Why Are There So Few Female Programmers?
4:09 am April 25th, 2009I got into a discussion on Trogger this morning about the question of men far outnumbering women in computer science (in my experience, this is very true — in my college CS classes of 20-25 people I would usually be one of 2 women, and of the 20 or so people my year who actually graduated with CS degrees, I was the only woman); why is this, and what can be done about it?
I think a lot of this has to do with unconscious bias and role models. As Cassie pointed out in her original post, a big factor is probably stereotype threat — the finding that members of particular groups stereotyped at being bad at certain subjects actually do worse in tests of those subjects if they are told the tests show a gender/race disparity, or even just asked to list their race or gender, than if they take the tests without race or gender brought up. Research like the Implicit Association Test suggests that most people, even female scientists and mathematicians themselves, unconsciously find it easier to associate math and science with men than with women.
Implicit biases in a person aren’t evidence that the person is actively discriminatory — they’re subconscious ideas that we get from the racist, patriarchal society all of us are raised in. No matter how consciously convinced you are that women make great scientists and technologists, you probably also have the subconscious implicit biases that suggest otherwise. So it’s not so much a question of women thinking, “Hey, I probably won’t be good at programming because I’m a woman!”, as thinking, “Oh, I just don’t see myself as a programmer”, without realizing that this idea might come from subconsciously ingrained biases about what a programmer is like (male).
But these biases can be fought! Research associated with the IAT has shown that people show less evidence of implicit biases when holding counter-stereotypes in their minds; for example, you’re more likely to associate women with science if you read about Rosalind Franklin or Marie Curie right before taking the test. This is what Ada Lovelace Day is all about — promoting the women who are already successful in scientific and technical fields is a win for everybody. The more visible women in science and technology are, the less prevalent these implicit biases will be in the future, and the more girls and young women will be motivated to enter these fields.
14 Comments to “Why Are There So Few Female Programmers?”
Sarah Allen says:
April 26th, 2009 at 10:32 am
There’s a great book called “Women Don’t Ask” that cites a lot of studies where certain assumptions (held by the majority of women and a minority of men) limit success.
I think Ada Lovelace Day is a great idea (btw, your link is broken). The more people see and hear about strong technical women, the less it will seem like this is a field just for men. The stereotypes change one person at a time, until the numbers get a lot bigger than they are now.
I also add a note to the Trogger conversation with a link to an interesting paper which I blogged about a while back: http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2008/12/the-decline-of-women-in-cs-from-1940-1982/
clara says:
April 26th, 2009 at 11:38 am
I keep hearing about that book! I’ll put it on my to-read list.
Link is fixed — thanks for the heads-up.
Thanks for the link to your blog and article! I’m always glad to learn about more historical women in computing, and the analysis of why participation in the field by women has declined was really interesting.
Elizabeth Hackett says:
April 26th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Plus it really does not help the cause that the AP CS program is completely useless. I recall being somewhat inclined to experiment in the field senior year of high school, only to be told by my high school guidance counselor that AP CS is weak sauce, and also that the teacher was terrible (the latter was reliable advice, based on the opinions of my friends who had previously taken classes from him). Looking back, I’m baffled why the guidance counselor didn’t just push me to do freshman CS classes at UW-Madison, instead of the math classes I did take, which turned out to be a total disaster.
(Also not encouraging was my mom, who had a less-than-awesome time during her 13-year career as a programmer.)
Ethan Stanislawski says:
April 27th, 2009 at 12:56 am
As someone who knows next to nothing about programming but does know about the peculiarities of the internet, I was a lot more disturbed by the recent report that 87% of contributors to Wikipedia are male: (http://bit.ly/1OCJ). I had a friend who edits Wikipedia who was shocked the number was that low. That leads to incredibly well-designed pages for porn stars, but incredibly biased pages on prominent feminists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf). 87% of the contributors is enough to shape an opinion on Wikipedia and overpower anyone who points out bias (see the discussion page), even if bias clearly does exist. And yet, Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the first source of exposure for everything. By Wikipedia’s standards, then, Marilyn Chambers is a much more important person than Betty Friedan (or for that matter, Socrates)
clara says:
April 29th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Elizabeth — yeah, intro CS classes across the board really need to be retooled. And of course, having role models from the computing world who didn’t like it is a push in the other direction as well.
Ethan — wow, that’s a really good point, yikes! I think most people who look for info on Wikipedia expect some degree of bias in the size of articles (like big, well-researched articles about pop culture stars vs. smaller, skimpier articles about important historical figures), but they probably aren’t also taking into account that the articles’ point of view is influenced by this gender imbalance (there are probably cultural and racial imbalances too — the link you shared doesn’t give country/race breakdowns for contributors but I would imagine it’s disproportionately white Americans).
Mike says:
June 28th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
That’s probably one of the reasons for the lack of female programmers in general. However the more interesting question is the lack of good female programmers. I do not know even one, and I am a M.Sc. in CS/maths and have worked in some large companies and with many people. There were female programmers among them. But they were all - how should I put it - not very strong. They either lacked initiative and the ability to formulate and implement a solution for a complex problem by themselves, or the end result of their work was somehow flawed, or they just needed forever. It’s not a bias, just an observation. I dont know why, but I am not familiar with even one good program written by a woman, or predominantly by women.
I think this has simply got to do with the fact that women on average aren’t as good at solving formal, abstract, complex problems. I’ve seen evidence for this repeated for many years over and over again. It is less obvious at highschool level where problems are primitive and almost all of the population attends (so even the less capable males), and thus girls statistically are similar to boys, or perhaps even better. However, the picture drastically changes at university and post-university level. In hard sciences, there are very few capable women. VERY few. Similar with programming. On a simple level - basic HTML, web design, simple scripting, generally easy-to-grasp highlevel languages - women are still somewhat present. Not a majority, but present. However, if you go into pointer-heavy hardware-near C/C++, Perl, generics, or any other more cryptic and harder-to-comprehend things, women practically disappear. A female Perl or LISP hacker is practically an oxymoron. I’ve never even heard of one.
IMO the only real explanation that fits that consistent picture is that women have more trouble with complex abstract concepts. Which is confirmed by personal experience as well - and not just my own.
It’s just a no-no to say in public.
Clara says:
June 28th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Mike — as you can probably imagine, I disagree with pretty much everything you’ve said
Mike says:
June 29th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Hehe, I figured :) just wanted to offer a diametrically different standpoint.
Mike says:
June 29th, 2009 at 7:37 am
As an addendum, the degree to which saying anything like that - as obvious as it is to most people in hard sciences - is taboo for the public nowadays, is perhaps best illustrated by the mass hysteria caused by former Harvard’s president’ Larry Summers speech on the reasons for underrepresentation of females in tenured positions (which subsequently forced him to resign). Here, you may want to read it:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505844
His main points, if you think about them without prejudice, all make sense, and are clearly observable in practice. And his speech is actually rather cautiously formulated. I’d be a lot more straightforward - but then again, I’m not the Harvard president.
Rhonda B says:
July 5th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Hey there Clara. In response to the articles written by you and Cassie, I felt inclined to write one as well. Mine may not be as fancy-written as yours, but I tried to make my point clear :X
http://sugar2sweet.blogspot.com/2009/07/female-programmers-interesting.html
Clara says:
July 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Rhonda — thanks for sharing your post!
I’m not sure you totally got what I was saying about stereotype threat and implicit bias, though. It’s pretty insidious and affects people on a subconscious level. You say “if programming is a field that you really like, you’re not going to let some alpha male spook you”; this may be true for confident women who have had the opportunity to get some programming experience, but the thing about implicit bias is that it affects people long before they have the chance to even get enough experience to decide whether they like something. So there are probably lots of women out there who would be really into programming if they’d tried it out, but never even thought about it because of these subconscious effects.
You also say you’re not a feminist — but you sound like one! Have you read this essay?
Keegan Wade says:
February 16th, 2010 at 9:10 am
I recently read a book by Louann Bezandine, a neuroscientist, who suggests that hormonal factors play a significant role in why females tend to stay away from careers such as programming. Check out my blog post: http://www.keeganwadehomepage.com/technicalpsychology/why-so-few-female-programmers-
Clara says:
February 16th, 2010 at 11:50 am
Keegan — LOL! That book has quite the reputation for inaccuracy and non-existent research in scientific circles. The statistic about how many words women & men say every day, for example, is just MADE UP: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/beckies.html, http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004370.html, http://www.inklingmagazine.com/articles/book-club-the-female-brain-by-louann-brizendine/
But even if this were true, in order for the explanation you posit to be plausible, we’d have to see statistically significant evidence that women choose careers with more social interaction and men choose careers with less, across the board — you’d see more men in relatively solitary occupations, like humanities grad school, and more women in more talkative occupations, like elected politician. What you’re doing is using “technical field” as a proxy for “doesn’t involve much social interaction”, which seems like questionable methodology.
Keegan Wade says:
February 17th, 2010 at 1:47 am
Carla,
Thank you for informing me of those discrepancies – I should done more investigating before posting. I edited my blog post and cited your help.
I agree with some of Brizandine’s detractors in that she overextended herself throughout her book. Indeed, I included a blurb at the end of my blog post to warn against taking her conclusions too seriously.
I’m not sure the entire book is useless, however. At the least Brizandine’s case studies suggest a linkage between estrogen and an emphasis towards relationships, interaction, and emotion. If such traits are not well suited to computer programming (vs. other job types), then that is interesting.
Keegan
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