Given the supplied anecdote, it is because 99 men and 1 woman completed the requirements for a CS degree, for whatever reasons the individuals decided go do so.
Let's step aside the point of generalizing one anecdote to be representative, however. Can we really assign the disparity solely to microaggressions against women? Would we feel the same if the split were 75/25,or 51/49? What is the threshold of equality with respect to noise?
> Can we really assign the disparity solely to microaggressions against women?
No. Did I suggest that? I don't think I did. All I mentioned was structural disparity, which is likely multivariate. Microaggressions is a strange thing to jump to from the conversation, compared to say, the effect of video game marketing on preferences, the attitudes of parents and guidance counselors, or parental fears about internet predators and private PCs for children.
I don't have data readily available on this, but there weren't that many women declaring CS to start with, and I kind of expect that if we divided CS freshmen men into 'has written a program before' and 'has not', attrition rates for women would track the 'has not' fairly closely.
> Would we feel the same if the split were 75/25,or 51/49?
I don't know where the bright line is, and there probably isn't one. If it exists, it'd probably exist be between those to ratios. But the fact is it's more imbalanced than either ratio suggested, which should probably motivate policy changes more strongly.
I don't... don't really get why the above poster's observation is not inline given national graduation rates for CS. Seems within the expected distribution, no?
> Can we really assign the disparity solely to microaggressions against women? Would we feel the same if the split were 75/25,or 51/49? What is the threshold of equality with respect to noise?
Why don't you use your powerful male thoughts to do some basic bayesian modeling and come up with some proposals? Many people have so maybe you can borrow their work, if that sounds like too much effort.
Here's a fun one: Stats suggest in the US that men:women declare majors ~3:1 across all engineering disciplines but ~2:1 in computer science at the outset. However, when we look at graduation rates proportional to the whole of their class in 2016 we saw: computer sciences (17.9%), engineering (19.3%), physical sciences (39%) and mathematics (43.1%).
Computer science has an abnormally high attrition rate despite a increased chance of declaration for major. Other similarly complex and abstract disciplines such as mathematics (which CS leans upon heavily to get any real work done) do not have such a falloff.
So gosh. Where do YOU draw the line? Care to show us the work for how you derived it? I'd love to know.
I could probably get numbers for major vocational education startups. I think I might go pursue that. Since many of those are online, they'll have less noise from on-campus harassment.
Let's step aside the point of generalizing one anecdote to be representative, however. Can we really assign the disparity solely to microaggressions against women? Would we feel the same if the split were 75/25,or 51/49? What is the threshold of equality with respect to noise?