Originally Posted by
JBI
I have all the high school science credits done. It doesn't matter though, I did not enjoy them, and cannot enjoy them - I'm good at them, especially computer science, as it functions kind of like language, and therefore works with the same sort of logic, but even so, it's all so tediously boring - sitting in a room writing lines of code for hours on end isn't my idea of a career - that's why I ended up opting out of it, since I knew I wouldn't be happy doing that for the rest of my life.
That's probably why there are so few women in engineering and computer science, not because women aren't smart enough, or inclined for those subjects (women, in general, seem to be smarter than their male counterparts), but because, quite simply, the people who study these subjects are the most troll-like people, or, at least at U of T, at any rate, all, assuming they can grow them, with beards and socially awkward plaintiffness, and an unrefined sense of self-superior geek-angst - the kind of people who seem to think socializing isn't worth the time, and everybody else is a moron who knows nothing.
When you think about it, someone like me studies languages, studies means of communication for the sake of being able to communicate with more people, in different languages, about different subjects. Somebody who studies computer science studies how to put commands into a machine, in order for the machine to in some way interact with other machines, and a human, as a means of doing something removed - the actual anti-social nature of the subject is excuse enough not to study it - I think the only thing that made me consider it in the first place was the fact that a) I am good at it, and b) I could've made big money and retired early. But even so, I'm of the mind that I can make it in other fields, and the 40 odd years of torture don't seem worth it.
The actual difference between the genders, that is, biological differences, has nothing to do with it. I think it's just that the fringe-sort of geek culture is more prominent amongst men than women - the whole video game sub-culture, and popular science youth-culture is most certainly geared toward men more. When I think about it, generally, if I were thinking from the perspective of what I think a normal person thinks like, I generally would think of a guy obsessed with video games and computers as a tech geek, a nerd, whereas if I were thinking about a girl, it would be completely different - I'd probably think of her as someone who lacks friends and social skills, and is ultimately a complete reject - the subcultures that seem to feed these areas of study seem dominated, at least where I grew up, by uninteresting men who feel more comfortable in front of a screen than in front of people.
As for what I said, I think many of you will think it somewhat rude, and perhaps offensive, but I think, from my cultural background, that is, growing up in Toronto, it seems to make a little bit of sense. There are actually tons of scholarships and work opportunities directly targeted at females as a means of trying to even out the playing field, but, when I think about it, only three girls were in my first year computer science class of about 100, and one of them, a friend of mine, ended up opting out of computer science because she couldn't stand the environment, whereas another didn't do well, and the third, a very, very bright woman in her thirties who had just emigrated from Taiwan (if my memory serves me correctly) seemed to know she didn't fit in there very well (though, she certainly got the right answers).
