| > What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? Every study that actually bothered to ask that question? 1. For example, there was an ACM study that asked both men and women (most studies do not). To their surprise, they found that women reported greater levels of support from their management than the men did. One of the few things they asked in terms of attitudes where there was a statistically significant difference between men and women was, drumroll, "interest in technology". And that's for people actually in the profession! https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-... 2.
Then there was the study that looked at why women leave engineering. #1 reason? "Didn't like the work/not interested in engineering". #2 reason was starting a family, #3 was didn't like the environment. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid... (Note: look at the actual numbers, not the headlines, because the headlines are very, very selective and do not reflect the actual numbers) 3.
There was a study about high school students taking (or not taking) CS in Israel. They looked at all the factors that are usually trotted out, support, role-models, etc. No difference. The one point that showed a difference: "interest in CS", with the boys taking the class at 100% and the girls at 43%. For kids not taking the class the level of interest was gender-neutrally low. Interestingly, this was reported as "no statistical difference", which is...odd. (Semanticscholar actually has the table in question, it's table 7 in the gallery) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issue... 4.
The ROSE project showed that non-interest in science and engineering starts at a very early age. It also shows that interest dropping generally in countries with higher HDI, not just for girls, though for girls it drops even more quickly. So it's not just the Gender Equality Paradox already mentioned quite a bit here, but also a more general Development vs. interest in STEM issue. https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjob... And of course there are the more general studies that show that a difference between people vs. things (empathising vs. systematising) is one of the largest and most robust gender differences that has been found (in the same category as the difference in aggression). |