Talk:Women in computing

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Truyen kim nguyen.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:07, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Some missing notable mentions
Won't add them myself because I don't feel comfortable editing such a collaborative article, but here are several if someone wants to pick up the glove the timeline should really include something about Dorit Aharonov, Dana Moskovich, Orna Kupferman and Irit Dinur. All four are internationally recognized researchers in computation theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.65.153.13 (talk) 19:15, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Meg Whitman
Adding Meg Whitman? I would think that Bill Gates would be on a typical list of famous men in computer science. Or am I wrong about that? If not, it seems that Meg Whitman and other women in business related to computers belong on the list here of "famous" women. - SteveMetsker

Marissa_Mayer
Add Marissa Mayer?

Marissa Ann Mayer (born on 30 May 1975) is the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at American search engine company Google.

Mayer was the first female engineer hired at Google and one of their first 20 employees, joining the company in early 1999.

Stats
one reads '' A report from the Computing Research Association indicated that the number recently fell below 20%, from nearly 40% 15 prior. [3] ''

which points to http://www.cra.org/statistics/ from where we can find http://www.cra.org/info/taulbee/women.html

which if you read it does not say about fall but the OPPOSITE!--Nkour 17:38, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Merge
I don't feel that the content in Women, girls and information technology really belongs here. The decline of women's involvement in the computer and information technology field is a separate issue that's the focus of several studies. The focus of this article seems better suited to talk about famous women in the field and (perhaps) professional resources for the women that participate in it today. Maura Dailey 20:24, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Concur - The article proposed for merger hasn't had the depth of editing and it seems to trivialize the impact and influence of professionals in this field who happen to be women.
 * geoWIZard-Passports 13:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Do Not Merge - Separate topics. Do not merge. --lquilter 14:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * After almost 2 months there have been no arguments to merge and everyone agrees to not merge. I removed the merge template from this and other page. --lquilter 14:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed the merge template - it looks like it never actually got removed :) Leigh Honeywell (talk) 04:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I Agree -Please do not merge. These are absolutely distinct topics. I, for instance, came to this page in order to find organizations for women in computing, and I do in fact see those on this page. It's very logical. That logic would be lost if the page were merged with the page on Women, girls and information technology. 209.251.153.11 (talk) 18:53, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

List of famous women
I think this would be better in chronological order. Any comments?JulesH 14:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. It appears to be in alphabetical order by first name (except for the last one added at the end).  That order is not at all meaningful, and just confusing.  Chronological would be much better, starting with the year of their first major computing accomplishment.  For example:


 * 1842: Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), analyst of ...
 * 1946: Betty Jennings, ..., original programmers of the ENIAC
 * T-bonham (talk) 08:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should unify the criteria to choose which is the date selected as an entrance of new women inside the timeline. By looking at the current timeline it appears that many dates refer to the moment when those women have achieved a significant contribution to computer sciences and computing development. This is mostly food for thought. :Spideralex (talk) 19:26, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Mitchell Baker?
Would Mitchell Baker, current President of Mozilla Foundation and CEO of Mozilla Corp count as famous? Frankchn (talk) 05:08, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I prefer the wording "notable" to famous, and if an individual merits a Wikipedia page then he or she is notable. The real question is: is this page about women involved in computing in technical capacities, or do businesspeople count as well?  I'm not sure I'd include a woman just because she is an executive of a technology company.  There are probably many more of those than there are women who have advanced the art of computing through technical achievements.  Robert K S (talk) 05:14, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Declination of women in CS merger

 * Strongly oppose: why not use "women in computing" to talk about women doing research, women innovators, the fact that many women were the first programmers because they could type, and other information that has a primary relevance to the said topic (famous women & organizations is a good start). The lagging #s issue is a side note to this topic yet it dominates this article! Most of the content here should be ported to the "declining..." article. I went here looking for something altogether different than the talk of how there aren't enough women in CS.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.200.173.113 (talk) 18:07, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Support this merger; looks like a clear instance of a new page created that should have been here. --Lquilter (talk) 02:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The article titled: Declination of Women in Computer Science deals with the declination phenomenon localized in Canada. The article titled: women in computing briefly mentions this matter on the global scale using the United States as an example. By Keeping the two articles separate, information seekers can find out the Canadian status of the situation much faster. Thus the merger should not be carried out. --TSornalingam
 * Yes, well, it's not titled "Decline of women in computer science in Canada", so it's not at all clear that that's what it is; I'd say rather that hampers information seekers. Also please note wikipedia manual of style regarding article titles. --Lquilter (talk) 18:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thats a great suggestion, I will make the necessary changes. Thank you. --TSornalingam
 * This article has been renamed: Declination of Canadian Women in Computer Science--TSornalingam —Preceding unsigned comment added by TSornalingam (talk • contribs) 21:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You still missed reading WP:MOS about how to do capitalization of articles. --Lquilter (talk) 23:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose this merger. Women in computing is a nice overall look at the issue. Kingturtle (talk) 18:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * oppose the merger. I'd rather see the "decline" content merged into Women, girls and information technology.  I'm not 100% happy with that title either, but the content seems more relevant.  I'm going to attach this merger recommendation to the decline article. Leigh Honeywell (talk) 03:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Alternative Reasons for Lack of Women in Computer Science
Several issues were not discussed as why women may eschew computer science as a career choice.


 * Education requirements: A typical computer science degree on average may take up to five years to complete (the lights rarely go off in the computer labs) and if there ever is a lapse along the way (childbirth, marriage, unemployment, etc.) recovery maybe difficult, especially in a fast changing field. Computer science schools and employers look at any interruptions or gaps in education as a negative.


 * Work Environment: Computer science may require 80+ hour weeks (just like college) and telling the employer that you have to take a month or more off for children or leaving work to no less feed a child (or even having a child) will interfere with their dead lines. If there is a project and a computer science person leaves for several months, they would most likely be unusable on this same project resulting in a reassignment to another project. This flexibility requires larger companies with multiple projects and many of those employers are going overseas to do their computer science or cutting back.


 * Unemployment, lower pay, and re-education: As computer science becomes more short term "contract" work, women may find themselves in a glutted computer science market with greater unemployment, lower paychecks than expected, or requiring more re-education because of gaps in employment caused by family obligations and unemployment.

All in all, women (and men) who are smart enough to be a computer science are smart enough to see that computer science may not be a good career choice for anyone who wants a life that involves a family, or even a life. The high tech community is not family friendly and very unforgiving of those who have a family or are not driven to "own their job". This is an industry wide problem that is devoid of childcare facilities and increasingly less health care the further one gets away from the top companies. As more competition from overseas comes into play, wages and benefits will decrease, thus making a computer science career choice for women even more unattractive. Other, non-computer science professions are more forgiving of people taking sabbaticals and smart women are more likely to seek those choices. What needs to be done to attract more women into computer science is to improve equal pay, flexible work hours, childcare, career re-entry, re-education, maternal leave, and health benefits in all high tech companies. This would reassure women that computer science is a valid career choice and not just a horse race.Septagram (talk) 04:08, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Quest Atkinson (talk) 03:19, 21 September 2011 (UTC) In addition to these reasons, readers should also consider  lack of awareness as a possible deterrent. Young girls at the elementary and secondary academic levels are not exposed to computing in the same way and degree that they would be to other subjects (i.e. biology, drama, math, etc.). When we look to countries in the east where participation is almost equally distributed between the sexes, we should ask why. One of the contributing factors in this shift between west and east is that many of these eastern countries are more technologically advanced where massive technology R&D investments are made. Computing and technology in these countries has become more of 'a way of life' and so the awareness is there.

I happened upon the IT industry somewhat haphazardly. While I'm passionate about the field and enjoy exploring it both academically and professionally, I'm confident that had a guidance counselor, peer or parent mentioned the opportunities and benefits of the field, I may have made a more conscious decision to be a part of it.

This is start of my entry, separated from the unsigned comment of someone else above -- No mention also about other things: The article fails to mention that at least in US, women are strongly favoured over men when recruited into faculty STEM position (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112.long)
 * risk-aversion. CS went through two drops, and each drop was higher for women than for males, and recovery for female emplyment was slower than for males
 * people-vs-tools. There is a lot of research suggesting women are more interested in interaction with people, while male (in general, this is a statistic) like more toying with tools (see e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/#%21po=7.14286)
 * psychology. It seems that programmers are more likely to be of several quite specific character types (as measured by Myers-Briggs) even after correcting for sex. Those types are more common amongst men (INTP and INTJ, for example are overrepresented amongst the programmers) http://masculinebydesign.blogspot.com/2014/03/discouraging-women-from-entering-stem.html - see here for distreibution of the types amongst gender http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/population-gender/

The whole entry does not list a lot of relevant papers investigating the gender gap in STEM and concluding that whateverprevents women from entering STEM, it is something which acts before the high school. 31.1.173.229 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:45, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Correction of my own statement "before the high school" should be "before bachelorship at least" http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00037/abstract — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:808:201:100:99F7:6A1B:C66C:7C6B (talk) 11:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Decline of women in CS
Judging by the graph given, it seems that the rise and decline of women in CS can be completely explained by the rise and decline of all people in CS (the graph shows that males rose and declined at exactly the same times as women and seemingly proportionally). Giving an idea of the change of male/female ratio may be more important.

--66.189.98.178 (talk) 08:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Concur: I agree that they should provide a ratio rather than the overall numbers. Graphs such as that may allow more people to believe that the number of women in CS is proportional to the decline in CS enrollment overall and that the gap is not increasing. Although it looks as though that graph has been removed, I believe it is important to accurately depict the increasing gender gap so that it will not be overlooked and change can be made in the field. An article mentioned in the New York Times provides a better overview (with accurate graph) that shows this disparity: What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?.

Torontostudent24 (talk) 17:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Concur.

Hedy Lamarr
I have my doubts about the 'co-inventor' claim-- in an interview she gave (citation needed..), she disavowed any real involvement with the invention/patent, and it done as more of a courtesy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.14.156.195 (talk) 03:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Reference: Locate the IEEE Spectrum article about her from the 1980s. 99.11.227.190 (talk) 19:04, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Merges
I propose that Women, girls and information technology and Women in the Information Age should be merged here. The first is an essay-like article that is essentially a content fork (computing=information technology) and the second is a non-notable research project. Fences &amp;  Windows  19:34, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I see the first merge was proposed in 2006. I think four years and no improvement shows that article is not viable as a separate topic. Fences  &amp;  Windows  19:37, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

No discussion after two years... I guess that means no-one's interested, but for what it's worth, I think these articles should be merged. Women, girls and information technology probably wasn't a content fork when it was created, but as it stands, these two articles both cover the same subject matter. It makes sense to bring them together into one comprehensive article, surely? (As for Women in the Information Age, it doesn't even seem worth a mention in this article. I'd be in favour of deleting it entirely.) DoctorKubla (talk) 17:00, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think Women in the Information Age is even worth merging. There's really no information on the subject except for its existence and who is leading it. I have proposed it for deletion. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:06, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Proposed split of article
It's an article which focuses on the lack of women in computing. The Overview, Attracting women into computer science, Gender theory and women in computing, and International perspective all ride a serious bummer which should live on another page. I went to this page to read about women in computing. Not why women are not in computing to the same proportion as men.

See the stereotype threat effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

Can I get a witness? Can someone help fix this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rcmulcrone (talk • contribs) 19:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I second this request. All that whining needs to be removed from the article. It makes for a very unpleasant and distracting read. There is already an article on sexism in the technology industry. --IO Device (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Some problems with the article
"Global concerns" is vague. Is there a specific desire (on whose part, then?) to increase the percentage of women in computing? It's 20% in the USA. And if that is to be the main focus of the article, maybe it should be labeled differetly, e.g., strategies for reducing the gender gap. I don't care if 90% of the article is about this, as long as it's labeled properly.

Also, if Lovelace is going to be used as an illustration, bear in mind that her notes about an algorithm that could have been programmed on Babbage's machine are controversial. Some people say that your instructions are a computer program, whether or not you ever ran it on a machine; others insist that a plan for a program, however detailed and useful, remains a plan until translated into a specific computer language. Until then, it's an idea for a program, possible a wonderful idea ... but not a program. This might, paradoxically, discourage high school girls from becoming programmers because she only wrote about it and never got to do it. Grace Hopper might be a better role model. But we must be careful not to ***do*** advocacy here; rather, we ***report*** on other people's advocacy.

Anyway, I changed "misconceptions" to concepts. Much of computing, in the software development industry, actually does involve sitting in front of a computer writing code. Not all day, of course, but it is the central aspect of the job. It may be that women aren't as willing as men to do this. Now if we'd like to write about the other aspects of computing, such as discussing ideas with others, that's fine. But I didn't see anything in the cited New York Times article to show that the "lone programmer in a cubicle" image is a is a misconception. Joel Sposky and Steve McConnell both recommend private offices for programmers, where he (or she) can work undisturbed for long stretches of time. --Uncle Ed (talk) 12:30, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

The page (and wikipedia in general) has series problems
1/ Some of the dates on the time line are wrong, off by a decade is some cases.

2/ Major gaps: people, topics, relation to world events are missing.

3/ Too much historical emphasis on the recent. Some of the women's roles were more managerial and economic (e.g., Meg) rather than technical. If you are comparing with Bill Gates: are you jealous, simply because he is a billionaire or because of his early technical skill writing a BASIC interpreter which made him a billionaire?

4/ Reference material in general is 21st century.

5/ Watch more for honors, titles and award for older folk, but be mindful of the young. 99.11.227.190 (talk) 19:12, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

6/ The section titled 'Worldwide timeline' appears to have limited itself almost completely without exceptions ( but: Mehvish Mushtaq, Frances Brazier ) to listing Anglophone women from the US and the UK for work done in the US and UK. Perhaps one could start here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/in-romania-vestiges-of-communism-boost-women-in-tech — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.137.38.59 (talk) 13:11, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Spam
The section "Organizations for women in computing" is becoming a bit of a spam magnet. Stricter inclusion criteria would help to deal with this. I suggest limiting the list to notable organisations only – ie. those that have their own WP article. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, since no-one objects, I'll go ahead and trim the list of non-notable entries. DoctorKubla (talk) 07:16, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Timeline, or list of famous women?
The timeline of women in computing is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis – it's trying to be both a "timeline of women in computing" and a "list of famous women in computing" at the same time. Which results in a bit of a mess, because the two are not synonymous. A timeline is usually understood to be a list of significant, landmark events, but not every notable woman in computing was involved in such an event. Entries like "Phyllis Fox worked on the PORT portable mathematical/numerical library" or "Sally Floyd (~1953–), is most renowned for her work on Transmission Control Protocol" just don't belong in a timeline; they would, however, belong in a list of notable women. We need to decide which type of list we want this to be.

In the meantime, I'm going to remove the following entries, where neither the event nor the people involved appear to be significant:


 * 1970?: Susan Nycum did early computer security and computer law/intellectual property for Datamation.
 * 1978: The Association for Women in Computing was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1978.
 * 1986: Hannah Smith was the "Girlie tipster" for CRASH (magazine).
 * 2008: Elektra, a member of the Chaos Computer Club developped Mesh Potato, a device for providing low-cost telephony and Internet in areas where alternative access either doesn’t exist or is  too expensive.

If anyone objects to this, feel free to revert me and we can discuss it. But I'm mainly hoping to encourage discussion of my broader question: should this list be a timeline of events, or simply a list of famous women? DoctorKubla (talk) 08:22, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Please do not assume that a lack of an article on someone mean a lack of notability. The most often cause for that is that the person or his/her field have been overlooked by editors. No objection, however, to remove events which do not say much about the development of computing. Dimadick (talk) 06:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

where's sandy lerner? co-founder of cisco should be in the list, if there has to be a list. duncanrmi (talk) 20:58, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Where's Kateryna Yushchenko? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateryna_Yushchenko_(scientist) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.152.38.31 (talk) 09:53, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

These "Women in..." articles may reveal, ironically, favouritism and bias themselves.
Even as they discuss discrimination and bias against women, they often themselves read like they're written by gender biased ideologues. There seems to be a gynocentric focus on women at this encyclopedia. What about African Americans in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (or computing, or whatever) or hispanics, or any other racial or ethnic minority groups for that matter? Are they not considered as important of a topic for an encyclopedia? I'm addressing here a potential favouritism shown towards women as an historically disadvantaged group that I think needs some attention at this encyclopedia. It's as important for an encyclopedia not to show favourtism towards a certain group as it is for an encyclopedia not to be biased. I would appreciate any comments about this.

(It's no one's fault that the vast majority of the editors and writers here are men, but I am wondering if there exists a possible, and completely needless, "guilt trip" on the part of many male editors here as the cause for this favouritism towards articles on women; I only bring this up because surely there has to be some explanation, pyschological or otherwise, as to why there is so much attention given here at Wikipedia to only women in almost every aspect of life and yet so little given to any other groups of people. Just a possible psychological explanation for this obvious discrepancy.) Alialiac (talk) 11:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This even has it's own category now: Category:Women_in_computing, but it's nothing compared to this expansive women+biology tree I found recently: Category:Women_biologists.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Assignment
I believe this page is still having an identity crisis. Is it a page about how women are underrepresented or is it a page about the history of women in computing? Judging from the title I would say the history of women in computing but judging from the content I would say it is an article about how women are underrepresented with a foot note about the history. Reading through the table of contents and looking back at the title of the article I was confused. I am doing research for a school assignment. I believe that if I was looking into why there are so few women in Computer Science this article may help. However I agree with the earlier comment on how “Decline of Women in CS” has decreased proportionately with the number of men in the profession. I believe this article draws too much attention to the fact that the number of women in the Computer Science field has recently decreased and does not draw enough attention to the fact that at the same time the number of males in the field has proportionately decreased as well. I believe that the information in this article is important but I think that the title and the content do not match. The title suggests a general understanding of the topic but the table of contents communicates that the article is all about how women are underrepresented in the field and progressively becoming more of a minority. Please give me feedback the whole reason I am writing this is to try to expand my understanding of the issue. Colinqb (talk) 18:02, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

NPOV
Lots of this article is "gender theory" speculation not backed by soild research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.114.88.111 (talk) 15:02, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Such as? You may well be right – I haven't read this article closely – but broad statements are hard to act upon. Can you give some examples of information in the article that isn't backed up by reliable sources, or that puts forward a non-neutral POV? DoctorKubla (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

This was exactly my impression. For example, in a section on "diversity benefits" no papers with a contrary views were quoted, giving an impression that the results are uncontested, while quick scholar google shows that the effects of gender diversity are still debated, with many papers supporting positive, negative or neutral, or non-linear effect of gender diversity. I added to references to correct this, but a lot more work would have to be put into the entry, as it currently sounds more like propaganda entry than encyclopedia. Why? Again, because it references no papers providing contrasting views, and many references to reports published by partisan organisation advocating for more gender diversity. 31.1.173.229 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

"International perspective"
There are two things wrong with this section heading in the article. Firstly, it suggests that English Wikipedia is only read or written by Americans, neither of which is true. Secondly, it suggests that Native Americans are not Americans, but live in some other country entirely!--greenrd (talk) 14:58, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Since no-one replied or did anything about this for several months, I have now "fixed" the issue myself.--greenrd (talk) 09:46, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Sexism in the technology industry
Two pages covering the same topic. The 'technology industry' is a slightly wider scope than 'computing' but the article exclusively discusses computing jobs. ― Padenton  &#124;&#9742; 02:22, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You're correct that the sexism article needs to be expanded with info about women on the engineering and manufacturing side ... but that was all I could do during the editathon. Want to give it a try?
 * Given the size of the article on "Women in computing," a merge would make for a really long article. Another option: Instead of expanding to a more general STEM focus, retitle the article "Sexism in the technology industry" to "Sexism in the computing field." (or something simialar.) Add a brief section to "Women in computing," with a link to the main article on "Sexism in the computing field." (Might need to adjust the title to work with existing language used in this topic.) -- Djembayz (talk)


 * Oppose merge. While women in computing are affected by sexism in the technology industry, it doesn't make sense to merge the article here. The content in the sexism article is well-developed and dumping it here would imbalance this article in terms of length and focus. Besides, the sexism article covers a distinct and notable topic that fits a general formula for articles on sexism (Sexism in video gaming, Sexism in academia). gobonobo  + c 09:09, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge. The women in computing article should however actually be about women in computing, and not about sexism. The article has a nice timeline, for example. I am in favor of having all sexism related info taken out of this article, and perhaps moved into sexism in the technology industry, etc. --IO Device (talk) 15:49, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge. While there is some overlap, the two articles have different focuses.  And putting it all into one article would make it too long.  I see that several recent stub or very short articles about lawsuits alleging gender discrimination in the technology industry would go very nicely over there, and take care of the incorrect viewpoint that those lawsuits are not Notable.  A subhead in that article such as Lawsuits Alleging Gender Discrimination in Technology Industry could pick up the articles that either exist or were proposed about the Ellen Pao (vs. Kleiner Perkins), Tina Huang (vs. Twitter), and Chia Hong (vs. Facebook) cases.  There is much good discussion out there in reliable sources about what these cases say about the employment/promotion culture in technology and VC firms.  (The discussion has included viewpoints both critical and supportive of the industry.) --Pechmerle (talk) 05:37, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Withdrawn: Seeing the discussion, and having now read through previous talk sections of this article, I see now that I was mistaken that the 2 articles were close enough to be merged. ― Padenton &#124;&#9993;  05:50, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Removal of copyvio
I just removed a couple of paragraphs that were added by User:Abickel in February 2014. Some of this content was taken from page 917 of the Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology, and I thought it was a fair assumption that the rest was copied from somewhere too (especially given the word-for-word repetition of the same sentence in both paragraphs). Looking through the revision history, I noticed that quite a lot of content has been added by users (like Abickel) with few or no other edits outside of this article – if anyone has the time and the inclination, its probably worth checking this article thoroughly for further copyright violations. DoctorKubla (talk) 11:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Meaningless statistics?
Here is a quote from the page "The same effect is seen in higher education; for instance, only 4% of female college freshmen expressed intention to major in computer science in the US." However the page does not give a comparable male interest rank, making the statistic seem meaningless to me. Can anyone find a comparable statistic for males to put in? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Champfish (talk • contribs) 15:47, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

removal of genetics subsection
I removed the one-paragraph subsection "Genetics" under "Factors contributing to lack of female participation": "Simon Baron-Cohen's Empathizing - Systemizing theory hypothesises that males are, on average, better at systemizing than females. A system being “anything which is governed by rules specifying input-operation-output relationships [...] such as [...] computer programming”."

Nothing here suggests that the cited author has proposed his hypothesis as an explanation for the gender imbalance in computing. The implied connection seems to be the editor's original synthesis based on elements of the cited source. --Allen (talk) 20:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Strongly biased
This article shows a strong feminist bias, particularly in the section on why there are less women in computing. It lists only feminist theories for why that's the case, never acknowledging theories and arguments that use gender differences to explain the disparity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheDracologist (talk • contribs) 00:19, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Split the part about gender gap in computing to its own article
Have an article about gender disparity in computing and let this be a page with the names and achievements of notable women in computing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheDracologist (talk • contribs) 19:44, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Do I understand the proposal correctly, that most of this article would go to the new article on gender disparity in computing and the history, timeline and the Turing award recipients sections would remain here?  --Boson (talk) 23:45, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is my suggestion. TheDracologist (talk) 06:23, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Support. The two topics are very different. One is mainly a list, and is (or should be) purely or mainly about historical and biographical facts. It can be categorized as history and biography (list). If the history section were longer it might deserve a third article. The other topic is (or should be) about statistical, sociological, psychological and neurological research; where appropriate (for an encyclopaedia) it should also discuss facts about different views on interpretative and normative issues in a neutral fashion, with a much greater necessity of attention to neutrality, due weight, etc. --Boson (talk) 12:08, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * How long should we wait for further discussion before going ahead with this? I'm new to Wikipedia, so I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. TheDracologist (talk) 20:36, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This split looks fairly uncontroversial to me and is reasonably easy to reverse, but there is no urgency, and anything related to an -ism is potentially controversial; so I would wait 7 days from when you tagged the article, if nobody else chimes in. The idea is to give anyone that might want to object a reasonable opportunity to do so, so I would normally wait longer in the holiday season, for instance. For actions with more potential for controversy, I might wait 4 weeks, but I don't think there are any bright-line rules. --Boson (talk) 21:32, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

evaluation of article
there should be more details of how women become involved with computing and their struggles to success.(Truyen kim nguyen (talk) 20:42, 15 September 2017 (UTC))

Inclusion of PyLadies in notable organizations
Any reason why PyLadies is not mentioned? They're an international community and well-established.

Aminata Sana Congo as a pioneer in computing
In what sense is Aminata Sana Congo a pioneer in computing? The article itself has no mention of her contributions and her own article is lacking in this respect as well. I understand wanting to include an African woman for the sake of diversity, but I don't see how she is a pioneer; what exactly did she contribute to the field of computing? 80.236.241.234 (talk) 14:32, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Frances Allen

 * Please add information about Frances Allen to the timeline:
 * Frances Allen, a computing pioneer from the 1950s through the 1990s, is listed only as a recipient of the Turing award. The fact of her receiving this award speaks to her notability and contribution. :
 * As source material, one can use her biographical page: Frances Allen:

Philhower (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I have declined this edit request. Information added to Wikipedia requires a reliable source that can verify the information. If you would still like to add this information to the article, please submit a new request and include a source. Thanks. Z1720 (talk) 20:52, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Frances Allen
Add three sentences about Fran Allen before: "Christine Darden began working for NASA's computing pool in 1967"
 * Please add information about Frances Allen to the timeline:

Here are the sentences: In 1966, Frances "Fran" Elizabeth Allen who was developing programming language compilers at IBM Research, published a paper entitled  "Program Optimization,". It laid the conceptual basis for systematic analysis and transformation of computer programs. This paper introduced the use of graph-theoretic structures to encode program content in order to automatically and efficiently derive relationships and identify opportunities for optimization.

Link: "Frances "Fran" Elizabeth Allen" to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Allen

Reference: https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/allen_1012327.cfm

Please add information about Frances Allen to the timeline:
Add three sentences about Fran Allen before:

> Christine Darden began working for NASA's computing pool in 1967

Here are the sentences: In 1966, Frances "Fran" Elizabeth Allen who was developing programming language compilers at IBM Research, published a paper entitled "Program Optimization,". It laid the conceptual basis for systematic analysis and transformation of computer programs. This paper introduced the use of graph-theoretic structures to encode program content in order to automatically and efficiently derive relationships and identify opportunities for optimization.

Link: "Frances "Fran" Elizabeth Allen" to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Allen

Reference: https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/allen_1012327.cfm

Flyingbarron (talk) 12:40, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Chrisfilip (talk) 04:12, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Mary Coombs
I see that this edit has been reversed. I'm not sure why? The edit wasn't mine and other than the user evading an editing block, I'm not sure why this particular edit was withdrawn, as Mary, if she was the world's first female commercial programmer as the citations suggest, seems significant enough to be on this page. Any ideas? Pluke (talk) 21:43, 30 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Try reading the edit summary - it was reversed because it was added by a block-evading user. It also had too many citations including a YouTube video. Surely it can be done better! One good citation should be sufficient. Skyerise (talk) 21:52, 30 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I'll re-add the edit and see what happens... Pluke (talk) 10:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Trans women in computing
There was just a minor edit skirmish of the paragraph in the article about trans women in computing. It was deleted, then restored, with no meaningful Edit summaries from either party. But this does need addressing. Right now, the sources don't support the claim that "There is a common notion that trans women are disproportionately involved with computing." They mention a few trans women, but nothing about a "common notion". Then the text clumsily says "Famous trans women involved with computing include Lynn Conway." Singular or multiple? We need to do better. HiLo48 (talk) 00:37, 29 September 2023 (UTC)