Women and Programming
Why are there so few women programmers? We might first excavate the stereotypes that probably float around in most of our minds, certainly in mine – not that I believe the stereotypes, but they still reside in my head. First, there’s the idea that women prefer being around other people, prefer human connection, and simply don’t enjoy thinking at a deeply abstract level. So crunching code, or doing math, for most women just isn’t their sort of thing. But I’m told by a friend who knows about such things that it’s largely a myth that women are bad at math – my friend says the research shows that through high school, women and men do the same at math. It’s only when you get to the higher reaches of college or grad school that women lose interest or turn off, or something happens.
(Full disclosure: my “friend” is my boyfriend of many years who has written a lot about gender and keeps me informed on these things.)
Lawrence Summers, the ex-president of Harvard and former Secretary of the Treasury, got into trouble for suggesting at a conference that women lacked the innate ability that men have in science and math, causing a famous woman biologist at MIT to abruptly walk out. Previous generations of women report having to struggle like mad to survive in the “man’s world” of the sciences.
Some people argue that discrimination and socialization are the two things that keep women out of science and math. I wonder if anyone can cite instances of discrimination against women in the computer sciences... I would bet it exists. Other people believe that from infancy, girls are more interested in people and boys are more interested in objects. Two famous developmental psychologists, Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke from Harvard, debate these issues. Pinker thinks there are innate differences in both motivation and ability in men and women in relation to science; Spelke does not. One surprise: males show greater variance in intelligence at both ends of the spectrum. So there are more boys at the very low end of intelligence and at the high; hence, Pinker claims, there will be more men showing up at the high end, at the elite universities and as the big names in math and science, and presumably, in other fields as well. When it comes to intelligence, everyone is aware of the great brains, but few of us are aware of the other end of the spectrum, so we have no stereotypes of men as being dull, although we presumably would if our focus as a culture was on low intelligence.
As far as the way men treat women in the developer community, I can speak only about my experience working with male developers mainly inside Sun. I’ve interviewed and worked with many developers over the years, and they’ve treated me with the utmost respect, and in some cases, with considerable patience when I was slow to follow their train of thought. If the problem is a lack of respect for women among developers, I haven’t encountered it.
Enough babbling for now. More later if you're game. :) And, let me hear from you. Who are you? What are your interests? Hello World!
Hi Janice,
Especially poignant because, of course, the person credited as the first programmer was a woman: Ada Lovelace.
Ada was one of the few people who fully understood Charles Babbage's ideas about his Difference Engine and his Analytical Engine. She created a program for the Analytical Engine, which had the Analytical Engine ever actually been built, her program would have been able to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers.
More info. on Ada Lovelace here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Cheers,
Wayne
Posted by Wayne Horkan on February 27, 2008 at 07:09 PM PST #
Having 2 daughters and a wife all majored in science or engineering, I can testify that women are absolutely no less, if even better, in Math than men.
Having taught all 3 of them programming, I am sorry to say that they are too smart for software engineering. You need a bit dogged stubbornness, particularly in the early phases, to hunt down those minutia in code. The women in my family all lost interest in that quickly. Boys, particularly teenagers, are a lot more "dogged" than girls.
Posted by Sin-Yaw Wang on February 27, 2008 at 08:27 PM PST #
at first when I got into the tech field there really were no women around but now i am in a development group where the it's about 50-50. Having said that I think the main problem about getting women into the computer field is that they ( actually most everyone ) thinks it's only programming when that is not true - there are many other positions. One field that ,in general, women shine at is testing - women just have this way of getting everything in order down to the last detail. I think if women are shown that there are other disciplines in the computer industry they will show more interest.
Posted by Jv5181 on February 29, 2008 at 07:09 AM PST #
My wife is definitely better at math than I am! In fact, I think she'd make a great programmer.
Posted by Michael on March 09, 2008 at 02:37 PM PDT #
hi Janice,
I am prticularly happy about your post, thanks for this opportunity. I am an Entreprenuer in Training with a software development company in Ghana (a developing country in west africa). I cannot tell off hand how many women programmers there are in my country, but i'm pretty sure the number is very minimal. and i always get that second look when i mention that i'm a programmer in training.
In Ghana, the term progarmming is almost synonymous to the 'man', and its deemed to be a man's world.
In my organisation, there are 14 men and only three(3) young ladies. Gradually i believe the women programmers are gonna increase and we will rub shoulders with the men. but i must say that i have enjoyed quite a great deal of respect within the organisation.
Posted by Daisy Baffoe on April 10, 2008 at 09:19 AM PDT #
I beg all your pardons (I do have an excuse in that I was away on business/personal travel), for being super slow to respond to your most thoughtful and interesting comments to my blog. (I flunk badly Blogging 101 that says the blogger should be responsive to comments.) Thus, I'm going to respond to all your comments here (again my sincere apologies).
Here goes and thanks again--
Thanks Wayne for the reminder. I've read about Ada Lovelace --
Byron's daughter no less -- and the ambiguities regarding her
exact contributions, but it's clear she was very smart. I think
very smart women sometimes have to expend energy protecting male
egos, which may cut into their analytical juices. I wonder to what
extent there is a conflict between being what the world says is a
"good woman" and a good developer.
Thanks, Sin-Yaw Wang: Your comments are intriguing. I know what
you mean when you say boys are more "dogged" than girls and I
don't disagree with you. I wonder why though. Is it that
"dogged testosterone" that makes males more competitive and
ready to aggressively attack a problem, whereas equally
smart or smarter females don't feel that aggression? Is
it a matter of social conditioning that makes boys want
to be aggressive and girls afraid of it? I'm afraid we
have more questions than answers.
Thanks, Jv5181, I'd never heard that before about women's
gifts at testing. I wonder if anyone else can confirm your
observation.
Thanks Michael. Again, I wonder if it's the case that women
have equal brains but less motivation or interest to become
developers.
Thanks Daisy, so interesting to hear about Ghana
and your position there. I just got back from
travelling to Sun Tech Days events in both Australia and St. Petersburg, Russia, so have been thinking a lot about cultural differences and likenesses amongst developers globally. In both countries, the developer audience looked just like what
I see each year at the annual JavaOne event in San Francisco: a young and male group. In most respects, the developer audience looked the same to me at least in
each country. I guess that shouldn't surprise as businessmen often look the same worldwide. I say "men" because of the ubiquitous male-gendered *business suit* whereas
business women (having more options) dress with more variety. It will certainly be interesting to see if, when and where more women developers will appear on the scene...
Posted by Jan Heiss on April 15, 2008 at 04:21 PM PDT #
Here's a link that may help. Apparently, according to this article women programmers were among the majority when the field was first blossoming, but then the culture changed...see: http://makeworlds.org/node/146
Posted by Julianne Holroyd on September 14, 2009 at 12:17 PM PDT #
Thanks, Julianne. Very interesting information and news to me. Really appreciate you telling us about this.
Posted by Janice Heiss on September 15, 2009 at 10:27 AM PDT #
I was looking for information on women programmers when I can across this site. I am a woman programmer. I went back to school a year ago to enter the technology field as a programmer and hopefully get a reasonably paying job.
I am still a student, but in a coop term with a company that is pretty much all men. In school I was welcomed and respected, there were about 2 women to every 8 men and I did not see any disrespect from my professors or students around my age and younger.
I do see it in my workplace though. I am still a student so very nervous about making mistakes, and the technology I am working with is older so our courses didn't cover it. So there are plenty of times I ask for suggestions or guidance and am frequently talked down to or made to feel like I am being mocked.
Being a coop student I have no real sway in this company so I don't know who to talk to. I have been there two months, and am finally finding some individuals who recognize my contributions and value them, but I wish I didn't have the 3 days of the week where someone says a comment and simply ruins my whole day.
Unfortunately I signed a contract when I first started to stay on til the end of April, and I have considered trying to get out of it but am worried I will end up someplace worse.
I have always been interested in math and problem solving, but I am shy and senstive so it makes things hard. I think that is why I end up finding employment in other areas.
I really hope that all places of employment are not like this. I am also a single mom (to a fiercely smart daugher) so fighting at work all day to prove myself on top of going home and fighting to keep things together is exceedingly trying.
So I can see why many women might be interested in programming, but dissuaded because of happening into one of these enviroments, and having to deal with that all day and go home and take care of a family.
Posted by A.H on November 10, 2009 at 09:12 PM PST #
Hi A.H.,
Thank you for your posting, which makes it all too clear how far we have to go before women will receive the equal treatment they deserve in at least some technology companies. I do feel respected and supported working at Sun, but my role is that of a writer, so there the difference might reside. And some companies are far more enlightened and fair-minded than others. I think your posting also adds nuance, perception and subtlety to the concept of a hostile workplace. It’s very important to have allies in a workplace, people who understand you and know what you are experiencing and can offer support and perspective. It doesn’t have to be a woman in your case; I’ve known men who act as good allies to women in such situations. More often though, it is a woman...
It’s no fun feeling demeaned by your co-workers. Are there fellow workers you can talk to about this? There might be organizations that deal with women programmers who could help, if only as sources of support. And as you gain more skill, confidence and experience, people will show you more respect, which is a reason to stick it out.
Good luck and thanks again for sharing your experience. Your challenges really came across. Thanks for being so open.
Jan
Posted by Janice Heiss on November 20, 2009 at 12:32 PM PST #
Nice post. i am a software engineer myself...personally i wouldnt say men are better at math than women or vice versa. the simple truth is men are NOT women AND women are NOT men. We can have similar interests...but you must admit...we dont have the same interests. the only reason there are so few women programmers is that they are NOT interested. not that they cant be great at it...they can.
our society plays a big role...just imagine... boys grow up playing with toys that are "science" related... and that becomes part of them. they grow up wanting to be engineers etc...and this is opposite for women. i think u get my drift.
we are all equal...but we are not the same:)))
Kofi
Posted by Kofi on December 28, 2009 at 05:41 PM PST #
Thanks, Kofi, for your thoughtful comments.
I really appreciate them and the spirit in which you made them.
I think we are a long way from figuring out how much of men/women differences are caused by socialization and how much by something "deeper" and perhaps biological. Certainly women seem much more attracted to the helping professions than men and seem to generally get less pleasure out of working with abstract numbers or symbols or straight logic than men do. It will probably take a few more decades of research to find out exactly why.
Posted by Janice Heiss on January 07, 2010 at 03:42 PM PST #