> As computer scientist Dr. Grace Hopper told a reporter, programming was "just like planning a dinner.
I have no doubt that Grace Hopper turned out to be a great programmer and made many great contributions to the field, but it turns out she was in the army, and she was ordered to go work on a computing effort, it wasn't her choice:
"In 1944, Lt. Grace Hopper was ordered to report to Harvard University to work on the Mark I, the behemoth digital computer that had been conceived by Harvard's Howard"
The idea that there may be some natural differences in preferences (things that interest you the most) between men and women is controversial for some reason, but this idea shouldn't be seen as sexist.
If it turns out that men really are more drawn to engineering (on average, this is obviously not true for everyone) because of some underlying biological development factors, shouldn't we try to understand why? Being more drawn to engineering doesn't mean you're automatically better at it. It just means you're probably more likely to go into the field and more likely to spend long hours studying it.
Right now the politically correct thing to do is to just reject that hypothesis and insist that all of these differences have to be nurture. I mean, why spend precious capital studying these things when we've already decided what is the correct answer, right?
I have no doubt that Grace Hopper turned out to be a great programmer and made many great contributions to the field, but it turns out she was in the army, and she was ordered to go work on a computing effort, it wasn't her choice:
"In 1944, Lt. Grace Hopper was ordered to report to Harvard University to work on the Mark I, the behemoth digital computer that had been conceived by Harvard's Howard"
The idea that there may be some natural differences in preferences (things that interest you the most) between men and women is controversial for some reason, but this idea shouldn't be seen as sexist.
If it turns out that men really are more drawn to engineering (on average, this is obviously not true for everyone) because of some underlying biological development factors, shouldn't we try to understand why? Being more drawn to engineering doesn't mean you're automatically better at it. It just means you're probably more likely to go into the field and more likely to spend long hours studying it.
Right now the politically correct thing to do is to just reject that hypothesis and insist that all of these differences have to be nurture. I mean, why spend precious capital studying these things when we've already decided what is the correct answer, right?