Observation

[sargon94]

I hate to restart a long-dead thread, but it's been something that's been bugging me lately. The thread in question was about how (it seems) that programming is a male-dominated area. I work in a place with 6 programmers and dozens of physicists and I've noticed that while the male/female ratio among the physicists is about 50-50, all the programmers are male. Is there anything about programming itself that turns away women? or is it just unhappy circumstance? (unhappy since I'm a guy)

[chrisname]

I think certain subjects are just more interesting to males than to females, and vice versa. Typically, arts and (I think) languages are dominated by females while numerical and technical subjects are usually male-dominated. Maybe male and female brains develop in subtly different ways that lead to different interests, or maybe it's just society.

I'm surprised there are as many female as male physicists: usually phyiscs is a more male subject. Female scientists seemingly tend to be biologists and psychologists - more qualitative, rather than quantitative, subjects.

[ResidentBiscuit]

Interestingly enough, the first programmer was a female. Granted, it wasn't a "computer" in the modern sense. Ever heard of the language Ada? Named after her.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

[chrisname]

Yeah, but what is referred to as a "program" was part of her notes on Babbage's analytical engine (based on the notes of Luigi Menabrea, which Babbage asked her to translate from French); it was a description of an algorithm to compute Bernoulli numbers. It wasn't intended to be executed, nor was it ever executed (mostly because the analytical engine wasn't completed in her lifetime (nor Babbage's, for that matter)).

There have been females who contributed to the field more recently and more profoundly, anyway, and it's kind of insulting to them to keep bringing up Ada Lovelace when her contributions were relatively minor.

[sargon94]

<let's not turn this into a sh*tstorm about who did what>
Thanks for the link a Ada, I honestly had no clue who she was.

I'm surprised there are as many female as male physicists

Ya I was too, the place I work at may atypical for the usual trend, but I'm not complaining ;) (actually yes I am, everyone else I work with is 10+ years older than me)
But back to the topic, I was mostly wondering if there's something inherent about programming that turns girls/women away from the subject, and why that would be so.
<insert jokes about women and logic here>
I'm obviously not saying it's impossible for there to be one of course, just that from my own (admitedly limited) experience, it has yet to happen.

[Albatross]

Really, sargon? You haven't met any female programmers?

-Albatross

[Cheraphy]

@Albatross

There was a grand total of 3 ladies in my rotation of Comp Sci classes.

I've met several others online, and apparently my friend's fiance is going to school for computer science (very proud of her, she'll do amazing at it)

[sargon94]

@Albatross: Nope, not in real life. There was one female in an intro to c++ class I helped teach, but that's the only case it's come even close. If I remember right she was one of the best in there too.

[tition]

http://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-not-more-female-programmers

[ResidentBiscuit]

In my CS classes, we have two females.

[Need4Sleep]

I feel like its because of societies view of what a woman should be. Usually the female programmers are more counter culture than the usual woman(purely opinion based)

[MrHutch]

There's a few female programmers in my workplace. Still, I think this probably accounts for < 2% of the programmers here.

I read on a UK salary website yesterday that 94% of C++ programmers in the UK are male. I would consider this a relatively interesting statistic if I cared at all for statistics and considered them a realistic representation of their given topic. :-)