What can we do to encourage more women to join the programming field?

Question

I saw this question that got closed for being subjective and argumentative and this one on how to encourage someone in general. I felt like the first was a valid question, but perhaps the question was put forward in the wrong manner. The second doesn't seem to address this particular issue.

As a father of a daughter with very good math and logic skills who is also very creative, I'd like to know what I can do to encourage her and, what can we do in general to encourage more women programmers. I'm aware of WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) chapters at many schools and I know that most colleges have programs to reward qualified women who enter these fields with scholarships, but it seems to be a matter of socialization. There just aren't that many women who choose to enter the field. I, at least, haven't encountered any outright discrimination and where I work there are a significant number of women in IT positions, just not programmers.

Your thoughts -- perhaps, together we can come up with some insight.

EDIT I'm not trying to push my daughter into anything. At this point she's working hard to become a professional ballerina and I'm very supportive ($$) of that. Ballerina's don't have a very long career, however. Joining the programming field seems to be daunting to women, partly because the community is overwhelmingly male. This is similarly true for male nurses, for example, although I do know a few. While I've talked with my sons about being programmers it occurred to me that I had never really thought of my daughter following in my career path. Thus the question...

Answer 1

Perhaps you could work on a mini-project with her. Whether it is a website with code behind, or something else entirely. Introducing her to programming itself might be enough for her to love it and want to pursue it.

If she doesn't have fun doing the project, then you probably shouldn't try to push her into it anymore.

Answer 2

Why don't we just educate boys and girls equally well, and let them decide what they are interested in? I have never seen a need to drive a gender into an area where they are supposedly underrepresented. When you change the question slightly you can see how illogical it is.

What can we do to get more woman to play video games?

We need to realize that regardless of ability, men and women on average have different desires. Certainly they should have equal opportunity, but there is nothing right or wrong about more men being programmers than women when both are given equal opportunity to choose it as their profession.

Answer 3

Ask her if its something she might be interested in.. if so teach her, give her a few simple problems and if she likes that kinda thing she might end up programming, but i don't think you should be overly eager, i'm sure she's find her own path.

Answer 4

There are countries where the majority of the developers are woman. But not in the western part of the world.

The woman developers I know, are without exception very good. Which implies a high threshold for them to enter this field.

And there are other obstacles. Most women like to work part time, and that is often a big problem in the programming world. Worse, overtime is fairly accepted, and face it. It is no fun if you have to leave your collegues working overtime because you have to get the kids (an yes there are men facing this problem too, but unfortunately it is a big obstacle for woman).

So what we can do, is make the developing world more attractive for woman. In the end it is a win win situation for al of us.

Answer 5

I think that the disparity is cultural in nature. There's not anything we as developers can or should do about it, in general. Of course, if some of us are being misogynists then that will certainly not encourage women to join us in the workplace, but that's true of any male-dominated field, not just developers.

As to the cause of gender roles and in turn gender inequality, any discussion of that is seriously treading on holy war territory. It's way, way beyond the scope of this site and definitely not programming-related.

Answer 6

More women will become Programmers, Engineers, and Scientists when society starts respecting those professions.

Is it any wonder why most kids want to be professional athletes, or movie stars instead? just how we as a society view them. I do think women are more likely to give in to the "group think" type of peer pressure. You find more men and fewer women who are willing to go against the consensus.

This is especially true in school. We suffer from a self destructive cycle of kids ostracizing good students, especially among girls and minorities.

How do we fix it? Kids, although they will deny this, mimic their parents behaviors. They will reflect your values.

Answer 7

I am a female developer and my father is also a developer. I don't feel that I was pressured into the IT industry, but he did help me out when I showed an interest of my own, buying me books and making sure I had the software I needed. I think that just from your daughter being aware of your work, she may consider it in the future.

All that above would apply regardless of whether you had a son or a daughter, though. For me, being female was fairly irrelevant, because it was the career I wanted, and that's just how the IT industry is, like accepting that a ballerina doesn't have a very long career, I knew that I would be in a male-dominated industry.

Answer 8

Respectfully (yes respectfully), I am so tired of this question. The programming field is the way it is and if women are attracted to it then so be it.

I am the father of THREE daughters and if any one of them shows some aptitude then I will encourage them to be programmers (probably by first having them maintain their own web pages when they are old enough), but no more than if they showed some aptitude towards the medical field.

When I hear this question it gets me upset about the other questions that never get asked or studied by industry executives and other higher ups.

How can we encourage more women to become garbage collectors? The pay is actually very good and I have NEVER seen a woman loading the garbage at the end of my driveway on Monday.

How can we encourage more men to become preschool teachers? EVERY SINGLE ONE I have ever seen is a woman.

How come when I waited tables and men made up only 25% of the wait staff the men ended up taking the garbage out EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. I am not exaggerating, all the guys would keep track.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader why you don’t see THESE questions and others like them asked on the evening news.

It would be interesting to see an honest study about the original question IFF my questions would be included...

Answer 9

Personally, I just don't think it's a great career when you add in all the factors. Fincancially it beats ditch digging for sure. However, a person with the same level of intelligence and ability to get themselves through tough school curricula and the drive to keep their knowledge up to date after graduation could easily choose Law School or Medical School and have a whole lot more money and respect to show for their effort at the end of the day.

A better question might be "why are men so dumb?"

Answer 10

Diversity is the issue. We work in a field that requires collaboration. The more backgrounds that come to the table, the better the collaboration and the better the solution.

I have worked in companies where 1/2 the development team was female; I have worked where females make up a very small minority. In both extremes the employer would have said that they have an open and welcoming environment. For the first, yes, for the second, nope--in the job where there were very few women, the lack of welcome is subtle. For example, lunch is "for the guys" and everything centers around boy scouts. After a while, these subtle items really grate.

I can understand why the career drop out rate is higher for women. Let's face it, we live in a very fast moving field. You need to keep up. A 40 hour week is for others, we need to study to keep up. After a while we all get tired. If you don't have a support structure (e.g., coworkers you really like working with), you're more likely to move off and find another line of work.

So, why don't more women enter the field? That's the $10K question, but equally so, how many minorities have you seen in your work place? No, not foreign born, but African Americans, Latinos? Does it represent the population? In my experience, no. Maybe on the coasts, but not where I've been. Is it because there aren't role models? Or, as I believe, is it because we are percieved by society as not being a professional career? Afterall, [grrr]anyone can write software[/grrr]

I'll say it again...in a field that thrives on collaboration and exchanging of ideas, the diversity is important. And, I don't think we have it. The poster has a good question; and it is a question that we should be talking about.

Answer 11

I think the original question was how to encourage women to join the programming field.

If the woman in question is one's own daughter, I think the answer is simple: "You can do and be whatever you want, and I will support you any way I can." At one point my daughter aspired to be a hairdresser and I said "that's great!" Later she wanted to be a lawyer and study at a technical school (?) and I said "Go for it!". Now she's a star salesperson in a highly technical area.

Other women who've accomplished things in technical fields report 1) support of their parents/husbands, 2) support of certain teachers and mentors. They also report fighting an up hill battle in certain male-dominated environments, where often the males are oblivious to the issue. So we should listen to the feedback from women to see how things could be improved.

It's not just women, by the way, but other people who exerience discrimination as well.

Answer 12

Here's my personal anecdote. Prior to college I always enjoyed math and science classes, but it had never occurred to me to try programming. Nobody had ever suggested it, and I didn't have friends who were into it, so it simply wasn't on my radar. Then, as a freshman in college I decided to take my first programming course. This was inspired by a letter I received from the Computer Science department suggesting I might like it. I took the class and was hooked.

Answer 13

I've seen interesting POVs from this article (read the comments) and this one from PJ Eby.

The first one is good because I could read women's point of view, aside from just speculating myself. I picked up these two facts, said by Shelley and Kathy Sierra respectively, that I think could summarize all that was said in the post.

(...) taking IT out of it's own little closet and integrating it with other fields is a great idea (...)

, mainly because

They believe the computer is simply a tool, however crucial it is to their lives. It's something you use to do other things.