There are so few female programmers because they find it BORING
2nd June 2016
Lion of the Blogosphere reveals some Inconvenient Truth.
I believe that the BORINGNESS factor plays a very important role. Girls find computer programming BORING. They also find math really boring, which could explain in part why they don’t do as well on the math SAT. This is not to say that there aren’t biological differences between the sexes, but is it that girls are biologically inclinded to do poorly at math (relative to boys), or are they biologically inclined to find math boring, which in turns demotivates them from studying and learning the material, which causes the lower math SAT scores? I say that it’s probably a little of both. And the BORING factor can run in the other direction, because people are naturally less interested in things they are bad at.
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We don’t live in a society where young people are normally told that they should persevere with boring material because it would lead to a higher paying, but boring, career. Young people are more often told the opposite. “Follow your passion.” “Do what you love and the money will follow.” You are ten times more likely to hear a high school commencement speaker say something like that rather than “study something BORING that pays well.” But in India, the opposite is true. Everyone in India wants to learn IT, not because they love it or have passion for it, but because they see it as a ticket for moving to America and getting a job here. (And I should add that American corporations seem happy to punch a lot of Indian tickets.)