Rupert Baines’ Post

Unless I'm missing something this is quite erroneous and misleading. The number of girls doing computer science GCSE is I believe (from data in 2023) growing at a bigger rate than participation in most other subjects. ICT, described a few years ago as 'nothing more than Office Practice' was a different beast and has rightly been de-emphasized. Being proficient in Excel and Access is not the same thing as understanding binary calculations and Python. Yes we need more girls studying this to correct that gender imbalance but looking at the paragraph here increasing participation from 5000 to 18600 in seven years is pretty astounding.

Do you think maybe girls don’t have enough visibility of role models to inspire them? Or is it because they perceive computing and engineering as a male-dominated profession so feel like they would be intimidated by the lack of diversity? I realised yesterday when I was posting on LinkedIn that a majority of the interviews I have done on Silicon Grapevine were with male execs, so even I need to broaden that range so we include more successful female execs that girls can look up to and be inspired by.

When I graduated I was the only girl in my year in the whole of Cambridge University doing Computer Science, Rupert. I thought times had improved…

This is very interesting and I appreciate you calling for improvement! I do have a theory of what is at fault, next to all the known stuff (lack of genuine role models in particular, inadvertent sexism, glass ceiling etc.). It might not be a popular opinion but male and female minds do seem to differ. Very slightly -- and none is better than the other! -- but importantly enough to make it a problem if the whole subject is, understandably, taught mostly by men. I have an anecdotal story from a former colleague at Red Hat. He's a brilliant mind, super knowledgeable, and often has workshops and presentations because of that. He shared a story of running an advanced Linux administration workshop for women only, together with a female assistant who was also proficient in the topic. He shared, totally perplexed, how he'd explain something to meet with dead silence from the audience, then have his assistant, quote, "repeat the exact same thing I've just said, only in slightly different words", and the audience would light up, nod and understand. He was truly astounded and couldn't comprehend the difference because for him there was none, but apparently for the female audience it was a big one 🤷

Clearly there’s still a lot to be done on gender representation in CompSci. At the beginning of the pipe, we should support the great work Anne-Marie Imafidon is doing with Stemettes - especially their recent White Paper (https://stemettes.org/change/whitepaper/). Mid pipe, we should encourage and support more cross disciplinary moves - moving into CompSci at a later stage with a social science degree for example will enrich the field. At all levels we need to bring visibility of female and non binary computer scientists. And finally, male computer scientists hold a lot of the responsibility of inclusion, as the majority party in this field (and in the clear majority of power). I would add re the CompSci GCSE, that Oxford for example prioritise Maths and Further Maths over CompSci in their prospective students.

I am seeing a rather different data from STEM Women. While it is still not an exciting one as numbers don't move much, it is still not dropping as drastically. However, they similarly release an interesting white paper where they highlight that lack of network is a key barrier to overcome if they would like to pursue any career path you wish. I would agree with Nitin Dahad that a good role model can be of a good impact. Someone or an entity that can be easily approachable and supportive when it comes to sharing a network.

Most ICT companies are located abroad in low cost call centres. Why would anybody do that when there are 'better' options available? I imagine most the vast majority of students (M or F) in ICT went on to work in completely different areas.

When I was at university there were at least some girls in CS, there were none in electrical engineering. Programming is something that people can pick up later, engineering is somewhat harder to learn on the job.

Rupert, I agree that's disheartening. I was a volunteer for Barefoot computing for several years helping primary school teachers understand the new computing curriculum. Hopefully we'll see that benefit coming through.