[Haskell-cafe] Are there any female Haskellers?

[Christopher Done]

Fran Allen talked about this in Coders at Work (I typed this up quickly so
forgive typos):

Allen: Recently I realized what was probably the root cause of this:
computer science had emerged between 1960 and 1970. And it mostly came out
of the engineering schools; some of it came from mathematics.

And the engineering schools were mostly all men in that period. And the
people IBM was hiring had to meet certain requirements: have certain degrees
and have taken certain courses in computer science. And so they were almost
all men because they were the ones that satisfied the requirements-because
it was a discipline now. The other thing that seemed to have happened is
that it was a profession-there were a lot of processes in place and chains
of management that implemented the processes and kept everything running
smoothly. So it was a very different place.

Seibel: I'm pretty sure sexism in society at large was prety rampant in the
'50s and '60s. Yet in that period you were working in groups that had lots
of women in them. Why was it so open to women then?

Allen: Software was the newest-of-the-new stuff that was going on. And it's
also probably still to this day considered a soft part of the science. And
that's where women gravitated. Early on they were programmers on ENIAC and
at Bletchley Park. Women were the computers-that was their name. But in
engineering and physics and the harder, older sciences there weren't as many
women. It was just divided that way, early on.

On 27 March 2010 18:56, Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de>wrote:
>
>> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>> Von: "Günther Schmidt" <gue.schmidt at web.de>
>> Gesendet: 27.03.2010 16:14:57
>> An: haskell-cafe at haskell.org
>> Betreff: [Haskell-cafe] Are there any female Haskellers?
>>
>> >Hi all,
>> >
>> >from the names of people on the list it seems that all users here are
>> males.
>> >
>> >Just out of curiosity are there any female users here, or are we guys
>> >only at the moment?
>> >
>> >Günther
>> >
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that Phil(l?)ip(p?)a Cowderoy is female, I've also seen a
>> couple of other female names here and on the beginners list.
>> (Since Ashley Yakeley seems to be located in the USA, I dare not guess
>> whether Ashley is a man's name or a woman's in this case.)
>>
>
> Ashley Yakeley is a man.
>
> I work with several female Haskellers.  And I've met several others who are
> at universities or use Haskell on the side.
>
> In general, I'd say women in computer science are a minority.  I would say
> mathematics has a higher percentage of women than computer science from my
> own anecdotal experience.  Why are there so few women in computer science?
>  I don't know but it's an interesting question.  One professor I was talking
> to about this subject said he felt that at his university when CS was a part
> of math there were more women and when it became part of engineering the
> percentage of women dropped.
>
> It's possible that there are gender differences that cause men to be
> attracted to this field more frequently than women.  I'm hesitant to say
> that's the underlying reason though.  I suspect the following, based on
> conversations I've had with women in the field.  For some reason it started
> out as a male dominated field.  Let's assume for cultural reasons.  Once it
> became a male dominated field, us males unknowingly made the work and
> learning environments somewhat hostile or unattractive to women.  I bet I
> would feel out of place if I were the only male in a class of 100 women.
>
> Anyway, those are just observations I've made.  Don't take any of it too
> seriously and I certainly don't mean to offend anyone.  I know gender
> differences can be quite controversial at times.
>
> Jason
>
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20100328/a548fe97/attachment.html