School Systems and Silicon Valley - Why the Extreme Differences in Workforces?- Audrey Watters

This presentation was most certainly an eye opener for me. The idea that women online were much more likely to be harassed and abused, even academic professionals, was something I had never considered or really thought about. When Alec pointed out he had never been victim to the type of Twitter abuse that Audrey experiences it really got me thinking about how the social media medium just became an easy conduit for sexism to keep rearing it's ugly head. I've always known about the racists, trolls and other such people that live to harass and be racist online. Even last week I was shocked at the tweet from the New England Patriot's Official Twitter account, with over 1 million Twitter followers. Take a look:



This tweet was sent out to 1 million plus followers.

The tweet was quickly deleted and the Patriots and they apologized for their software, which auto generated the tweet with the 1 millionth follower. Trolled.

Silicon Valley and School Systems

While I resonated with much of what Audrey had to say, I was critical of using the hiring practices of major corporation such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and so forth. Many of the companies had in the 70-80% range of male employees. Figures from the Computing Research Association Taulbee Survey indicate that less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at U.S. PhD-granting institutions in 2010-11 (Retrieved from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing). The hiring is simply based on the available workforce. However Alec was quick to point out that this was just further indication of an issue in technology sector, and society and culture as a whole.


I also instantly thought of our school systems.

The male proportion of the full time educator workforce nationally dropped by 41% in 1989 to 35% in 1999, and is lower among younger educators. However, over longer time frames, the percentage of men in teaching has gone both up and down; women were a higher percentage of educators much earlier in the century. And there is continuing concern about the ability of women to play leadership roles in teacher education (Acker, 1997) and in the profession (Gaskell & Mullen, 2006). (Retrieved from http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ite/UserFiles/File/CharacterizingITE.pdf)

 

One thing that is noteworthy when it comes to systemic sexism is that both sectors have a disproportionate amount of men in higher positions relative to that of their workforce.

I need your help ECI. I have some thoughts but I want to open it up to you first!

Why is it that so few women enter computer science programs?

Why is it that so few men enter the education field?