But then art (and I am talking primarily about art, not modelling) is a problem, which requires further explanation. Because artists seem to be, at least to me, totally obsessed with nudity (and I think sex, too, but feel free to disagree here). So why that attracts women, in droves in fact, if they are put off by it?
My answer is that the hypothesis is wrong. Females are not put off by computer scientists, that's not the reason why they don't do computer science. In particular, I doubt you would find CS people more sexist than other group of men, I actually believe they are mostly nicer (and also lot more honest about their views, which can strongly bias it).
The reason why women don't do CS is they lack confidence and positive role models to do it. You can actually see the differentiation happening in high school, where no one really knows how it works on the workplace yet. And that's where, or maybe even earlier, the problem needs to be addressed. It's probably cultural and frankly, whether the cause is wrong beliefs of men or wrong beliefs of women is irrelevant for the solution (wrong here in the sense "differing from reality").
Edit: You could argue (I think you do) that the cultural norms about nudity in art and computing should be different. I don't disagree (in fact, they are, which makes it a moot point anyway). But then, isn't this a case of someone projecting their own cultural norms to somebody else? Is that really a failure of some culture that it doesn't respect your (rather arbitrary and harmless, compared to art) norms?
However if the finding is that if you make it nicer, more women will choose it, that seems rather trivial. Of course if you make something more attractive, more people will choose it.
In computer science (either academia or industry) we have a recruiting problem and we're facing an uphill battle. We have to care about how it looks.
Someone else has already shared some formal research on how other "in-group" signals have exactly this effect. I don't think it's much of a stretch to suggest that "public consumption of heterosexual-male-targeted erotica" could have a similar effect. But even without that research, the fact is that plenty of women have been very explicit that nude or sexual images in the workplace make them feel unwelcome, unequal, and in some cases even threatened. Regardless of the deep causes of those reactions, the experience is undeniably real for the people who report it. And that comes back to the parent poster's point: if your company environment welcomes nude or erotic imagery without good reason, many women will choose not to work with you.
Finally, you ask whether it's unfair for one culture ("women", broadly speaking) to project its own cultural norms onto another ("computing", in this case). I see two answers. First, the pure capitalism that some folks here are fond of: if your company's atmosphere tends to push away talented female employees and your competitor's does not, they'll be more successful at drawing on that talent pool, eventually giving them a big advantage. (One could probably extend that reasoning to entire industries or societies with a little work.) And second, a social justice perspective: not all norms are morally equivalent. The classic example is that slavery used to be a perfectly accepted norm, but few today would argue that it was wrong for the abolitionists to seek to change it. I'd like to think that one day our social context will have shifted enough that nude images in the workplace will have the same impact on men and on women, but we aren't there now and it's hard to imagine it happening in my lifetime (or even two or three generations down).
[Oh, and one more point, since it's something that took me years to catch on to: as a guy, I'm very cautious these days when it comes to deep theorizing about why women (or other underrepresented groups) might feel the way they do about issues like this. The thing is, while trying to reason out all this stuff is just an intriguing intellectual exercise for me, for women it's their constant reality. And let me tell you, there's no upside to taking someone who's obviously unhappy about something and trying to dispassionately pick apart what exactly about it is bothering them. In the end, it's almost always more productive to simply say, "Wow, thanks for letting me know you feel that way. What can we do to make it better?"]
The point is, there is probably no absolute, specific reason (such as nudity) why women don't want to go to CS. The reason may well be the cultural difference from the norm (of majority of population) itself, no matter what it is. Whether it's nudity or Star Trek, doesn't matter. So the morality doesn't even come into play here.
And that's why positive examples are needed. To show, "OK, it's a bit different culture, but that's fine" sort of thing. (Also to show that girls can be good in CS, because they often seem to lack confidence in this - at least I met several that didn't feel they could be programmers, even though they were lot smarter than me.)
Whether or not any given woman is fond of looking at pictures of naked women isn't the point. The issue is that it's difficult to give women assurances that they are being treated equally as colleagues if the professional environment also embraces cultural norms that treat women as eye candy or playthings.
And this isn't an assumption, in any case. Plenty of women have been quite explicit about feeling uncomfortable about erotically charged images in the workplace. (You know this.) I'm sure some women think it's fine, too, but that doesn't make the feelings of the others any less valid.
(Also, "females"? Really?)
I think sexual attraction will always exist between the sexes, so any professional environment will have to deal with that. I don't agree that erotica imply that women are just playthings.
The image used was just the head of a model, btw.
Probably some men disagree about the use of the picture, too. Everybody is free to use another picture, though.
I wonder if some women feel uncomfortable about the display of an unveiled female head in a photograph - only veiled photographs would be really OK?
Lastly, what if I don't want to work with somebody who is uptight about that sort of thing? I think it should be possible to build a team of people who get along. Presumably there could be some workplaces with uptight rules, and some more lose workplaces. Why should "uptight" always win?
But it sounds like you're addressing the broader issues just like I was: you suggest that you might not want to work with someone who was "uptight about that sort of thing". All I can offer is this: I've heard multiple stories from female engineers at tech conferences who have had trouble getting attendees to talk to them because everyone assumed they were just there as some sort of booth babe. It can't be good for their companies to have an engineer's time wasted in that way, and it's certainly not good for the women's careers if they're unable to network as effectively as their male peers. I won't try to claim that I can nail down a specific causal chain, but it seems pretty clear that a culture that routinely uses women purely as attention-getting devices or for visual enjoyment would naturally tend to undermine women who work in technical roles in this way. And when you drive away or devalue half of the potential talent pool just because a few guys don't see it as a problem, that's a bad thing.
[Oh, and a side note to whoever is downvoting out there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782124 I'm open to the suggestion that my comments in this thread have "provided no substance or insight", but I'd love to know why. If you just happen to disagree with my point (or anyone else's), that's not what the Hacker News downvote button is for.]
Also, did those women really not manage to talk to anyone? That seems odd, given that booth babes are probably also supposed to make people talk to them, and are considered an effective means for that?
Correct, and if there would be a tradition of using both, that would already be different. I see what you’re getting at, judging skin tones etcetera is important, but the Lenna picture doesn’t represent only nudity—she’s a playmate, and represents all the cultural luggage that comes along with that. If you’re looking for an inviting workplace open to others than cis straight males, making a playmate a central part of your research culture is silly.
[G]ay men overwhelmingly become sexually aroused by
images of men and heterosexual men by images of women.
In other words, men’s sexual arousal patterns seem obvious.
...
In contrast to men, both heterosexual and lesbian women
tend to become sexually aroused by both male and female
erotica, and, thus, have a bisexual arousal pattern.