[Equal] NY Times Article: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

[Keller Seitz Monika (Prs)]

Dear Equals

Here an interesting article to read...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really-keeps-women-out-of-tech.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full%C2%AEion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article&_r=2&referer=

Conclusion: it's a sum of cultural aspects that make them feel that they don't fit in!

Some excerpts...

...Figuring out why people who choose not to do something don't in fact do it is like attempting to interview the elves who live inside your refrigerator but come out only when the light is off. People already working for a company might tell you what makes them unhappy. But these complaints won't necessarily pinpoint the factors that keep women and minorities away from studying computer science in the first place.

...For the past six years, Sapna Cheryan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, has been studying why girls in high school are significantly less likely than boys to sign up for a class in computer science, take the Advanced Placement exam in that subject, or express interest in computer science as a career, and why female college students are four times less likely than men to major in computer science or engineering, even though they test extremely well in math.

...Over and over, Dr. Cheryan and her colleagues have found that female students are more interested in enrolling in a computer class if they are shown a classroom (whether virtual or real) decorated not with "Star Wars" posters, science-fiction books, computer parts and tech magazines, but with a more neutral décor - art and nature posters, coffee makers, plants and general-interest magazines.

...The researchers also found that cultural stereotypes about computer scientists strongly influenced young women's desire to take classes in the field. At a young age, girls already hold stereotypes of computer scientists as socially isolated young men whose genius is the result of genetics rather than hard work.

...In another experiment, Dr. Cheryan and her colleagues arranged for female undergraduates to talk to an actor pretending to be a computer science major. If the actor wore a T-shirt that said "I CODE THEREFORE I AM" and claimed to enjoy video games, the students expressed less interest in studying computer science than if the actor wore a solid shirt and claimed to enjoy hanging out with friends - even if the T-shirt-clad actor was another woman.

...Such superficial stereotypes might seem laughably outdated. And yet, studies show that the public's image of a scientist hasn't changed since the 1950s.

...Men sometimes scoff that if young women let such nebulous factors deter them from careers in physics or computer science, the women are exercising their own free choice, and if girls were tough enough, such exaggerated stereotypes and feelings of discomfort wouldn't discourage them.

...Yet I wonder how many young men would choose to major in computer science if they suspected they might need to carry out their coding while sitting in a pink cubicle decorated with posters of "Sex and the City," with copies of Vogue and Cosmo scattered around the lunchroom. In fact, Dr. Cheryan's research shows that young men tend not to major in English for the same reasons women don't pick computer science: They compare their notions of who they are to their stereotypes of English majors and decide they won't fit in.

...To make computer science more attractive to women, we might help young women change how they think about themselves and what's expected of them. But we might also diversify the images of scientists they see in the media, along with the décor in the classrooms and offices in which they might want to study or work.

...At the college level, some fairly simple changes have proved stunningly effective. At Harvey Mudd College<http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went-from-10-female-computer-science-majors-to-40/>, strategies such as creating separate introductory classes for students with no programming experience and renaming courses ("Introduction to programming in Java" became "Creative approaches to problem solving in science and engineering using Python") led to an increase in the percentage of computer science majors who are female, from 10 to 40 percent, in four years.

Best greetings, your Equal-Team

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