Over the last several months, I’ve witnessed many controversial discussions among my friends, in my San Francisco community, and on online forums about James Demore’s memorandum. People of both genders are wrestling with the fact that fewer women go into computer science and trying to find explanations that balance their experience, empathy, and ethical aspirations. I’ve heard lots of good-intentioned people consider discouraging theories of biological superiority because they can’t find any other compelling explanation (like this post on HackerNews, for example). As a woman who studied computer science, worked at some of the top tech firms, and has founded a software startup, I’d like to share my take on why fewer women go into CS and my opinion on how to address the issue.
[...] I graduated from Stanford with a BS in Mathematical & Computational Sciences in 2015, interned at Apple as a software engineer, and worked as an Associate Product Manager at Google 2015-2017. In October, I founded a video editing website called Kapwing and am working on the startup full-time. Although I’m only 25, I’ve already seen many of my female friends choose majors/careers outside of STEM and have been inside of many predominately-male classes, organizations, and teams.
This article is one person’s humble perspective, and I do not speak for every woman in tech. But hopefully having the view of someone who has “been there” can help people trying to understand why there are fewer women in tech.
(Score: 2) by romlok on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:59AM (1 child)
Being "pro-social" doesn't mean emphasising one's social life over work. It means finding more value in doing things which improve people's lives, than merely because they're intellectually interesting.
From my observations at least, you tend to find a lot more (neuro-typical) female interest in projects and businesses which emphasise the ultimate social benefit, over ones which emphasise technological achievement or novelty: eg. "helping artists get funding" over "a website for collecting donations"; or "letting people walk again" over "building robot legs".
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:18PM
So, applied rather than pure science? It's fine to use a possible future (or current) application of the skills and knowledge as a motivator. Hell, I bet almost everyone who learns programming or electronics has some things in particular that they like to do with the skills. But the applications come after the learning and study. She's talking about struggles during the studying. She's also implying that a lot of women don't even realize what the potential applications of software development are, at least when they're school age. I suppose that might be true for some, up to a point. Surely though software and tech is getting so ubiquitous now that kids must see the applications in every day life? Is it a wood for trees thing?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?