Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?

[Helen Faulkner <helen@debian.org>]

Penny Leach wrote:

> The idea totally freaks me out to be honest - I grew up with this idea
> strongly entrenched that as a woman, the best way to work towards
> feeling like I was living in an equal society was my ability to earn a
> good income (sure, in NZ I think it's still only 80% of men's but at
> least I'm self sufficient)... having a baby and putting my career on
> hold and being completely reliant on someone else for food and shelter
> is ... like, brain falls over and I go into shock :)

You may find, if the occasional arises for you, that you feel differently about
it then.  You might even realise that you want to do this thing of taking time
off from your career, even to its detriment, in order to raise a family.

I was also totally brought up to have an interesting, challenging career and
worry about the family thing later.  But now, looking down the barrel of
parenthood, I know that this massive (and scary!) change from working physicist
to stay-at-home mum (for at least a little while), is exactly what I want to do.
 It'll present quite different challenges, different joys, different pains.  And
I think I'm going to be happy doing it.

Yeah, there's no accounting for taste - I know well that this wouldn't appeal to
everyone.  But it does appeal to me, and that's why we're planning it this way.

(Hmm, have gotten very off-topic here.  Sorry to those who are bored with the
direction this thread is taking.)

To get back on topic, does anyone think that CS-related careers are harder or
easier, compared to other careers, to take a break from and actually get back
into it?  As in: is it a career that fits well or badly with the types of
disruption that parenthood often presents, for men or for women?  Maybe this is
part of the reason why women are being turned off CS - the field changes so fast
that you lose 6 months you might be in trouble...

I'd be interested to learn from the experiences of people who have taken a break
from a career in CS and gotten back into it, or into something related.  How did
it work for you?

Helen