was potentially destroying this thing or blowing it up. Maybe things are changing at the younger female ages, but a whole slew of women I’ve encountered, computers are like kryptonite to them.
http://xkcd.com/385/
Amusingly, in my family, it’s my mother who fixes the computer while my father can barely check his email using Outlook.
However, neither of our families can be used as evidence of widespread biologically-based trends. Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient, as any decent scientist will tell you…
I find it amazing that you would support your position solely with anecdotes. I marvel at your lack of capacity for self-reflection when you can — apparently seriously — suggest that any generalizations can be drawn from your very limited experience.
My wife claims that she and computers don’t get along. She has countless examples of people saying “It can’t do that!”
She tries to bring up her laptop from work, then hands it to me and 5 seconds later it is up. OK, it’s coincidence, and this doesn’t always happen to her.
So, how come she can wait 1 to 10 minutes for it to come up, and the majority of times it almost immediately comes up when I touch it? I’ve got a few theories. She’s right. She is so psychically (psychotically?) attuned to the computer she knows when to hand it over to show it hates her. She’s actually a master programmer in disguise and arranges for a tsr to hang up her computer.
Just typing along, it sometimes stops dead and neither of us can change it without a re-boot.
So how come she can wait 1 to 10 minutes for it to come up and the majority of times immediately comes up when I touch it? I’ve got two theories, she’s right, or she is so psyically attuned to the computer she knows when to hand it over.
Whoops, sorry about the repetitiveness.
After being in software for 20+ years I have worked with very few women. One seemed ill fitted for a career in software – after some time she chose to exit the field as it was becoming obvious to her too. Another is now a distinguished engineer with one of my previous employers; she has a few traits that tend to be attributed to men such as risk taker, ego, bold, go getter, driven – and she also was into Linux (and good at it). Her, me and another guy put together a proposal to convince the execs to consider using Linux in the corp, she conducted the presentation and convinced them of the business value in using Linux. So this corp has been using Linux for 12+ years in their critical systems because of this top notch engineer who is also a women. And lest we forget that a woman was (or is) attributed as having the highest IQ (Marilyn vos Savant). Also, in my 20+ years in the computer industry I have worked with many capable men and also many men who should find something better to do with their talents. IMHO, while nature plays a big role in abilities, it seems nurture plays an even bigger role. And we shouldn’t encourage just anyone to go into computers, electronics, engineering, etc. That would be a dis-service to both them and the various industries. Better would be to help identify areas each youth is good at and then expose them to various careers that utilize those areas of strength and then encourage them to get into something they enjoy. Passion will do more for making them great than being pushed. That’s my two bits…
–Mike
That’s all complete BS (the reply from T). Though there’s loads of speculation, there is no scientific research to support what you said about genetic predisposition.
Know who else likes to collect berries? Bears. Ever cook? Flame and sharp edges are risky as well. It’s the testosterone that causes men to be rude, insensitive and constantly try to show off while ignoring or degrading the work that other people do.
This is just as sexist as saying stuff like “girls suck at math.” It’s (mostly) cultural conditioning that makes people assholes, not the testosterone boogeyman. See: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091208/full/news.2009.1131.html
Testosterone doesn’t make men know everything, it just makes them think they know everything.
I am female and have been a programmer for 15 years. Being surrounded by testosterone-inflated egos has taken the fun out of it for me.
I bet if they gave us some kind of standardized test, the men would have to admit I know as much as they do. But of course they never will do that.
Are you for real???
T,
Wrong, dead wrong. Most women avoid CS because of the nerd culture of toys, Star Trek, and Battlestar Gallactica. Of all the reasons I have heard for the dearth of women in CS, yours might be the most retrograde, dumb-ass, neanderthal one of all time.
Oh, and good luck getting laid anytime before 2037.
And why would women necessarily want to avoid those things more than men? I vote social pressures.
Like an awful lot of evolutionary psychology, this is at best completely unsubstantiated and at worst, completely wrong. What you’ve described is nothing more than a plausible fairy tale. You’ve provided no evidence that the traits in question are in any way correlated with success in programming or computer science, or even that they’re predominantly heritable.
And for the record, I’m being quite generous in describing this as being even a plausible and unsubstantiated claim.
Hey T, you’re just being a massive troll, right? Good job.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080724192258.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100105112303.htm
This comment is so full of fail I can’t believe it. You are 100% wrong about everything you said. When you’re spewing badly generalized statements from The Brain for Dummies, you should exercise a little more caution, and perhaps check with an actual neurologist before saying this little gem of intellectualism in public.
All y’alls are missing her point. I think. Full disclosure, I’m a guy.
The point I got from her piece isn’t about what gender is smarter or more aggressive or risk-taking.
The issue that stuck out for me is about how male programmers specifically tend to be egomaniacs who cannot give simple help without being derisive of the person asking.
That, I have to say, is 100% true, and 100% cultural.
You can be very risk-taking and aggressive and intelligent without insulting everyone around you for not being as smart.
If only….
If I try to start a conversation with one of the guys by asking a question, he will immediately assume that, as a helpless ignorant female, I am in need of his expert assistance.
Sometimes I ask a guy a question and he goes on to waste 2 hours of my time talking about everything in the world except what I asked. Then he will come and sit down at my computer and move everything around so I can’t find it again. And he will make scornful comments about whatever editor I’m using.
Why then do many more women enter fields such as medicine, where risks are far higher?
This comment is totally wrong (genetics found out… etc.). It is probably just someone trolling, but if this is a real opinion it is unfortunate. The comment is derogatory, disrespectful, and ignorant of actual research.
@T Thanks, that had to be one of the stupidest replies I’ve read anywhere on the Internet in the 17 years I’ve been using it. What does gathering berries have to do with determining one’s ability to write code? Idiot.
This is a perfect example of what a terrible understanding of evolutionary biology produces.
I’d ask you to cite the major researchers and theorists that support your laughably simplistic and thoroughly incorrect conclusion, but I’m betting you’ve never actually read any evolutionary biology, let alone evolutionary neurobiology.
umm hey moron we are not “wired”. What we ARE is conditioned by a society that expects woman and men to behave a certain way. I know so many women that are much much better than me at “man” tasks. The first step is to change this ridiculous way of thinking. All that these “thousands” of years have done is self-elevate some men into thinking that they are better at anything, just because they have a penis.
I don’t your comments “picking berries”, really you cannot be serious.
It has nothing to do with “evolutionary wired behaviors”. It has more to do with conditioning. I am in the computer industry (woman IT!) and met an equal number of men who are unable to understand or work with computers than women. When I was a young woman, I had to teach computer principles to young men who struggled to understand it. If you are interested you will succeed, doesn’t matter if you are male or female. By the way, the reason I am in the computer industry is because I dislike “repeating work”.
You just made all that up. Reasons that women should do low-paid boring repetitive work, while men get all the high-paying interesting jobs. Total nonsense, generated by your ego.
Genetics found? Genetics can do things? No people do things and genetics, like any other human endeavor, is subject to human biases.
Men aren’t perceived as jerks in all professions, even those with equal male-female participation. Is there some evolutionary explanation for why men in computer science are jerks. No, and that’s really the question here. This is question of culture, not evolution or genetics.
The above response by “T” with its knee-jerk scientism reflects the culture problem of which you, Hsu, write. You’re dealing with a lot of people who believe the world is a very ordered place (be it by math or genetics, say), who have great faith in order and hierarchy, and who believe that they can apply such principals of order and hierarchy to social situations and come to dominate those situations.
But that’s not how the world really works, not the human world. The above response does not take in unquantifiable things, such as culture or historical contexts, and reduces everything to some simplistic, scientific determinism. That kind of absolute, childish faith might be laughed at in other cultures and in other historical contexts, but because the western world prizes computer-science skills and money, these kinds of thinkers are rarely challenged or forced to consider the fact that human relations are not all a matter of simple genetics or evolution.
He (“T”) can’t even see his own sexism, probably because he has trouble thinking outside of neat, mathematical and scientific explanations. His sexism is cultural, but that kind of thinking does not fit into a nice mathematical rubric, so he cannot see it.
I think what’s missing from your male computer science friends is empathy, which for many people is developing in the course of a liberal arts and sciences curriculum, not vocational programs. Perhaps Princeton, one of the premiere liberal arts colleges, needs to make sure that students who aim for vocational degrees (even ones with some social prestige) actually get a liberal arts and sciences education. I cannot guarantee that such a move will develop empathy in all computer science majors, but it may help. At the very least, it may help some to avoid making puerile attempts to understand present-day social situations by invoking the behaviors of long-dead cavemen.
There’s also room for change within computer science programs. Computer science programs not only encourage students to master programming languages but also to look down on others who don’t. There’s also a great deal of concern among computer science students that they not be caught plagiarizing, and so the culture of the programs encourage them to keep intellectual distance from others, often by downplaying others’ skills or mocking their abilities. That kind of environment produces mini-narcissists, blow-hards, and know-it-alls. That’s your problem, Hsu. Culture. It’s not about evolution.
I suppose that computer science attracts certain personality types who are willing to engage in such behaviors. I can see how many females who are socialized more so than males not to be so obnoxious might be deterred from computer science programs, while men (and, sorry T, it’s not all men or even most men) who have been allowed to engage in such antisocial behaviors might feel at home in the environment of a computer science department.
If you were still in college, Hsu, I’d suggest that you try to change the culture. Since you’re not, I’m glad that you’ve found a good work environment. That might be because such obnoxious behavior is not well tolerated in the corporate world, where teamwork is so heavily emphasized. Who knows where those jerks from college went. Maybe they had to change or maybe they’re alone in some dank room writing code. At least they’re not near you.
You would have fared a lot better if you had a Chinese mom
LOL. I like this post.
I’m sorry you’ve experience that. I myself have noticed very few females and this towards women!
Great article. Respect.
+1
Glad to see you using your God-given gifts wisely. Forget the haters and intellectual – do what sets you free!
I worked for Kai, er, Dr. Li, at Data Domain. He is awesome. I just stumbled over your blog from a link on Twitter and seeing Kai mentioned forced me to comment.
I gave a talk at my alma mater last year, and one of the questions I was asked was, “why so few women in this field?” — I really had no good answer. But I think you have hit a few good points here and will borrow them next time I am asked.
Hi Mitch,
Yeah he had a really positive impact on me and I’m sure many many others. Thanks for stopping by!
Great, now I know the name of the feeling, Impostor Syndrome. haha.
I think most of the time when people say things like “you don’t know [insert technical term]?” is because they don’t realize the obscurity of the knowledge or because they are really frustrated.
There exist math majors who never heard of transcendental numbers. Which is amazing to me in the beginning. Some of them have already taken advanced courses like complex analysis. I only realized the obscurity after talking with more math majors.
Different people have different expectation from their peers, which can cause a lot of frustration.
2 semester ago I was helping my friends with an algorithm class, I found it’s extremely difficult to communicate due to them didn’t know the concepts I was referring to. So I have to explain from the ground up. I could understand if someone just burst due to frustration, saying things like “you should know better!” I guess that’s how RTFM! become popular.
If one doesn’t understand something, one should refer to the book. Only if the book doesn’t contain the material or too hard to understand, one should ask someone else.
In the same semester, I found one of the course was extremely difficult, and I went to the professor’s office hours. When I asked a question, she just told me to read the book, everything is in the book, just stare at it until you get it. Quite ironic.
Your professor sounds like someone totally frustrated with questions that show the book was never opened or assigned to teach a subject matter he/she wasn’t interested in.
Thankfully, I’ve never met him/her.
On the other hand, I’ve seen tons of “students” who want to be hand-fed answers. (They don’t even care about the question, other than how it will get the answer that they’ll need when tested.)
My second time to read one of your posts – you are a really good writer and write well about subjects that are often handled poorly. Please, keep it up!
I have no idea why this is the case but at times think about how IT feels like a monoculture at times. UNIX Sa’s must have beards, etc, etc…
I hope more women become software engineers – buecause we need them and we need new approaches at times…
Thanks Michael! I hope to write more frequently about topics that interest me
this really weird, 20 years ago loads of women were in comp sci, at one point the attitude was hardware for men software for women. I suspect the rise of home computing had a lot to do with the change. I remember in shops watching girls being told by their mothers that computers were boys interests.
I was equally amazed on slashdot recently when there was wholesale objections when a gay related story came up. At one time the number of people working in the industry that were gay was much higher than in other industries.
I really cant account for this change, but it does seem to be this machismo computing thing going on. As a comp sci professor pointed out to me a few years ago, back in seventies and early eighties most people coming through their course were really good intuitive hackers, when the course numbers expanded there were many more people learning coding and going into the market but the number of good intuitive hackers stayed about the same, I suspect the loss of women from comp sci has actually reduced that number
just some thoughts
Am calvin from kenya i run together with friends of mine small bootcamps but the number of ladies participating is low but we are trying to encourage them by getting lady developers To encoarage them.
Its hard but its possible hope we can work together to atleast try reversing the trend
Speaking as a person who works for an IT company where only men are hired, I’d have to say that, in this case, it probably has to do with the boss’s hiring practices. However, this is exaggerated by the fact that too few women are available for hiring. This doesn’t explain why there are less women in the industry. Without looking deeper, I suspect that it has less to do with capability, than with interest. As you said, a lot of the people you studied with had a lot of knowledge prior to beginning their studies. My experience is the same. Programming, as you probably know yourself, is a demanding hobby, and can eat up a lot of time. It’s a solitary activity. I think this is actually what drives most people away from the hobby/profession, with an exaggeration in the female populace because of their bent towards being more socially active, even among those women that are less so than others. It’s a relatively simple and obviously stereotyped observation, but I don’t have a better explanation. I think the industry is dominated by men, simply because men prefer the kind of solitary activity that programming provides, whereas women, in general, do not.
In general, if a person enjoys programming, he enjoys to work with good programmers, whether they be male or female. Obviously, there will always be the sexual nature of men and women that can at times be both annoying and stimulating when trying to communicate without this getting in the way, but most adults are at least able to pretend that they have this side of their nature under control. It is possible, that this side of things could also be having an impact on the number of female programmers.
Great post, Jean!
I’m biased by the company I keep (Toronto has an awesome startup community) but I’ve found that in the last few years as the “we must encourage more women into tech” train has gained speed, people have lost sight of the importance of removing barriers in favour of recruiting girls simply because they are girls.
In addition to being totally messed up politically, it’s really harmful to your self-esteem if you think that you are being given special treatment to satisfy someone else’s political correctness quota. Not to mention that eager men (with the best of intentions, no doubt) over-compensating can lead to “othering”, that feeling that everyone is going overboard making you so welcomed that you kind of want to barf.
My current speculation is that for most girls, it’s actually their parents that instill a nagging sense of doubt regarding what they are “supposed” to consider good career options. Therefore, I think the key is to reach young minds.
Girl coders: go speak at public schools or high schools today!
I don’t feel like I was given much preferential treatment as a woman. Not that I know of, anyways! I would hate to think that I’ve been given preference over an equally qualified man. My parents don’t really know what I do, and the rest of my family is predominantly in medicine, but in a way it’s nice there are no comparisons =)
My family definitely tried to steer me in a different direction – they would have preferred that I go into teaching or something in the liberal arts. But I like to think it’s just that they wanted to protect me from what they viewed as a harsh environment for women. It hasn’t turned out to be so harsh though – aside from a few isolated experiences, gender has never been an issue. =) Screw the so-called stats on evolution and genetics – I think the real key is letting other women know that they’re welcome, that the world of programming is not such a scary place.
The report Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics has some good research on the barriers that women face. I’ll point out two of the data points reflected in Jane’s experience: women on average understimate their skills while men overestimate their skills. Women belive a higher level of skill is needed to enter STEM fields. Those two combined are a powerful force!
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Well, I’m a CS student (guy), and sometimes I feel like I was condescending after the fact to both other students and co-workers. I hate the feeling, and I wish I knew how I could improve and avoid doing that.
The fact that you’re aware of yourself doing it is the first step in learning how to not be like that.
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Stop trying to show how good you are and people will be much nicer to you! You said you were at Princeton as soon as the third sentence of the article, you report multiple times how great people think you are … Come on! You’re exactly what you’re complaining about.
Most of it was relevant to the story she was telling. Direct or indirect praise helped her overcome her excessively low confidence. Not only is this an interesting story to tell but it is instructive: the praise of a professor does have huge effect on their students, and choosing to believe in one’s abilities can increase one’s confidence.
Mentioning past achievements does not necessarily equal bragging.
A career in CS requires you to put in a lot of time and effort in it. It is not something you do, just because you want a job. It’s based on thousands of hours obsessing passionately over programming problems in your own free time, long before ever working in a paying job in the field. What students learn at college won’t give them the thousands of hours, needed as a minimum background, even before applying. The field is therefore indeed frustrating for people who are just looking for a job, girls or boys.
Erik, you are wrong. CS is no different from any other profession — an interest in it surely helps, but it can also be something you just pick up during studies, and notice it’s something you can do for a job. I’ve been a backend programmer for over ten years now and the most programming experience I had before studies was a few lines of BASIC at age 12.
This myth of ‘thousands of hours obsessing passionately over programming problems’ being somehow essential to a career in CS is one of the reasons girls have so little interest in it.
A point about the guys showing off in your classes. I was and maybe am one of these guys, too. I did that because I always thought, people have no reason to respect me for anything, so I need to show them. I was really surprised when I found out that people actually don’t like me more for doing that, but less. There are many such situations that happen if it is hard for you to read emotions (of other people and yourself). I’m really sorry for even hurting other people who take such comments as serious critics of their abilities. I hope this comment helps you and other readers to relax more, when confronted with that kind of situation, knowing that these people actually feel less confidence in their skills then you do.
that this comment ended here and not under all comments is a bug and was intended by me!
@Erik, @Katja – I agree Katja. I am going back to school for computer science after having spent a few years as an attorney. The worst thing I did before law school was buy into how you MUST pour yourself entirely into the study & practice of law. Granted it is a field where you are expected to put in long hours and required to do continuing education but at the end of the day it comes down to whether you are a competent student of the subject and had whether you have one or two good mentors who help you to get your bearings once you begin working in the field. I don’t know ANY amazing attorneys that spent countless hours drafting affidavits, researching legal precedent or drafting killer closing arguments before law school. Many of us were encouraged to study law because of an ability to problem solve, analyze facts, pay close attention to detail, etc. And once we started we HAD to spend our free time doing things unrelated to law or you burn out.
Sure there are probably some traits that might make it easier to study CS, but there are varying levels of competency from good to great to highly exceptional. One of the most important factors is whether you enjoy the type of work enough and have enough fun with it that you can get through the parts that just feel like a grind.
And by the way, even with an almost 50/50 split of women/men in my graduation law school class (so law really shouldn’t be that much of a “boys club” anymore) one of my bosses actually said that women make shitty lawyers…of course he didn’t mean me. Sadly, this kind of crap goes on in any field
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In my experience, a female programmer could right much better code than a male one. As they pay more attention to details.
I like to right wrong code too, and I am mail.
Details like “right” vs. “write”?
The reason is simple , computer science is a mix of other courses and women are enough wise to not choose it.
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I am also a software Engineer.I have been very good through out my career of 3 years and all my colleagues and managers really think I am a key part of the team and I have done some very incredible work but i do face discrimination when it comes to increments/promotion/career growth.My managers always support their male team members.They endorse the work of male team members and show it off in front of higher management, while putting my work/accomplishments in queue or even not put it in notice of Big bosses.when refer to my work they say ‘we did it’,but when telling about some male team mate’s work they say ‘he did it’.
Thats really shattering my confidence gradually, n also make me think about quitting my job.
It’s too bad you are facing this issue with management. I am a computer design engineer at a large company with 11 years experience, and Mentor more junior men and women. Before quiting I would encourage you to have an honest discussion with your manager with concrete examples of when this has happened, and ask why the discrepancy. He may not be aware he is doing it. In general, women need to learn to self promote as well. However, if these tactics don’t work, find another group or company where the culture is different, or if possible seek out a more senior woman at your company as a mentor, she will know the culture of your company/group and may be able to help improve your situation.
I left a comment, but I guess it got censored, or I failed to press submit. It appears that the uncomfortable truth, that woman are different to men, is often ignored, because inequality is perceived as a bad thing. Inequality does not imply an ordering. Men and women’s brains are different, and on average, get a buzz from different things.
I agree with that too. People strive for “equality” but equality in all things (50/50 ratio of men to women) is sort of an arbitrary goal. Equality in opportunities though–that I would definitely strive for. That’s a post for another time
Your argument doesn’t address the decline in women participating in CS courses. Read the article and follow the link to the nytimes story “What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?”
Also, “I guess it got censored?” Come on.
Maybe it is as simple as the “geek culture” that prevails at the undergraduate level is not something that appeals to everyone? The universities and industry can do everything in their power to make the field as equal opportunity as possible, but if you have a negative impression of the people in your classes in college would you really want to work with them once you are out of college?
This is a great post, thanks. I’m a guy, and there’s only 2 girls out of 14 people in my class. I wish there were more girls interested in CS — cause let’s be real — it’s nice having girls around too. The girls acknowledge that it is rare, but they don’t seem to really care either.
I think there are not many woman in CS, because for most people it’s not natural to imagine them there. Most people includes the women themselves of course. Too many things assumed to be divided by gender when it’s not. Even you fall in the this trap when you write : “I think women are more susceptible to these feelings of inadequacy”.
I am very susceptible of this feeling of inadequacy and i’m a man. But most people expect i’m a man so i should not be over concerned by feelings. But it’s not true. And i know many women that can be far more insensitive than me.
Another point is the very usual confusion between what people are and what people do. If someone does something that person is this or that. Actually you can do software and be a woman, it’s unrelated. the fact you write code does not grow dark hair on your legs.
Those confusions are carried equally by men and women as far as i can see. The people who wish to change that, and see the society more gender neutral, should act about it. My bet is that the line between the people bothered and willing to change the situation and the people satisfied with the situation is not by gender.
Thank you! My girlfriend has boldly decided to change majors to an engineering field from a public affairs degree, and I admire her so much for it. I sent her a link to this article.
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I think it may be the stereotype of being a coder, it’s typically perceived as a career for loner geeky guys with no social life (the movie “The Social Network” didn’t help things). We all know that’s not true (ok, it’s mostly not true) but the appearance is enough to make the job unappealing. What the industry needs is a technical female founder of a billion dollar computer business. Once the world has technical female role-models equivalent to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs I think the male/female ratio will start to even out in our industry. There have been some technical female leaders but none that seem to have captured the worlds attention yet. Hopefully there is a young lady right now coding away on the next Google or Facebook.
One small flaw in that plan: Those who generally get held up as IT role models, the “rock stars of IT” that get shown in the media are people that started their own IT companies. This usually involves many long lonely hours cutting code on their first product. If you don’t like long hours of solitude, alone with your thoughts and a computer, it would be difficult to relate to these role models.
That’s not to say there is no room for people with social skills in IT. Quite the opposite. Once you get to the point where you need to work with somebody else, those that fit the obvious aspects of the stereotype tend to fall flat.
More has to be done to show that there is more to IT than long hours of cutting code and memorising obscure bits of techno-trivia.
When I did my IT degree back in 91 – 94 there were quite a few girls in my classes… at first. They could be roughly slip into two groups: The girls that were very social and just wanted to know what the technology being discussed could do / how it could be applied. These were the sort that as children played with their toys the way the designer intended them to be played with. They tended to be at Uni because they could see a future in the IT world and wanted to know how to use the technology to be a part of that future. At the start of my first lab, one of the girls (a friend who later graduated with me) didn’t know which way round a floppy should be when you jam it into the old Apple Macs we used as dumb terminals. The result frustrated the tutor and the service tech that had to un-jam the drive.
The second group seemed to fit in more with the way most of the guys thought. They weren’t so concerned about what it could do and more concerned with how it worked. They were the sort that as children pulled their toys apart to see how they worked and then attached 9V batteries to the terminals of the electric motor they just removed from said toy to see if it could be used as a drill. They had already taught themselves to use a pc and do some basic programming before they finished primary school. This group learns best when left alone with a new technology so they can poke at until something interesting happens. If it stops working or goes BANG then they may refer to the manual.
Since most lecturers also learn about any given piece of technology this way they seem expect “Poke at it and read the manual. In a few weeks I’ll ask some questions about stuff that isn’t mentioned anywhere but that you should have been able to infer from reading books I won’t tell you about and poking at the technology” to be sufficient instruction.
For the second group it probably is. For people that aspire to be academic researchers it probably is. Universities love this approach because it’s a very good filter to get rid of people that aren’t going to be PHD students. But for members of the first group, those that don’t care how a piece of technology works just what can it be used for, this approach is a big fail. Their numbers dropped by more than half by the end of the second year. (Some of them were seriously cute too! damn it.)
In the corporate world nobody cares much about the how, just so long as you can apply technology in a meaningful way.
And there’s the other problem: How do you get *anybody* interested in the corporate IT world? Saying “Look, I know you prefer to deal with real live humans rather than spending long lonely hours cutting code, but we still have got a real IT career if you want it. Sure it will be anonymous and your work will be largely invisible to the people in the business that matter, but it will be in IT and you will be achieving something real. Now repeat after me: Have you tried rebooting?” is just not going to cut it.
A two stage approach is needed:
1) Show the high school students there is more to IT than just cutting code and the help desk.
2) Don’t encourage those not interested in completing higher degrees to leave. Show how the language/chipset/algorithm/maths/application relates to a real world issue, or any issue. Give the students a mental hook to hang the information on. Don’t focus on disconnected trivia with the excuse “We’re teaching the student how to think and deduce what’s going on”. It doesn’t work. It just filters out those that didn’t already know about that piece of technology before they started the class. It also reinforces the self-satisfied “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you” stereotype. We were memorising all sorts of things I have never used without any clue as to why.
I watched some very bright young women walk away from IT in disgust at the end of that first year.
The really sad part is all it would have taken is something as simple as “This course/lecture will cover X. This is used by to work out how to do Y so they can Z”.
At a stroke you set up a context, a mental hook the students can use to relate to and properly absorb the information in the lecture.
As I’ve grown older I have moved from the second group to the first. I no longer care how the technology works. I don’t care whether or not the code could be a little more efficient. I don’t care which CPU has the quickest clearing registers or which operating system uses the least video RAM. If it only saves 15 minutes of a low level admins time once a week, I would suggest giving them a newer/faster PC. If they are using a new PC, wait 1 – 2 years and try again.
What I do care about is: Does the piece of technology operate reliably? Can I get somebody else in to support if the current support tech skips town? Does it have a useful manual? Does it do the job the business needs it to do? No uni degree that I have seen pays more than lip service to these issues.
Your milage may vary.
Insightful post, really wanted to add you to me google reader but couldn’t find a feed :/
just add jeanhsu.com
I’ve tended to notice a lot of people generally in IT can be very condescending. (Including myself, which I am trying to be more aware of and mend.) One main reason I believe is due to the lack of socializing.
Also with that being said, other parties to partly blame would be the individuals who notice IT folk being condescending, but do not make a mention of it. Be-it the culture that they are from or whatever, I have appreciated individuals who have told me directly to my face that I came off as condescending. It is really nice to have that third person perspective.
Might I also say, that in your case, since you are a woman, that you may be more prone to having men in your field being condescending to you just to show their ‘dominance’ and ‘confidence’.
Pertaining to women being scarce in the IT field, it is sad, but it is to my belief that women are usually smarter and pursue fields that can’t be outsourced like the medical fields or teaching.
Women also may not find comfort being in a field where their sex is the minority.
Great post. I don’t know why there aren’t more female software engineers, but I suppose parallels can be found in many other fields. Nursing, construction, ballet, mining… I’m of the opinion that men and women ARE different, but noone should let social pressure tell them what they’re allowed to be good at. Good on you for following your passion!
I enjoyed your article.
The main reason, which i feel lies in the very elementary upbringing of kids. The social environment around females, is a little different to that of males. This causes boys to grow more nerdy/geeky as compared to girls.
The general attitude where boys are supposed to fix pity things in their garage, while girls are not meant for that, might be one reason they tend to grow techie over things.
I am not being a sexist of this issue. One thing that could change this is a few good role models, that girls could look up to. The writer of this post could act as one!
I’m really liking your writing.
Hi Jean,
Thanks for the article. As a female software engineer myself I can greatly identify with your experiences.
The imposter syndrome is one of the things I struggle with most day-to-day (made worse by the fact my degrees are in Electrical Engineering and I haven’t been a programmer since a childhood, like most of my peers). It’s very encouraging to hear that you have grown in confidence and got over that problem.
I look forward to your next post.
Just read your comment after writing mine below
We seem to be in a similar situation except my degree is in Electronic Engineering 
Don’t worry though, it is something that happens a lot!
> I don’t know where those people ended up…
Very likely, picking up social skills. It takes most nerds a few years to realize that technical aptitude isn’t enough, and that interpersonal skills need to develop too. Then, it takes a few more years to develop them. I know they seemed like jerks to you at the time, but most likely, they weren’t intentionally being mean. Social skills are very hard for a lot of us nerds. We try really hard to be good people and friendly and whatever else, but things we say just rub people wrong. It takes a lot of time and hard work to figure out how and why. But many of us eventually do it. You find many more asshole nerds in their teens than in their 30s. Hence, the prominence in college and on-line forums, and the declining levels as you move up the ladder of life.
Thanks for sharing and thanks for highlighting Impostor Syndrome. It is something that happens regardless of gender but I can see how it would be amplified if you are in the ‘minority’.
Like you, I may have come to CS pretty late in the game (after college, only dabbled in C while in education and never really took to it), but have found that it really is what I want to do. (Thanks to people I have come across in my ‘professional’ life)
This made me suffer from Impostor Syndrome (and probably sometimes still do) but after being to a few interviews and speaking to more experienced programmers about what I have done and want to do, I am pleased that most of them say the right things to allay my fears of coming to the field too late in the game.
Regardless of gender, the condescending assholes you speak of can make anyone feel about 2 feet tall. All people can do is forget about them, they exist everywhere and life is too short to deal with them. I have found the other 90% of the people out there (mostly the successful ones) understand that CS is a huge field. They know if you show ability in one area, you will most likely not have a problem in other areas!
Anyways, nice article, your honesty is a breath of fresh air
John
I had pretty much the same experience (without the female specific bits) as un under-confident male.
Hi Jean,
I’ve worked with many women developers in the course of my career. In terms of the quality of their work I have found it to be above average. The differences from men that I have observed seem to be more about their ethnic cultures than anything else. For example, American and Indian female developers tend to be more expressive in meetings, whereas Chinese female coworkers tend to be very passive and quiet. Otherwise, they have produced very high quality work and are often easier to work with than males. I feel kind of odd talking about gender in such objective terms but that has been my experience. As a manager now, I actually look forward to the opportunity to hire women, and consciously I don’t really make much of a distinction based on gender.
Great article, Jean! My $0.02 on how to increase the # of women in computer science:
1) Getting girls involved in computers & programming at a young age to build confidence. Like you, nearly 100% of my female friends who are programmers have been programming since pre-college. Many even before high school.
2) Increasing awareness of applicability. Computer science in so many ways is rather abstract. You don’t always physically see the results of a great program. One of the best things about the computer science classes I took was that we had assignments that were really applicable. It was easy to see why you needed to learn about loops, OOP, Big O, because those homeworks were grounded in real-life problems. That said, I’ve never picked up a single computer science book that has really great examples of why you need to learn ABC concept or syntax even. We should talk more about what to use what for and why.
In regards to the second point, it sounds like you are referring more to software engineering than computer science per se as in the purist form, computer science is more about the mathematics behind computation than it is about the actual applications of that math. As you start climbing higher and higher up the ladder in terms of formal computer science education there tends to be more math and it is up to the reader to be able to see the practical applications of said math.
Good stuff, thanks for posting. I was actually looking for something else and this site came up lol. Oh well, 2 minutes of my life gone! Totally worth it though!
Hi Jean, I enjoyed reading your blog post. I am a female software engineer at a startup. My previous three jobs were all at startups in various stages (of growth, promise and/or viability, but that’s startups for you!).
I have never worked with another woman who programs. The startup where I work now isn’t big enough yet for the small tech team to accomplish the enormous volume of work while spawning subprocesses to mentor more junior programmers. So it is with regret that all of the female candidates I’ve interviewed in the past two years (all two of them!), I had to give the thumbs down because they were bright and capable junior programmers but didn’t have enough experience to be a good fit for our team.
To women interviewing at startups, I would say: keep trying! Sometimes not being hired is less about you and more about the working environment of the company itself. Don’t give up, focus your skill set on things startups want (which is very different to the skill set, say, that large investment banks want), and rock on. You know what makes a programmer every startup wants to hire? Focus and good cheer combined with technical skill.
Interviewing men has been a very mixed bag. I had a recent candidate write out the code sample I asked him for, and then ask if I were technical enough to understand it. I grilled another candidate about a year ago on JVM internals, and got back a thank you letter saying how nice it had been to talk about garbage collection “not of the domestic kind” with a “lady programmer”. Sigh. Please stop falling down on the easy stuff.
One thing common to everywhere I have worked is that some men and women just seem to have an inherent difficulty in taking a female programmer seriously. If there is a male programmer present, his opinion will be solicited first although we are a small team of highly qualified people. (Confidential to Mr. X: that old site whose performance we are benchmarking the latest iteration of the new site against? The one you keep talking about? I wrote that back end, sir. If I can’t inspire your confidence by now, maybe it’s about you rather than me.)
It does hurt my confidence, but I find that labelling this “sexism” (if it truly is: maybe the interlocutor feels he has already heard my opinion and wants to hear another’s) is simply not productive. And being a programmer in a startup is about damning the torpedoes and producing good work fast.
My opinion? The whole male/female brain dichotomy is a red herring. Sex is orthogonal to the determination to sit down and code until you have done something worthwhile.
As a female web and software developer you just expressed my sentiments exactly.
In addition, I can’t count the number of times my good ideas have been taken and male co-workers have taken credit for them while completely ignoring my positive contributions.
And to the Commenter from Toronto, where is this so-called attempt to hire, encourage and promote female developers in Toronto? I live in Toronto and haven’t seen any such thing.
In fact, my experience in the industry is pretty much in line with what other women are expressing here.
I’m quite good at what I do as well and often better than or at least as good as my male co-workers.
Despite this they almost always get paid higher salaries than I do and receive far more credit for what is often mediocre quality work.
Given the Canadian propensity to mythologize our accomplishments and always give the impression we’re somehow better than the Americans, this is not surprising.
I’m currently unemployed in this so-called positive environment for women software developers in Toronto and am starting my own web and software development business.
I can’t say that I completely agree, but of course I’ve never really thought of it quite like that before. Thanks for giving me something to think about when I’m supposed to have a blank mind while trying to fall asleep tonight lol…
I think “ego” is at the heart of Computer Science. One of the toughest challenges to finding a good job, is finding a team where the “smartest” people are not jerks about what they know. I think the guys that go into CS do it for a number of reasons, including …it’s the one thing they are really good at, and so they actually define themselves by it. For better or worse, it can be like being on a mental-football team.
Good read, where i work we have a few female programmers on the team i work on. They are good at what they do.
Coming from a CS degree myself there are hardly any woman in the field. I am not sure why because the females i know that are from a CS or SOEN field are extremely smart.
This was a great article, it’s important for us women to be discussing these issues to try to change things for the future. I’m an IT consultant, not a programmer, and have the same issues in terms of the lack of women in my profession, but luckily I’ve found it to generally be an asset and not a detriment. It makes us an unusual company, one that people remember. Many of our clients are women and they are excited to see a woman in tech. Many of the men are too, come to think of it!
I can totally relate to your article. I just graduated with a CS degree and got a job as a software engineer which was a major confidence boost after dealing with a lot of the same type of peer mentality that you described. With industry, it seems they are more forgiving of what you don’t know as long as you have the heart to learn, which is fine by me!
Hi Jean, what a thoughtful post. Like you, had my first programming classes in h.s., and went on to major in CS, and didn’t meet another female programmer till my first job. I ended up more in the networking & security fields, but wanting to get back into programming, see so few women, it seems the odds are sometimes stacked against me, but then, I suppose not much has changed, so not giving up.
Thanks for the good post. All I can say is that women engineers are so much better to work with in general. Male engineers, especially young ones, tend to be too competitive and too busy trying to prove how smart they are. Jean, I hope you inspire more young women to go into CS. The whole software industry will be better off.
Great post. I too have felt like you at times. In uni there were only 3 other girls in my class. I found that a few guys in the class would say stupid comments or were rude because computers were the only thing they had going for them. They did not have a lot of friends, good at sports, or “socially accepted”, but they were good at developing. It was also as if they felt that someone was going to take that away from them, but that is an untouchable skill. In the work force I have not experienced any negative affects.
Great post, Jean! I’ve had a similar experience as a female software developer. There are some idiots out there, but over all everyone has been great.
I see you went to Princeton, if you are in the area check out http://GirlDevelopIt.com. We’d love your help/feedback.
Also, that “T” guy is a moron.
Jean, I find all the explanations that people have put fourth for why computer science has become more “male” while all other professions, including all other technical professions, have become more “female”, to be deeply unsatisfying.
Your anecdotal story is interesting, but I feel the answer to a society-wide phenomena is hard to discern from individual stories.
All the things you describe were true in the 80′s and 90′s, too. There were people trying to prove they are gods and you are nothing, there were boys in the class that showed off a lot, there were socially awkward people, and so on.
Furthermore, there’s no obvious reason why most mathematicians and research scientists should be female, while most computer programmers should be male — they all focus on analytical thinking.
The funny thing is, while I feel deeply unsatisfied, everyone else I know has an answer that they believe is right, and feel the question has been settled (usually of some variation of “male nerds put up Star Trek posters and make females feel unwelcome”); I am the only one I know who feels the explanation has not been figured out yet.
Thanks for this post. As a fellow female software developer I enjoy hearing your experiences and those of the other commenters.
I did some programming before college like you, but never really considered it as a career – I only took Comp Sci as a second major since I wanted to learn more about programming and I wanted more math. I had the idea that being a programmer would be a dull, lonely sort of job. But throughout my undergrad I gravitated more and more towards Computer Science and now I enjoy software development as a job and find it the opposite of dull and lonely
I was part of a women in Computer Science committee in school and we discussed the high dropout rate of women in the first year class. The professors in the group brought up the same thing you did – the men in the first year classes were vocal and confident but didn’t necessarily know any more than the women in the class. The first-year women that were new to programming seemed to think they were in over their heads. We brought up possible solutions like all-female tutorials, but I don’t know if that was ever tried.
I consider myself lucky to have had friendly fellow students in college (male and female) to offset the few arrogant ones and to have worked with other female software developers in all my jobs (though not on all my projects). As one of the people who interviews and mentors student programmers at my current workplace, I can say that the female programmers I have worked with have been solid coders and communicators and good at self-managing.
Thankfully, I haven’t seen the sexist attitude at work. What I have seen is not overt – ex/ people external to the company might direct their questions to the guy on the team. It’s an implicit, unconscious assumption – nothing they do on purpose and nothing I take seriously.
This post on SE goes along with this post: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3974/whats-your-experience-with-female-programmers
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Super article!!! I think you described really well what most of the women feel or felt like at least once along their careers in CS!
Your article is SO true Jean. I felt exactly the same in terms the male majority throughout all my Computer Science classes, the fact I chose the Computer Science degree because it gave me options, starting the major in second year not having known even what “programming” and computer science was and working extremely hard in my courses to understand even the most basic concepts. However, I decided to take upon the major as a challenge to myself because each time I achieved a little or had a small success with an assignment or project, the reward and feeling was more than I could say when trying to accomplish something you already know you can from the start.
To give the rest of you females out there, who aren’t quite sure about the whole Computer Science “thing”, a little encouragement and belief, the first person to write a computer program was female. Yes that’s right gentlemen, her name is “Ada Lovelace”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
I completed a Computer Science degree at a university in Australia. It was interesting to watch the number of women steeply decling between first year students and third year students. First year it was about 1:20, second year about 1:50, third year almost 1:100. This was in the Computer Science major. Other majors like information systems and e-commerce had a slightly larger female to male ratio, but not by much. The decline in female students was definitely due to a lack of support women felt to challenge and ask questions in lectures about basic concepts if something wasn’t understood. There was definitely an expectation of women not being as savvy as men in the complex technical classes.
I really liked your article, and how much wisdom you have been able to express in your learnings & perseverance. Best of luck to you!
A bit of anecdata for the guy claiming that it’s all genetic and culture has little influence: I spoke to somebody who lectures CS at Makarere University in Uganda, and he told me that the majority of his students are female. That’s right, > 50%.
I just wanted to say how wise AND how true this post was, even though I had a slightly different experience.
I had a fantastic peer group of socially adept men who didn’t think that I was some kind of token or freak, and experienced women students who showed me the way. I had many more problems with professors, like the one who told me I wasn’t good enough to take his class (I got an A!) and the one who only learned the names of the girls in his class (we protested!).
Some of us have gone on to industry, some to startups, some to other careers (like me: I’m a researcher who writes her own data-gathering software), but we all know how lucky we were to be in an environment where doing computer science was AWESOME – for men and women alike.
Thank you for posting your experiences. Last year I helped with a Women in Agile project sponsored by the Agile Alliance where we interviewed several awesome women in software development. You can read about it here: http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/women-in-agile-interviews
This year we are continuing the program, we hope to sponsor some training for girls at the Agile 2011 conference in Salt Lake with the folks who do the Teaching Kids Programming program (http://www.teachingkidsprogramming.com). Our hope is that more people in the software community will reach out to girls and encourage them to enter software professions.
Lisa,
What a great idea! Let me know if there are other venues where we can collaborate to be supportive of women entering the field.
Carol
Jean,
A courageous posting – there is so much divergent opinion on the male/female differences/similarities/culture/nature/nurture/venus/mars – and from the comments raised to-date, you’ve certainly rattled more than a few cages.
As a female mechanical engineer who graduated from college 20 years ago, it’s sad to see that the more things change technologically and societally, the more that they stay the same. There’s still (and always will be) an old-boys club; a group of guys who support women’s rights; a group of guys who disdain them; a group of women who support other women; and a group of women that do not.
The key to the future IMHO is to embrace diversity and celebrate strengths no matter the gender, race, creed, age, etc. – and to accept that an experience is just that – an experience. Your blog is about your experience so for anyone to challenge your perspective of your own experience is just, plain, disrespectful.
As women in male-dominated fields, we need to support other women (and men) who are coming up behind us. And, unfortunately, it is often other women (not men) who can be the biggest impediments to progress (due to intimidation, fear, jealousy, etc.) We need to support the rights of all to enter the field of their choice no matter what their gender – especially if we want to compete in the (flattened) world today and in the future.
Thanks for posting, and I wish you continued success!
p.s., you may be interested in my Computer Engineer Barbie posting, here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/4gf2wed
Regards,
Carol
p.p.s., my other blog is http://musingsaboutsoftwaredevelopment.wordpress.com
Thanks Carol! I’m following your blog on Google Reader now. I don’t claim to know why there are so few women in CS, or really know what’s the best way to go about it. Just thought people might be interested in a different perspective! Thanks for stopping by.
Thank you Jean… I hope you’ll also cross-post comments on my blogs.
Best,
Carol
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Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!
“Something that frustrates me about the field of computer science is that there are a lot of jerks who think that just because they’ve “mastered” some programming language or know some obscure unix commands, they are gods and yo…u are nothing. My worst CS experience was when I was working briefly with someone like this. He blew up in the middle of a computer lab after I asked a very reasonable question: “This isn’t some 200 level course, you know!” he screamed at me. Those few minutes made me seriously question my abilities, until I realized he was just an asshole who probably wouldn’t get too far in life anyways.” This is what I took away as her core thought about why there are so few female techies. Was just wondering if this reaction is standard fare.
My reaction would have started off pretty much the same. “Wow, I must really suck!”, but then make an effort to learn whatever it was I needed to learn.
Anyways, the reason I am interested is because if this is the way women handle things internally I am going to need to adjust the way I communicate with them in the office. Right now I essentially treat them no different then I do a man, including giving them shit when they mess up. Just as I would expect them to do when I mess up. However if this is truly making them miserable, I guess I’ll stop.. sheeeeeit
I honestly know the type of guy she was talking about, they’re lots of them, and they just do not give women a break compared to the men. Its the kind of mentality where if another guy had the same question it would be fine, but a woman to ‘prove’ herself in an occupation which is male dominated is not allowed any room for error. Otherwise she’s put in the category of just ‘one of those women who know nothing’.
It’s because men already have a biased view that she won’t know anything and get frustrated that she’s in a field not ‘suited’ for her. A lot of men get threatened too as they do not know how to handle these women.
My mom being an independent single mom who has had to do the job of both parents. e.g. you would usually make the husband do the repairs of the house etc. has had to show her extensive knowledge in cars and house building etc before men accept her knowhow in the subject. Only then do they accept her, otherwise though men just naturally assume other men to know but women won’t.
It sounds fine if you treat the women at your work place the same as you treat other guys, I’m sure that if you didn’t and you treated them nicer and gave them less shit they’d think you also don’t take them as seriously as you take the guys and would feel left out. Kudos to you if you feel that you don’t bias against them.
However, you should look out if other male colleagues at work treat them differently from other guys, in those cases I would advise you to stick up for them subtly if you know the women are right in whatever it is. Hive mentality, if one male says its ok the rest will be ok too.
I say this only because there came a point where I could tell some of my male friends were undermining anything i said because i was a woman, and i noticed that if i spoke alone with them or if no one else said anything, they would be completely black and white in their arguments, the moment another guy would give the slightest indication of support to my argument, they would take HIS opinion into account and suddenly be ‘open-minded’, because THEN it was valid.
If you can pick up on any unfairness in that sense like some of my more mature male friends did, I am pretty sure your female friends will be really grateful for your help.
Very nice post, and it is interesting to learn from your experience. And it is incredibly frustrating to read the first comments on this post which are just stupid.
I actually am self taught, and worked for years in a corporate environment where I was quite successful and led a team. Now I am employed programming for a university because I had an opportunity to work on code that would be put to use for social research. And I have to say, the most condescending know it alls have been some of the phd students and professors at the university. It takes a lot of patience to work with them sometimes, and I wonder if they could survive in the world outside of academia.
Hello Jean, I stumbled upon your post after having discovered a link to it on Fark. I found it very interesting and motivational. I myself have (or am steal living) the impostor syndrome as a mature student returning to university.
Really thought you post provided some insightful comments not just on a woman being in a mostly man dominated field but also dealing with various attitudes you might encounter in any field (or in life in general)
It’s amazing how the encouragement and a few kind words from the right individuals can have on oneself. I’ll be following your blog and reading through past articles in my spare time!
Wonderful post. Just had to make a comment, best professor I ever had shared a few notable links – http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lv/
Having a come from a purely non-computer science BA as I went into Grad School, I was amazed by the social environment I saw in certain parts of the undergraduate ranks; petty competitiveness, one-upmanship, and frequent dismissal of anyone perceived as unequal. I watched it literally run the women right out of the program (as well as some good men). The department made attempts to address this, but it was only after they started bring in women like Christine, that things slowly began to turn.
Long and the short of it, the boys club is slowly morphing in this industry, but as with any change, some folks can’t get over themselves – especially regarding gender. It’ll just take time.
My experience as a male software engineer:
10 Wake Up
20 Drink Coffee
30 Fix Bugs
40 Drink Alcohol
50 Sleep
60 GoTo 10
> They can say something so simple as “Oh don’t you know that command?” but in an inadvertently condescending voice that makes you feel like you’re the only person who doesn’t know it.
Dude,
I’m a 39 year old male software engineer, and I get folks doing this exact same thing to me.
The problem is that a lot of software types are autistic spazzes.
haha yeah this is by no means unique to treatment of female engineers!
Came to the comments to say this. It was already said.
A good hacker is one that doesn’t care about what you know right now, but what you remember after being shown. Programming, in my experience, is mainly about quickly learning and applying that knowledge.
Thanks for sharing
In my experience:
1. Technical fields tend to have a lot of know-it-alls who are just average people with big mouths.
2. Women do get unfair treatment, but Men also do. We are supposed to know and fix everything because of our gender.
3. The learning environment in Universities is not as good as it should be for beginners. How are beginners supposed to learn, if they can’t ask questions? Heck, I will always consider myself a beginner, and I’m an average programmer. As long as there are things to learn expertise is too big of a word.
4. The whole programming industry needs to get laid. Bunch of know-it-alls who rant about how awesome they are in their blogs. Guess what? You are not so awesome. Get over it. You only write software. |(I have a blog
)|
5. People will try to make you fell less so they can feel superior. Don’t pay attention to it.
I’m glad you did turn out to be a software engineer. We need more.
The whole programming industry needs to get laid.
That would be easier if the culture as a whole didn’t have a habit of dehumanizing geeks.
I don’t know, but your name is Brillant.
Indeed. And mostly male geeks. Female geeks don’t seem to get shit on as often as male geeks do.
As a female CS undergrad student out of a university I would like to thank you for writing this an making me feel a little less alone. ^^
thanks sabrina. feel free to email me–I’d love to hear more about your thoughts!
I did hear one suggestion for the lack of women that stuck with me as it is an interesting idea. Men seem to dominate in fields where you build stuff or do technical stuff eg programming, engineering, science etc. Women have a large role in caring, creative and domestic fields eg cleaning, cooking, nursing, teaching etc.
One possible reason for this is that we’re almost indoctrinated as children though our toys. Look at toys aimed at boys. There is a wide variety but they focus a lot on building and creating stuff. Take for example Lego or Mechano or simiar toys, which while not explicitly aimed at boys, tend to focus on them. Toys aimed at girls seem to be more focused around things like baby dolls or toy ovens etc. (another interesting and related point is colours, where if you look for girls toys they’re almost always pink, but for boys there is every colour under the sun).
Now it could just be an idea that has nothing to it, but it could be that the toys we play with as a child push us towards stereotypes for our gender. Of course other things could come into it, such as differences in psychology between men and women that might naturally push them to certain careers, but I suspect there at at least some environmental things that we could change to help push is in the right direction.
I totally agree. I remember as a little girl my mom would buy me a lot of barbies, which were fun for a while, but then she (being open minded to let me try everything) got me action dolls, mechano, and lots of computer games. though i never got an interest in hot wheels as such, mechano was AWESOME, and because she gave me these ‘tools’ for learning as a child i feel it opened my mind to a more logical view to this date.
I lived in a boarding school and was the only girl who gamed in my dorm, all the girls and the matrons would come to me for their computer problems, even if it was something so minor where you just needed to switch a printer on and off, that logic worked. i connected my moms telephone wires all on my own and have found many ‘creative’ ways to use electronics to help us. thankfully the male friends i made there, seeing my interest in these things would share the information they had on it, while other male encounters i have, not having grown up with me, totally undermine any opinion i might have before even listening only because i am a girl and they dont believe i have anything important to say. being humble in my lack of knowledge i have never pushed upon it while seeing complete noobs talk shit really confidently among other guys and being accepted for it.
one last thing i would like to add, living in India at the moment I have a bike which i drive. i dont know if you’ve seen the traffic here but its chaos. honestly 90% of the time when i drive i always imagine myself playin mario kart live =p and its made me a brilliant driver for that. learning through gaming ftw
http://www.geekgirldiva.com/2010/05/girls-v-boys-by-smbc-awesome.html
Yes, I think that polarizing gender in that type of way (beginning a such a young age) causes less women to think of themselves in tech fields.
However, a problem that I have (as a women in science (but not CS)) is that many men in the field like to use this as their reason…and tend to not think that the current culture also contributes to the lack of women. When I’m the only woman in the room and guys talk about going to a conference in Europe where there are nude beaches and they talk about how they wish women in the states would do that too – I feel very aware that I have breasts and it makes me uncomfortable. When the talk about breast feeding as gross – I’m very aware that this is something I’m likely to do in the next few years, I feel uncomfortable. I’m not invited to play Halo with them or play basketball once a week – I don’t want to participate in these activities either, so I am removed from that bonding element.
I do believe that there is going to be a shift rather soon, though. I’ve already begun to notice it, and the reason is that having children now for most couples requiring co-parenting. There are a few men in my department (and in the CS department) that have started to have families, and they are realizing that they are no longer part of that “tech brotherhood”. They see that it negatively effects how they are looked at and they feel that more is required of them at their jobs than they feel used to be – almost like they have to make up for not being able to play with their friends by working extra hard, or that the other guys are kinda mad at them for having a life and so will criticism them more than they used to.
This is interesting. I’m a woman who is a programmer – I didn’t study Comp Sci but production engineering.
We have zero information at the moment about the underlying neurological development vs cultural development argument. I speak as someone informed about this because I have a diagnosis of autism and I talk about it with my specialists.
Autism is ‘really uncommon’ in girls. And as a result, girls rarely get sent to the specialist to be diagnosed (or not) – after all, it’s ‘really uncommon’… except that researchers are just figuring out that it may even be equally distributed, we just have boy-centered approaches to diagnosis.
So, unless we are able to take a large enough sample of the population and bring them up as if they are the opposite gender, we have no real scientific basis for the argument that it’s all about the berries…
There are clearly some differences between the sexes – I have no desire to deny that muscle tissue differs. But coding doesn’t require push-ups. It requires focus. Maybe we treat girls differently in such a way that they’re less likely to develop that focus-zone thing that makes us forget to eat?
I don’t know, but I do know that there’s about as much overlap between hunting bears and writing OOP code as there is between swimming and playing the bagpipes.
I’ve found the women with the aptitude to program no less ‘wired’ for programming then men. Although I will say programming usually seems like something you either can or cannot do. (I think a lot of the women that could don’t because they just don’t realize it’s something they would be good at.)
While I’m not a ‘programmer’ per say (most programmers would call what I write artistic scripts) but I do design scripting languages (how it should interact with the user, the UI, syntax, things like how to implement trig to animate variables etc) which my wife programs for me. I’ve worked with several talented very programmer women, and nudged quite a few into writing scripts and code. (My wife picked up HLSL (first code she had ever written outside of a few scripts) and I watched her 3 weeks later have an article published in Shader X3… she’s a dam solid programmer)
I for one, just get bored if the code I’m writing doesn’t have some interaction that keeps me interested. I find a lot of younger people are the same way. Yet once they get introduced to the idea of code, logic and syntax by writing scripts, it becomes much, much easier for them to envision. Writing something that someone says ‘wow you created that?’ is usually all it takes (I’ve found) for someone to have a lifelong interest.
I’m not saying writing scripts is the same thing as writing device drivers, or programming an application, but once people have written things that are useful it seems to stick. Me and my wife have nudged several younger (guys and girls) into programming things by showing them simpler stuff they can actually use.
Honestly I’d say if anything my wife has gotten more respect and higher wages, not less respect and lower wages, because she is such a all star programmer and a girl. (Which is something I’ll tell younger women that have an interest, honestly because it’s true.) Commonly it seems men don’t want their offices to turn into total sausage parties, and there’s only so many HR girls (not to down play their importance) you can hire.
One thing I’ve found that’s very typical for women is to underestimate the wages companies are willing to pay them, especially in initial interviews. I think actually this contributes to gender wage gaps. My wife had gotten basically head hunted from her job by another company, and she actually was considering just taking the money they offered her at first. I got on her about it, told her to ask for quite a bit more (Like 20k a year) and she was amazed that she got it. (I wasn’t, it was obvious they wanted her to work for them fairly badly.) This is actually something I tell younger girls that program. Ask for more money then you think your worth, and stick to it.
Commonly companies reward people in charge of hiring if they can get that person they need for cheap, so they commonly low ball the initial offer (Yet have permission to go much higher if necessary). The worst that can happen is they say no. (It’s likely they are willing to pay more because they don’t want their office to be so homogeneous)
Mr. Hochschild!
This is a great article. Thanks for the read!
Hi,
So many comments, maybe you won’t be able to get to this one. I was struck by the size of the disparity you described–80/20 at best. You mentioned one factor that could be responsible for this in you post,
“I think women are more susceptible to these feelings of inadequacy, and it can deter some potential CS concentrators from the department.”
Do you really think this sort of relative susceptibility accounts for all, or even most of the huge gap? Are women really that much more sensitive?
hmm I don’t think that is responsible for the huge gap, but it certainly contributes to it. Though many men have posted saying they too get this condescending attitude too, so it’s by no means limited to treatment of females.
I think it’s not something females really think about as something they would be able to enjoy doing. Intimidation, disinterest, lack of exposure…those are all contributing factors IMHO. By no means am I saying we need 50/50 for the sake of having equality in the industry, and if women are interested in other fields they should do what they love, but I think a lot of women are missing out on something they could potentially love because of these factors, and probably many more as well
>I think a lot of women are missing out on something they could potentially love because of these factors, and probably many more as well
If it were possible to agree with something more than 100% I would
. My daughter will get just as much tutoring and enthusiasm from me about programming as my son, if not more.
Thank you for this article. It’s a subject that’s been on my mind for a couple of decades now. Do I think it’s sexism? Oh yes, there’s definitely some of that in there. Do I think it’s our own female insecurities? Well, for some of us, yes.
I majored in comp sci when I was in college. The only other woman to finish the degree that cycle seemed to survive by programming solo projects in groups with the guys. Never interested me – I programmed by myself. I had guy friends and boyfriends in the dept, but I never asked them for programming help, ever. I wanted to do it on my own, and I did, even if the results were inelegant or late. Some 10 years after graduating, one of those friends basically told me to my face that the only reason I got my degree was by milking my boyfriends, having them do the heavy work for me. I could have (should have?) slapped the #$%# out of this “friend” for even thinking that, but how many other guys have thought that? It makes me shake with fury and horror to recall it!! And this “friend”? Cocky and condescending. He seemed to enjoy making people feel like idiots even back then. From what I can find about him online, nothing has changed, but he’s a fine programmer even if he’s a crummy human being. It’s a damn good thing I know kind-hearted and generous male programmers, too. They think women programmers are cool because we seem to look at problems differently. I’ve been told that we’re so valuable because of this, but, specifically, we need to speak up! Curious insight, and it was recently stated, too.
And now I have a high school daughter who wants to be a programmer. The school doesn’t offer anything programming related, so she’s learning on her own from time to time. Looking at colleges is daunting, and I worry that she’s going to endure the same crap that I’ve had to. The only way I can figure to help her is to encourage self-confidence, that she really can do it. Sadly, I flash back to my own computer degree nightmares, and I worry that it’ll color what and how I impart. I don’t want to screw her up. I don’t want to be part of the problem.
Sorry you had to go through that. Your daughter is lucky to have you as a role model and the early exposure to programming!
You’re not the only one! As the second female PhD student in the EE school, the rumour amongst the students and lab techs was I only got my PhD studentship because I was sleeping with my PhD supervisor. Completely groundless, but it made things uncomfortable for me teaching in the lab for a while, if you can imagine. I could literally hear them whispering behind my back as I helped other students. (Shudder.)
I don’t mean to drag stuff up that would be pretty unlikely to happen today (if it did, I could get rich with a lawsuit!). Overall I am so pleased to be in computer science and I wish the best for your daughter.
Nice article. Pity we need to go into all this biological predisposition crap again. If that isn’t the biggest hindrence to women in CS, I don’t know what is. They’ve tried it with most other professions and women still have to fight all their lives to move through structures controlled by men too scared to communicate outside their boys room understanding of life. Juvenile behaviour such as this controls some of the biggest “professional” firms on our planet.
I think the biggest cause of this in the computing world in particular may be a lack of humanities and arts education among the majority of those in the field. As you say, when you can sit wired in for 10 hours straight just programming, you’re often missing out on some other very important learning. So men really go for basic arguments like “Man hunt, woman pick berries. Man better at computers.”
A few million years of biological evolution doesn’t happen with it’s corresponding psychological, sociological, anthropological and political aspects. Let’s see people account for all of these components of humanity’s evolution before commenting in the future.
I’ve worked in programming & IT for ~15 years, now. The % of women co-workers I’ve worked with has never been over 20%, tops.
Which is a real shame. My experience has consistently been one of wanting to have one of the rare women as a work partner, because together we solve problems that would have stumped either one of us alone, or, for that matter two men or two women.
There does seem to be a tendency for male & female programmers to approach problems from different angles, and that’s a great thing when confronted with some monstrous, hairy spaghetti of a problem.
I do not know where this difference arises from, and I’m not even going to attempt an explanation.
I do know, however, that the field is weaker for the lack of a more even spread of talent.
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A great case for increasing access to high school computer science courses! Have you hugged a high school computer science instructor today?
Well described article about a current bias that worries me for reasons I’ll go into later. Firstly, you mention that the places/situations you are most likely to find discrimination was in you college years or in forums (and from the above, it would seem you can add in comment threads too.)
I personally believe that the male extreme tendency for overconfidence is a large component of this – the difference between male and female responses is most apparent when a situation appears ‘competitive’. There are a lot of research findings that back this up, such as [1].
[1] “Do Women Shy Away from Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?” – http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/qjec.122.3.1067
Overconfidence is important for showing capability to non-technical managers too. We work in an area where specific knowledge can be rendered useless in months. Having the confidence, and often, the overconfidence to state that you ‘know’ something when in reality, you say this because you believe you will be able to learn enough in time to use it. I would suggest that men are more likely to say things that managers want to hear and also be heard at all.
So, why do I think this is a deeply worrying thing? If men and women can do the same job as well as each other, why should it matter? A gender bias within an field that already has an observed narrow range of personality-types can only be bad. We are support and building technology to enable the world to communicate with each other, but often, it’s our own community that has the most problems communicating. These cultural problems will only get worse as the range of people involved narrows.
Hey Jean,
This is a lot of response you’re getting to your blog, but I just wanted to reply to a few things.
> They can say something so simple as “Oh don’t you know that command?” but in an inadvertently condescending voice that makes you feel like you’re the only person who doesn’t know it.
I’m really sorry for this. My favorite computer science professor had the opposite philosophy – first day of class he explained “I program with the manual in my lap just like everyone else”.
And other’s have said it before, but I thought I’d throw my own two cents in about specious arguments from evolution. Neither programming, nor mathematics, nor even written language have been around long enough to have a significant evolutionary impact on the human race. I don’t see how any large group of people can be *genetically* better than anybody else at programming. …I sort of suspect this line of reasoning isn’t news to you, since you say you flirted with evolutionary biology.
Some of the most famous computer scientists are incredibly humble and supportive. Brian Kernighan was my professor for a class in undergrad and he would often start the lecture by encouraging students to speak up if he made a mistake or there was a better way to do something. He would always say “I’m sure there are some of you that know much more about this.” His humility was truly inspiring and his friendly demeanor made him incredibly approachable, despite his fame.
I’m a male, with a BS and MS in CS. I work at a well known high-tech company. I have 24 years experience. I’m the “technical phone screen” person you fear (if you are young or just out of college). Random thoughts:
What I find is there just aren’t women graduating with CS degrees. Why do we hire so few female programmers? Heck I think I’ve interviewed one woman in the last two years (we hired her, she’s young but the smartest person on our team).
There are egotistical jerks in CS. Like mentioned earlier — “Oh, you don’t know xyz command??” They act this way towards males/females. Maybe females take it more personally?
If you are a woman interviewing at any reasonable company, and you don’t think being a female isn’t an *advantage*, you are uninformed. I’m in on many many interview teams, and have been for years. At Bell Labs, HP, Nvidia, it is a HUGE plus to be a female. Every single woman will say “Oh, my being female had nothing to do with me being hired” but they are uninformed. You aren’t simply hired because you are a female, but it is a big plus. (This is similar to the fact every black I’ve ever met in high tech [there are very few] is for affirmative action, and I’ve yet to meet a black who would acknowledge they have benefited from AA)
In my view of high tech, if you prove your technical skills, the rest takes care of itself in a hurry.
Of course we will benefit from being a woman or black. And you know what, EVERYONE lets us know. Many try not to acknowledge because all the surrounding peers are sure to let us know. Hey don’t know something – well you were just hired because your woman/person of color. We have to work extra extra hard to show that we were hired for legitimate reasons beyond skin color and gender.
“We have to work extra extra hard to show that we were hired for legitimate reasons beyond skin color and gender.”
And this will continue as long as AA remains in place. Since the HR departments tell managers to hire a certain quota of race/sex the other workers will always have that thought lingering in the back of their minds…
I always hear people use the AA argument as if there is a plethora of white men losing positions or being passed up for promotions to under-qualified minorities. It’s simply not true.
Companies only have to make a good faith effort to hire QUALIFIED minorities and women. You are not going to lose a job to a minority who doesn’t even satisfy the minimum qualifications.
very well-written. thanks for posting this!
I am not in this field as such. However, I would have to say that the reason not many women choose this field is probably due to their lack of exposure to it. She said so herself that she took a few classes beforehand that got her interested. I had a friend in high school who was female and did a programming course. She was the best at it and beat all the guy and even did a whole 100page coursework for another guy. Though I do not deny that there could be some genetic factor involved, honestly programming is only popular now of late and not hundreds of years ago. How can one base science on which gender would be more talented.
As a girl who took her own initiative to hang with ‘the guys’ when they played games on computers I remember getting warcraft put on my comp and learning how to play it on my own. I ended up getting very skilled in it, but only because I took the interest in it. Guys usually share these kind of hobbies among themselves under the assumption that it’s not something girls like. So its only natural that they being exposed to such become more talented in the field. I feel if girls were given the same exposure and choice without the social limitations (including parents who think that girls only need barbies and make up) that there would be more girls working in that field.
I remember once a group of girls asked me to set up a counter strike server for their laptops so they could play against each other, just because they wanted to try it out. It was pathetic, they had no idea how to use the mouse and with keyboard at the same time, and how to shoot etc. However, I came back to their room a couple of hours later and they had gotten the hang of it and were totally enjoying it. If people didn’t just put girls in that category that they ‘probably won’t like this’ and just gave them a chance to see for themselves then it would probably be a normal culture where everyone is equal.
It’s like driving a car, so many women are just considered to be terrible drivers (which I admit gender wise also men are known to have better reflexes), however I feel that many times even the ones who are brilliant at driving will never be accepted as a good driver unless they can prove themselves at an excellent level where they make no mistakes.
Same with programming etc, I can imagine that unless she was sooo confident and excellent in what she does, any mistake a woman would make (even if her fellow male peers would make the same ones) would be scrutinized all the more JUST because she is a woman and males expect her to be terrible. They leave no room for error. It’s sad, but true. They would rather put a woman down than feel threatened. Only the one’s who are truly intelligent look at intellect over gender.
While there may be some very good female software engineers, the reason for their lesser numbers is due to differences between female and male brains.
Females do poorly (relatively) in tasks such as map reading, mathematics and music composition in comparison to males. This is not due to cultural reasons, but to the way evolution has wired our brains.
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I think it’s that from the start. Women advance earlier in learning and ‘growing’ up so to speak. I feel that since boys finally start getting it when they’re older and at this time introduced to ‘computers’ at the same time as girls. Young girls are already past that time while boys are in a more fertile state of learning. The way I’d have to put it is that girls are really held back in education as it seems from my perspective cognitively they develop much faster than men. That with proper coursework and education at a sooner faster pace for girls would help bridge that gender gap so to speak.
I do feel that in the end statistically one we reach adulthood we’re all the same intellectually based on environment factors and not sex.
I too would like to see more women working around me. It seems whenever I have the opportunity to work with a woman on a project they think of factors I commonly don’t even recognize. Especially with things like simplifying things/features and are much more adept at keeping order/functionality while also still pushing the envelope on form.
It would greatly help with our field over all. I feel we as human beings are meant to be diverse and work together, and it’s a shame that in this field people are more individualistic than pluralistic in our country. While not as much as in other fields.
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The one and only Android developer I have ever met in the wild, was indeed female. I was firstly shocked to having met an Android developer (since I don’t meet many new people) but that she was female too was very striking!
Thank you. I’m not like you, I’m not actually good at math or programming – I’m avarage at best – , and this semester, after having failed two classes, I was seriously considering giving up. I know you didn’t adress this issue, but reading your article really inspired me to keep going!
Having lived through Grace & cobol and a real shortage of women in IT I have come to the conclusion that they are generally too smart to want to work in the industry.
I used to be the only guy with long hair and a red Gaultier coat on, while all the rest wore dark blue suit, white shirt and boring as possible tie, and that was a real magnet except for the pretenders and gold diggers. Really though – standing around in a room full of IT people was rarely exciting and never stylish. Perhaps women need a bit more. It is also the most under-appreciated of careers.
The other issue is the black & white thinking needed to code properly. Yes or no, flowers or stripes. Not maybe – unless it leads to another yes or no. Obsession helps. Man and woman do that bit differently.
I love your post! It put a smile on my face all morning
I’m a software engineer at a company with around 10% women where I’m the only female actually working as a software engineer (out of ~40 engineers). My colleagues are nice and I love working with them but sometimes I really miss having a female co-worker. Thank you for your post, I don’t feel that lonely any more!
Software is a complete system. Women is pre-programmed to be an irrational being. How can these two co-exist together. Well there are exceptions of having the other side of brain working better than the natural expectation..just like a right hander or a left hander..
It’s not about intelligence.
I’ve worked with men and women both and found the actual level of intelligence to be the same.
The difference I’ve found is in approach.
Men are more prone to start or restart things.
Women are more prone to finish them.
Neither of these are absolute at all, even I can point to plenty of exceptions, yet with enough numbers the trend holds up.
Both approaches work and both are needed.
The sexes are not the same, but they are equal.
Your post triggered me to write a response blog.
Here it is
http://irrational-world.blogspot.com/2011/01/women-and-it-is-that-good-match-in-long.html
Hi Jean!
Can I please just start out by saying: YOU ARE AMAZING FOR POSTING THIS!
I’m a twenty-something female, Computer Engineering & Electrical Engineering double major at a very competetive engineering school. There are so many things in your post that seriously hit the nail on the head for me and describe a lot of the ridiculous shenanigans I go through while trying to get through my CE studies. The lack of emotional intelligence among CE majors is even more apparent since I take classes in both the CE and EE department- even though both areas of study are very closely related, CE majors are definitely a brand of their own!
Of course, not every CE major is a pompous asshole. But subpar social skills is definitely a reocurring theme among my peers. It’s a relief to know that industry will be different.
Thank you for sharing. I’ll keep on truckin’
Thanks for the comment! Keep at it, and feel free to email me.
I think most of the condescending attitudes die once these kids start working and realize they aren’t the CS gods they thought they were. That’s been my experience anyways.
Also, companies can be pretty good about filtering out jerks during the interview process.
A good dev != a good manager.
The lack of career progression for the hardcore techies in most companies is the problem. I’ve got a couple of friends, hardcore programmers, who’ve had to take that management promotion due to the nagging from the wife for more money & security (even though a programmer is more valuable than a middle manager).
There are certain companies (thoughtworks, google spring to mind) where there is a dedicated track for programmers who still need to get their hands dirty.
He’s a straight shooter with upper-management potential.
But seriously. The jerk factor tends to go away after you’re legitimately working at a company, and not just a co-op that feels like they’re just touring the grounds on their way to something better. Superiority is still there it’s just directed at incompetent management and QA, while developers share a bond of some sanity in the madness.
Thank you for this insightful article. As another female programmer I feel very lucky indeed — aside from a couple of job interviews, I don’t think I’ve ever been treated prejudicially. I actually think that my gender is less of a red cloth to my coworkers than the fact that CS is just something I do for a job. At times I feel that people start scrutinizing my work much more negatively if they know that I’ve never coded as a hobby. I don’t know if that’s exacerbated by my gender or not. I used to tell about my liberal arts background to coworkers as a kind of a joke, but no longer do that because of some of the reactions I’ve gotten. What I think happens is that some people who actually put a lot of time and effort into programming feel insulted by the fact that I can code pretty well without having a passion for it. Has something to do with what they base their self worth on I guess? So they start trying to find flaws in my work. Personally I find that code quality it has fairly little to do with how many open source projects or IPhone apps you’ve worked with. Some of the most passionate programmers I’ve worked with actually produce rather crappy and convoluted code.
Actually, now that I think of it, I do remember one nerd who clearly had a problem with my gender, years ago. We worked briefly side by side and he never said a word directly to me — did talk to male coworkers though. Once when talking with our boss right next to me, he offered to reprogram an app of mine because it was ‘badly designed’. This from a guy whose code was almost impossible to read. But he was such an exception that I have a hard time even remembering him any more.
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I’ve worked with three female programmers in the past. Two were more intelligent than me. One was worse than whoever wrote PHP.
Gender has nothing to do, it’s a social thing. Girls tend to play with barbies, and when they get involved with “computers” they either play “barbie” games and such. Whereas men have a range of games that are more related (war, racing, simulation). Girls are rarely interested in those topics.
I believe that that leads to a wider adoption of men into the computer habits (which are required if you are considering spending 8 hours a day sitting in front of a pc for a living).
But those women who do pursue the CS, they are as good as men or better, like in every other field.
You don’t see a lot of male cloth designers either and they are usually associated with gay people. Does this make every female programmer a lesbian?
LOL WHAT.
I played Barbies when I was a child but when my household got our first computer, it was about PC games–but not “Barbie” games. I did educational math/english based games and eventually went to Tomb Raider, Doom, CIV all before I even hit 13. Heck, I even played owned/every Nintendo console up until the Xbox came out and I got into Halo.
I had no older brothers that got me into these games–it was my own pure curiosity and desire to try things out. Females are most definitely VERY interested in “those topics.” Perhaps you should just expand your friendships with females.
Just don’t make such asinine assumptions.
As a woman that did electronics as an EE and programming back when because I knew something (circa 1972) about computers I may be in a minority. I do hardware and write code. One the hardware side I’ve seen a lot of bias from day one at college. On the software side much less so especially for the last 20 or so years. Keep at it, and I encourage more women to do engineering.
While becoming an electrical/software engineer in India in the 2000s, I noticed that more than 50% of my engineering class was female. The Computer Science classes also had a healthy female representation. At the work force as software developers too, I noticed a balanced male/female ratio. Two of my immediate managers were ladies, and so were some architects. Its no more a surprise for girls to be in software and engineering fields.
Pursuing masters in engineering in the US was a totally different story. I was really surprised to see how few girls there were in CS and EE/ME based fields.
Somehow I think the Western world has some more distance to go before it takes women engineers more seriously.
I think this is a great thing to point out. We have people on here saying that women are in CS because of “evolution”. That viewpoint is almost exclusively held by the western world, in India/China/Japan having women in math and tech related fields happens regularly.
It has nothing to do with gender, just culture. There are plenty of Chinese and Indian software engineers.
I started programming in 1980 and things have improved. The challenges then were 1) overlooking guys staring at your boobs as you’re talking 2) concentrating on the program work at hand when you have to work in a room plastered with naked lady posters 3) having to team with sexually frustrated guy showing naked lady pictures as he’s demonstrating how to use source control 4) figuring out what to do when a fellow engineer writes “how much he loves you” notes via inter office mail (this was before email). Since such things aren’t mentioned in your blog, they must not exist, and the culture has improved.
The next cultural wave will be American engineers dealing with condescension from Indian or Chinese engineers that assert educational or intellectual superiority. I predict they will borrow from your post, or perhaps Martin Luther King era protesters appealing “I AM A MAN”.
All are welcome to programming, all genders, races, nationalities; bringing their own expertise and energy. No gender or race is intellectually superior. The optimal work group is diverse yet unified in purpose. If you’re the lone woman engineer, enjoy the guys, they’re entertaining, comical. They’re really just reacting to genetic programming, showing off to the gals in their socially awkward ways.
I think this article hits it on the head. Many prgrammers are obnoxious. My own self confindence saved me. I love working with people and helping people find that confidence in their abilities brightens my day. But to over exagerate, if you don’t think you are better than everyone else, you can suffer in this field.
The few female programmers I have met tend to be very good. This is probably due to the cultural bias against them resulting in only the best and most driven making it their job. Naturally it would be better if there was no bias at all and we should do everything we can to encourage women to choose a career in the field but until then and all other things being equal, I tend to have my own positive bias when it comes to judging the abilities of female over male programmers.
Here at Rice University, due to recent curriculum changes, our rising CS majors are approximately 25-35% women. The very first class in the CS curriculum is taught by an amazing female professor, which may contribute to breaking the trend.
When I was in University I noticed that among the engineering disciplines Chemical Engineering had the highest female:male ratio. I was kind of jealous because we had hardly any women in our class (Electrical Engineering). The few women in my class were Chinese, I guess Engineering isn’t seen as something scary for women from Asia.
Hi, Jean.
I’m a white male, but I was very happy to read the part about intimidation by people who seemed to be programming since they were rugrats (I’m paraphrasing) while in the computer lab at school.
Not happy that you in particular felt that way, but happy that I was not alone. It was a very discouraging feeling for me, trying to stumble around csh commands for the first time while everyone else just sorta knew how it worked.
In addition, I’m glad to discover your blog. I am looking forward to reading your future posts.
If you removed any mention of gender, your story wouldn’t be too different from mine. I think the self-doubt you mention is a large part of being a geek: as is dealing with other condescending geeks.
As you said, this seems mostly to exist in high school/college and disappears my the time you hit the workforce. That late teen/early 20s stage is particularly full of self-doubt.
The evolutionary behaviouralists might say that “lone hunter” males are intrinsically more comfortable with that isolation. Though that doesn’t explain the reduced percentages over time.
I wonder if it’s simply the fact that IT now has many more students than previously? If guys generally deal better with the geek “social” environment it makes some sense that they would disproportionately make up a bigger part of the increase. It also magnifies the effect: 5 women in a class of 50 have less cultural effect than 1 woman in a class of 10.
1. There is really a statistical genetical difference between how females, and males think. The emotional behavioral interaction with challenges just differs. This is well understood.
2. The majority of the CS field, especially as a science, has a history of being shaped by ‘extremely manly brains’ (nearing full blown autism).
3. This makes it harder to understand, fit in, and contribute in the field, culturally, technically & socially, for people who have a more ‘female brain’. (which includes lots of men)
4. The field would look quite different, if the different types of minds would have been balanced in the past. It may likely have been a huge improvement.
5. The advantages and disadvantages of the mainstream approaches to technological and scientific challenges, directly echo typical traits of the ‘extreme man brain’. This for a large part actually explains, why most software is so quickly written, discarded and buggy. We often make promises we can’t keep. Set deadlines that turn out to be unrealistic. Release code that isn’t thoroughly tested. Jump on every new hip bandwagon. Why many not only favor speed over quality & durability, but also our weird relationship with clever hacks. (we both hate & secretely love them).
The social function of IT as a sanctuary for the more autistic oriented brains, fullfills a very important function. I’m very happy to work in this sector because of it. But I think, the quality of software would be much better, if it would have been more balanced.
The fact that female-oriented brains tend to make different choices, does not make those choices any less valid. If you look at the mind shifts needed in our sector to move to a world where we create durable, maintainable, quality software, they sound a lot like “stop doing things the autistic way”.
Thank you so much for this. I feel the same way. I’ve been a professional developer for almost five years at a job and company I love and I’m putting myself through grad school while working full time now and I *still* feel like an impostor. The louder people are the ones heard, and if all we hear is how great these people are, we start believing it. You’ve given me hope that I can get over being an ‘impostor.’
If you want more people from group x to join a profession, you (the collective you) will need to drop the “our brains are just different” baloney and start dealing with reality – when one group is told their entire lives that their appearance is their most valuable asset, that they aren’t are smart, that they aren’t supposed to do x, that it’s conveniently-slanted pseudo-biology why they are better suited to different tasks – you’ll get two results. 1) that group of people grow up believing all these things and 2) those in the opposite group grow up believing it too.
These things don’t happen in a vaccuum. All these people claiming that their stories are exactly the same, as long as you remove any mention of gender, are completely missing the point. You can’t remove gender and then say “oh, it’s exactly the same”. That’s privilege talking.
Fantastic description of your experience in this field. I’ve had other women share similar stories on my Girls Can’t WHAT? site. I’m going to share this with them and post a link on my site.
There’s no physical reason why more women can’t jump into the IT field. I guess there’s a lot of social expectation that girls do certain jobs, just like guys go to “manly” jobs. Look at teaching: men largely driven out by assumption of paedophiles in the waiting.. Jobs like mining etc long since removed from the need for physical strength via occupational health and safety laws: but no women there either.. Nursing = not many men etc.
I’ve worked with some *very* competent female software engineers and some very competent male software engineers.. Have worked with some incompetent males, not so many incompetent females but smaller pool size I guess. So my experience has been the ones that do stick out the gender bias tend to be a little better on average.
In terms of the workforce as a whole: there’s the issue of babies. Generally you lose women (not men) to go and raise kids. I think that’s a bit of a shame that society still makes it hard for men to share the load (paternity leave vs maternity leave.. or primary carer).
If you look at it: IT is a pretty girly career – nice and clean, inside and away from the elements. It’s hardly heavy lifting and backbreaking labour..
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I’m female and majored in CS as well. A year into grad school the Chair of my CS department pulled me in his office and asked for advice on getting more females into CS. I gave him a very simple answer: recruit hotter men and the women will follow
Nice response. This had me cracking up.
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Hi… I’m not a girl but kinda understand what you mean ’cause the “Impostor Syndrome”. Your article has been an eye opener, got me deeply.
On the issue, I’ve worked with plenty of development groups and my opinion is, the better groups are those with at least 33% of female force. Girls have a wonderful way to give balance.
I just want to say that your post is quite inspiring. I’m not quite a programmer (yet) but I’m studying in a related field. I’m going through what you mentioned in your post right now and it’s really nice to see someone who managed to conquer these problems. Thank you!
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hi,you are right.In my class, there is 13 girls out of 76 persons.This year is my last year in school,from the info i know,girls in my class tend to choose some job posts other than developer although they are quite good at that. BTW,i am studying in a university in Guangzhou ,P.R.C
So nice a female software engineer!
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Well it is past 1am and I’ve skipped over some posts to get to the end, just to post this gem. Judith Harris wrote: “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do”. Her theory of socialization turns the basic assumption that adults socialize young people on its head. Young people socialize themselves! They select peer groups and through this selection process adhere to the norms of the chosen group. She quite brilliantly discusses genetic influencing factors regarding ‘the effects of the effects of the genes’ arguing quite convincingly that impulsive behaviour and other anti-social traits are in part passed from parent to child, which makes these types of people hard to deal with. Anyone who is interested in finally putting to rest the gender question, should pick up a copy of her book. I have spent countless hours researching the question as part of my M.Ed thesis on motivational theory and implications for computer science and Harris has all the key arguments that explain what is really going on in terms of how young people acquire dispositions, values, and exhibit behavioural norms.
Happy reading, and a big thank you for all those who took the time to posts!
To encourage more females, I’d say share with your friends how your career makes you feel fulfilled. Also, help high-school-age girls approach and enjoy technology.
I think it’s simply a matter of gender stereotypes. Men in marketing, nursing, or other stereotypically-female fields probably feel similar stigma about being a man in those fields. Though, there is also the harsh reality of pregnancy that stereotypically ends up with the man being the breadwinner and the woman taking time off from her career. But that shouldn’t impact people’s attitudes, so I think the strongest help you can give would be being a role model to younger women.
Am I the only developer who doesn’t even stop to think about which gender is better at programming? Just shut up and code.
Very good article, Jean. In the last line, you were looking for ideas to increase the female students in CS. It was discussed in the Women in Tech Panel at Facebook HQ. Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T44XdGH5s-8
You know what Jean. I think you are awesome.
I also think you are smart. I suffer from “Impostor Syndrome”.
Primarily because I did not graduate from college, in fact I never graduated high school, and I work in a R&D environment as a programmer and I had to teach math to myself rather than with a teacher. I feel like because I missed the college experience that my mind and achievements are worth less than those of others that have a degree.
I know how you feel, or maybe I should say felt since it seems you have passed through the proverbial hurdle of your own self-doubt.
Regardless of what we think about ourselves, the perception of others is typically much brighter than we think. At least in my experience it is.
Take care Jean. I wish you well.
Yes! Yes! It was a revelation when I read about the Impostor Syndrome. But now what I do (as a grad student in CS, and therefore, a TA as well) is try to encourage women in my class, get to know them, and try to find out about their future plans and encourage them to major in CS when I find them acting timid.
Sometimes just a few words of encouragement can let someone know they are doing just fine. I know that is definitely true for me, and some others I’ve spoken to.
I felt like reading my diary except that I’m a 26 year male from India. Very true to what you’ve said.
I agree with a few posters that it’s not the same scene in India, although there are other fields where the divide is rampant. Liked the article.
My tryst with Impostor Syndrome involved being convinced by others that what I got is more than I deserved!
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My uni lecturer teaching Java was a 50 year old women with grey hair, and to watch her put 50-100 male students in their place was often the highlight of my week!
in the end, its not an ability trait, but a societal one
Thanks for writing about this, Jean. Nearly all of the adult, professional software engineers I know are well adjusted, family loving, neighborly folks. It’s a shame there’s so much noise and anti-social strife generated in the background. Glad you found your way in to a discipline you enjoy!
It would seem to me that you’ve already identified the major issue causing women to shun their own entry into the CS field: feelings of inadequacy.
It took specific intervention by teachers, as well as a chance epiphany, for you to realize that you were made of the right stuff to not only succeed in the field, but also get a good job at a top company.
The condescending tone does not end with university. These geeks (male and female) tend to be socially awkward, and don’t realize that their clumsy social interaction akin to an elephant ballet, is hurting people around them.
The problem is not that women can’t do the job (far from it). The problem is that most of them don’t realize that they can, or become discouraged by the concentration of genius at the top end of the class, wrongly assuming that group is the norm (even worse: the top end tend to be the most socially awkward, and the most likely to inadvertently damage the self esteem of a budding computer scientist).
More role models for women to be exposed to at an early age would be nice, but it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
Perhaps as a stop-gap measure some sort of info site and/or pamphlet explaining this broken social interaction dynamic might help more compsci students stick with it despite the false signals of disapproval/condescension from their awkward peers.
Hi Jean, I like your post. Have you seen this article?
“The Trouble With Bright Girls” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-grant-halvorson-phd/girls-confidence_b_828418.html
OK, based on the accepted fact that men and women are different, having both on my team is extremly valuable BECAUSE they are different.
Why waiste time debating the obvious.
I like working with women becuase they often have another perspective that I just didnt consider, which in the end makes me a better programmer. And I have never worked with any asshole women – they have all been male.
I just stumbled across this blog, and it is an insightful piece of information about current situation.
I am an Indian, and we do not really have this kind of situation at any point in the entire education-to-placement-to-enhancement chain.
My general observation is that there is a sizable number of female project managers who have come from the trenches as compared to the numbers that I am seeing in the article.
My opinion is that the culture matters more than anything else, as Indians are pressurized to study, matters not which field. Invariable, girls choose CS as it pays more compared to other fundamentals streams.
Genetics might be playing a part, but your environment and the way you have been brought up also has an impact on girls choosing CS over anything else.
It’s interesting to see a perspective from a different culture, where there are a lot of women in CS. I agree that culture and societal influences, even the subtlest ones, seem to be the biggest factor.
You triggered a huge round of discussions in my female friend circle, when I shared this article with them.
Most of them were of the opinion that CS was a matter of choice for them and they never had to face any kind of pressure while studying or working. It just came naturally to them and I was told that there is nothing different in being a female and a programmer. The percentile population that is worthless is same, whether it be male or female.
They were also of the opinion that while studying, the male half (usually) of the class always relied on the girls to do the submissions and assignments and project work on time and were grateful for that. As one of my female friend said there used to be fight amongst the boys to have a girl be part of their gang.
So I guess it’s just a question of having an atmosphere conducive to learning and cohabitation.
And I have been asked (specifically, categorically) that I let you know that they are proud of you for being a part of change.
The problems to be solved aren’t interesting enough.
——————————————————————-
I graduated in 1998 in BSc Computing. On our course, in my year, there were only two ladies. Both very intelligent.
In the year group below us (on the same course) were 9 ladies of varying ages, from 18-32. I was privileged to have provided course work assistance to 10 of the female students. Some of them had very creative approaches to solutions, which (as a man) I don’t think a man would have thought up.
From my interactions with them, I found that it’s not about ability or sexism keeping them out, it’s that the subject isn’t interesting enough for them. Of course there are women that find it interesting (as in my work place).
My view is that the majority of the computing industry isn’t solving problems that are interesting enough to female programmers. We are wired differently.
I think that the reality of what problems can be solved with software is not accurately portrayed to students throughout their early lives and college. Maybe what is portrayed is more appealing to males.
Since computer science is a field where you enjoy much freedom of speech and thinking I guess it is equally well suited for women and men (I personally believe due to genetical differences men and women ain’t equally well suited for each job type in GENERAL
). From my personal experience I believe it is the social field of someone and the general attitude towars stuff that influences if you are suited to CS or not. You need to have some basic interest in technologie itself that I find many women lacking, MAYBE also because it is not ment for girls.
On the other hand, many women I know are too emotional to suit any engineering job which I think you need to be more serious for.
There are some good points in the other comments as well.
“Male dominated” really means “female neglected”.
Hi Jean, I enjoyed reading your post, and this is partly due to your written language skills matching those you evidently have in computer science. Deep-seated discriminatory attitudes typically take a century to overcome, give or take a few decades. Keep doing what you are good at and enjoy doing, and only occasionally allow yourself the kick of unsettling the fraudsters amongst the many playing the ‘mystique of knowledge’ game by asking a staight question and provoking responses like: (1) don’t you already know that, (2) why do you want to know?, (3) you shouldn’t have thrown out those 101 notes, and similar constructs in lieu of the straight answer which they do not have and therefore cannot give.
You mean to tell me you actually had a few classes with girls in them?
(BSME NCSU 1985).
I think I can remember 2 out of a hundred in the department.
Kwazai
Programming requires brains.
This article and the comments show that in the human population, on an avarage, 80-90% of the men and 10-20% of the women have brains .
Thanks for sharing! It’s a bit puzzling problem, and a quite unfortunate one for the field. I think you nailed many issues — this problem has recently been discussed in e.g. the Blender community, I think we can learn some lessons.
There are interesting stories in history also, it seems – I was recently playing Archon with my son, and noticed that it was written by a woman .. the wife of the guy who designed it with his friend:
“Archon: The Light and the Dark is a computer game developed by Free Fall Associates and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was originally developed for Atari 8-bit computers in 1983, but was later ported to several other systems of the day, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, IBM PC, Apple Macintosh, PC-88, and NES. It was designed by Paul Reiche III and Jon Freeman and programmed by Anne Westfall, who was married to Freeman. Reiche also produced the artwork for the game.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Dark has a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Westfall
It is somehow fun to think of the situation, perhaps some sort of a visionary enthusiastic guy and his friend thinking of this wicked battle chess, together with her too, but then she being the only one who can actually make it real
.. being more technically inclined, interested in learning assembly etc .. and out comes a real classic which is still a great game.
~Toni
Who does not want to admit that we are genetically different, living their own reality, deceiving the group with which it coexists.
For women: “I am a man, and I’m different and some men like these are different from each other, also about gender. I’m good at drawing, my brain works fine on 3D environments, I have a good provision of spatial orientation, but not all men have this feature, you can even have the possibility, small, find a woman with the same characteristic. “
Will makes an excellent point. More effort needs to be made in helping more women to approach and enjoy technology. One must give it a chance to learn how enjoyable it can really be. CS is a great career for those women willing to explore it.
Great post, Jean. With great risk to my masculinity, I understand your plight. When I was in college, CS was my first major. I ended up dropping that for EE before settling into Physics. I had very little success in finding study groups and felt very inadequate in most of my classes. I had a decent GPA, but always felt behind the curve. I was in the upper 25% of the EE students, but still moved on.
In my current job, I spend most of my time developing software because that is what I apparently am quite skilled at. It does pay the bills and I do enjoy the work. Even now, I still struggle with feeling behind the curve because the guys I work with are real super stars, but they are supportive and tolerate my lack of OO vocabulary quite well.
Good on you for sticking with your passion, Jean. You are an inspiration to all.
Thanks Drew! Thanks for sharing your story–I hope your masculinity did not suffer too much =)
Nice post. I work at IBM. Whatever its faults it is an equal oppertunities employer and it takes this seriously. My manager and many of her manager’s managers (hey this is IBM!) are women as are some of the developers and they are all good at their jobs!
I’ve been writing software now for 27 years (post college anyway), with a BSEE. I’m a manager now, most anyone who survives that long in this field is, but I still keep my hands on in architecture and design. When I started, I was the ONLY female in my entire college of engineering, with 5000 men. Talk about daunting. I’ve been through direct, acknowledged discrimination (A manager once apologized for being so nasty to me over the past two years. He said he was quite sure that a woman couldn’t do my job. His apology was meant to say he’d been wrong, and I’d proven it.), to being ignored and moved to the “mommy track” when I got pregnant the first time, to being respected and admired for survival in this field now. I’ve raised three sons, two of whom are now in technical fields despite my best advice. I love programming for the sheer challenge of writing code. Very little else is so creative in the modern world, there is always something new to learn, something else to try, and I can make a computer “sing” (meaning, make it do what I want). The income has been marvelous, allowing my husband the ability to start small companies while I held the benefits and stable salary. I volunteer now with an organization for girls that attempts to foster STEM education and technical careers. The line in the women’s restroom is always short at technical conferences, and when you do something great, it really gets noticed because females are noticed.
The flip side is that if you don’t do great things, you will also stand out. You “confirm” others low opinions of females’ abilities in the field with every failure, and that can be a heavy weight to carry. There aren’t many (sometimes not any) other women to be friends with, and let’s face it, if you are going to pursue this as a career, you won’t have time for many friends outside of work. Cubicle conversations about male pursuits can leave you feeling excluded. If you don’t work enough hours, you won’t be any good in this field, and that is extremely challenging while balancing having a family. Telecommuting and flexible work hours though are far more common now than when I was starting a family, and companies are sometimes so eager to hire females that they will make unusual accommodations for them. I can’t say I would do things any differently if I could do it over, although I do not believe young people now have the same options we did. Outsourcing has changed nearly everything in software development, I am at a loss to see how American programmers can get started when all the entry level work is going overseas. I’ve told my sons to specialize in technical project management, because then they can direct overseas software projects. They won’t get much chance to do hands-on coding, which is a shame.
As far as the females in the field are concerned, I’ve watched friends raise their daughters (I didn’t have any myself) to care mostly about their appearance and social standing. Even the smartest girls aren’t encouraged by parents or teachers to do STEM work very often. Our culture here in the States defines a woman by how she looks and who she marries still, far more than what she does. I still stew when I meet new people with my husband. They ask him what he does, but never ask me – even intelligent, educated people do this. It’s not that I care that they know what I do – it’s that I care about the implicit assumption that what he does matters, and what I do doesn’t. Until we overcome this bias as a society, why should women try so hard to do something so difficult?
Hi Karen,
Thanks for the thoughtful and at times infuriating comment (I can’t believe what you went through). For me, I think the challenges were more internal (I was my biggest critic), though I’m sure a lot of the doubts I had were based on society influences.
Jean – interesting article and comments. I’m not a developer by education, but I run a software development/consulting company (and I happen to be a woman). I would definitely say that there are still some attitudes in the developer community that surprise me in terms of gender issues. And, sadly, most of these are just accepted because, “Well, you know how developers are… most of them just don’t have any social skills….” And so long as “we” as a profession accept that to be true (and, even worse, acceptable), nothing is going to change.
Personally, I find it very frustrating. One of the other posters mentioned prejudice during job interviews. I’ve experienced that as well, but from the other side of the table. News flash: if you want to work at our company, you need to be able to work for a woman. Shockingly, many guys in this field can’t.
I have worked with a number of women developers over the years, and except for one exception, I would describe them as excellent programmers (the anomally was merely “good” in my mind) and highly motivated professionals. That is not true of the men I have worked with; they ran the gamut from bloody awful to incredible.
One thing that has not been talked about is the human interaction piece. Writing code is a lonely sport. Women generally want to be in roles where they interact with others. For instance, my wife would be an excellent engineer, and a welcome addition to any team I have ever been on. She would be a grounding force for a lot of the high flown, “write it this way because well, that’s cool” kind of stuff I have seen many times and on many different teams. She has absolutely no interest in the field but is very happy making 40% of what I make mostly because she wants to be in a role where she interacts with people.
It is ironic that I work as an engineer in roles where I have a lot of flexibility in my schedule yet my wife works in a female dominated industry and has literally none.
The orthodonist has never met my wife even though my kids have been going there for four years.
Programming has a fairly high learning curve, often requiring a huge amount of initial time investment to learn how to think in terms of representing abstract concepts and tasks and communicating in a largely foreign context. Students in high school that spend all their free time in front of a computer (programming and/or video games) often miss the necessary social time to learn how to interact with people. And if their parents are jerks, or are not willing to discipline their kids so they don’t become jerks, and they don’t learn to respect people from school …
From my observations from my education in computer engineering, the women who were able to find a niche of positive social reinforcement early on in that first year from either friends or professors were much more likely to stick it out. The ones that felt isolated because of the competition or disdain in the classroom, and lacked an outlet that provided that positive support withered. My sister left for the lack of a supportive environment by her first semester sophomore year. As long as CompSci continues to remain a competitive instead of cooperative field, I don’t foresee women wanting to work in those kinds of stressful environments. Most women want to have some positive social aspect to their career, whereas a lot of men get more emotional fulfillment by their achievement over any progress in social interaction.
The CompSci department first has to first acknowledge that there is a problem, and be willing to try to create an environment that is conducive to provide the positive environment that women need to succeed. I don’t know how to change the mindset of an industry that thrives on greed and competition, ever pursuing the “next big thing”. Great environment for technological progress, poor working environment for women, imo.
Good article.
My wife and I both work in IT (we met while working in the same shop) – and we both have the same attitude to our fellow IT “experts”: you’re all a bunch of jerks, until you prove to us otherwise. We also believe that neither of us know everything – and by extention neither does this bubble-headed know-all buffoon standing in front of us pontificating out of his backside!
At the end of the day, if an IT “expert” can’t communicate to a User in simple terms the solution to a problem, then he’s doing more harm than good.
I always remember the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes …. You may think you are wonderful and know everything, but the rest of us just think you’re a jerk!
More women in Computing – you’re far to sensible to get involved in such a “p*ssing competition”!
hmm.. not so sure if this argument have come up somewhere along this posts..
i have observed a pattern in my school where the girls who are studying CS ends up not that competent by the end of their uni days cause they always get helps from the guys.. and thus end up not learning anything much through out the degree course. when they start getting help in the foundation courses, they started struggling for the advance courses and ended up quiting all together.
i think this phenomenon is kind of common in most MMORPG as well. the guys help the girls level up. girls get annoyed when things suddenly goes hard and quit early.
if we could just prevent the guys from helping the girls…
what u guys/ladies thinks?
All the males who replied/commented on your article, did this because you are a female (opposite sex) in the field of IT. They are zombies in the disguise of humans.
Beware of them. (Y)
Evolution certainly is not the answer since it’s not true to begin with but I think that culture definitely has something to do with it. The general stereotype as well as portrayal of CS in movies and the like is a cubicle farm full of hopelessly nerdy (think Big Bang Theory) techies that talk about nothing but the merits of Mac over PC over Linux while eating pizza and slurping down soda. Not really inviting to anyone.
My wife is great at figuring out logic problems (she is also great at math) and I know she would make a great programmer (she even helped me in school to figure out tough problems). She just has no interest in how computers work. I’m the one that programs every day. So the ability is there, but for some reason, likely cultural and social more than anything else, women simply are not drawn to CS or IT. I see many women being pushed toward management and finance/accounting degrees. Perhaps women are generally more concerned with higher-level things and men are more into how things work “under the hood”. But everyone is different and usually it is wise to avoid generalizations .
I definitely agree there is a problem with the portrayal of CS, and that it does not appeal to many females, despite the fact that they may be interested in the many interesting problems in the real world that can be addressed with software.
Jean,
Nice post. I admit that there are fewer females than males in software engineer, but those in it are just as competent as any one. In my 20+ years with many companies, I’ve had opportunities working with many female developers on the team and all are dependable just as the men.
The best thing about have female developers on the team is that women tend to bring in more cookies or home cook goodies to share — brighten up the spirit of the team. With all men team, it is completely void with goodies.
I wrote a post about the benefits of being a female software engineer, and included a part about being appreciated when you bring in treats for the team. There was a mixed reaction to it =)
The greatest thing when you are a female sw engineer is that in all the conventions, roadshows, etc… you realize that those are the only places where you don’t have to wait outside the women’s toilet!!
Hi Jean
I like your article. Although I am a man I am always of the opinion that more and more women should participate in software development in computer field. Only suggestion I would give to increase women’s contribution to this field would be train them right from school days to think logically at early age and transform their ideas into some programming language and make them enjoy small successes at younger age so that they build confidence to take up challenges of difficult projects.
Recently I have listened to speech by eminent speaker Dianne Boddy who is self taught Mechanical engineer, who has done design work in 2000 projects starting
from machines in canning industry to robotics. It was amazing and mind boggling.
Logic may make you a good programmer.
Thinking outside of the box/Creativity makes you a great programmer.
I don’t think any one gender holds the advantage in that.
(a chick programmer that leads an all male development team)
Thanks for your article. I have been in the field 10 yrs. When I got to conferences I do the same thing. I look to see how many women and I also look to see the ages of people attending. I just don’t see it being a popular option for women. I think the arrogance that you experienced can be a deterrant. I also think that we see more ‘gamers’ that look into this field and that also tends to be male dominated as well.
I think one of the biggest and best things that can be done is simply getting females engaged in computer science related topics at an earlier age. I’ve met quite a few female computer engineers and scientists and it seems a fair number of them entered the field later on. From your article, it seems that is the case for you, as well. I think any field can be daunting when most everybody else has been fiddling around since very young.
I’m not sure how this can be accomplished. As a male, I don’t have any insight into the challenges females face growing up or in college (other than what I read), so I don’t have the knowledge of how to improve the situation. I can say that all the female computer geeks I’ve met have been spectacular at what they do, so I look forward to the day when the industry is more balanced along gender lines.
Thanks for sharing your story.
You cannot use a few isolated cases to buttress either positions.
We men are genetically different from women, period.
Men cannot get pregnant nor give birth. Physically men are stronger than women.
Emotionally women are stronger than men. This is genetic, and not environmental.
We are simply different, even though there are exceptions to the rule. But which one is more intelligent is irrelevant.
As a mid-fifties woman, I am distressed to not see more younger women in programming; however, I do see them more in auxilary position that require the use of technology. A local tech group is hosting a “saturday” event that includes options for professionals and there kids. Basically all of us, men and women need to act mindfully in ways that offer encouragement to younger men and woman. Like the professor in the article, you may have a greater impact that you anticipate.
It gets better.
Having recently retired since working in the software biz since my BS in 77, I can tell you that – I gets better (thank you, Dan Savage!). Undoubtedly horrible for women when I started, by the time I retired, where were a reasonable (if not fair) percentage of women in my company.
They were treated pretty darn well, and the nerdo-geeks that you so rightly call out were pretty much toast. The modern programming world is just to competitive for idiots to survive for an extended period.
So my advice – deal with them, smirk at them, and realize they won’t be around for that long. The downside? Many of these assholes will become middle-managers, where incompetence is rewarded. But they won’t get any higher than that.
Wow impostor syndrome! That article described me!!
When I first studied software development, we had about 10 girls (in 2000), in 2003 at the end of the course, there were 3 of us left. I studied again starting in 2007 and the numberof females hasn’t increased by much.
As a recent graduate, I am feeling very intimidated by the number of men in the field and definitely have a touch of Imposter syndrome…
Great article! Thanks
You hit the nail on the head with this. It’s so similar to my own experience in the computing field. I graduated with a 4 year BSc in Computing Science in ’06 and am no longer programming, though I’m still in the industry. I’ve certainly had a much different experience than my husband, who was in my graduating class.
I guess it’s genetics that make programmers fat friendless assholes with a predispostion at being obnoxious because they are fat and alone and therefore have alot of time on their empty lives being on the computer learning more.
The programmers that you speak of are introverts. They were most likely bullied at school from an early age and never developed close personal relationships with any other students at school as a result. Shunned by their classmates and other neighborhood children, they stayed indoors and found comfort in food, books, television, and computers; basically, any thing that would not judge them.
As adults, they are still shunned by society because they place higher value in the things that they surround themselves with more than they value people; therefore, they do not meet the acceptable social standards set by most people.
So to respond to your comment, this has nothing to do with genetics. Society has cast them aside and shunned them since they were young.
For this reason, I think they have every right to be obnoxious assholes to a society that wants nothing to do with them. Don’t you?
and you are?
Twenty years ago I was in a class that was thirty percent female. They made up the top Forty percent of the class. They had the knowledge and most important skill to think within the computer. As a male I had to work hard to stay even with the two top students. So with that said.
I have been taking classes of late and found what you say to be all to true. I have no answer as to why. Yet there have been things I have read of late that might shed a small amount of light no the reason. Young female who are told that they can not do something like programming will walk away. This can be a real problem when the teacher does not know how and is also female. This was found to be true in Math, Study done in 2009 (late). The study was done by women from the U of Chicago.
The other possibility is the lack of role model in the computer science community. ie Grace Hopper is gone. The current head of ACM is of course FEMALE.
Few women go into Computer Science because they are so much smarter than men. Here’s what men don’t seem to understand:
1. You WILL be laid off at some point when your salary gets too big.
2. Your job WILL be moved overseas.
3. You WILL work longer hours than average.
4. You WILL have increasingly greater stress as quality disolves due to 3.
5. You WILL have more headaches and other disorders due to 4.
6. You cannot keep taking medicine to compensate for the above.
Women are just too smart to deal with this non-sense. Ask my wife, who gave up this career 15 years ago and started a small business selling kitchenware, NOT made in China.
In India I find lots of girls take up CS including programming. My friend, a professor, tells me that there are 50% of girls in his class. I also find lots of girls working in the IT industry. Our culture also is paternalistic but somehow girls seem to have come out of that. Daughter of one of my friends is working on mainframe software. another girl is working on programme testing
To girls in the US (pardon the generalization), computer programming is not unlike being fat or dressing badly or having a venereal disease. I assume the stigma does not exist in countries like Canada, India, or Russia. I’ve met a “disproportionate” number of capable programming women from those countries.
I married into a large family where the next generation of children is predominantly female. I’ve been trying to sell them, coax them, encourage them to go into computer programming. I’m guessing that at least one in ten would go for it. No dice. They look at me as if I’m asking them to commit suicide. It’s not something they’d wish on their enemies. Fashion design, pharmacy, business – yes. Computer anything – hell no.
Perhaps if I were more fashionable, cool and studly, they’d be more open to the idea. But I still think there is something cultural going on that convinces girls that comp sci is not an option.
Nice one Jean, I think your description is spot on.
The reason that you no longer see so many of the “jerks who think [...] they are gods and you are nothing” is because despite their (self proclaimed) skill, no one likes working with them. Oops…
Anyway, I can tell you that things are the same on the other side of the world, and the experience you describe is not limited to women (I experienced the same thing, in New Zealand)!
Good on you for being true to yourself and sticking to your guns.
you should look up prof gloria townsend childress @ depauw university. she shares your sentiment. I can proudly say say most of what I know about computers i learned from a woman!
The behaviour of some women in some sections of some industries is abominable, where they just try to get away with doing wicked things to men, then lie to other men in a charming way to try to reduce the possibility of punishment.
I have worked with mostly male programmers, and some female programmers. The female programmers I enjoyed working with, as they had respect for their colleagues. I have also enjoyed working with male programmers.
Programming appears to be one of the last remaining primarily male oriented industry, and I think it is important that male programmers forget about lusty thoughts after women they work with (although, of course I have done this myself, and I am a hypocrite). But basically, I think that if the female programmers are respectful towards their colleagues, and the male programmers love their colleagues, then the programming industry can grow, and continue to be an enjoyable place to work.
It probably should be noted that most men I have worked with did not seem to suffer from lusty thoughts towards their female colleagues, which may explain in part the respectful attitude of the female programmers.
Way to go Jean.. In male predominant countries, after you start working , women face a hard time. Its not easy to prove that you can handle the same pressure or the same kind of responsibility.
Well the day women will launch startups is not far as well.
We are all for it.. !!!
During the dot com boom, there were able 30%+ female students in CS classes. My wife was also in CS, but unfortunately she had to drop out from CS due to academic difficulty. I don’t take the same courses as a CS student. I took computer engineering which I learned both sides of the hardware and software, and half of my courses are from the CS department. My wife told me that she felt intimidated because she felt she didn’t know as much as the others do in the CS class, and the professors were much help either.
I felt that it is possible for female to excel in CS. However, the female need to pass thought the culture barrier and the teachers need to get the female interested into science and technology first. Generic plays some factors, but the environment also plays a factor too.
The important thing is our society needs to get the female interested in the male-dominated fields in the early age (including CS). That means teachers and parents play need to play a big part in encouraging female to go into CS.
Jean, thank you for this really good post. It was a pleasure reading it.
I can totally relate to you and what you have written. The condescending attitude seems prevalent in college, workplace and even in these comments.
Amazing experience!
İ enjoyed when I read this post. Thank you
Most of the ladies i ever talk to including my wife when asked ‘why don’t you go into a technical career because it pays better and is easier to get into than anything else?” they say “technical stuff is boring and annoying i’d rather not”
Maybe it’s growing up with different ‘toys’ and ‘interests’. Boys blow shit up and build things and girls play house and grow relationships/emotional skills… right? Yes there are exceptions that are amazingly wonderful and yes culture makes fun of the exceptions.
Maybe my observations are wrong but that’s what i grew up around.
I really enjoyed your article. Most of the women I’ve worked with really knew their stuff, and in part I think a lot (not most, not all but a lot) of guys just feel insecure about the possible prospect of feminine intellectual equality. I welcome our female overlord and wish I could find a woman that enjoys programming the same way I do.
OH, my God! Thank you! Your post went straight to my heart, as I have struggled with these exact feelings for quite some time now, and only recently have started to realize the extent of this illusion of the “I’m not good enough”. So I thank you for this amazing statement you have made by writing this post! I bet there are A LOT of women who will relate to it. Cheers!
I don’t understand the “asshole” point. Or better I totally disagree with it. Is software engineering the only job where there are assholes? And if really women don’t like jerks while there are so many lawyer-girls?
I stumbled upon this post and i must admit although i am a guy i can truly relate to this. Although my experience was a little worst than yours in the sense that i came into CS completely handicapped by my previous experience, i had never taken any courses on programing. What i knew about computers was relative to the amount of time i spent on one, i was really unsure of what major to apply to and i basically jotted down the things i spent the most time on and computers was number 1.
I was surprised when you commented on that one asshole who yelled at you during lab, i had the same exact experience. Even though i was depressed that most people in my major seemed to know so much more than i did, i still pressed on, out of pride i suppose, and managed to pass most of my courses. I still haven’t graduated but my first two years were almost exactly like yours. Still haven’t managed to make any friends in my major, it seems most people are socially awkward or complete assholes (unfortunately this is the majority) but most of my friends ,who are outside my major, commend me for having stuck with the major since a lot of them took it and transferred out after the first semester.
I could go on and on about my experience with CS, but i would just like to add that i am glad that i have found someone else who has had a similar experience and wish you the best of luck in your career.
Thank you for the post.
Nice post. Hope you won’t give it up.
Yea, in my programming career, I’ve run into more than a few programmers (males and females both) that seem to be clueless about programming. A good programmer (I think) needs to have a passion for software development. It is like they just closed their eyes and randomly picked a major by opening the college catalog and chose the major to what page they flipped to.
I wish they had picked some else like Political Science.
I, too, found that the description of impostor syndrome struck a nerve.
I didn’t feel that way in college, but my job hunt was very humbling, as is dealing with the complicated systems in place at the large corporation where I work as a business applications developer. I’m slowly getting my confidence back. It’s just very daunting to be a junior dev in this joint. 
With that said, I believe the post above about programmers being “fat friendless assholes” was not only quite tasteless, it was very uncalled for. I am under the impression that this is a site intended for a professional audience. Quite sad that someone would find it necessary to be verbally abusive here.
My personal opinion on the matter is that it may be a simple issue of personality types. Women strike me as being more inclined toward nurturing and social interaction in their career choices, two things that are fairly limited in computer science. Not to generalize all women, but the tendency seems to be thinking with the heart rather than the brain. Again, there are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Otherwise you would have no women in CS. Just a thought.
Wonderful article, Ms. Hsu. Now that I have discovered you, I will be peaking in on you in the future.
hey, nice text!
(since ur there, im pretty sure u are very good at what u do 
)
im one of the girls that actually feels like u did, but i still feel that. i never gained the self confidence in programming, though ppl say im not so bad at it.I have a computer science degree. I like 3d modeling better, but there is not a lot of work in the market, specially not where i come from. I really dont know if i should give up on web developing or not!?
but, it was nice to read ur story and that u got someone to encourage and motivate u!
good luck and i hope ur doing well in Google
Great article, though even being a man I felt a lot like you in class. I knew nothing about CS software when entering it and felt completely left out, often being to afraid to ask questions because it was all so new to me and not so new to the others. I’m also with you 100% of the way on your last sentence, It would be real shame for women to miss out on a fun and great problem solving job based on stigma and self confidence.
Are there any subjects where they want to bring in more men? (such as nursing or teaching elementary school) Of course not! the issue is BULLSHIT! Why should we bend over backwards to try to accommodate people (women) who are not really interested in this subject.
Substitute black males and [any desirable field] circa 1960 and you have the same thing! Oh, except then you can’t say your reason is based on their lack of interest.
When something seems prohibitive for a group, or it seems like they’re unwelcome, their not joining is not evidence of a lack of interest. Saying “This is BULLSHIT!” when all the post is suggesting is that perhaps the CS culture could benefit from a little less ego and a little more politeness falls somewhere between sad and hilarious.
And to answer your question, yes there are:
Nursing: http://bit.ly/lyYCRB
Teaching: http://bit.ly/gWF15m
THANK you!
She never asked for accomodations, just to not feel intimidated into silence. Women ARE interested. They’re also fed a lot of messages to shut up, sit down, and don’t bother the important people. Everyday we’re told to feel embarassed when we succeed, especially in competition with men. Remember “you hit/run/throw like a girl”? To be bested by a woman means a man is really a loser. So, if a woman has the right answer, she shuts up. She keeps her work private. She defers to her co-workers so they don’t lose face. The good-as-gold ones allow her to get out from underneath all that pressure and seek her opinions and treat her information with respect. You’ll never get it, and it’s your loss.
I’m a guy and have had many instances of the same feelings that you have. Most people tend to think that they are less qualified than they really are. This may be because of the ones that are super good “guru” types and comparing yourself to them is really not the way to go. But you can’t help it to do that sometimes. When you get down to it usually these gurus are at the level of experience, even when very young, that they use intuition to get to the answers of problems etc. Not everyone can do this. Women have a great sense of intuition and because of that I think they can achieve even greater hights then these guru. It’s a left/right brain type of thing this intuition aspect of any field of endeavour.
Thank you for this post! It definitely struck a chord with me — I’ve absolutely been feeling the effects of Imposter Syndrome while pursuing a Software Engineering degree, and I’m glad to know that (a) it has a name, and (b) it isn’t just me that feels like this. That said — I’m so glad that I chose this field, and despite the insecurity I feel sometimes, I love being a dev.
Hang in there! I can’t explain how much easier things get inside when you hit your late 30′s. All those old messages fade. Hang in there until then!
This post is wonderful. I have a daughter in middle school who asks me about programs like Alice, GIMP, Google Sketch Up, and others. I have dedicated time and resources to help her understand how to use these programs. I asked her to read your article as a point of inspiration. Jean, you have done it. Girls and women can be programmers as good if not better than the “guys”. I am not a strong programmer, database background, but I plan to now. I have lived with the Impostor Syndrome for years. Now I am no longer one.
Thanks again. Please continue your woman software engineer evangelism.
As a woman, graduating with a degree in CIS was an interesting experience. Additionally, I’m 42. At my age, there’s less pressure to dumb down in the classroom. My pressure was external, from family & other women, to blend into the wallpaper. I shouldn’t have given into that pressure as I could’ve been more successful if I had been less self-conscious. The men have been fantastic and enjoy talking geek with me.
P.S. One thing that resonates so deeply in my experience was her comment about the instructor that said “Jean doesn’t know how good she is..”. The biggest enemy a woman has is her own tendency to self-denigrate. Her own thoughts are harsh. It’s like cool water in a desert to hear kind words. I doubt myself a lot too and would’ve given up if not for a classmate who said something similar in front of his programming co-workers. “Sandy’s a really good programmer.” I never realized anyone was that impressed with my work.
I have been working in IT for about 20 years – both in proprietary software and recently almost exclusively with open source software. All all the (sadly few) female software engineers that I have had to fortune to work with have been:
* Technically brilliant
* Better at problem solving/intuitive that most of the men
* Work both smarter and harder
* A joy to work with
Software Engineering/Infrastructure or Application Architecture is a career which is a pure meritocracy – gender or race is no barrier – just enthusiasm, intelligence and the willingness to be an eternal student all of your career. Perhaps I am being a bit idealistic but I cannot think of a more ideal career for a woman to have in which she can more than prove her abilities.
My 11 year old daughter wants to go down a different path (Veterinary Science at the moment) but if she wanted to go into software development/design then I would certainly encourage her.
The words about self-denigration ring true as well. The one thing you learn in the school of hard knocks is that you HAVE to “blow your own trumpet” sometimes – i.e. promote yourself. Good work never goes unpunished – if you sit in the corner doing a good job quietly and well – you will be left there to carry on with that job – and that applies to men just as much as it applies to women. If you promote yourself (just occasionally) then you will be notices just as long as you can back up your words with evidence and action.
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Jeez, do not have time to read all the comments arguing about whether males or females are well suited, or better suited, to be software engineers. Waste of time; just do what works for you and what you love to do.
My BSCS degree was in ’77 (in a graduate EE program, there *was* no CS dept/major then), and my experience as a female in college and at work as a software engineer pretty much tracks that of the original poster (Jean Hsu). My how things change in forty years.
Doing well in computer science has less to do with smarts, I think, than with a way of thinking. For me it was about puzzles – I loved solving complex problems, making things work right, groking a whole system so that you know when you poke it *here*, it’s gonna twitch *there*. That’s what led me to choose CS after one intro-via-Fortran (in ’75!!!) course. Well, that and the fact that it was the first thing I ever tried to do that was hard.
Thanks for encouraging me, almost gave up on development because of what men say. Especially when trying to explain something to them
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I starting reading and my eyes glazed over – I have read quite a few blogs now about women in IT. ITs not all about programming or pure computer engineering (electronics etc). IT is an huge arena. I have done programming and started out on a mainframe. When I get bored or wanted a change I picked a different area to learn and go for it. I have several industry qualifications and currently I am Technical Support Manager. I get my hands dirty i.e. i climb under desks, climb up on D10 caterpillars, fix hardware, install and configure servers, support networks and the list goes on. Men and women are different. Women are a minority within IT but I think that is more to do with the fact that not a lot of women know all that is available, and in fact I will qualigy that and say people in general dont know. If women dont want those long hours and being on call they can chose to do something softer like project management or business analyst or even technical writer or even as Trainers in IT. Think outside the box and see what is on offer. I think it is that in the box thinking that does not entice more women in the field of IT. If you speak to most people they have no idea what so ever about IT and the many roles available. Did I say men and women are different. Its a fact. Don’t need stats for that. I have a daughter and a son – I thought I could raise them the same way but nope I can’t. My daughter thinks its unfair and why can’t I be the same with her brother. It does not work that way and I have had to reassess how I discipline and encourage. I wanted my daughter to do a double degree in law and arts but she wants to be a dramatic arts student and my son wants to design things in the army (probably due to COD or something like that). I wanted him to do engineering of some sort however I think he will make his own decision in time. Notice it was what I wanted and I have now changed my way of thinking to “I will support whatever you wish to pursue as long as you do your best. If you dont like what you are doing try something else.” I know this is totally off track from the very fist post about experiences as a female engineer however it is all relevant at the end of the day. We are all entitled to our opinions and I promise to always try and accept someone elses opinion.
My experience of going to college as a CS major was very similar to yours. I was very good at math and science during high school but would have never considered pursuing a CS degree until my mother signed me up for a beginners class in DOS during my senior year in high school (if anyone even remembers what DOS is today). I was lucky and had a mom who believed in me and an aunt who spent her whole life in IT to support me during my first years in college. Hey, even a few of my male friends from high school told me I would never be a successful programmer, just because I did not fit the stereotype for a computer geek. From experience, I know that women can be just as competitive as men and this is what all engineering seams to be: at first look everyone is extremely competitive and people not used to that environment give up very easily.We have to get away from all stereo types related to women and IT, there are so many women who could enter the field but get discouraged because of the lack of support from friends and family.
I really do agree with you. As a girl, I am appalled at the vast majority of members who are boys in my Computer Club, of whom I am president of. I was wondering if anyone here as any idea how we could enhance the gender diversity of the club and make a good learning atmosphere for anyone.
KP > I was wondering if anyone here as any idea how we could enhance the gender diversity of the club and make a good learning atmosphere for anyone.
I would suggest women programmers to start their own business
I have read a book called “Whistling Vivaldi” that discusses stereotype threat and its effect on women and other minorities physiologically as well as psychologically. It is so far, the most accurate accounting of what I am feeling at work. I have words like “chilly work climate”, etc. but it just doesn’t describe it well enough.
Someone posted this to me once “And she says, that despite everything, that its still a lot tougher to be a woman engineer than a man. There still is a culture that favours male engineers and that you can only fight for so long before you say enough is enough”
I am a genetic techie, not a learned one. Squeaked through high school and flunked out of University. Make that spectacularly flunked out of University. In 1982 I got my first “real” job as a mainframe computer operator (change 12″ reel-to-reel tapes, feed punch cards into the reader, etc.). My interests were never specifically computer related as my goal then was to be a rock/metal guitarist (don’t judge me). All the jobs I have had have been for the sole purpose of having an income to live on. Why do I mention this? It is to try and explain where I came from so one can understand what I’m trying to say.
Between 1982 and 1989, without any conscious or intentional effort on my part, I eased from one IT related job to another. In 1989 I was chosen to go through an intern program on programming. I wasn’t enthusiastic this, but knew it could lead to a better income. It turned out that I have a small knack for hacking code. From 1990 until 2004 I progress though a number of different programming related positions of greater and greater complexity and size. Unfortunately, I began having health problems in the late 90′s that, by 2004, forced me into a disability retirement.
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You’ve reached the actual meat of this rambling. And that is this; the vast majority of women programmers I have worked with have been, on average, much better in both technical and intellectual processing of programming/development. Yet, almost every one of them would have a slightly deferential air about them when dealing with their male counterparts. I fairly sure that none of them were conscious of this attitude they projected. It was very subtle, but there. This even when most of the male programmers equals in their programming skills. My belief is that this was completely due to the cultural impact of gender stereotyping. This was between 10 and 20 years ago, so thing might be better now. Or not.
So, what can be done about it. How can we change a couple of thousand years of cultural and social programming? I don’t have an answer for that. “Then why did you write this frelling novella, Joe?” Because I honestly wish I could change the sociocultural landscape in the IT field. Especially with respect to women and programming. It is true that men and women think differently. But neither thinks better than the other. My best work has always been when I had the feedback and perspective of my female colleagues.
Ok, looks like I ran out of steam. If anyone can make sense of this babbling brook of a post, please feel free to translate it into English. All I wish is that we could get more women into the IT industry as programmers. (And it took you over 480 words to say that, Joe?!?)
I am also a female software development engineer and work on Android apps too. I agree with you. But it seems to me more difficult to go on my career as a development engineer because I am chinese and work in China. In my country, the gender discrimination in this CS work filed is more serious. Female engineers would not be promoted to high positions even though they have done well with their works because leaders believe that males are more suitable for these positions. The most popular advice for those female software engineers is to marry a good man. So i think all of you are lucky to live and work in America where the work atmosphere may be relatively more friendly than in my country.
Hope to make friends with you and share work experience together.
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for the comment. Where do you live in China? If you’d like to talk more, feel free to email me at jeanhsu09@gmail.com.
Jean
Hi, I’m an electrical engineer with a Oracle certification in PL/SQL development.
Can I translate to spanish?
bye
Alvaro
at Bogota, Colombia, (South America)
Sure! That sounds great–please let me know where you post it! And link back to the original =)
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Hi, So I am a girl, 20 years old and I realize that I really need to choose a career because I can’t just keep taking general courses at my community college. I am seriously considering computer engineering because I am good and math and it leads to great job opportunities. I have one problem though, I know nothing about computers, but I am confident I can learn. Should I risk it and go into the field?
Hi Mandy,
That makes sense to me. I knew very little about “computers” when I started pursuing CS in college. In fact, I still know very little about hardware, and have a lot of gaps in low-level stuff. It seems like you have the right attitude, and if you think it’s something you might be interested in, go for it!
On the first day of semester, one of my female students came up to me with her friend. She said, “I don’t know what I’m doing or why, I don’t know if I should be here, I don’t know anything about computers or coding or anything.” Her friend nodded, feeling the same. I told them that they didn’t need to be, I tried to explain the objectives again and focus on WHY each task was brought up. A couple of the guys walked past sneering at them, but those two girls got the top grades in the class with no further intervention from me. One of them is talking about doing a PhD in mathematical modelling. Women can be fantastic programmers. All it takes is a little encouragement for those who have always been told they can’t.
Wow… I feel inspired and powerful (in a good way) ive had a lot of problems in my career, i even was going to quit, but i didnt.
Thanks for the words, even tho they werent for me, directly. Thank you very much <3 asm ftw! <3
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This is a really late reply haha! but thank you for that you guys, that gives me a lot of confidence I’m actually taking my first classes toward becoming a computer engineer this semester! they are merely the basics and its at a community college lol but its only been one week and im enjoying what im learning, Im a believer that you can learn anything as long as you put all your effort in it so I am definitely going to purse this career now! THANK YOU!
I asked a question regarding same topic, and I think you should take a look at it.
The link is:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130818/why-womens-share-is-less-than-mens-share-in-professional-development
I am a female software developer and there are days when I want to leave this field. My superiors and managers always love me, appreciate the work I do and hole me in high regard but my peers make me feel like I am an idiot. I do not know if I come off as an egoistic person or what exactly it is that triggers this behavior in my. It is highly likely that I am doing something wrong but I do not know what it is. I am often confused about my abilities since my peers seem to perceive me differently than my superiors. I hope that one day I am able to call myself a good developer. Reading your post gives me hope.
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I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am a female software engineer and at times I search the web looking to read blogs by other females in the field. Inevitably, some jerk posts a comment about how women don’t have the right brains to be programmers. So I have come to realize, like a good software engineer does, that there is a pattern. Just like there are always random bugs or those corner cases for which you wish you didn’t have to solve, there are always those jerky people who try to bring you down. Women have a tremendous role to play in programming because of their strong communication skills and attention to detail. Whether it’s communicating with a computer, with other people, or both which is often the requirement for being an effective software engineer. Keep blogging, programming, and learning. Also, note that the software field has one of the highest (if not the highest) failure rates in terms of the number of successful projects. It’s also one of the fields that has the lowest percentage of women. Go figure
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Thank you so much for sharing. I graduated with a CS degree in 2010 and am now just getting started with my industry experience with a software consulting firm. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve found myself feeling like the “Imposter”. And I never felt like the work or the projects I’ve done were truly my work. I was lucky enough to have a great group of friends as my support system through college. I’ve volunteered to be a mentor for Women In Computing to encourage college freshmen girls to continue in CS. What I’ve found out is that a lot of these girls do feel intimidated and insecure about their abilities. So it’s really nice to hear someone like you stick to your guns and succeed.
Girls do tend to be more quiet but I always think of us as “silent but deadly” =] If people want to notice you, they will through you and your work. Nobody said you have to be loud and obnoxious to succeed. I personally tend to notice people who are quiet because show-offy people are overrated…
I agree that more girls need to join us on this journey! Let’s form a club!
Hello I am Olga a current C++ programming student at Miami Dade here in Florida.
To tell you a little bit about my experience, I am currently the only women in my class, where they are 25 male, they look at me as if I am not serious, is not that I am pending of what they are looking at, I just know it.
First Class OK , second class they make fun of me specially one short headed guy (African American) Please be clear I am not racist to anyone.
The main point here is that they don’t even know where they are standing on, Our Professor is a Woman by the way…Bachelors in CS. in different Universities and worked for the IBM.
As it serious at it seems, this is not been serious to myself and I apologized for letting this out. The main reason why I am writing here is because I want to mention something.
I am not here (c++ Prog) because I want to proof anybody that I can I am in this class because I want to prove to myself that I can, and That I always COULD!
If there is the attitude then it is!
I just a calling is not a new World to me! The opportunities are there. most women have not discover themselves and that is what is need it to have more women’s aboard on CS.
Thank you
Olga
ah! thank you thank you for your post. I finally have have the term for what I’ve been feeling throughout my learning process the “Imposter Syndrome”. I’m just recently starting to develop some confidence in my abilities in the field. I also started my CS journey late and have about a handful or so classes under my belt. It’s hard to be in the learning environment with so many guys that seem to know everything. However, the encouragement outside of the classroom is very present at least from my male friends who are in the field. One works for a big software corp and another for a start-up and both have encouraged me and even said once I finish a few more classes would love to recommend me for an internship. I don’t know why the classroom dynamic can be so different, but it has definitely made me question my fit and ability in this field multiple times despite the fact that my grades and progress have been very good. I focused only on how I felt: intimidated, out of place and lacking potential around these dudes. Thank you again for sharing your experiences, it’s very encouraging and just what I needed to see!
Lovely read!
I have an idea to raise young women’s interest in CS. Create a cute visual media series – an online comic, Youtube videos, games, anything – that explains the basics of CS concepts in a visually-appealing manner. From what I’ve seen, there are several comics and video series for other subjects like physics that do fairly well because of the appealing manner by which they were presented:
Physics in a Minute: http://youtu.be/Af0_vWDfJwQ
What Color is a Mirror?: http://youtu.be/Af0_vWDfJwQ
Not so for CS. (Or, I can’t find anything good).
There aren’t many girls who don’t like looking at cute things.
Hi there Jean! Just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed reading your blog!
It was truly inspiring. I am also a female who is considering a degree in computer science. I am 22 and had a difficult time tying to decide what I wanted to go to college for. It is so nice to hear from a woman and a few others on here who share the same interests and to hear of your success. I enjoy that you sound confident, yet humble at the same time. 
It seems that that is so rare in other blogs I have read. 
I get a little discouraged sometimes because math is my weakest subject. Please do tell more! Thank you so much for sharing your blog and experience with us! You go girl!! 