Customer Reviews

Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing

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This is an important book for everyone concerned about the causes and consequences of the nation's failure to attract undergraduate women into computer science. Margolis and Fishers' well-structured, longitudinal study is the first to explore multiple dimensions of this issue in careful detail, and their findings counter causal myths (e.g., about the "natural" distribution of interest and aptitude) that can inhibit or
misdirect remedial efforts. Some roots of the recruitment problem lie in the inequities of pre-college access to computer experience; some (as other research has shown) reflect the gendered character of IT industry products that target children and young people. As a result, few of those female students who possess strong mathematical, linguistic, or logical thinking skills enter college with sufficient disciplinary knowledge and experience to entertain computer science as a major. They may also have limited information about the range of careers open to CS graduates.

As the study also documents, women who do enter CS majors (approximately 15% of this student population) are apt to be discouraged by the misogyny of the peer culture (which varies from, but is related to, that documented in other science majors). They are often strongly distanced from the geek persona that they (wrongly) perceive to be a requirement for success. The emergence of CS as a discipline that defines itself in conceptual, theoretical, and technical terms, and somewhat avoids functional application or customer-programmer negotiation, also reduces the appeal of the major to those women who are primarily interested in what they can do with computers. This group looks elsewhere (e.g., cognitive psychology, human-computer interaction institutes) in order to pursue their interest in computing with a more human focus.

As Margolis and Fishers' evidence also shows, elements in the traditional socialization of girls leave US women students at greater risk--either than their male peers or than international women students--of quitting CS classes, or the major, despite adequate or good academic performances. Experiencing insufficient personal encouragement from faculty and active discouragement from some male peers, perfectly competent women begin to doubt that they belong in the major, lose confidence, and leave. Foreign women were found to be less deterred either by these elements in the CS culture, or by their low entering levels of CS experience.

The authors discuss the relative importance of these causal factors and describe the interventions developed at their study site (Carnegie Mellon University) to address each of them. They also discuss the serious global consequences of failure to address gender disparity in IT as a discipline and as an industry, namely, a constant bias in product
development that both misses and mistakes customer needs, and perpetuation of a cycle in which half of the world's talent is diverted from this central field of human endeavor.

If you want to make a difference in this field, first read this book.

This book grabbed me by the collar and shook me up. I'm a female Computer Science student and the stories in the book sounded like quotes taken from conversations between me and my friends. Margolis and Fisher describe the factors that affect the experiences of tech inclined women as they embark on and endure or exit from the Computer Science major at CMU. The writing is level-headed and socially conscious, and the experiences are told largely through the stuents' own words. It's a good read for academics, teachers, parents, women, students, engineers, or anyone interested in these groups. It's pretty amazing to see the subtleties of a culture and a discipline as experienced through the eyes of someone other than yourself.

I have referred many people to this book as a first class
evaluation of gender differences in technical education
presented along with concrete and practical suggestions on
how to improve. After more than 20 years in the
computer industry, it is a pleasure to read a book that
presents so well the challenges that most young women face
when starting in Engineering.

I picked up this book because I had observed the females in my CS department (including myself) drop like flies. I was curious as to the cause of it, but there didn't seem to be a common theme, so I thought this book might have some insight. It didn't.

They cited several reasons women at CM were leaving, some of which were interesting, but the one that made me put down the book and walk away was when it claimed that it was because women are nurturing, and computer science needs to change to be more about using computers to nurture and care for people. To me, that sounded suspiciously like "Women aren't interested in computer science because it doesn't involve babies and ironing their husband's shirts!"

Reading about the changes they instituted made me retch a little bit. They talk about specifically approaching female students and having "women in CS" gatherings. While I'm all for creating a supportive community, if my university had done this, I would have turned and run the other way. The reason I enjoyed my CS department so much was because nobody talked to me like I was any different, or made an issue of my genitalia, I was just another computer science student.

Admittedly, a lot of my dissatisfaction with this book stems from my views on gender: I see men and women as fundamentally the same, but socialized to be different. Ultimately, they're all people. It seems like the researchers found that certain types of people (those who wanted to nurture and pursue a variety of interests as opposed to single-mindedly obsessing over one) were not succeeding in computer science, and those types happened to be overwhelmingly female. They proceed to refer to these types of people and "women" interchangeably, which I feel is inaccurate. They made an effort to get more people with vaginas in the door - regardless of whether or not they fit the type of person they just described (people who fit that description who happened to be male were just out of luck, I guess). I realize they're speaking in generalities, and not all people will fit even good generalities, but I think that they were inaccurate in this regard.

I think that, ultimately, recruiting women explicitly only serves to keep gender an issue and build the suspicion that female students were only admitted because of their sex. Instead of creating a supportive community of females for females, why not work on involving everybody in that supportive community? Instead of having dinners and get-togethers for women, why not have similar get-togethers to discuss sex and gender and how it plays out in the department? Everybody's got a sex, and in addition to supporting one half of the traditional gender binary, it could also create support for and awareness about the non-traditionally gendered.

The book focuses on the results of a "four-year study (involving some 230 interviews) at Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science." The authors did not spend a great deal of time offering solutions to the gender gap problem, but they did offer a great deal of insight into what causes it, such as the way boys and girls play and subsequently view the computer as a "boy's toy." It goes into detail about the societal pressures and our cultural differences that have attributed to the small percentage of women in computer science. I believe that some of the results from this research can lead to programs and other solutions that will eventually decrease the gender gap, but again not much emphasis is placed on what these solutions might be.

On a personal note, it was actually quite helpful in sorting out the emotions and situations that occured during my undergrad work and the fears and apprehensions I had of going to grad school. I especially recommend this book to all women in the computer fields and any woman interested in pursuing a computer science career.

This engaging book describes some of the best research I've seen in the 30 years I've worked in the area of increasing the participation of girls and women in math, science and technology. Now folks, it's past time to put what we know into action! Read the book and get inspired.

I got a recommendation from Software Development magazine, and wow, I feel so lucky that I "discover" this book! I can't remember how many times I feel alienated among my male peers, whenever they keep talking about computer stuff or coding all the time. I also keep wondering whether I deserve to get a mark which is better than most of them. I even talk to my counsellor and she can't understand at all how a student who gets a good mark can have such a low confidence. Now, I feel much more comfortable in pursuing my CS degree even though I don't have the "geek" personality or such things like that. Thanks for doing this research, Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher!

I interviewed Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher on my Internet radio program 'Interviews' on Radio Left. The authors explain via anecdote and research results why women are under represented in high tech careers and in the computer industry in particular. Despite the serious topic, 'Unlocking the Clubhouse' is highly entertaining. Here are a couple of amazing facts from the book: When the air bag was first designed, by men, it was designed to be safe for adult males, causing the deaths of many women and children before it was redesigned. Early video conferencing systems were trained to turn the camera toward the person speaking. One problem: the systems only recognized male voices, so, when women spoke, the camera would not turn to them! The authors report on a highly successful program at Carnegie-Mellon University to attract and retain women in the Computer Science Department. They operated on the principle that the program needed to be fixed to attract women rather than that women needed to change to succeed in the program. I recommend this book to anyone concerned about the role of technology in our society, to those considering high-tech careers, and those who want to create a maximum array of career options for their children. Geoff Staples Host, Interviews

Like nearly all of the other computer science departments, the college where I teach has seen a dramatic decline in the number of people taking computer science (CS) courses. While some of it is understandable due to the publicity of the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, there is now an equal or greater amount of press about the lack of qualified people in information technology (IT). However, that does not seem to be prompting more students to take CS courses.
Our situation also mirrors the rest of the country in that the percentage of females in our CS courses has dropped even more. While the ratio of females to males has held steady or even risen in other areas such as medicine, mathematics and engineering, computer science remains a sad and confusing exception.
My purpose in reading this book was to try to obtain some ideas that we could use to attract more females into our programs. While I certainly agree that some of the problems are the perception of a males-only clubhouse and that there is subtle pressure against females, I dismiss that as the significant cause. Not so many years ago, the same was said about fields such as engineering, math and medicine, yet women entered those fields and were successful. The primary instructor I had in my undergraduate mathematics classes was a woman and she would talk about being the only female in a physics class held in a large lecture hall.
One theme that emerged from the research conducted by the authors is that the girls seem to have more fragile egos than the males. When a male fails at a computing task, they seem to shrug their shoulders and proceed to the next challenge. However, the females seem to quickly reach the conclusion that they cannot do it. Since failing at a computing task is a fundamental part of your education, for example no one can be considered to be trained as a programmer until you have programmed an infinite loop, this is fatal. This puzzles me again, as the female mathematics and engineering students of decades ago (and now) would have faced the same situation and yet they persevered.
Another theme mentioned in the book is that males tend to program games and activities that are in the "shoot, beat or blow them up" genre. This is said to be a point where girls are turned off. While I agree that boys are like that, very little of programming has that as the end result. No person who has surfed the web, created a web page or even used a word processor should be convinced otherwise.
Therefore, while I can understand these problems I am unconvinced that the reasons given in this book are the fundamental reasons why women are not pursuing careers in CS in greater numbers. As a collective body, females met these challenges in other fields decades ago and in computer science even a few years ago. Since I feel the need to continue my pursuit of the reasons after reading this book, I have begun examining the book "Women and Information Technology: Research on Underrepresentation" edited by J. McGrath Cohoon and William Aspray. Hopefully I will find more answers there.

I work in IT. Given the current state of the industry, I don't recommend it as a profession to my son, nor would I recommend it to my daughter, if I had one.

The book is an example of research addressing the general question: "Why oh why are other people not living their lives in ways that we, the researchers, deem appropriate?" There may be a book-length explanation to that, but then again, maybe they just don't feel like it.