Why Women Dislike Computing

Why do women still avoid computer science like the plague when they're now already near parity representation in undergraduate mathematics? Ernie's 3D Pancakes gives the real, unvarnished answer:

No, Bill, it's because most people in the software industry are glorified factory workers. Highly trained specialists, yes, but in the end, most of them are just putting more bolts on more widgets (and trying to deal with with someone else's crappy widget design) to make more money for people like you. Booooring. Boring boring boring.

Let's face it, the IT industry has a serious image problem, one no amount of dotcom mania has managed to eradicate: who can blame young women for not wanting to sit indoors all day chugging out yet another "enterprise application", alongside spotty-faced geeks with minimal social skills, even worse hygiene, and inordinate obsessions with Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons and Natalie Portman?*

It's at times like these that I feel a renewed appreciation for David Krumholtz's work on "Numb3rs", the show's silly name notwithstanding ...

*Er, not that there's anything wrong with the last - hey, what can I say, she's hot!

Comments

[Todd Fletcher]

It's actually OK being an IT worker as long as there are plenty of other, normal people in the same office. Then you'll at least have some girls around to flirt with.

At one job I had the entire IT department was isolated on it's own floor - 1 woman to 60 men. It was HELL.

[angua]

As a girl who likes computing just fine, I gotta say that I disagree. It depends where you work, of course, but, by my experience, most computer guys I know are many kinds of cool. I spent a couple of years at IBM, and EVERY guy in my department spent the weekends canoeing in the wild, drumming in a punk band, filming the great Canadian movie or studing obscure forgieng languages. Barely a D&D afficionado in the bunch. (And he spent HIS weekends at a rave a couple of times a month.) Not to say that there aren't any geeks around, for a given definition of "geek", but... I think you do have to be bright to be good at computers, and so you are often bright enough to figure out hygiene and social skills by the time you hit your twenties.

[Abiola Lapite]

"I think you do have to be bright to be good at computers, and so you are often bright enough to figure out hygiene and social skills by the time you hit your twenties."

You're correct in saying this, but I'm talking more about the *perception* others have of the IT industry rather than the reality of it. Let's face it, pictures of the dowdy looking shlubs at Microsoft circa 1977, or Bill Gates himself before he was forced to learn grooming, don't do much to contradict the worst stereotypes.

[Factory]

"Booooring. Boring boring boring."
As is every other office job. If jobs were not boring, then you wouldn't have to pay ppl to do it.

"alongside spotty-faced geeks with minimal social skills, even worse hygiene, and inordinate obsessions with Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons and Natalie Portman?*"
Hmm that's a bad cliche, in my experience the only reliable interest that IT ppl have is an interest in computers, which IMHO is the more likely reason for there not being so many women, ie the lack of an interest in computers above and beyond what is strictly required to do their job.