Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Nerdier Than Thou

Research on why women do not choose computer science seems to point to the fact that women can feel threatened by science fiction and gaming related interests of others in the field. This seemed very strange based on my group of friends. This group is not a random sampling of the population, but many of my friends that are women are nerdier than many computer scientists I know. I did a quick survey of my Facebook feed to test if this observation was supportable and found that three times as many science fiction or gaming posts on my feed were generated by women than men in the last few days. Many of the women generating these posts are in other scientific fields. None are fellow computer scientists. Why are these women who are obviously not intimidated by science fiction and gaming culture still not choosing computer science?

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