Many blogs have already piped up on the THE article on the deadly sins of academia (thanks to Gordon Wilfong for first directing me to it). The article isn’t entirely at fault and meant to be in good fun. The section on Lust, though, by Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham contains such gems that I am sure I need not editorialize:
Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?
Enjoy her! She’s a perk.
I would like to point out, though, the language he uses in his rant:
[T]he universities are where the male scholars and the female acolytes are. […] The fault lies with the females. The myth is that an affair between a student and her academic lover represents an abuse of his power.
While I haven’t personally crossed paths with such overt comments as by Kealy (I have come very close though), the stereotype that men are thinkers and women are not still exists. Feminism advocates equal rights and equal opportunities for women. It is our responsibility to create an academic environment that is welcoming to all people, regardless of race, gender or economic means.
I can understand the stereotype, but I can’t help but wonder if the stereotype is dying. During my Master’s studies (in CS), men were the minority in my office. Also, I’ve known many women (profs., fellow students) who are obviously much more intelligent and harder working than I am.
I wonder how long it takes for a stereotype to develop and to die.
Yes, Dave – I do think the perceived stereotype is dying. Thankfully! The numbers in EECS are still not great though. I’m sure no one knows the full answer to the question, but why are only ~10% of incoming freshman female? Unfortunately, I’ve known more than a handful of women who have left the field or chosen other career paths because they didn’t like the environment of math/physics/engineering.
There’s some good discussion of that Kealey piece of work at Crooked Timber.
As for why women are still so heavily underrepresented in academic computer science: that’s a long and much-debated subject, but I’m sure sexist attitudes such as Kealey’s don’t help. Even if (as I hope) these attitudes are held by only a small fraction of the male CS faculty, they can lead to discouraging incidents out of proportion to those numbers, such as the ones Belle describes in her Crooked Timber post.
questions (i’m trying to understand where you’re coming from–i’m not trying to be a jerk):
* where did you get the statistic of only ~10% of college frosh being women? I find that incredibly surprising.
* How many freshmen actually stick to CS long enough to get a degree? Because, beyond what major is fashionable or cool, CS can be really frickin’ hard. Boys and girls, both, can drop out of things that are too hard.
* would you define “environment” please? Is it that they dropped out because, to play on the stereotype, they were surrounded by D&D players who didn’t shower much and who never asked a girl to the prom, or was it something else?
* do you view the lopsided EECS enrollment as a function of what our culture says is “cool” for girls?
(1) I think 10% was a number I heard for EECS enrolment – it could have been 20% – it was sadly quite low. (I was surprised too.)
(2) I was told that retention of women and men in EECS at OSU was equal (ie. the same proportion of men drop out as of women) which is a good sign.
Your other questions are difficult to answer. I wish I had a solid grasp of what was going on.
According to this year’s Canadian Association of University Teachers Almanac, in Canada, undergraduate enrolment in CS is 13.4% female. This rises to 22.6% at the PhD level.
I was astonished to discover that undergraduate enrolment in mathematics is 42.8% female. This falls to 28.4% at the PhD level.
I had expected that the math vs. CS stats would be similar.
Narad: thanks for the stats! I’m a little surprised at the numbers.
Could the CS numbers be explained by sampling? I might guess that the small numbers in ugrad are the result of under-selection so the women who graduate from ugrad CS outperform their male equivalents and are more likely to continue onto grad school. Or didn’t want the programming job that you are likely to get with an ugrad in CS and thought if they go for their Ph.D. they can escape the hours of coding.
The math numbers – perhaps women in ugrad math tend to (as stereotypes would have you believe) go to teachers college afterward, more so than their male classmates? Since computer science isn’t really taught in high school (certainly not at the level that math is – *sigh*) that isn’t an option for CS ugrads. Or, like me, switch from math ugrad to computer science grad.
These are all just guesses though – I’d be interested to see where women with math ugrads end up and where women in CS grad school come from.
Narad: Part of the apparent balance in the math undergrad numbers (at least at Illinois) is that two mathematics majors are being conflated: mathematics per se (overwhelmingly male) and mathematics education (overwhelmingly female).
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