Programming is not a gender specific activity. Having said that, there must be some reason for the decidedly short supply of women programmers. Granted there is also a short supply of male programmers, but on average the ratio heavily favors men.

I personally know women programmers have the capacity and ability to be as good if not better at programming than their male counterparts. That obviously begs the question we initially asked--why aren't there more women programmers?

I can think of several reasons. First, women are excluded for purely economic reasons. Men need jobs to support their families, which are made up of women and children. So when the choice comes to give a programming position to a man or woman, it goes to the man. Does that shock you? It shouldn't, that archaic mentality is all around. I personally know of a number of managers who have based their hiring practices on exactly that. In fact, it's an attitude that permeates the hiring practices of many large and small organizations. From another angle, it's an underground process designed to keep men in positions of authority and financial superiority. Women, for the most part, accept it because society has convinced them that a man's role is breadwinner, morally strong and emotionally limp.

Second, in general society views programming as a logical, problem solving activity ideally suited for males, hence women are generally not encouraged to pursue programming curriculums. This is a stereotype many people still sincerely believe and continue to support, especially in my generation. Other examples of professions caught in the same stereotype are mathematics and engineering, and not surprisingly they are both perceived as logical problem solving types of professions.

Third, the stereotypes we've been discussing are deeply rooted in the academic profession. Being a college instructor myself, I believe some instructors, at least at the college level, play a very large role in molding student ideas and decisions. I don't necessarily believe they openly discourage women from pursuing male stereotype professions but certainly in many ways, through suggestions, comments, curriculum recommendations and worse through grading, they manage to convince or otherwise influence students from pursuing certain courses.

This academic influence is certainly not limited to teachers. Students play at least as big a part in this process. There is nothing worse than peer pressure to force conformity to established norms. At the college level, peer pressure is particularly strong especially for first year women who face and must deal with an entrenched male authority system that is tolerated if not reinforced by the institution itself.

What about the corporate world? We've all heard the stories of the male dominated upper levels of management, how does this impact on women programmers struggling to progress up the ladder to MIS directors or Vice President of information systems? I can answer this question with another question--how many MIS directors do you know who are women? Now ask yourself how many of those manage big corporate data processing departments? My answer to the first question would have been a few. I know at least eight or ten DP managers out of seventy that are women, none of which manage big DP shops. In general, the bigger the resources the greater the likelihood you'll find a man in charge. That's truly a sad statement of our business philosophy.

I mentioned at the beginning that I believe women could make better programmers than men. Let's see if I can support this statement. First, Empirical evidence has demonstrated that women have superior fine motor skills which simply means they're better at detail and we all know programming is a rather detail intensive profession. Anybody with that kind of ability will be better suited for programming types of activities.

Second, and this is a pre-disposition that I believe in, women have a greater level of compassion and emotional capacity than men do. I've seen this demonstrated so often it's difficult to refute it and keep a straight face. In my opinion, these are highly desirable qualities worth developing because they help that person analyze any given situation in greater detail. This increases the potential for finding the right solution for all concerned.

You may be asking how those kinds of qualities fit into programming. The intense degree of user interaction in today's programming environment requires exactly those kinds of skills to mediate the differing personalities and viewpoints and reach the right solution, one that satisfies all interested parties. The days of developing software in a vacuum in the MIS department are long gone. They've been replaced by committees that include users, managers and sometimes vendors.

For my part, as an instructor, I am constantly encouraging female students to try a programming course. They might find it comes a little easier than they expected.

RR 2 Box 168, Jericho, VT 05465, 802-899-3115 Info@lavalleeccs.com