Women and Wizards

Last Friday an old friend asked me if computer science was hard. My answer was simple, "It's easy, you just have to be friends with the wizards." People who don't understand computers think that they are magical. To them, little wizards live inside your laptop and summon the powers of the internet gremlins to process data. Both men and women are capable of eradicating this fallacy, but men are more likely to believe they can. Computer science is largely dominated by men due to the fact that women are more likely to lack self-confidence. As a computer science TA, I have seen that women tend to do as well (and often better) than men in CS classes. Even the brilliant female computer gurus, however, often do not feel confident with their abilities. If more women could see their capability in the computer industry, more women would exercise their capability in the computer industry.