RE: Why are there significantly less women in S.T.E.M fields, what we can do to help
December 23, 2015 at 7:40 am
I found this very interesting ...
When Women Stopped Coding
Up until 1984 37% of computer science graduates were female. And then it started to decline. The main cause seems to be that personal computers being sold to boys only and not to both genders.
I'm a woman working in Computer Science and there have been many times now that I've wished that I could move to another career or had chosen differently, especially when I lived in Germany. When I went to university about 10% of the students were women. I can count a total of four other female programmers as colleagues over a 20 year career.
I'm working as a software engineer in a world class institute for Biology at the moment and they have an equal gender balance. I've never worked somewhere before where there have been so many women.
From what I can tell people have in mind a certain image when they think of a good programmer. They will then compare everyone to this image. So if they have only ever worked with young, unwashed, white male programmers with Aspergers (just as an example), then they will have far more trouble truly believing in the ability of a candidate who is a different race, gender, demographic or lifestyle choice. So this doesn't just affect women. I've seen explicit ageism take place when hiring for example even though I wasn't the target of it.
This doesn't just result in not being hired, but being paid less, fewer promotions, not being valued as much and being given fewer opportunities.
The only thing any of us can do is to be consciously aware of your own unconscious biases in the workplace. We all have them.
When Women Stopped Coding
Up until 1984 37% of computer science graduates were female. And then it started to decline. The main cause seems to be that personal computers being sold to boys only and not to both genders.
I'm a woman working in Computer Science and there have been many times now that I've wished that I could move to another career or had chosen differently, especially when I lived in Germany. When I went to university about 10% of the students were women. I can count a total of four other female programmers as colleagues over a 20 year career.
I'm working as a software engineer in a world class institute for Biology at the moment and they have an equal gender balance. I've never worked somewhere before where there have been so many women.
From what I can tell people have in mind a certain image when they think of a good programmer. They will then compare everyone to this image. So if they have only ever worked with young, unwashed, white male programmers with Aspergers (just as an example), then they will have far more trouble truly believing in the ability of a candidate who is a different race, gender, demographic or lifestyle choice. So this doesn't just affect women. I've seen explicit ageism take place when hiring for example even though I wasn't the target of it.
This doesn't just result in not being hired, but being paid less, fewer promotions, not being valued as much and being given fewer opportunities.
The only thing any of us can do is to be consciously aware of your own unconscious biases in the workplace. We all have them.
