This is starting to get way off topic but I'll post a Perl comment
to compensate.
About 15 years ago the Communications of the ACM (major computer
journal) had an article titled "Predicting the Success of
Freshman Computer Science Students >." As a little backgrounhd, computer
courses in most colleges were difficult to ge into because of equipment
limitations.
A large study was performed at an unspecified institution. Both
authors were from Prudue and the survied school was "a large mid-west
technical school." Freshman were self selecting, if you were accepted
into the school, you picked your major. The female students had very
slightly less high school math and science courses. However, female
students had slightly higher SAT scores and higher high school GPAs.
For the sake of the study success was defined as a student entering
their sophmore year as a science -- not necessarly computer science --
major. Femail students were twice as likely to both drop out of school
or change majors to "easier" areas such as soft science. However, there
was essentially no gender differenc in the graduatiion rate of sophmore
computer science majors. The female freshman were "snatching defeat out
of the jaws of victory." The major conclusion of the article was that
simple equal opportunity was not enough, active intervention was
required.
The above is fact, now for the fiction part. I have four grown
childred, two are female. My observation from an n of 4 is that our
society does not prepare females for failure. Male children are almost
required to play on athletic teams, until a generation female athletics
was discourgaged. Failure (losing) is part of athletics, the coachs
extols their charges, "forget what happened and just try harder." It's
a powerful message for all minds, espically your impressionable ones.
Difficult academic works is frought with failure, that's why they
invented debuggers :-) One of my daughters was very athletic (she won 8
varsity letters in highschool) the other was not. The non athlete was
socially active, the athlete was not. It's difficuly to get a date as a
female highschool freshman if you have two varsity letters and not a
single male has one. The athlete graduated college with a difficult
degree, the non-athlete didn't graduate from college.
I think the battle for true equality begins at birth, not in
graduate school.
<CONTROVERSIAL PART>
Having said that, I'm not overly concerned that there are not more
Ph.D. in computer science. First where is the concern that departments of
Nursing are almost exclusively female and departs of Biology are about 90%
female? The undergraduate enrollment in schools or education is about 80%
female. About 80% of educational doctorates go to males (I have one.) All
that says to me is that given more than equal oportunity, females op not
to go into administration (competation) and education has lower priority
than for males. As a member of the human race, I say thank God for the
later.
</CONTROVERSIAL PART>
Urb, W2DEC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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