Males PhDs

1. Do you have a spouse/kids?
No

2. What is the occupational and/or educational background of your parents?
Father: Elevator Engineer, Mother: Medical Technologist

3. Were your parents supportive of your CS pursuit?
Yes. Very supportive. Burned through savings account to pay for school.

4. What is your perceived % of women faculty in the Stanford Computer Science Department?
15%

5. What is your perceived % of women graduate students, masters and PhDs, in the Stanford Computer Science Department?
PhD- 2%; Masters - 5%

6. What is your perceived % of women in the computer science industry (technical positions)?
15-20%

7. What motivated you to pursue CS?
Just find the field a lot of fun - that' it. Enjoyable, the technology . . . 8. What challenges/struggles have you faced in your pursuit of computer science? We want specific instances. Being enticed by start-up companies - and staying focused on completing the PhD program.

9. Through the whole process, do you perceive graduate school to be easier for males or females?
Easier for females because there are fewer women, everyone is very supportive of helping women achieve their goals in their field, whereas men are on their own - good luck.

10. Why do you think there are more males than females among the Stanford Computer Science faculty? Or, what do you think keep women out?
Same reason you find more male mechanics - it's not considered to be a lady-like profession by the external world. Pale, geeky guy sitting behind the screen - stereo-types like this does not make CS an elegant and attractive field for women.

11. How do you feel about shortage of women faculty in CS?
I wish there were more women in the field but not for any professional reasons - it's just ridiculous to be surrounded by men. I read a study that women are better prone to be better managers. As a result, fewer female technical managers. As a result, if more women, better set of technical managers.

12. Why do you think there are more males than females among the Stanford Computer Science graduate students? Or, what do you think keep women out?
In general, I think that for a lot of engineering fields,I don't know if women are expected by society to pursue higher degrees as men. Not specific to CS, but specific to engineering.

13. How do you feel about shortage of women in the CS graduate program?
It requires more effort to have a social life.

14. Why would you pick academia over Industry or vice versa?
Academia over industry: because don't have to deal with as many of the non-technical/political issues as you do in industry. Aca really gives you the opportunity to pick a problem and stick with it and really go deep in it. Industry: do have to worry about political issues. You end up spending 50-75% time on non-tech issues. Industry is breadth of skills as opposed to the ability to go deep in any one particular area. I hire people for depth but breadth becomes really important. Lifestyle more laid back in Academia but money is tight. Industry, things more intense but more financially rewarding, but learn to work with and interact with people a heck a lot better than in academia.

15. Why do think women would choose academia over Industry or vice versa?
I'd guess that in the field of CS, women would choose industry because they'd get the opportunity to interact with more people. Industry gives you better work-life balance. In order to get a tenured position in academia, level of commitment required may require you to put your life on hold. Where in industry, you can have a balanced life and make progress (become a manager).

16. Do you perceive discrimination against women faculty in funding practices or in general?
I don't think so.

17. Do you think professors are inclined to seek out female graduate students for research?
Most faculty members should be indifferent to that.

18. For grad students, would you prefer to have male/female advisor?
Indifferent - more a matter of finding right research interests.

19. juggling family and careers:
A much bigger issue for women than for men. Yes, just the societal expectation is that women have to take on most of the burden.

20. hostile environment:
No

> 1. Do you have a spouse/kids?
No.

> 2. What is the occupational and/or education background of your > parents?
Father: Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics - occupational background in signal processing. Mother: B.A. in Music - teaches quilting.

> 3. Were your parents supportive of your CS pursuit?
Not at first - their idea of CS was originally something like a trade school. They wanted me to go into Math or Physics. Upon realizing that the EECS curriculum was heavy on both math and science, they stopped minding.

> 4. What is your perceived % of women faculty in the Stanford Computer > Science Department?
I know of 2 off the top of my head. I'm not quite sure how that translates into percentages -- I'll estimate 8%.

> 5. What is your perceived % of women graduate students, masters and > PhDs, in the Stanford Computer Science Department?
Hm. Somewhere between 10% (1 in 10) and 17% (1 in 6).

> 6. What is your perceived % of women in the computer science industry > (technical positions)?
No idea. Judging from my undergrad experience, I'll guess 25% and rising steadily.

> 7. What motivated you to pursue CS?
I've been working with computers since my early youth, and I was skilled in math. The choice of study was not difficult.

> 8. What challenges/struggles have you faced in your pursuit of > computer science? We want specific instances.
I have not perceived any particular challenges in pursuing my studies that are not to be expected of all college students. (Even my parents' original disapproval of my choice of study was not very strong. By the time they would have been bothering me to change my major, they had already decided it was OK.)

> 9. Through the whole process, do you perceive graduate school to be > easier for males or females?
I strongly doubt that there are any intrinsic difficulties based on gender - at least in the technical fields. Math and science are the same regardless of gender.

> 10. Why do you think there are more males than females among the > Stanford Computer Science faculty? Or, what do you think keep > women out?
Well, there seem to be more males than females everywhere else in CS, all the way down to the undergraduate level. Why should faculty be different?
I don't think we've overcome the historical inertia of previous eras to the point where true parity emerges. It is likely that full parity (50-50) will never be achieved (due to historical inertia, single-income families with the male as the one employed will probably continue to outnumber single-income families with the female as the one employed).

> 11. How do you feel about shortage of women faculty in CS?
I do not possess sufficient information to justify any feeling - but see the answer to question 13.

> 12. Why do you think there are more males than females among the > Stanford Computer Science graduate students? Or, what do you > think keep women out?
Women aren't being kept out; men are being shoved *in*. People in CS are there either because they love the field or because they want a marketable degree. The second concern is likely to hit males harder than females (due to the historical inertia mentioned in 10 - our culture demands that men have careers, and it's only recently that it's even *suggested* that women have them).
I think that a higher percentage of women than men in CS are there because they love the field. Admittedly, my sample information is skewed (most of the women in CS that I knew were highly active members of the local engineering or honor societies).
CS isn't that politically glamorous a field either - people seeking to demonstrate that women are being kept from the reins of power are much more likely to look at top business, law, or medical schools before looking at technical fields. "Outreach" literature intended to make young girls pursue advanced education are much more likely to be singling out professions like doctors, lawyers, and CEOs than professions like researchers or software developers. That means that less females will love the field to begin with, and without outside motivation, they'll have no reason to join.

> 13. How do you feel about shortage of women in the CS graduate > program?
This is kind of a leading question. While there isn't anything close to parity yet, I don't think that qualifies as a "shortage of women." If the door is open but they aren't going through, the question is why they aren't. Shoving them through is *not* a solution.

That said, I expect parity in CS to close faster than other technical fields - it's a newer discipline, and the culture is much more inclined to take gender-neutral views of things.

> 14. Why would you pick academia over Industry or vice versa?
I chose a grad program because I wished to be involved with research - which one cannot do very well with only a B.S.

> 15. Why do think women would choose academia over Industry or vice > versa?
I simply can't see how gender would play a role in this decision, in the absence of overt sexism in one realm or the other.

> 16. Do you perceive discrimination against women faculty in funding > practices?
No basis for comment.

> 17. Do you think professors are inclined/disinclined to seek out > female graduate students for research?
No basis for comment.

> 18. For grad students, would you prefer to have male/female advisor?
It would not enter into my decision at all -- at the most, personality traits that I work well with might manifest more frequently in one gender than another. But in this case, gender would not be an issue, just a statistical correlation.