Good overview. I think the "thinking different" part is important. Many comp sci problems can be solved in very different ways, increasing the variability of thinking might increase the probability of finding the best solution? Or to rephrase, including women, and generally people from different backgrounds might yield advantages over just hiring the best white/asian dudes.
There's a contradiction inherent with that "thinking different" argument. If you accept that women on a large scale (ie, no individual example, but as a group of millions of people) think differently, then it's not absurd to say that they don't tend towards computing and hard-science as often.
Women have different biology, their bodies respond differently, they fall ill to different diseases but somehow it's become taboo to say that perhaps they think differently too, and therefore tend towards different disciplines. The brain is just another organ after all...
An example from a similar field: 90% of NFL Wide Receivers are Black. Does that mean the NFL is racist? Or that black people's genetic heritage skews their speed&strength bell curve slightly to the right so that the top hundredth of a percent is slightly above white's top hundredth of a percent? I tend to believe it's the second.
Please note that I know some nerd girls (mostly from the CS and EE programs), and nothing I say indicates that opportunities should be closed, or discrimination should happen, but you can't look at a number like "15% of comp-sci students are women" and immediately assume something is wrong.
I don't doubt that social pressures are playing a role here, with general pressure to "be pretty, not smart", but I don't think it explains away all of it. I am not putting forward a theory of everything here, just expressing my frustration with general feminism thoughts that everybody is fundamentally identical, except for socialization.
Well, this is going to turn bad I'm sure, I've touched on sex AND race.... but the central argument across all 3 is similar. There are bell curves everywhere in biology, and they are slightly skewed and stretched across different groups. No individual point is enough to make a decision ("you're a woman" doesn't say anything about computer ability, just as saying "you're black" doesn't make them a wide receiver), but on a mass-scale they predict percentages and expectations.
90% of NFL Wide Receivers are Black. Does that mean the NFL is racist? Or that black people's genetic heritage skews their speed&strength bell curve slightly to the right so that the top hundredth of a percent is slightly above white's top hundredth of a percent?
Or that young white men, compared with young black men, are much less likely to see professional sports as their ticket to an upper-class lifestyle, and therefore the folks who focus their efforts on becoming a better football player are predominantly black?
(Note that in the first few decades of the 20th century, when antisemitism was much more prominent, professional boxing was a predominantly Jewish sport.)
I nevertheless think that the feminist idea that we are fundamentally identical, except for socialization is the best way to think about the world. Because it means that since it's all socialization, we can change ourselves, we can understand each other. If we are hardwired to be different, all our efforts at change are futile.
I think there's a middle ground. By acknowledging that people come in all shapes and sizes and mindsets, you can consciously find people who compliment you or your organization well.
I never think that biology should be used to discriminate, since the 90th percentile line of women may be the 85th percentile of men (or whatever skew you want), that doesn't mean that she's not better at whatever task than 85% of men, and hence a good hire. Basically, the macro scale says nothing about the micro scale. But what I wanted to point out was that using macro level statistics and saying "this is inherently wrong" is reading the skew, and not the individuals.
As with everything in life, I'm guessing the real answer is some combination of socialization and biology.
One other ideas has been kicking around in my head, a comp-sci idea even... If you have women being approximately equal members of college (I think they have a slight lead by a few percentages), and you have few women in comp-sci, by the pigeonhole principal, they're the majority in another major. Why isn't there a clamor to get men into those majors? The example of biology was used elsewhere in this thread I think.
Yes, some fields have a lot more women than men. The thing is that men can choose a lot more freely (although it is true there is prejudice against men in some areas, like male nurses), while women are facing a lot of prejudice, sometimes very hardcore prejudice, like death and sexual threats (and you can find a lot of incidents well documented). Men need not worry about such things if they choose to engage in a female dominated field.
The main issue, I think, is not whether women opt more or less for CS, but rather that many many are compelled/driven to opt-out of it. Something is clearly wrong if they can't opt freely without suffering prejudice or without having to, as some say, "grow a thick skin".
