That's a very interesting downward progression. By just the 3rd course only half the percentage of women, which implies more than half the women quit (assuming the whole class shrunk as well).
Why?
I guess it could be a culture of exclusion, but for it to work that fast it seems like it would have to be exceedingly toxic.
I wonder if Stanford does exit interviews when people leave a major. I had to have informal talks with my advisers (at a different college) when I changed majors, explaining my reasons. I wonder if that data is collected at all? And if not, why not?
> I guess it could be a culture of exclusion, but for it to work that fast it seems like it would have to be exceedingly toxic.
It's a failure of experience.
How many people can bake a cake? More on this later ....
My first assignment in data structures is simply: "Here is Eclipse, here is a project, here are directions for checking that project in, do it. Now use that to create a second project to print "Hello, World!" exactly."
1/3 of the class CANNOT DO THIS and drop. I'm serious. Following directions exactly appears to be a learned skill that not many learn.
Back to baking a cake. This is the same problem. Cakes have some exact directions occasionally. If you get them wrong, something goes wrong. I cannot give out several of my cake recipes because people accuse me of giving them the wrong recipe when the problem is they don't follow it.
And, yet, these recipes were directly out of women's magazines in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. So, it's not an anti-female bias to this characteristic.
It may be more of a fact that women who can follow directions exactly get pulled off into different areas/fields/hobbies before they reach computers.
Why?
I guess it could be a culture of exclusion, but for it to work that fast it seems like it would have to be exceedingly toxic.
I wonder if Stanford does exit interviews when people leave a major. I had to have informal talks with my advisers (at a different college) when I changed majors, explaining my reasons. I wonder if that data is collected at all? And if not, why not?