From NYTimes.com:
Where the Girls Aren't
January 12, 2003
By KAREN STABINER
Anyone who has ever tried to pry a girl offline knows that girls like computers. They just don't understand how they work. Computer science, the mathematics-based study of programming, is so unpopular among girls that even the most rigorous girls' schools rarely find enough students to fill a class. Tech-minded teachers worry that programming is to this generation what math was to their mothers -- a boys' club preventing girls from getting a foothold in the technological world.
One camp says that girls see computers as a communications tool, and the best way to engage them is to exploit that and offer classes that stress using programs -- say, designing Web sites or online magazines -- over creating them. The other side says that such preferences exist only because no one has tried to expand girls' technological horizons.
Kurt
Schleunes, head of the mathematics department at the all-girls
In
"Women earn less than a third of bachelor's degrees in computer and information sciences, and only 18 percent of advanced degrees," said Ann Pollina, principal at the all-girls Westover School in Middlebury, Conn., and co-director of the Connecticut Girls and Technology Network, a group of educators, public officials and business people working to expand the presence of girls in technological fields. "Overall, in the industry, men outnumber women four to one," she said.
While several girls' schools have planned computer science courses, they erode because of lack of interest. A 10th-grade class at Spence used to stress program writing but has evolved into a "text and image class" -- editorial projects that use existing programs -- because that's what the students preferred.
"I would love to see a few more girls pursue programming," said Hope Chafiian, director of technology and curriculum at Spence. She believes that differences in approach are inherent and difficult to overcome. "The wanting to know how things work, that's often what boys want to know," she said. "A boy pulls apart a carburetor. How many girls are interested in that?"
Mr. Schleunes believes that girls' reluctance about computer science -- their eagerness to stay with "editorial" functions -- is a consequence of social conditioning. He wants to get girls past "the societal stuff that goes on" about boys' and girls' interests. "It's not good to ignore the talent of half your society," he said. "We are importing computer scientists from other countries because we can't get enough. Is that a good thing in the long run? If this is a field we would prefer to dominate as a nation, we should be developing more women in the field."
Ms. Pollina sees herself as "parked somewhere between these two camps," and says that it is the expectations of adults, more than the girls, that have to change. "Try giving a 12-year-old girl a computer and a screwdriver, and you will agree that the boys' club need not remain that way," she insisted. She bases her position on 30 years' experience teaching math to girls.
"When I started in 1972," she said, "there were three girls in calculus out of a senior class of about 50. Now there are three sections of Advanced Placement calculus, in a class about the same size -- in other words, about 75 percent of the senior class. This would not have happened if we had bought into the reigning mantra of the time, which was, 'Boys are naturally interested in mathematics; let them do it. Girls are more talented in literature and history; why ask them to change?'"
Last year, Mr. Schleunes conducted a personal case study by retooling the Advanced Placement curriculum, which he thinks turns off a lot of potential students. "It's obviously not serving girls if they represent only 12 to 15 percent of the students taking the classes," he said. "The environment isn't girl-friendly. Intelligent, creative girls want to do larger-scale programs that actually do something. They don't want to look at a logarithm that deals with a math thing and how we're going to apply it. They don't like puzzle problems -- or they don't exclusively, and yet that's a lot of what the Advanced Placement test is about."
For
two
Ms. Pollina says that the next step is a similar revision of the computer curriculum. She cites Westover's expanded math program, which incorporates user-friendly strategies that appeal to girls. If girls preferred the discussion and analysis of English class, then teachers borrowed techniques to make math lessons more engaging. They retired the old pattern of lecture and homework and gave the girls a reading assignment first "so they would have something to put on the table, to actively problem-solve in class," Ms. Pollina said. "Simple and effective -- and we can do the same sort of thing with technology."
She regards girls' preferences "as a lever to stimulate interest in technology in other areas."
The dot-com universe is young and volatile enough to embrace people with all kinds of backgrounds, so many of the women who have elbowed their way in are skeptical about the programming imperative. Laurie Petersen, a senior vice president at the boutique investment bank Gruppo, Levey & Company, is a self-taught computer whiz who built a bridge from newspaper reporting to her current job working on technology start-ups. She loves the irony: the men who have dominated programming have made software so accessible and smart that women can prevail without having to learn the underlying programming concepts.
"Excellent project managers are as critical to any operation as a good programmer," she said. "Is it sometimes frustrating? Absolutely. But you need both sensibilities."
Ms. Trigger says that programming is a necessary evil for women who want to succeed in technology. "It opens a lot of doors," she said. "If you speak English and you learn Spanish, it's a lot easier to learn Italian and French. You have the grammar structure. So if you take even a tiny bit of programming, it's going to be so much easier to understand what's going on inside the machine. I can always operate things much better when I understand the machine."
To her mentor, Mr. Schleunes, the issue has a profound social impact. "The question is, who wants to be the Rosa Parks of computer science?" he said. "Who wants to walk into the room with 11 boys?"
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Karen Stabiner is the author of "All Girls: Single-Sex
Education and Why It Matters" (Riverhead Books).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/edlife/12STABINE.html?ex=1043389185&ei=1&en=4f98dff05311a8bd