4 ms·

Maybe this is coming from a generational gap, but your experience does not mirror mine at all. I went to an engineering school where women in CS were either ass

Maybe this is coming from a generational gap, but your experience does not mirror mine at all. I went to an engineering school where women in CS were either assumed to be a management major or people assumed that they were taking the easiest courses available. I've had my wife answer questions for people thoroughly and correctly, and had them come to ask me the same question 20 minutes later and trust that my answer was right. I've talked to women who left computer science, not because of the difficulty of the courses, but because of the attitude that men at our university had towards them. The data supports this, take a look at the charts of women in CS over time. And honestly, talking to women older than me, a refrain I hear from nearly all of them is "I'm not a math person". I had a relative in her 80's with a math PhD who would not tell people because she thought it was "too manly." My coworker, who got into tech because she thought it was the only way she could stay in Seattle, frequently says "I'm not a coder." She just did a code review of one of the projects she's working on that is significantly better than any of the other work I've seen coming out of QA or DevOps at my job. Your wife is an anomaly. So is mine. It doesn't take much effort to see that in our field.

home_boi 11y ago
>take a look at the charts of women in CS over time. You mean the chart of video game growth over time? This might be a bit of a stretch but it has rung true with me and many other people. We all became interested in technology and computers because of video games. Our interests in video games transitioned to taking programming courses in high school and college.
- ae_keji 11y ago
  Maybe Minecraft will change the industry before any of us can cook up a good solution to the gender gap.
belorn 11y ago
It seems fairly established that profession with highly unequal ratio of men and women tend to have a minority gender with a much higher exit rate than the majority, caused by the majority harassing the minority until they assimilate, quit or switch profession. The next step should be to ask why women working in a female dominated profession are harassing the men in the same profession, or why men working in male dominated professions are harassing women. Maybe if we could figure out a good answer to that, we could turn the tide of more work professions becoming gendered with unbalanced ratios.
- nostrebored 11y ago
  I do not think this seems fairly established at all. I have friends who are male nurses, friends who are male teachers, and the type of behavior they dealt with on a day to day basis was not harassment, they did not deal with coworkers who were constantly checking them out, they did not have people doubt their competence. Were people less quick to invite them into their groups? Sometimes. But they were still able to cultivate friend circles without an actively hostile percentage of the population. The one place that I agree with you on this however, is childcare. I've dealt with a large amount of bullshit while staying at home with my newborn, and male caregivers are typically assumed to be incompetent.
  - belorn 11y ago
    What kind of study are you referencing there? I quoted a study commissioned by the Swedish government, which in turn referenced a study that looked at work culture in professions with unequal gender ratios. Did you friends mention how children to men who take up female professions get teased in school because the job choice that their dad took? How their spouses don't want to tell friends what their partners job title is. How male nurses get question like "are you not a man, why are you a nurse?". People who walk up to a male midwife and accuse him of being a pedophile, ready to punch him? Read any of the multiple news article on how male preschool teachers do not feel safe at the job, feeling like they are under constant accusation by parents and co-workers? Same articles that talk how they dislike being the "representative" male, always chosen to do "male" stereotypical job activities? But more importantly, the data don't lie. Male teachers and male students that are studying to become a teacher exit the job profession in rate about 450% higher than a female counterparts. Are we going to use the same old arguments that its something genetic that a male teachers starts working and after a year or so decide leave the profession?

home_boi 11y ago

>take a look at the charts of women in CS over time. You mean the chart of video game growth over time? This might be a bit of a stretch but it has rung true with me and many other people. We all became interested in technology and computers because of video games. Our interests in video games transitioned to taking programming courses in high school and college.

ae_keji 11y ago
Maybe Minecraft will change the industry before any of us can cook up a good solution to the gender gap.

belorn 11y ago

It seems fairly established that profession with highly unequal ratio of men and women tend to have a minority gender with a much higher exit rate than the majority, caused by the majority harassing the minority until they assimilate, quit or switch profession. The next step should be to ask why women working in a female dominated profession are harassing the men in the same profession, or why men working in male dominated professions are harassing women. Maybe if we could figure out a good answer to that, we could turn the tide of more work professions becoming gendered with unbalanced ratios.

nostrebored 11y ago
I do not think this seems fairly established at all. I have friends who are male nurses, friends who are male teachers, and the type of behavior they dealt with on a day to day basis was not harassment, they did not deal with coworkers who were constantly checking them out, they did not have people doubt their competence. Were people less quick to invite them into their groups? Sometimes. But they were still able to cultivate friend circles without an actively hostile percentage of the population. The one place that I agree with you on this however, is childcare. I've dealt with a large amount of bullshit while staying at home with my newborn, and male caregivers are typically assumed to be incompetent.
- belorn 11y ago
  What kind of study are you referencing there? I quoted a study commissioned by the Swedish government, which in turn referenced a study that looked at work culture in professions with unequal gender ratios. Did you friends mention how children to men who take up female professions get teased in school because the job choice that their dad took? How their spouses don't want to tell friends what their partners job title is. How male nurses get question like "are you not a man, why are you a nurse?". People who walk up to a male midwife and accuse him of being a pedophile, ready to punch him? Read any of the multiple news article on how male preschool teachers do not feel safe at the job, feeling like they are under constant accusation by parents and co-workers? Same articles that talk how they dislike being the "representative" male, always chosen to do "male" stereotypical job activities? But more importantly, the data don't lie. Male teachers and male students that are studying to become a teacher exit the job profession in rate about 450% higher than a female counterparts. Are we going to use the same old arguments that its something genetic that a male teachers starts working and after a year or so decide leave the profession?