Nowhere did I say that women in the military are ASKING for it. I actually argued the opposite, that in a military setting a subordinate soldier cannot tell their senior officer to get lost. Nor do combat or combat-like situations really allow for a junior soldier to be insubordinate and lodge a sexual harassment suit. I specifically said that in the case of an officer saying "sleep with me or all send you out on the most dangerous duty" is in essence making a threat against their life if they do not submit. In this case, if the soldier gave in and had sex, I would not call this giving consent. Coercion yes, forceable, maybe. Consented to having sex, NO.

To me this is clearly different than if my boss walked into my office and said "sleep with me or I'm firing you". I have the ability to refuse without any immediate risk to my life or ending up in jail. I can walk down to the HR department and file a complaint. So yes, I do question the woman that gives in in this situation. What is in her background that she just didn't stand up and say "f-off you loser!" I'm not saying that she's asking for it, but more why in the world didn't she just say NO. Was it because she was afraid that she couldn't get another job, or pay her rent, or was she never taught how to say no? If she gives in and then makes an accusation of rape, unfortunately that does have the effect of "watering down" the horrific crime that is forceable rape. I don't say that it's right, but that is what happens.

I agree with several of the posters that if you narrowly define CS you miss a lot of the women working in the industry. If you only consider only CS degrees within the engineering school then you miss out on all of the IT displines that usually fall under the business schools. I though as post-BA program for IT back in 1997 that was out of the university's school of business, several of our programming classes overlapped with the CS curriculum.

What does bother me is that there is still this belief that low level "hardcore" programming is more difficult and more highly compensated and that this is reserved for men. In actuality the "code monkey" work is increasing being outsourced and is not where the big money is to made (unless you are in a very highly specialized field.) In the 90's a lot of people just got into IT and programming work because it was new and exciting or because their existing job demanded those skills to be developed. In evaluating job candidates typically proven skills and job history win out over a degree with no job history. For people already in the field, it's not financially rewarding to go back and get a CS degree because you won't get a salary bump. However, I do see a lot of high level IT positions requesting or requiring MBAs. In my experience, workers that only have code writing/engineering backgrounds are notoriously difficult to work for and with. They may write great programs but they are a project manager's nightmare. They are argumentative, defensive and have poor communication skills. I've had several great programmers almost tank projects because they gave attitude to our clients, refused to document their code, were purposefully obtuse with our analysts because of personality conflicts or refused to share their code with their coworkers even though that code was the property of the company. Although I've seen this mostly in my male co-workers/subordinants, this is not exclusive to them.

Yeah, maybe "math is hard", but managing people is harder.

Claire, you asked about Catholic hospitals and their policy of saving the baby's life over the mother, I'm not sure how strict that is. When my mother (in the early 70's) gave birth to me in a Catholic hospital, she and my father were asked to sign a form choosing which to save in case complications arose in which they could not save both. Her first pregancy had ended in very difficult labor with massive bleeding and necessited several transfusions. At first my Mom choose to save the baby (me) over herself. My father pointed out that they already had a 3 year old that needed a mother and that my father wasn't up to parenting two motherless children. They along with their doctor were allowed to make this decision and luckily my birth was completely uncomplicated so it was not an issue. I'm not sure if the fact that they weren't Catholic had any bearing on the matter. I wonder if this policy is still in effect or not. My husband (Catholic) and myself are starting to plan our family and I'm not yet in the high risk age group, but yes this concerns me. We've decided that if the hospital policy is to deliver the baby instead of saving the woman we would go elsewhere. Unfortunately a lot of big hospitals are Catholic affiliated and we might have to travel farther to go to another hospital. I also plan on vetting my OB/GYN very carefully to make sure that they do not have an idealogic bias that might compromise my health or life. It's sad that it's come down to that.