4 ms·

One question. Why is it important to make, quote: "computer science more attractive to women..."? I mean I get that the sex discrimination stuff and treatment

One question. Why is it important to make, quote: "computer science more attractive to women..."? I mean I get that the sex discrimination stuff and treatment of women we read here on hacker news is bad and of course it would help if there were more women in tech. But other than that, if you think of the women in general and not some "diversity would be good" (which it probably would be), why the worry? Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers? I know from experience that it would be very important to get a more "balanced" look at things in those fields. Are we still treating women as little girls who we need to be worried about because they "only like superficial things and nail polish" and can't really take care of themselves unless we make changes so that "important stuff" is more attractive to them? I think this is a very patronizing attitude, and dismissing the stuff some women may find more interesting than "hard sciences"

dfabulich 11y ago
This is the top voted comment right now, but I'm struggling to understand it. You grant (at least for the sake of discussion) that more women would help with the tech industry's sex discrimination problems, and that diversity itself would "probably" be good. But then you ask, "but other than that, why is it important?" It makes no sense to disregard sex discrimination and diversity when considering whether this topic is important. Sex discrimination and diversity are themselves already important. It's like asking about the benefits of exercise, setting aside the health benefits and psychological benefits. > Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers? People do worry about those topics, but we mostly talk about tech here on Hacker News.
davmre 11y ago
The greedy answer: because systematically discouraging 50% of the brainpower of the human species from entering one of our most productive and simultaneously short-staffed occupations is bad for technological progress and the growth of global wealth. The humanist/utilitarian answer: because computer science is intrinsically awesome and rewarding, so global utility is maximized by ensuring that anyone who might be interested has an unimpeded path towards experiencing that awesomeness.
- briandear 11y ago
  But why should we force that "interest." If girls don't want to do it, why should we be "encouraging" it. We should encourage everyone to follow their passion and talents regardless of what those might be.
  - lagadu 11y ago
    I agree with the original post, however the question here is something to the tune of: "do women not like it or are they being pushed away (passively) by social factors?" If it's the former, then everything is fine, if it's the latter then there is room for improvement.
    - davmre 11y ago
      There's essentially no evidence that women are biologically predisposed against CS. There's quite a lot of evidence that social factors do push women away. That doesn't guarantee that there's no biological component, but even if there were, we'd still want to fix the social factors.
      - galtwho 11y ago
        I think the evidence is to the contrary as I mentioned in my earlier comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372862 and the inferences from those evidence is that women are predisposed to studies that involve human interactions and very less evidence that social factors play a part... infact it is in unequal societies( relatively speaking) where social factors play a part that forces women to consider professions like CS.
- Bostonian 11y ago
  We don't know that 50% of the brainpower relevant to computer science is female. Male and female brains differ, and it is quite possible that they choose to specialize in different areas.
IanCal 11y ago
> why the worry? Artificially limiting the supply of talent to something that I assume many of us on HN believe to be an important field is not a good thing. > Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers? I think that is important, teaching young children particularly since good teachers can have an enormous influence on a large number of people. One big difference however is in the scale of pay.
wmt 11y ago
The article says multiple times that when young people make choices about e.g. should they learn programming, they of course use their own free will, but they often decide based on incorrect expectations. As another example it mentioned how men often avoid becoming an English major for similar reasons. I'm not sure if english majors consider a skewed gender representation for their craft, but frankly I don't think I even care. What I do care about is the fact that computer science now gets dumber people by scaring away people through false expectations. Doing small things to fix these flawed expectations has nothing to do with dismissing others as little girls who only care about nail polish. Articles suggestions like changing the course name from "programming in java" to a more descriptive "creative problem solving with python" hardly warrants such criticism.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
RogerL 11y ago
Because they are human beings, and if we are doing something culturally insensitive or repressive to them we should stop?

dfabulich 11y ago

This is the top voted comment right now, but I'm struggling to understand it. You grant (at least for the sake of discussion) that more women would help with the tech industry's sex discrimination problems, and that diversity itself would "probably" be good. But then you ask, "but other than that, why is it important?" It makes no sense to disregard sex discrimination and diversity when considering whether this topic is important. Sex discrimination and diversity are themselves already important. It's like asking about the benefits of exercise, setting aside the health benefits and psychological benefits. > Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers? People do worry about those topics, but we mostly talk about tech here on Hacker News.

davmre 11y ago

The greedy answer: because systematically discouraging 50% of the brainpower of the human species from entering one of our most productive and simultaneously short-staffed occupations is bad for technological progress and the growth of global wealth. The humanist/utilitarian answer: because computer science is intrinsically awesome and rewarding, so global utility is maximized by ensuring that anyone who might be interested has an unimpeded path towards experiencing that awesomeness.

briandear 11y ago
But why should we force that "interest." If girls don't want to do it, why should we be "encouraging" it. We should encourage everyone to follow their passion and talents regardless of what those might be.
- lagadu 11y ago
  I agree with the original post, however the question here is something to the tune of: "do women not like it or are they being pushed away (passively) by social factors?" If it's the former, then everything is fine, if it's the latter then there is room for improvement.
  - davmre 11y ago
    There's essentially no evidence that women are biologically predisposed against CS. There's quite a lot of evidence that social factors do push women away. That doesn't guarantee that there's no biological component, but even if there were, we'd still want to fix the social factors.
    - galtwho 11y ago
      I think the evidence is to the contrary as I mentioned in my earlier comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372862 and the inferences from those evidence is that women are predisposed to studies that involve human interactions and very less evidence that social factors play a part... infact it is in unequal societies( relatively speaking) where social factors play a part that forces women to consider professions like CS.
Bostonian 11y ago
We don't know that 50% of the brainpower relevant to computer science is female. Male and female brains differ, and it is quite possible that they choose to specialize in different areas.

IanCal 11y ago

> why the worry? Artificially limiting the supply of talent to something that I assume many of us on HN believe to be an important field is not a good thing. > Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers? I think that is important, teaching young children particularly since good teachers can have an enormous influence on a large number of people. One big difference however is in the scale of pay.

wmt 11y ago

The article says multiple times that when young people make choices about e.g. should they learn programming, they of course use their own free will, but they often decide based on incorrect expectations. As another example it mentioned how men often avoid becoming an English major for similar reasons. I'm not sure if english majors consider a skewed gender representation for their craft, but frankly I don't think I even care. What I do care about is the fact that computer science now gets dumber people by scaring away people through false expectations. Doing small things to fix these flawed expectations has nothing to do with dismissing others as little girls who only care about nail polish. Articles suggestions like changing the course name from "programming in java" to a more descriptive "creative problem solving with python" hardly warrants such criticism.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

RogerL 11y ago

Because they are human beings, and if we are doing something culturally insensitive or repressive to them we should stop?