Computer Science GCSE male dominated, but geekettes are ready to rise

More teenagers than ever are studying computing, with a growing proportion being female, ladies, or persons of the contradictory gender. Figures from the Joint Council for Qualifications show that the new GCSE subject of Computer Science is enjoying rapid growth. It was brought in to supplement ICT (Information and …

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

"Put down you ironing and get to the keyboard!"

"you ironing"?

Is this going to be an article in rap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Put down you ironing and get to the keyboard!"

You just mad because i'm stylin' in computin', being down with the turin'. I'm gonna make some money using gcc, and then inject some objectical heredity. Larval stage? Well, fuck this shit, it's a hit. Even at young age, I'm working with rage, like Trinity hacking using SSH. Scheme and parenthesis are not exceptional. Use Python as needed and some big-O notation? For me it's just input for mental fermentation. Ada would thumbs-up the approval rating when she saw me taking derping jerks for skating.

[Lionel Baden]

Re: "Put down you ironing and get to the keyboard!"

Finally some secretary's that will know how to use word ;)

Oh im going to hell for this post !!!

[Martin]

Re: "Put down you ironing and get to the keyboard!"

Finally some secretary's that will know how to use word ;)

Oh im going to hell for this post !!!

Yes - a hell where you are permanently taught decent grammar and spelling. Most secretaries (not secretary's - sigh) can write far better English than that.

[Lionel Baden]

Re: "Put down you ironing and get to the keyboard!"

Good thing I'm not a secretary, I will side with you on that battle. I do actually try to spell correctly, it just isn't in my skill set im afraid.

I had / Have no quibble with their English or grammar, only that they have been known to believe that a headline that they cant make italic is an IT issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: moving the emphasis from “what it does” to “how it works”

Eh? So, transistors and logic gates and so forth?

[John Riddoch]

Re: moving the emphasis from “what it does” to “how it works”

Not necessarily, it could be stuff like operating system basics (kernel, drivers, IO, etc), simple programming, whatever.

Having said that, I did do logic gates in CSYS (certificate of sixth year studies - old Scottish qualification after highers) in physics in '91, no idea if it's still in any physics syllabus now.

[Fungus Bob]

Re: moving the emphasis from “what it does” to “how it works”

Prolly had to remove it so they can teach the young 'uns that tachyon generators are science fiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: moving the emphasis from “what it does” to “how it works”

>> Not necessarily, it could be stuff like operating system basics (kernel, drivers, IO, etc), simple programming, whatever.

I guess this is why I felt compelled to post, I'm not clear on the distinction being made.

It's pretty easy to argue that running an operating system is "what a computer does" and not exactly "how it works."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: moving the emphasis from “what it does” to “how it works”

It's pretty easy to argue that running an operating system is "what a computer does" and not exactly "how it works."

You could also easily argue that breathing is "what a plumber does", but I think most people would understand that's not quite what is commonly meant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: moving the emphasis from “what it does” to “how it works”

I don't know what the new one is like, but several years ago one of my daughters took one of the older Computer Science GCSE's, it was awful, they had obviously asked non technical teachers to write the material, stuff like "Show how you would format an email, business letter, and sales invoice", i.e. the kind of thing that used to be in English O level when I was at school.

[TheProf]

Sex

"persons of the contradictory gender." You mean the distaff side.

[Captain DaFt]

Re: Sex

-"persons of the contradictory gender." You mean the distaff side.-

Well I was going to question whether computer sciences needs more naysayers of either sex, but that works too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sexist, but joking = Sacked

So The Register's writers are allowed to make a joke about women ironing.

But when Tim Hunt made a joke about women crying and was sacked, The Register supported the whining feminazis who did that.

Hypocrites.

[Kai Lockwood]

Re: Sexist, but joking = Sacked

This just goes to show how far the industry needs to go. Is that all Mr. Rockman thinks women get up to during the day?

As a recovering mysogonist I need to call you out Simon. Get less sexist tag lines, period!!

[Chairo]

Re: Sexist, but joking = Sacked

when Tim Hunt made a joke about women crying and was sacked, The Register supported the whining feminazis who did that.

The El Reg article was relatively neutral. The comments were full of ironing, pardon - irony.

[John H Woods]

Re: Sexist, but joking = Sacked

I didn't support him being "sacked" because it's not how academia should work: the #distractinglysexy response from female scientists was much better.

Nevertheless: there's a bit of a difference between being apparently serious and being obviously ironic; there's a bit of a difference between being a satirical news source and being a brand ambassador for an institution; and there's a bit of a difference between being fired from a job with teaching time, lab-time and a salary and being asked to resign such a non-salaried brand-ambassador role when you've put your foot in it big-time and embarrassed your brand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sexist, but joking = Sacked

Tim Hunt followed his remarks about women crying with "But seriously..."

Do you think maybe he was joking too ?

[Cari]

Re: Sexist, but joking = Sacked

He was taken wildly out of context, and was actually being self-deprecating. It's okay though, I don't think any of the media that was champing at the bit to destroy him actually followed up with apologies and corrections when the truth came to light, so it's understandable you missed that.

[Ted Treen]

"Put down your ironing and get to the keyboard!

Only IF you've finished the ironing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lottie Dexter!

You were our saviour all along!

[Fitz_]

Gender question

I really couldn't care about the gender of IT workers as I treat everyone on merit, but why do we see lots of this sort of thing about getting women into traditionally male dominated industries, but we never see any complaints that there are few males in traditionally female dominated industries?

Or are there sites dedicated to hairdressing, stylists and child care somewhere going on about how the numbers of male GCSE passes are just not as high as they should be?

[ElMarco]

Re: Gender question

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11668169/Why-arent-we-doing-more-to-encourage-men-to-be-primary-school-teachers.html

An article about more men being needed in traditionally female jobs.

[AbelSoul]

Re: Gender question

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11668169/Why-arent-we-doing-more-to-encourage-men-to-be-primary-school-teachers.html

An article about more men being needed in traditionally female jobs.

Primary teaching was going to be my choice before doing my IT MSc. Turned out the application / intake dates were so far ahead that I would have had to wait another year to start so I did IT in the meantime.

The last few years of living with my primary teaching partner has shown me what a bullet I dodged. I'll stick to hacking out code for the time being.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Gender question

"Why-arent-we-doing-more-to-encourage-men-to-be-primary-school-teachers"

Society can answer that in one sentence: because all men who want to be around little kiddies are peedos.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gender question

I've also noticed that they only seem to complain about the gender gap in well paid or at least "interesting" industries. There are many other male dominated industries which no-one seems to care about - probably because they are low paid, dirty and/or dangerous.

You don't exactly see many (if any) women in refuse collection, yet for some unknown reason there isn't a massive campaign to get more women on the bin lorries. Why not? Do they think they're too good for low level jobs such as those?

[Connor]

Re: Gender question

Agreed. Just 10% of nurses are men, yet no-one ever seems to be beating a drum about that - a percentage that would be deemed as unacceptable if it were women. At the end of the day I think the whole thing is silly, people are drawn to whatever they want to and anyone who is put off so easily never had any real passion for it. Besides you can entice people however you wish, when the reality differs from the perception you have problems. Just look at nursing where they are now having problems, the carrot of increased pay and responsibility attracted those who thought themselves above things like washing patients ('Too posh to wash' as they say) and now nursing struggles with the basics. The same will happen with STEM as they get ever more desperate to attract a specific quota of women or be labelled as sexist.

[Cari]

Re: Gender question

@Connor - With respect to the IT industry, having actual proper computing subjects being taught in schools benefits everyone with an existing interest or with the potential to be interested. How much talent has the industry missed out on due to IT in school being so dire the last two decades? It's not just girls that get turned off by it. They shouldn't be doing this to fiddle numbers and meet quotas. IT in schools in general needed to stop focusing on how to use Office and actually teach the interesting stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor deluded fools~~~ all that time lost in education to become an entrant code monkey or helldesk call logger.

[LucreLout]

So what's the problem?

Why is gender imbalance within a profession perceived as such a problem? Where are the campaigns for more binwomen? Trawlerwomen? Why did mining come and go with no outcry about the estrogen deficit? When was the last government compaign to get more men into HR? (stop sniggering - I only realised after I'd written it)

Given that certain academic subjects are mandatory at GCSE level, why not simply make Computer Science another of those? Instant rebalancing.

The government could couple that with various initiatives to make computing a more appealing industry to women - such as sorting out ageism and offshoring. Going on maternity leave in your 20s or 30s is a much bigger problem if your career is toast in your 50s than it is if there's going to be work into your 60s. Having your department offshored is more of a problem if you're only a week away from notifying your employer of your pregnancy.

[Cuddles]

STEM is meaningless

"There is clearly a lot more to do to encourage girls to follow the STEM subjects generally and computing in particular."

I really dislike the use of "STEM" as a category, it's just far too wide-ranging to actually be of any use. Sure, computing has a huge majority of men in it, and physics and engineering aren't far off. But biology is dominated by girls (around 60% or so), while chemistry and maths are about on parity or possibly girl majority depending on what level you look at and how you gather your figures. If there's a problem with getting girls interested in computing, focus on that. Mixing it up with subjects that don't have that problem, or even have the exact opposite, doesn't help anyone.

[J.G.Harston]

In 1985 (god, I'm old) my state comprehensive school 'O' level Computer Studies course was almost 50% male/female, and it covered database structures, algorythms, logical analysis and programming. We never touched 'office' tasks - that was the business studies class upstairs bashing away at their Remmingtons.

[Cari]

Got to wonder what happened in the 90s and 00s there. When I was doing GCSEs, IT was a GNVQ in "How to use Office" and A-Level was that + Macromedia software.

So glad to see kids and teens will get to have courses that focus on the interesting aspects of computers now.