[TUHS] Women in computing

[Seth Morabito]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2019, at 11:30 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Deborah Scherrer
> 
>     > In the early days of Usenix, I used to keep track of the women.
>     > Initially, about 30% of the organization was female.  That dropped every
>     > year.
> 
> Interesting. Any ideas/thoughts on what was going on, what caused that?

I have seen some interesting stories about this phenomenon. There was a piece on NPR's "Planet Money" in 2014 that offers one possible explanation that home computers in the 1980s were more commonly bought for boys than for girls, and that this eventually created an experience gap. Prior to the home computer revolution, they reason, no experience with computers was assumed when pursuing math and computer science in college, but afterward, experience with home computers was assumed, and boys had more of it than girls.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

> 	     Noel

-Seth
-- 
  Seth Morabito
  Poulsbo, WA
  web at loomcom.com