Women and Computer Careers( http://vest.gu.se/vest_mail/0846.html)

Women are leaving or avoiding careers in computers because of the following factors:
1. Discrimination by male co-workers
2. The narrow focus of training
This training tends to emphasize technical expertise rather than practical application. However, a higher percentage of men are concerned with technical details itself while a high percentage of women are concerned with putting the technology into use.
3. The narrow focus of job
Many women more often want to link computer science to other issues, to broader social agenda. In other words, instead of focusing on faster, better technology for its own sake, women want to use computing to solve problem in medication or education. However, the current situation in computing job is more narrow focus such as debugging software.
4. Different preferences
Women would be more likely to design hand-held computers that keep track on an entire family or cylindrical kiosks with a facility for group discussion while men don't.
5. Computer usage
"Computer use is pretty equal between boys and girls until age of 10, when boys rapidly overtake girls" said John Baskett, senior vice president of marketing at Girl Games, a software company in Austin, Texas. A landmark 1995 study of 1,100 children ages 7 to 12 tried to find out what causes girls to tune out. It shows that rather than violent, girls found games boring. Because girls tend to look for characters that they could imagine having a relationship with, and for an intricate, true-to-life story line.
6. The bad image of programming
According to a study of students at Carnegie Mellon, the image of programming as a solitary, myopic fascination with obscure technical details is especially pernicious for discouraging and repelling women students who want to broader experience.
7. Few role models
Women made up only 10% of computer science professors and less than 6% of full professors, at top American universities in 1997. In addition, at the nexus of the industry, women leaders are in still shorter supply. Therefore, few role models were made and women feel inferior to men, regardless of their training.
8. Family-unfriendly work environment
9. A general sense that the field is irrelevant to women interests