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An Retort to the Typical Sexist Post on Lack of Female Programmers

A response to There are so few female programmers because they find it BORING:
As usual, the assumption that math predicts ability is assumed. Did you do any research of published data? Also, you likely do not realize that Mathematics majors, score about equally on the mathematical and verbal portions of the SAT/GRE. Math is not simply math.

Some samples, from four different studies:
  • The results of the study indicate that high scores on the verbal part of the SAT test facilitate generating solutions on the word programming problems; however, the high scores obtained on the SAT test are not significant if the students do not posses specific problem solving skills in their background.
  • About 60% of the variance in programming aptitude was accounted for by this single factor. Six, out of 18, cognitive factors loaded significantly on this factor: REASONING, LOGICAL (Loading: r = .81, p < .0001, n = 45) Ability to reason from premise to conclusion or to evaluate the correctness of a conclusion. VERBAL COMPREHENSION (Loading: r = .61, p < .0001, n = 45) Ability to understand verbal symbols. INTEGRATIVE PROCESS (Loading: r = .54, p < .001, n = 45) Ability to keep in mind several things simultaneously. FLEXIBILITY OF USE (Loading: r = .41, p < .01, n = 45) Ability to think of different uses for objects. CLOSURE, SPEED OF (Loading: r = .39, p < .01, n = 45) Ability to quickly recognize ambiguous visual stimuli. SEQUENTIAL MEMORY SPAN (Loading: r = .30, p < .05, n = 45) Ability to remember distinct items in correct sequence. These cognitive tests have also served well for prediction equations using stepwise regression. The multiple-R was .71, p = .000, n = 45. With other variables (preference for graphics, gender, algorithm comprehension), the multiple-R climbed to .82, p = .000, n = 45. To the best of my knowledge .82 is the highest multiple-R in the literature. Only variables with F-ratios of 3 or more were allowed into the equation.

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