ELLEN SPERTUS, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? She published a 124-page paper, “Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?”, that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field. The year was 1991.I've worked with very few women software developers, in about a ten to one ratio. I think there may be a connection to Autism. Autism is three times more likely in men than women. Asperger's Syndrome reads a lot like a description of the most stereotypical nerd behavior. Austism occurs in a spectrum from low functioning to high functioning, and in many cases the person may not be impaired, just socially awkward with unusual interests. How many programmers have this shadow syndrome instance of Asperger's? People like that seem to gravitate to technical fields, particularly software. There is a special kind of thinking that is required to write software well. Almost anyone can be taught the rudiments of programming and go through the motions, but very few have the talent. It's like perfect pitch, you either have it or you don't.
Computer science has changed considerably since then. Now, there are even fewer women entering the field. Why this is so remains a matter of dispute.
What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.
When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling....
UPDATE
Girls with Asperger's are not being diagnosed with it. [Link]
It's not uncommon for girls with Asperger's to go undiagnosed well into adulthood. Like heart disease, this high-functioning autism spectrum disorder is 10 times more prevalent in males, so doctors often don't think to look for it in females. But some experts have begun to suspect that unlike heart disease, Asperger's manifests differently, less obviously in girls, and that factor is also causing them to slip through the diagnostic cracks. This gender gap may have implications for the health and well-being of girls on the spectrum, and some specialists predict that as we diagnose more girls, our profile of the disorder as a whole will change. Anecdotally, they report that girls with Asperger's seem to have less motor impairment, a broader range of obsessive interests, and a stronger desire to connect with others, despite their social impairment.
1 comment:
Fascinating. Your hypothesis makes sense, and the Shadow Syndrome explanation seems to validate your thinking. It could explain, for example, why the valedictorian of my high school class, who graduated from MIT with multiple degrees, even took his humanities courses in French because they were too easy in English, wound up as a handyman, doing odd jobs and participating in tiddlywinks competitions. Unrealized potential, decreased social skills, etc. Or, it could have been pot...
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