Yasminer Paul Fishwick posted this on his blog
http://creative-automata.com/2014/09/02/gender-computing-and-modeling/
-Computer science and engineering as a field doesn't have that great
of a track record when it comes to gender balance.
While I was Director of Digital Arts & Sciences (DAS) at the
University of Florida in 2012, I published a piece in Leonardo
demonstrating that
a core computer science degree can indeed achieve a better balance.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/LEON_a_00362#.VAy8H_ldU1J
The DAS program encompasses an undergraduate (BS) and graduate (MS)
degree in computer science with a strong shell of human-centered
computing (HCC)
surrounding the CS/Math/Science core. The paper represented a 10-year
comprehensive summary of what worked, and what didn't, along with
statistics.
There are others around the country that have tried similar programs
involving media and the arts. At the University of Texas at Dallas, we
have computer scientists, engineers, designers, and artists working in
the same building (Arts and Technology).
http://www.utdallas.edu/atec/
The gender situation is complex and it isn't clear what works and what
doesn't work in every situation. However, there appears to be hope on
the horizon in the form of programs that have a strong
social/human-centered approach to computing.
this is part of a discussion that karen doore a professor here has
been instigating around the
surprising result at georgia tech = their computational media program
which has gone from the 25-30% female up to 45.32%.
At 45% female, they believe that it may be the most gender-balanced
ABET-accredited computing undergraduate major at any US state
university.
http://computinged.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/the-most-gender-balanced-computing-program-in-the-usa/
this blog post discusses a number of interesting topics - with the
observation that as the Georgia Tech Computational
Media was attracting a growing number of women- the number of men
admitted was actually declining.
the article discusses the complexity of the sociology of feminisation
of professions ( eg vetenarians).
one of the arguments for the STEM to STEAM movement, as well as
culturally situated STEM is that this is a better
way to attract diverse groups of students -but is it more complicated
than that ?
paul finishes his post with
The gender situation is complex and it isn't clear what works and what
doesn't work in every situation.
However, there appears to be hope on the horizon in the form of
programs that have a strong social/human-centered approach to
computing.
what do yasminers think
Roger Malina
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