Eeek, it’s so Geeky

The stereotype of computer scientists as geeks who never leave the lab may be driving women away from the field, a new study suggests.

The stereotype of computer scientists as geeks who never leave the lab may be driving women away from the field, a new study suggests. And women can be turned off by just the physical environment, say, of a computer science classroom or office that’s strewn with objects considered ‘masculine geeky’, such as video games and science fiction stuff. That stereotype doesn’t appeal to many women, who don’t like the portrait of masculinity that it evokes. So women don’t feel they would fit in and steer clear of computer science courses and jobs. Such avoidance could help to explain why just 22 per cent of computer science graduates in the US are women, a ratio that has been steadily decreasing. In the study, male and female students entered a small classroom that either contained objects stereotypically associated with computer science, such as Star Trek posters, video game boxes and Coke cans, or non-stereotypical items such as nature posters, art, a dictionary and coffee mugs. (They were told to ignore these objects because the room was being shared with another class.) In the geeky environment, women were significantly less interested than men in computer science, while there was no gender difference for the non-stereotypical classroom.