My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer

Re:My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer by binbasti on Monday January 17, 2011 @05:03AM (#2111738)

Last year I attended a panel about women in tech on the fairly new CCC congress "SIGINT" in Cologne, which focusses more on society and politics. The panel itself was rather boring and not really insightful, but during the Q&A a young woman from Eastern Europe pointed out something interesting: she stated that in her country there's a 1:1 male/female ratio in all science fields at the universities, including computer science. I haven't checked the facts, but even if that is not entirely true, the difference to Western countries is astounding. She went on to say that the problem is entirely with culture, and all aspects of it, and that the numbers were just reflecting that.

The women on the panel, who were all Westerners, couldn't even comment on that. They were just plain speechless, and rightly so, because most of their arguments involving bullying boys, mother nature, and other standard points were pretty much refuted by the simple fact that there already exist places in the world where this topic is not even an issue. And it's not the ones you would usually relate to human progress.

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Re:My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer by binbasti on Monday January 17, 2011 @05:13AM (#2111755)

I found some numbers, albeit a little old:

Exemplar: Bulgaria

The participation rate for women in these fields is slightly higher than for men: 7.8 percent of the female college-age cohort obtained an NS&E degree in Bulgaria in 1992; 7.2 percent of males in this age group obtained such a degree in that same year.

In 1992, women obtained 57 percent of all university degrees. In addition, they obtained half of the engineering degrees, 70 percent of the natural science degrees, and 73 percent of the mathematics and computer science degrees. These percentages have not changed since 1975 (Stretenova, 1994).

http://anitaborg.org/files/womenhightechworld.pdf

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Re:My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer by capstone on Monday January 17, 2011 @03:41PM (#2113382)

Growing up in Russia, I remember the stereotype that girls are better suited for sciences because they are more studious (the exact Russian word is hard to translate but basically means that one is physically able as well as personally inclined to sit down and study for a long period of time). Boys on the other hand were considered too boisterous to pay attention for very long.

Of course, this stereotype was perceived as The Truth. Mother Nature, backed up by statistically demonstrable demographic evidence. Can't argue with that, right? And so it goes...

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