I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example).
If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets lamenting the lack of women in CS are actually partly to blame for it for their ongoing denigration and belittling of those already in the field. For example, someone in this thread cited an NPR article titled "When Women Stopped Coding." Does "coding" sound like a prestigious job activity to you? How many news articles have you seen lately that casually refer to psychiatrists or psychologists as "shrinks," and how many have you seen that refer to us as "coders," "geeks," or "nerds?"
As a physician, I don't think any of us have the perception that programming is lower status. Our in-jokes are usually about how we can't find housing on our salaries because the former computer science majors are driving up the prices.
"Does the staggering wealth of particular engineers and programmers mean that there is any chance for nerds to rise socially?
Stammbach worked with a colony of longtailed macaques. In the paper cited above, the running header is "Responses to Specially Skilled Java Monkeys." Stammbach took the lowest-ranking macaque out of the society and taught him to operate a complex machine and obtain food. When the nerd monkey was reintroduced to the society, the higher ranking macaques stopped kicking him out of the way long enough for him to complete operation of the machine and obtain food for the community. I.e., society cooperated to create the conditions under which the nerd could toil for them. However, the monkey who acquired these special skills and provided for the society did not achieve any rise in his dominance status."
Phil Greenspun's title for the above was "Java Monkeys."
(I personally don't have an opinion about the status of programmers relative to other professionals and how it affects women, so just commenting on your remark.)
as someone who works around hundreds of MDs daily. I would say they all look down at CS degrees, in fact at my work, a masters in CS still gets you the label of "unskilled labor" but a CNA with 6 months of training is not.
Where have you seen Media outlets talking about Programmers are "geeks" or "nerds"? I recall The Register calling scientists "boffins" but not using the other two words for Coders.
I have absolutely no problem with "Coder". At the risk of sounding grand and dandy, I think people realize the impact Code has on their lives, and being called a coder makes me very happy.
I agree with your apprehension over Geek & Nerd, though, it's a badge of honor for you and me but maybe not within wider society. But still, which media outlets?
Oh BTW: Interesting point about "prestige" affecting womens' choices in profession. I did not give that angle much thought, I'll talk to some of my female colleagues to verify.
Being called a "coder" implies you're performing mechanistic grunt work of manipulating symbols with little thought to architecture, or really without any implied discipline. It's akin to identifying a writer or journalist as a "typist". Though I suppose that's what many "coders" do, go figure.
The media by and large does not care about programmers, only insofar as there is overlap with Internet entrepreneurs.
I agree with you. It's all highly subjective, of course, but my own perception is there's a slightly negative connotation to calling someone a "coder." If you don't think so, you can at least agree that it's less positive relative to "doctor"/"lawyer"/"manager." Heck, even "designer" has a slightly fashionable connotation to it.
Perhaps it's not prestige so much as risk-aversion. Programming is a very cyclical industry (akin to oil or construction), whereas there's always a need for doctors and to a lesser extent lawyers.
Edit: Certainty this isn't the only reason to choose another career besides software, I just thought I'd respond to prestige as a particular reason.
Woz, Bill and Larry were coders, geeks and nerds at some point, and in many ways still are. Are they prestigious? I guess it's up for the reader to decide.
They're famous and respected as businessmen and philanthropists, not software engineers. The media and general public are largely ignorant of the technical accomplishments of those men and would pay them little notice had they not been so phenomenally successful in business. Compare the responses to the deaths of Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.
Well sure but nobody cares about most Nobel prize winners either, and nobody cares about great poets. It's just that money is an "objective" yardstick, you either have it or you don't, which makes it easy for people to wrap their head around.
However, I would argue that if he wasn't a foil to jobs he wouldnt be nearly as interesting, there are plenty of equally/more deserving engineering geniuses in the world, no matter how gifted woz is.
If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets lamenting the lack of women in CS are actually partly to blame for it for their ongoing denigration and belittling of those already in the field. For example, someone in this thread cited an NPR article titled "When Women Stopped Coding." Does "coding" sound like a prestigious job activity to you? How many news articles have you seen lately that casually refer to psychiatrists or psychologists as "shrinks," and how many have you seen that refer to us as "coders," "geeks," or "nerds?"