Sarah Davies

My notes from Sapna Cheryan’s TEDxSeattle talk “Stereotypes as Gatekeepers.”

There have been profound changes in scientific degrees. Half of degrees in math, chemistry, and biology are granted to women. Computer science degrees, however, have lowered in the number of degrees granted to women.

Computer scientists are the modern architects of society. It’s important for them to be diverse. It also has some of the best paid and most flexible jobs in the country, which women could be missing out on.

Some of this may have to do with socialization. How do people visualize computer scientists? Do women think of computer scientist when they visualize possible future careers?

When high school girls think of computer scientists, they have an incorrect perception of what actual computer scientists look like. Where do these misperceptions come from? Children’s books tend to be very strict about gender and professions. No male nurses come up if you Google Image Search for nurse. Ads also tend to portray software geeks as males. Do these images affect who goes into these fields?

How can we change software development environments to be more friendly to women? Microsoft, Google, and University of Washington have computing environments that are less stereotypical. It turns out that University of Washington attracts more female computer science graduates.

They took two different classrooms, one of which had stereotypical computer science stuff – science fiction books, Star Trek posters, etc. one of which had neutral stuff – nature posters, generic science books. Then they had people who weren’t computer scientists come into the room for an orientation into computer science. Across all of their studies, women have a strong preference for computer science when the stereotypes are absent, where men have a strong preference for computer science when the stereotypes are present.

What is it about these objects that communicates to women that they don’t belong? Both sexes perceive the stereotypes to be masculine. Women are not likely to see themselves fitting in.

Sarah’s commentary
I like Star Trek, and some sci-fi, so maybe I’m biased, but I do have direct experience with this. I took computer science classes at University of Washington. The thing that alienated me from the field was that the expectations of time spent on the class were insane. The people who got 4.0s in my cs classes spent upwards of 80 hours a week on a five-credit class. I think women focus more on family and life-balance, and as a result we get forced out of the field.

Posted by Sarah Davies, filed under TEDxSeattle. Date: April 16, 2010, 11:52 am | View Comments