THE CUTTING EDGE : Women and Computing: Nature or Nurture? : Why are most nerds men? And does it really matter? To find out, The Times posed questions to a disparate group of women and men who debated them in an appropriate forum--an electronic mail roundtable.

Why are there so few women in the world of computing? Why do men predominate on-line and stay up all night, tinkering with their config.sys files? And does it make any difference?

In search of answers, the Los Angeles Times asked some people who’ve spent time thinking about such questions. Here are some excerpts from the resulting discussion, which began with Jo Sanders.

Jo Sanders: I am increasingly concerned by the direction the popular media is taking about women’s issues, including computing. We seem to be hearing more and more about the equivalent of a “computer gene” that makes women different, in essence innately, from men.

This thinking leads to the conclusion that it’s not surprising there are so few women in computing, relatively speaking, and not coincidentally, also reinforces the status quo: if women are by nature unsuited to computing, why bother trying to increase their numbers? In all my years of research on girls and computing, it seems to me that there are so many cultural influences that explain the differences in computer behavior and achievement between men and women that looking for the functional equivalent of a computer gene is at best misguided and at worst a cynical attempt to keep women out of computing.

We know a great deal about the subtle and not-so-subtle influences: parents who buy computers for boys and put them in boys’ rooms, software that appeals (not to say panders!) to male tastes, pornography in electronic networks and software, nerdy boys who chase girls out of computer rooms--I could go on and on.

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George Gilder: The dominance of males in computing is no greater than their dominance in mathematics, logic, business, politics, physics, chess, athletics and violent crime. These areas of dominance are obviously not an effect of socialization since they arise in all societies known to anthropology.

Although it is not politically correct, male dominance originates with the biological differences between the sexes, beginning with the perceptible differentiation of brain structures. As long as computing is a leading-edge activity, it will be dominated by males. This was true of driving until the car was routinized. When the computer becomes a routine tool, men will turn to something more challenging.

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Robin Raskin: Surely this was meant as inciteful conversation?

I think the operative word here is not “leading edge” but “impractical.” That is as long as computing is an “impractical” activity, it will be dominated by males. Women are practical creatures, driven by very practical, goal-oriented needs. While men have the luxury of “frittering away” their time with on-line banter, the latest video game technology, a round of sports, a few hours of listening to high fidelity or some other “sharper image” pursuit, women have been juggling the realities of family and work.

I’m a woman who spent 10 years at home minding the children, and writing about technology as a sideline. When my children were school-aged, I returned to the office and was shocked beyond belief at how inefficiently men there used their time relative to women at home. I also quickly came to realize and appreciate that sometimes it’s this playful/tinkering/explorative behavior that leads to the most creative work.

As a woman in this industry, I try to balance the practical considerations of getting a high-tech magazine out on time and on budget with the more noble pursuit of “testing the heck out of a software or hardware product.” In other words, I try to bring a sort of androgynous blend to the picture. Women have as little incentive to go on-line and chat with electronic cronies as they did to hang out at the corner bar. As the computer becomes a tool with a means to an end--a way to get the school newsletter out, or shop for a family, or find out what an expert family doctor says about the new HIV vaccination, or plan a family trip, or balance the family budget--that’s when women will see the value of computing. Women see a “tool” where men see a “toy.”

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Sanders: I’m always amused at the certainty people have of innate sex differences, considering that such a thing is unknowable. When we’re prepared to raise children in individual boxes with no environmental influences whatever, then we will know what is innate and what isn’t. In the meantime we have to assume that since we know a fair amount about environmental influences that shape expectations and behavior, at least a lot can be laid at that doorstep.

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Reva Basch: Whatever the historical reasons for the lack of women in computing--something that I do think is changing--I see a tremendous interest among my female friends and colleagues, not so much in how computers work as in what they can “do.”

For any technology to take hold, you need a “killer app,” an application that makes using it irresistible. For many women, the killer app is communications, the ability to connect with other people through their keyboards and modems. I host Women on The WELL, a private, women-only forum that happens to be one of the most active conferences on that system. I see women who got hold of a computer and climbed the learning curve solely to participate in on-line communications. There are artists, single mothers, people who live in isolated rural areas, whom you wouldn’t think of as computer users at all, but they have gotten adept simply because there was something they were strongly motivated to accomplish that happened to be computer-related.

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Gilder: The issue of differences in behavior between men and women in relation to anything, from knitting and figure skating to baseball and computing, cannot be seriously discussed without confronting the demonstrable reality of biological differences. Although sex roles have varied tremendously among societies throughout history, in all societies, men are more aggressive and competitive, hold the warrior role (Amazons are a myth), and command the positions to which the society ascribes the greatest prestige and importance outside the always central and indispensable maternal roles.

In recent years, studies of the brain have demonstrated physiological differences in the hypothalamus and the cortex, and in the entire endocrinological system. Differential performance in math and science is not a peculiarity of the United States; it is universal. Greater male focus on earning money is universal in all societies with productive economies. It stems from the fact that as an overwhelming rule men must outperform women in the marketplace in order to marry. The computer is the leading wealth producer in the world economy. Men flock to it not for diversion but for sexual survival. In general, the more money a woman makes, the larger is the gap between her income and her husband’s larger income. The male dominance in computing is merely another expression of the universal need of men to dominate economically in order to win women.

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Raskin: But George, you can’t say that spending hours and hours surfing the Internet, or playing some golf simulation, or Fantasy Baseball League, or electronic chat boards, or heaven forbid even electronic pornography has much to do with going out there and “making a killing?” These guys have a “because it is there” attitude, not unlike climbers of Everest. While I won’t disagree with your findings about innate differences in the sexes, I think the male “kill” gene doesn’t really explain what’s going on here. As a matter of fact, I could argue that there’s an escapist gene at work instead. I’ve heard wives complain about their husbands’ computer habits with the same tone that wives complain about drinking or drug habits.

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Mary K. Flynn: Cyberspace may have traditionally been a men’s club, but that’s changing fast. Earlier this month, at U.S. News & World Report, we launched a women’s symposium on our CompuServe forum. In the first three weeks, 2,000 people participated, about 95% of whom are women. And we certainly aren’t the only ones who’ve been successful in bringing women on-line. The New York-based bulletin board Echo isn’t aimed especially at women, but by virtue of its being founded by a woman, Stacy Horn, it’s captured 40% female membership. Compare that with CompuServe, which estimates its female membership at about 10% (and maybe as high as 30% if you count women using their significant others’ accounts). Women’s Wire, launched in January in San Francisco by Ellen Pack, has 700 members, 90% of whom are women. Clearly women are very interested in communicating on-line. But the way women communicate electronically seems to be very different from the way men do. While men spend a lot of on-line time expressing their opinions and arguing, women seem to be more interested in sharing resources and in connecting with each other in the real world (the U.S. News women’s symposium is filled with a lot of career networking). At this point, I wonder if the very thing men seem to like about on-line services--the electronic “pub”--is what has been turning women off. As to why so few women in the computer industry, this is a question I’ve been asking male and female executives in the computer industry for the last eight years. Many of the women I’ve spoken to talk about that magical age between 11 and 13 when all of a sudden you can’t be both pretty and good at math. (If I were George, I guess I’d say women discover that in order to get a man, they have to fail at math.)

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Basch: Women often need to be shown that there’s something of value behind the technology. I tried explaining to my 80-year-old mother-in-law how it was that I had made such good friends “on the computer.” Finally, I sat her down and demoed The WELL to her. Her comment? “Why, honey, it’s just people talking, isn’t it?” She was thrilled, and had me browse through conference after conference, looking for topic headers that she found interesting. I don’t go along with Mary’s suggestion that women seem to be more interested in sharing resources and connecting in the real world than in hanging out in some electronic pub. The electronic pub model is exactly what appeals to many of us. We work at home, or live in areas where it’s difficult to find kindred spirits, and we fulfill many of our social needs by hanging out on-line.

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Wendy Kaminer: I’m a computer illiterate, having my first e-mail conversation (is this called a conversation?) Imagine my delight when while reading George Gilder’s remarks, I discovered the escape key. I may learn to love computers after all. I’m already enjoying the spectacle of a new technology being used to conduct an old conversation. Women have traditionally been considered ill-suited to do whatever jobs it would have been socially or economically disruptive for them to do. The professions--law, medicine, and business--and the more lucrative trades were exclusively male for much of our history, partly because it was believed that women were dumber than men, less analytic and ambitious, as well as weaker. “Scientific” theories about gender difference were always used to justify gender discrimination (just as theories about racial difference were used to justify racism.)

Darwin asserted that men were more creative, energetic and courageous than women, who, he suggested, were not as evolved as men. He associated women with the “lower races.” (Guess which races he meant.) Of course, George, I don’t know as much about evolution as Darwin did, but I do know a dinosaur when I see one. Nineteenth Century scientists also kept themselves busy weighing the brains of famous men, in the belief that brain power was a function of weight. But, as feminist Helen Hamilton Gardener pointed out, no man’s brain, not even Byron’s, was a match for the brain of an elephant. More important to biological determinists today than theories about the brain are theories about genes. Practically everything, it seems, is said to be genetic, which means nothing is anyone’s fault and nothing is changeable. We have alcoholism genes, homosexual genes, and now, it seems, we have computer genes. (We really ought to have a biologist in on this conversation to explain how genes work: it’s not that simple.)

How convenient all these theories are for men who want to maintain their monopolies. Actively discourage girls from succeeding in math and science and then count the number who change to humanities majors in their sophomore year as evidence that women are naturally uninterested in math and science. When a woman has been forced into a corset all her life, Helen Gardener remarked, it’s hard to judge her natural shape.

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Karen Frenkel: I have just finished filming a documentary for Public Television that addresses the same questions as this forum. The one-hour film is tentatively entitled “Minerva’s Machine: How Women are Changing Computing.” Over 40 people were interviewed, including computer scientists, psychologists, lawyers and students and teachers.

George Gilder’s statement that there are few women in computing because males dominate leading edge activities is, at best, simplistic. The reasons for unequal gender representation are complex, as we learned from our interviews and research. As one sociologist explained, boys and girls exhibit different styles of programming. Boys generally use the “hard master” style--they conduct a monologue with the computer, commanding and writing code according to a structured, linear plan. In contrast, most girls employ “soft mastery,” engaging in a dialogue and even a negotiation with the computer in order to see what works. Their way is to interact and explore what the computer can do, rather than to conquer the box, as males try to do. In school, girls get their hands slapped for programming the “wrong way.” As a result, they believe that they are not good at programming, become discouraged, and stay away. Yet truly creative, virtuoso programmers draw on both styles in order to maintain their “leading edge.” Think of all the talent that is being deterred and lost. The idea that women are not capable of excelling in computer science because they are biologically not fit is absurd.

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Raskin: With new visual development environments and the rules of object-oriented programming, I wonder if women won’t be better off. The things you mention, like having a dialogue with the machine, and testing to see what works and what doesn’t figure heavily into the object-oriented model. The ability to see the gestalt of the application becomes very important too. Of course, I just wrote a column where I lambasted the “fellas” who are developing some of the new language of object-oriented programming. Concepts like “exposing your objects,” “naked objects” and “inserting objects into containers” dominate the language. Freud would have had a picnic.

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Frenkel: Several of my sources said the direction of computing seems to be going in one that women will welcome. For example, girls like to work and play together with the computer. They like to problem-solve as a team. This would seem to be in synch with the advent of collaborative work, made increasingly possible by local-area networks and client-server configurations.

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Gilder: Wendy Kaminer’s response is typically feminist: throw some dirt and change the subject. A belief in the differences between the sexes is alleged to imply racism, genetic determinism, and male superiority. I actually believe that male and female brains are different and that in many ways the female brain is superior: for example, female brains manage a much more complex endocrinological system, more sensitive social perceptions and verbal subtleties.

I have shown in several books that women are sexually superior and that men are more dependent on marriage, and hence on women, than women are dependent on men. Women are healthier and play the central roles in procreation. A society could survive the deaths of nearly all its young men, but would go extinct if its women were not protected. But men in all societies are more aggressive, competitive, enterprising, mathematical and tall. It so happens that computer science is heavily a mathematical pursuit and that the computer business is one of the most competitive on the planet. But as the father of three girls, one of whom I am currently teaching calculus, phasor algebra, trigonometry and other advanced engineering math at age 13, I fail to see how my observation that women around the world are less involved in computers than men makes me somehow a dinosaur. Any society, however, that fails to come to terms with the profound differences between the sexes will likely go the way of the dinosaurs.

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Flynn: George, I’m trying to follow your arguments but I’m perplexed. If men are genetically better designed for mathematics, what is the point of teaching your 13-year-old daughter calculus, trig, etc? There’ll always be a guy around who can do it better, in your view.

I also don’t understand why the historical evidence you refer to leads you to the conclusion that men and women are genetically different--all of it could be explained by socialization, not biology. I do believe there tend to be some general behavioral differences (with zillions of exceptions), but I think they stem from the different training we give girls and boys. Some of the signals we send are so subtle we don’t even notice them. I try to be very vigilant about this stuff, buying gender-neutral clothing for the kids we know, but I fall into old habits sometimes too. For example, when my husband I were Christmas shopping, we chose a Fisher Price garage for our nephew and a Madame Alexander baby doll for my best friend’s daughter. It was only later that we realized what a different set of messages--and training grounds--we gave to each child. Who knows? If my parents had given me a garage when I was two, maybe I’d be a mechanic instead of a writer.

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Gilder: It is amazing to encounter extremely intelligent people who believe after the last 50 years of revolutionary advances in biology, neurology, endocrinology, and physiology that the differences between the sexes manifested in all societies ever studied by anthropologists are environmental. The superior male performance in mathematics is not debatable. It is a fact. However, my daughter is far superior to me in mathematical aptitude and in mechanical aptitude, just as there are millions of men better than me in mathematics. This fact does not stop me from studying math, any more than the fact that several of the female participants in this wrangle know far more than me about computers stops me from studying computers and writing about them. The environment in the feminist argument becomes a force as all encompassing as biology itself. Why do human beings everywhere create an environment that makes women less aggressive and less mathematical?

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Raskin: As computers evolve it becomes less and less essential that you be mathematically inclined, or that you be an engineer, or even a computer nerd to make your “mark” on the computing world. Computers become a form of expression and exploration for everyone. Will more and more women enter into engineering, chip design, mathematics or data processing? I’m not sure.

I think that part of the reason they’ve stayed away is not a matter of ability or inclination but of our social system. The nuclear family is probably the single biggest impediment to women entering traditional 9-to-5 jobs and sticking with them long enough to make an impact. Why do women dominate the teaching field? You think it’s because they have some sort of biological inclination to teach the next generation? Hogwash! It’s because you get summers off and the workday ends at 3:30 p.m.

I can be the editor of the largest computer magazine today because I stayed home with my three children and wrote free-lance articles about computing until they were all in school. And even now (ages 14, 12 and 8) I have an extensive and elaborate support network of relatives and paid help that get me and them through each day. My husband, great guy, and successful that he is, never had to balance the demands of family and professional life the way that I have. He writes books while I write magazine-length articles. And I tell him that in part, the reason I stick to magazines is because I can’t think for more than 5,000 words without being interrupted. I think many women are driven by such realities.

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Kaminer: And they say feminists have no sense of humor. I wasn’t “throwing dirt” George, I was trying to provide some historical context for this discussion. (How is that changing the subject?)

Since you rely so heavily on “science,” it seems useful to examine some historic scientific biases. I did not imply that you are a racist, though believing that the sexes are naturally different in character and intellectual ability does make you something of a biological determinist. (I’m surprised that you consider the term an epithet.)

Nor do I understand why you bother denying your belief in male superiority; it’s evident in the assertion that men are more enterprising and more likely to be involved in leading-edge activities as well as more mathematical. Of course you assign superior social skills and emotional sensitivity to women; male supremacists usually do. Stressing women’s superior capacity for nurturance and their relative lack of ambition and aggression is merely a way of stressing that they belong at home.

In any case, I find assertions about female superiority as silly as assertions about male superiority. Women aren’t “born communicators” any more than they’re born to be stupid at math, any more than occupational segregation is natural. During World War I, when there was a shortage of male workers, women were deemed ideally suited to low-level bank jobs, because they were presumed to be neat and in possession of good characters and nimble fingers--qualities that might have made them born blackjack dealers. How come it made them born secretaries?

During the Depression, when there was a surfeit of male workers, experts discovered that women were ill-suited to banking work after all, partly because they were lousy at math. White collar jobs, in particular, can be easily categorized as either stereotypically male or stereotypically female, depending on what job qualifications you choose to emphasize, and how. Executive positions might be considered naturally male, if they’re said to require a penchant for hierarchical authority structures and for cool, analytic decision-making that puts the interests of the company above the feelings of individual employees. Or, executive positions might be considered naturally female if they’re said to require a penchant for cooperation and nurturance, or even nagging.

Computing might just as easily have been labeled naturally feminine activity, since it requires typing skill. We might have pointed to men’s fascination with computers as evidence of the feminization of the male work force. We might have focused on the phenomenon of men sitting at keyboards, getting soft. Instead we’ve fixated on men exploring cyberspace. What if we focus on virtual community? I’ve heard it said that women are less likely to engage in virtual community because it is relatively impersonal. But, the Home Shopping Network and the talk shows seem like mass, female virtual communities to me. Will women form different kinds of virtual communities? Perhaps. Gender stereotypes are often self-fulfilling; that’s why they have such staying power.

So, why don’t I use a computer? I admit to being something of a Luddite (Luddites were male; how does George explain that?). I’m happy with my typewriter, and I like the process of typing and retyping because I get to know my work so well. I try to organize while I write, so I don’t feel that much of a need to rearrange text, and because I want my writing to trace the development of my thought, I don’t actually like the idea of rearranging.

Most of all, perhaps, I don’t like what computers have done to editors. They’re made it too easy for editors to rearrange text, for no particular reason. Editors have begun to see essays as collections of interchangeable parts--paragraphs that can be thrown into the computer and spit out in any order. Computers have contributed greatly to the increasing incoherency of writing.

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Sanders: One advantage to working on the educational/kid end rather than the industry/grown-up end is that it is easier to see developmental processes occurring.

I am increasingly able to understand just why it is that the “computer gene” approach is so attractive to so many people, not just our friend George. It seems to fit so well with the evidence! After all, it rarely happens--perhaps just about never happens--that anyone forbids girls to use computers. Parents don’t tell girls that only their brothers are allowed to use the family computer. Teachers don’t restrict computer courses to boys only. In fact, we all know that parents and teachers often wish girls would be more involved in computing than they are. The conclusion that the boy/girl difference must be innate is so easy to reach, since nothing else seems to account for it.

There are two major problems with this kind of thinking. The first is the most obvious. Computer ability can’t be innate when some men are poor at computing and some women are superb at it. In fact, all educational research on gender differences in achievement in math, science and computing indicates that there are larger within-sex differences than between-sex differences.

The second explanation is to my mind less obvious but far more interesting. The reason we see different behavioral outcomes but do not see the causes leading up to them (thus concluding the cause must be genetic) is that the causes are so subtle and cumulative that they are terribly hard to identify. When a boy in a computer class makes a disparaging comment to a girl about what she’s doing, and what’s worse the teacher lets it pass unchallenged, a tiny influence has lodged in her mind about her computing ability. One incident alone is nothing, but many of them add up to a considerable force.

The girl who eventually decides in high school that computers aren’t as interesting as she thought they were when she was younger surely doesn’t understand the influences on the change in her thinking, but this doesn’t mean she wasn’t influenced.

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Flynn: Karen, I’m relieved (though also saddened) to hear other women experience the fatigue you’re describing. After covering the computer industry for eight years, I am soooo tired of having to prove I know something about computers every time I do an interview. I used to think it was just a test computer executives put all reporters through until I started going to press conferences with my husband, John Quain, who is a contributing editor at PC Magazine. The difference between how we’re treated is really shocking-- people just assume he knows what he’s talking about; whereas I have to earn their respect. It’s quite exhausting.

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Esther Dyson: The mere fact that there are greater differences within sexes than between has nothing to do with innateness. It is entirely possible (likely!) that there are two overlapping populations (women and men), but that the averages of those populations differ. Therefore you can predict statistically, but with no certainty in each individual case, for any particular characteristic such as partiality to computers. Such differences can of course be accentuated by nurture--and probably are. As with most things, there’s no single cause. (For what it’s worth--not much--my mother is a mathematician, logic and set theory mostly.)

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Kaminer: Reviewing everyone’s remarks, it strikes me that for all our talk about gender and computing, no one has mentioned all the gender and sex games that hackers play. There are a fair number of would-be transsexuals out there in cyberspace, guys pretending to be women. If I wanted to be glib, I’d suggest that men may be using computers to escape the gender stereotypes that tradition insists in imposing on them. If George Gilder is right, which I doubt, this means that the male brain has finally given men the means of escaping their own maleness.

The full text of this discussion is available for download in the US News Women’s Symposium on CompuServe (GO WOMEN).

Our Panel

Reva Basch runs a women-only forum on The WELL, an on-line service based in San Francisco.

Esther Dyson is a computer industry analyst who publishes the newsletter Release 1.0.

Mary K. Flynn is an editor of technology coverage at U.S. News & World Report.

Karen Frenkel has just completed a film documentary on how women are changing computing.

George Gilder is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based technology think tank. He is the author of “Life Beyond Television” and other books.

Wendy Kaminer is a writer and public policy fellow at Radcliffe College. She does not own a computer.

Robin Raskin is editor of PC magazine.

Jo Sanders runs the Gender Equity Program at the City University of New York’s Center for Advanced Study in Education, where she studies computers and girls.