Máirín Duffy

" It just seems to me that there are lots of efforts to push programs and not enough evaluation of results."

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The program that I attended at RPI, the Preface program, I have heard was canceled even though it continued providing good results. However, I don't know how or if they even assessed the results they were getting (presumably they did this at some level as they secured external funding year after year.) The only reason I know it succeeded as well as it did for my classmates in the program is that we kept in touch over the years; the school never contacted us again for follow up information.

I think you're too quickly concluding that STEM outreach programs don't work.

For example, when I was a high schooler, I was very much on the fence as to whether or not I should get a liberal arts education or a more technical degree. I had the great fortune of earning a scholarship to attend an engineering summer camp for underrepresented minorities (including women and racial minorities) in engineering at the school I eventually ended up going to, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. We spent a couple of weeks living in the dorms, working on engineering projects (I remember very clearly the electrical engineering lab where we built our own laser tag guns using breadboards and basic circuit components and then played laser tag around the lab :) ), and also getting lectures from professors and grad students in pretty much every field of engineering. We even took a field trip to IBM's plants in Fishkill and Poughkeepsie NY and saw POWER chips being made.The experiences I had during that summer camp were the push I needed to decide to go to an engineering school and study computer science. I didn't really know all that much about engineering and what it involved before I had that experience.

The majority of my classmates, including myself, ended up pursuing technical degrees, several choosing to go to RPI and graduating successfully and are now working in technical careers.

Another successful example of a STEM outreach program is the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. 40% of the women in the program have stuck around the GNOME project, some becoming mentors for the next round of students themselves (http://adainitiative.org/2012/08/karen-sandler-weve-created-ways-that-we-can-talk-about-it-that-allows-women-to-cope/). This year, the program expanded to include other open source projects, including Fedora, and I'm mentoring a UX intern to work on usability testing for Fedora right now. :) ) https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram2012

"The number one reason for leaving the IT field (or avoiding) was "I want to work with people, not computers all day"."

Odd. Do you think then women don't belong in white collar, professional desk jobs? Honestly, if you're sitting in a cube in 2013, you're more likely than not working with computers all day, and it's not exactly an option!

"Nursing, in comparison, is 95% women, 5% men. Yet no one is really surprised or troubled by this."

No, no one is surprised by this because traditionally if you were a woman who worked (shocking! Yes, at one point in our culture this was shocking!) the respectable professions were basically nursing, teaching, or secretarial work. This is a historical precedent. Look at how many female doctors there are now, vs. 50 years ago - change in a male-dominated field is possible!

"Maybe IT is just a field that men are more attuned with than the average woman."

So this comment bothers me a lot - I know you didn't mean it to be offensive... but the assumption that women are just not 'built' for certain fields is the very reason why I seriously considered leaving technology as a hobby and going liberal arts when I was trying to decide as a teenager what it is I should do with my life. Who would want to go into a field they've been told (explicitly or culturally) their entire lives they are innately not good at?

I think maybe the issue is at least partly that the IT field is still not fully mature and is still a bit of a 'Wild West' scene, so the types of gender-charged comments and jokes that would never fly in other professional fields and contexts are still far more kosher than they really should be. You can't change the environment you work in, but you can easily change jobs, right? I believe we need a critical mass of women to stick around - I don't think we're there yet - so that we have enough of a percentage of women to actually change this culture. I think the approach the Outreach Program for Women is following is exactly the right one - make a call to women letting them know they specifically are more than welcome to a project, identify those women most interested in/qualified to get involved, and hook them up with a mentor and a support network to make sure they have a positive experience and folks they can trust to go to.

The culture issue is not simply a matter of women needing to have a tougher skin or learn to be less sensitive - some of the comments and behavior I've had to deal with have been pretty outrageous and, at times, terrifying. I would be happy to regale you with horrifying stories over a beer sometime. Or you could take a look at the Geek Feminism wiki's timeline of incidents: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

"I know I personally was pressured into a field I later found I hated (engineering) because of the prospect of a good job. While I do well in IT, my job views are no longer based on money. IT is something I love to do."

I agree 100% - students should be given the opportunities to experience different career fields and find out what it is they really love doing. Kudos to you to finding what you enjoy :) I love my job in tech as well!