Unlocking the Clubhouse

By the age of five or six, children develop a sense for male vs. female activities. At that point, the genders split in the toys they play with and activities they partake in.

In computing, researchers found that fathers play with sons 50% more than daughters, while also spending more time introducing boys to computers.

As girls grow, they start to view computers as masculine, often referring to the actual computer as a “he” and during teenage years computers are much more likely to be found in a boy’s bedroom.

When girls do receive encouragement in computing from parents, it often comes during high school or college. But by this point, many girls feel behind.

Entering into high school and computer science classes, males are far more likely to have prior programming experience.

The incoming experience gap between boys and girls contributes to girls feeling inadequate and behind. They start to question whether they belong in computer science at all.

The girls researched often said that boys are obsessed with computers, and these girls didn’t want to dedicate their life to programming. This obsession gap and seeming requirement further adds to questions of belonging among girls.

To combat this, Carnegie Mellon successfully implemented four paths to entry in computer science based on previous experience level. This right-sizing allowed more novice students of both genders to self-select into the appropriate level and feel more comfortable, which reduced churn.

Most computer science classes are taught in a dry manner that’s all about the programming. This isolated approach often appeals to males, but not females.

Women are more interested in the opportunities created by connecting computer science to other domains. They value the application, not just the technology itself. For instance, how computer science can be applied in biology or social change.

Women in computer science programs often hear that they were only accepted because they are female. Implicit or explicit in these comments is the belief that the women are not smart enough or good enough at programming to truly participate.

The result of these divisive and derogatory comments is a set of lower expectations for female computer science students. As you can imagine, someone expecting less of you based on your gender would feel demotivating and unwelcoming.

International female computer science students seem to be more resilient to these challenges than their American peers.

The researchers note that these women often come from cultures where hard work and resiliency are viewed as the keys to success, whereas many Americans believe raw intelligence is more critical.

Likewise, these international students were less exposed to the male hacker identity and expectation than the Americans, so they were less likely to believe that an obsession with computers is necessary to success.

The authors make a useful distinction between the values of computer science – program performance and programmer speed, which are highly valued by men and our existing computer science curriculum – vs. qualities valued in software engineering, which are often valued by women:

• Composability
• Extensibility
• Flexibility
• Maintainability
• Readability
• …and so on