Female programming languages?

[Michael Ernest]

It doesn't take to know lambda calculus to spot that most problems our fellow programmers have are caused by unsiffucient supply of females around us. Once in a while (read: once a year) our "professional programmer" drags himself out of screen to get a life - well... Maybe. Maybe he has a chance. Or not. Anyway, the radical solution is to bring females where our lives are - in our workplace.
To find how we can do that we need to look at the root of the problem. What caused such a disproportionality in the first place? We know that male/female ratio is close to 50/50 in general population, then what keeps women away from programming?
I claim that the imperative style of programming is to blame. To command and to impose her will is very orthogonal to the woman's nature. On the contrary, declarative languages and female psyche are two perfect fits. Leave it for men to fight complexity and to specifyhow and allow our women simply to tell what they want. If you need any proofs, look how Map fell in love with such a small, non-violent language as XSLT

[Rosie Vogel]

I am relatively new to programming (been doing it professionally for a little over a year now) and I too have often wondered why there are so few women there. Your theory about the imperative style of programming is interesting but I have to disagree.
I don't think everyone perceives programming as something imperative. Personally I had never thougth of that until you mentioned it. I think of programming as creating order. You reduce the real world to something small enough to program, then you put everything in neatly defined variables and functions. Your program brings calm and logic where at first there was just a fuzzy mass of information. I like to compare it to cleaning out a closet: you take everything out, have a good look at it, throw away what you don't need and then you put everything neatly in its place. You know how crazy some women are about making everything look neat and orderly!
So, I have always thought that programming is a typically womanly thing to do. Also because it is a clean and physically non-demanding job.
Now I'm sure there are some men who feel offended because I compared their brilliantly designed application to a tidy linen closet . Of course I understand that one is a little more complex than the other, I'm just saying that the underlying principle seems similar to me.
So what does keep women away from programming? I must admit I don't really know. You've probably all heard the theory that in general, women are more sociable than men and prefer to deal with people instead of machines. I don't know if this is true. What do you think?

[Jim Yingst]

A transparent ploy, Michael. The gratuitous use of "orthogonal" is a dead giveaway. Not to mention various other linguistic aberrations...

[Fyodor Myshkin]

He probably meant diametric when he said orthogonal. However if you subscribe to Rosie's linen closet theory it's more apposite than diametric or orthogonal
What is the story of "orthogonal" any way ?
[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Fyodor Myshkin ]

[Rob Ross]

The problem isn't unique to computer science; all the math, engineering, technology and science disciplines are disproportionately male.
So where are all the women? Are they still just getting married and not working? Well maybe some of them.
Certain fields seem to be dominated by women still - nursing, waitressing, hairdressers, admin assistants, etc.
I think this clearly shows a problem with our educational system and our cultural values.

[Anonymous]

I think that for programming one has to be logical/reasonable. They are good at Public Relation job where they have to use there tongue

[Angela Poynton]

I personally think despite myself i was always destined to do something like programming.
I've always had a very logical mind, I perform tasks in a logical way (admittedly some people argue that my logic is flawed, but it suits me).
In my office I would say there is a 60/40 male/female ratio out of about 80 developers which I know is a lot better than most offices where there are programmers. I went for an interview once to work in a dept of 30 developers, all of the exisiting ones were male. Had I been offered the job I would have been the only female.
I know I get a few strange looks when I confess to being a Developer to others though.

[Shubhrajit Chatterjee]

Well I don't want to sound like a chauvinist, but I have been working for 2 years, there are about 600 developers in our office branch, I have interacted with many of them, and I have found ONLY one lady who is technically strong and commands respect from co-workers, though there are about 40 - 50 male developers in that category.
By the way, the ratio is about 4:1 in favour of male developers.
The HR, training etc is dominated by females though and they are doing a good job there.
[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Shubhrajit Chatterjee ]

[sprintup]

Good paper Please go through
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/Gender/pap/pap.html

[Reid M. Pinchback]

Originally posted by Shubhrajit Chatterjee:
Well I don't want to sound like a chauvinist, ... I have found ONLY one lady who is technically strong and commands respect from co-worker.

Maybe that only indicates that your company doesn't know how to hire properly. Unless people have been carefully trained in how to hire, they tend to fall into a pattern of hiring those who seem "just like me". Sometimes that results in a gender discrimination, as you have described. Sometimes it results in a racial or age-based discrimination.
Bottom line, when you see a dramatic skew in the demographics of the staff in an organization, it is almost always because of weakness in hiring-related practices. Obviously the pool of available applicants limits who you can hire, but when you hear that the minority candidates also aren't skilled, that sounds like a case of deliberately hiring those who aren't skilled. It is an effective way of reinforcing a stereotype.
[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Reid M. Pinchback ]

[Michael Ernest]

Originally posted by Rob Ross:
The problem isn't unique to computer science; all the math, engineering, technology and science disciplines are disproportionately male.
So where are all the women? Are they still just getting married and not working? Well maybe some of them.
Certain fields seem to be dominated by women still - nursing, waitressing, hairdressers, admin assistants, etc.
I think this clearly shows a problem with our educational system and our cultural values.

I don't think it's any more mysterious than that.

[R K Singh]

when woman is said to choose to between beauty and brain, they always choose beauty ..and leave all brain for us.
But still beauty wins over brain

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Fyodor Myshkin:
He probably meant diametric when he said orthogonal. However if you subscribe to Rosie's linen closet theory it's more apposite than diametric or orthogonal
What is the story of "orthogonal" any way ?
[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Fyodor Myshkin ]

"Orthogonal" is one of Michael's favorite words. Check this, this and this threads, just a few examples.

[Baruch Sadogursky]

Consider this saying:
"Women programmer is like a guinea-pig. Not from Guinea nor looks like pig..."