Posted 12/01/2008 at 10:44:40pm

Some of the people here are saying nearly contradictory things.

I personally don't think it's the "nerd and geek" stereotypes that are keeping women out of the field. Certainly not that alone. It's the Dilbert stereotypes that are much more dangerous. I mean, you can sell nerds and geeks as cool. Think Steve Woz and Steve Jobs.

If you look at the graph on the NYT page mentioned, you see an interesting trend. Girls followed the guys during the 80's CS boom, but they DIDN'T follow the guys during late 90's dot-com boom. Part of that could have to do with generational differences but I think it also has to do with how the field was characterized during those time periods.

The 80's boom was much more about the marvel of what potential computers and technology had. Sure, there was lots of hype and people were making money, but it wasn't so much, "How can I make a quick buck off this latest technology?" It was explorative and rightfully geeky.

The 90's were when we supposedly "legitimized" the field and tried to kill the geek image, but in reality all we were doing is making the field less friendly, more hostile, more competitive. More money hungry people came along who don't care about the art. In academia, this attitude boiled up, as producing CS majors became a soulless industry. I don't blame ANYONE for wanting to stay miles away from this. I could barely stomach this cold impersonal discipline myself, if i weren't for my love of the technology I grew up with.

The thing is that you'll find plenty of girls who enjoy math and science. But they're usually introverted, and not into aggressive activities. Furthermore they prefer not to just use their brains to show off.

You'll also find the girls who want to become power-players, that are ultra outgoing, and enjoy competing with guys. But the thing is that these girls don't usually like doing math and science. I don't think Hillary Clinton or Martha Stewart would ever consider majoring in CS.

Good luck finding girls who like math and science, and are hungry to dominate and compete. It's hard enough finding guys who meet that criteria. You'll find a couple of nerds like me who will put up with all the crap in this field, because we'd have to compete with alpha males anyway even if we did something else, so we might as well do what we like. And then you'll find some nerds who've tried to convince themselves that there now some kind of macho nerd that people are going to suddenly take seriously. And finally, you'll find the sharks and robots.

So change the culture, and we'll start seeing the trend reverse I predict. If you don't believe it's possible to have a lot of girls in Computer Science, there's this study of a university in Armenia, which found that 80% of the CS students there were female! If they can do 80%, I think we can do a bit better than 0.3%.