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I'm not sure how this is surprising for anyone. Of all of the female friends I had growing up, I don't know a single one that went into software. I had one stud

I'm not sure how this is surprising for anyone. Of all of the female friends I had growing up, I don't know a single one that went into software. I had one study "Happiness" at Mt Holyoke, one study Gender Studies at UMass, a few Biology majors who now are lab techs, one law school graduate who works with the ACLU, and a bunch of women who didn't even go to college. If we want to fix this problem, we need to encourage women to stop studying such ridiculous nonsense feel-good bullshit. The problem lies with our culture and how we raise children, not "racist/sexist/whatever-ist" employers.

achompas 10y ago
Sorry, so you're suggesting the problem is that women don't study computer science? Hmm. [0] It sounds like you're chalking this up to the famous "pipeline problem." [1] This is empirically incorrect. In particular, Figure 8.2 demonstrates that the quit rate for women in "high tech" is almost 2.5x higher than the quit rate for me. [0] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-idUSKCN0S32F020151009 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-... [1] http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology.pdf http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-...
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  The fact that the quit rate is higher doesn't disqualify the pipeline problem as an explanation. It sounds like your assumption is that a hostile work environment must be the reason for the higher quit rate, and thus that fixing the pipeline wouldn't fix the issue. I'm not sure this is as ironclad as you're pretending it is. I personally know people from underrepresented groups in tech (African-American, women etc) who attest that, even in work environments that made them feel 100% welcome/comfortable, they felt a mental cost from the very fact of being underrepresented. That is to say, even if you were to remove all the consciously and unconsciously biased behavior from workplaces, some people still have a negative reaction to being the only present member of a group that they identify with. The pipeline problem is the only solution that could possibly address that[1], by addressing the imbalance per se. [1] I suppose short of having people stop feeling this way about being underrepresented. I've been underrepresented ethnically in almost every group I've ever been in, but it has never bothered me. Far be it from me to tell other to stop feeling a certain way though.
  - achompas 10y ago
    > It sounds like your assumption is that a hostile work environment must be the reason for the higher quit rate, and thus that fixing the pipeline wouldn't fix the issue. I'm not sure this is as ironclad as you're pretending it is. I mean, the data does seem to support a tech environment that applies disproportionate pressure on women to perform certain activities. From the linked HBS study, for example (Figure 6.1), 71% of women in tech feel pressure to put in face time (vs. 19% in all sectors) and 36% feel pressure to be available 24/7 (vs. 26% in all sectors). Both of these are time-consuming activities. Myriad studies show child care responsibilities, even today, still fall disproportionately onto women. Child care is time-consuming, and that comes into conflict with time-consuming professional work. Of course, not all women want children. And this is one study. But it wouldn't surprise me if women were underrepresented in tech due to a combination of cultural issues and the pipeline problem. It's just extremely reductionist when people assign blame to the pipeline problem, since that shifts the focus from work environments to higher education. That's a convenient result for companies.
    - wutbrodo 10y ago
      Thanks for the data. That's a pretty compelling perspective actually: policies that are less compatible with family care in a given industry have a disproportionate impact on women in just that industry, which increasing representation (through pipeline issues) won't necessarily fix.
- netheril96 10y ago
  > Sorry, so you're suggesting the problem is that women don't study computer science? Hmm. [0] The reference you cite says that > about 214 women are majoring in computer science, accounting for about 30 percent of majors in that department and > only about 18 percent of all U.S. undergraduate computer science degrees go to women. While the WSJ article states that > Women made up 33% of its global workforce, up from 31% in 2014. So, exactly a pipeline problem.
  - achompas 10y ago
    It's interesting that you have not addressed the high attrition rates for women who do enter tech. Is that also a pipeline problem? Should schools also teach women to tolerate hostile work environments?
- prostoalex 10y ago
  How does it compare with the quit rate in highly-paid but non-high-tech occupations such as legal, middle/upper management, aviation, medicine or finance? One would assume there's a natural attrition across all industries due to women taking time off to have/raise kids as well as some common base level of quitting in general due to reasons common across all industries (better pay elsewhere, bad managers). Is 2.5x coefficient very high, very low or just about same as other industries?
- tn13 10y ago
  I am not sure what that quit rate really means seen in that isolation. What is the quit rate of women in other sectors ? What is the quit rate in high-tech in general ? All those questions are very important. My wife left her job after marriage because she had to relocate and later she took a break for childbirth while I was at the same job. "Pipeline problem" is not really a problem. It is not the case that women will suddenly come to CS if we paint classrooms pink. If the reason women are not attracted to CS is probably those young girls have done their research an decided that they will be better off being something else other than CS major. Hostility at workplace might be one of the reasons but I highly doubt if that is the only one. At least we need data to indicate that quit rate is not a useful metric.
sanderjd 10y ago
This is the worst comment I've read on HN in a long time. You extrapolate from some weird personal anecdotes to "women study ridiculous nonsense feel-good bullshit" and then ironically imply that sexism is not a problem. I suspect you'll be downvoted eventually (and be flabbergasted as to why) but I thought I'd drop a comment with my gut reaction to your post instead.
- exit 10y ago
  ignoring the color added by "nonsense feel-good bullshit", are women underrepresented in STEM degrees?
  - asdfologist 10y ago
    Are men underrepresented in non-STEM degrees?
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      The answer to both questions is yes.
    - exit 10y ago
      quite possibly - i have no idea though :) careers such as nursing, teaching, and (ironically given the op) human resources seem to be highly gendered towards women.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    The relevant question is whether they are underrepresented in non-"nonsense feel-good bullshit" degrees. But then we would have to agree on a definition of that. Having no statistics handy, I suspect by my definition the answer would be "no", while by yours (which perhaps is just equivalent to STEM?) the answer would be "yes".
  - happyslobro 10y ago
    TE: under represented, SM: over represented, at my uni, anyway. This whole thing is way overblown, imo. If, for some reason, far more women want to be doctors than engineers, then good for them. The last thing we need are grumpy doctors who treat their patients like machines, or bored engineers who make a special snowflake out of each server. Imagine how ridiculous it would be, if when I was enrolling in uni, an advisor had said something along the lines of "Are you sure you wouldn't rather be a doctor? Because we need more male doctors, and the engineering fields are way over their quota for males. In 4 years, you might not be able to get a job in that field, unless you discover that you are actually a woman in a man's body."
blhack 10y ago
Here is some relevant data for anybody trying to add some facts to this post: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-studies-what-men-women-and-college-majors http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-s... Conclusion: it's complicated. Women make up about half of science and business degrees, and relatively small percentage of engineering and computer science.
exit 10y ago
it would be interesting to know whether any societies don't have this bias in educating women.
nicklo 10y ago
This comment is mind-numbingly anecdotal and runs wildly contrary to reality. '"Happiness" at Mt Holyoke' - here's the list of majors at Mt Holyoke: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/majors https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/majors. 'Happiness' appears nowhere on the list. "bunch of women who didn't even go to college" - females outnumber men in college 55/45. Beyond the blatant disregard for facts, the comment is dangerously reductionist, attributing the diversity gap to a single cause- a lack of encouragement for females to pursue technical fields at a young age. Yes, this is part of the problem, but no matter how much the talent pool increases, women are going to continue to leave tech at alarming rates until tech culture issues are improved as well.
- seattle_spring 10y ago
  > '"Happiness" at Mt Holyoke' - here's the list of majors at Mt Holyoke Congratulations, you can Google! Maybe if you exercise that talent a little bit more, you'll realize that My Holyoke, not unlike the infamous Evergreen College, allows students to design their own major. > the comment is dangerously reductionist, attributing the diversity gap to a single cause- a lack of encouragement for females to pursue technical fields at a young age. How is that any different than the OP suggesting that hostile work environments are the single cause of poor diversity?
  - achompas 10y ago
    > How is that any different than the OP suggesting that hostile work environments are the single cause of poor diversity? I'm baffled by how this could possibly be your impression of the article. The WSJ is reporting on a recruiting push that failed to hire minorities and women. It's the only thing they talk about for the first five paragraphs, then they immediately reference the pipeline problem (emphasis mine): > The move shows how Facebook is applying its trademark data-driven approach to one of the tech industry’s most stubborn problems: the homogeneity of its nearly 15,000-person workforce. But its lackluster results reflect the limits of that method when tackling deep-rooted issues such as inequality. The article raises the pipeline problem again in multiple places: > Facebook says it wants its workforce to better reflect the diversity of its 1.7 billion monthly users—85% of which are outside the U.S. and Canada. But last month, it said it couldn’t substantially increase the diversity of its workforce because there weren’t enough qualified women or minority candidates. That drew fire from tech diversity and inclusion leaders on social media. > The extra incentive points—awarded in job categories that are too homogenous—are an unusual effort to expand Facebook’s “pipeline,” which is the pool of candidates recruiters identify to interview for a position.

achompas 10y ago

Sorry, so you're suggesting the problem is that women don't study computer science? Hmm. [0] It sounds like you're chalking this up to the famous "pipeline problem." [1] This is empirically incorrect. In particular, Figure 8.2 demonstrates that the quit rate for women in "high tech" is almost 2.5x higher than the quit rate for me. [0] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-idUSKCN0S32F020151009 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-... [1] http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology.pdf http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-...

wutbrodo 10y ago
The fact that the quit rate is higher doesn't disqualify the pipeline problem as an explanation. It sounds like your assumption is that a hostile work environment must be the reason for the higher quit rate, and thus that fixing the pipeline wouldn't fix the issue. I'm not sure this is as ironclad as you're pretending it is. I personally know people from underrepresented groups in tech (African-American, women etc) who attest that, even in work environments that made them feel 100% welcome/comfortable, they felt a mental cost from the very fact of being underrepresented. That is to say, even if you were to remove all the consciously and unconsciously biased behavior from workplaces, some people still have a negative reaction to being the only present member of a group that they identify with. The pipeline problem is the only solution that could possibly address that[1], by addressing the imbalance per se. [1] I suppose short of having people stop feeling this way about being underrepresented. I've been underrepresented ethnically in almost every group I've ever been in, but it has never bothered me. Far be it from me to tell other to stop feeling a certain way though.
- achompas 10y ago
  > It sounds like your assumption is that a hostile work environment must be the reason for the higher quit rate, and thus that fixing the pipeline wouldn't fix the issue. I'm not sure this is as ironclad as you're pretending it is. I mean, the data does seem to support a tech environment that applies disproportionate pressure on women to perform certain activities. From the linked HBS study, for example (Figure 6.1), 71% of women in tech feel pressure to put in face time (vs. 19% in all sectors) and 36% feel pressure to be available 24/7 (vs. 26% in all sectors). Both of these are time-consuming activities. Myriad studies show child care responsibilities, even today, still fall disproportionately onto women. Child care is time-consuming, and that comes into conflict with time-consuming professional work. Of course, not all women want children. And this is one study. But it wouldn't surprise me if women were underrepresented in tech due to a combination of cultural issues and the pipeline problem. It's just extremely reductionist when people assign blame to the pipeline problem, since that shifts the focus from work environments to higher education. That's a convenient result for companies.
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    Thanks for the data. That's a pretty compelling perspective actually: policies that are less compatible with family care in a given industry have a disproportionate impact on women in just that industry, which increasing representation (through pipeline issues) won't necessarily fix.
netheril96 10y ago
> Sorry, so you're suggesting the problem is that women don't study computer science? Hmm. [0] The reference you cite says that > about 214 women are majoring in computer science, accounting for about 30 percent of majors in that department and > only about 18 percent of all U.S. undergraduate computer science degrees go to women. While the WSJ article states that > Women made up 33% of its global workforce, up from 31% in 2014. So, exactly a pipeline problem.
- achompas 10y ago
  It's interesting that you have not addressed the high attrition rates for women who do enter tech. Is that also a pipeline problem? Should schools also teach women to tolerate hostile work environments?
prostoalex 10y ago
How does it compare with the quit rate in highly-paid but non-high-tech occupations such as legal, middle/upper management, aviation, medicine or finance? One would assume there's a natural attrition across all industries due to women taking time off to have/raise kids as well as some common base level of quitting in general due to reasons common across all industries (better pay elsewhere, bad managers). Is 2.5x coefficient very high, very low or just about same as other industries?
tn13 10y ago
I am not sure what that quit rate really means seen in that isolation. What is the quit rate of women in other sectors ? What is the quit rate in high-tech in general ? All those questions are very important. My wife left her job after marriage because she had to relocate and later she took a break for childbirth while I was at the same job. "Pipeline problem" is not really a problem. It is not the case that women will suddenly come to CS if we paint classrooms pink. If the reason women are not attracted to CS is probably those young girls have done their research an decided that they will be better off being something else other than CS major. Hostility at workplace might be one of the reasons but I highly doubt if that is the only one. At least we need data to indicate that quit rate is not a useful metric.

sanderjd 10y ago

This is the worst comment I've read on HN in a long time. You extrapolate from some weird personal anecdotes to "women study ridiculous nonsense feel-good bullshit" and then ironically imply that sexism is not a problem. I suspect you'll be downvoted eventually (and be flabbergasted as to why) but I thought I'd drop a comment with my gut reaction to your post instead.

exit 10y ago
ignoring the color added by "nonsense feel-good bullshit", are women underrepresented in STEM degrees?
- asdfologist 10y ago
  Are men underrepresented in non-STEM degrees?
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    The answer to both questions is yes.
  - exit 10y ago
    quite possibly - i have no idea though :) careers such as nursing, teaching, and (ironically given the op) human resources seem to be highly gendered towards women.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  The relevant question is whether they are underrepresented in non-"nonsense feel-good bullshit" degrees. But then we would have to agree on a definition of that. Having no statistics handy, I suspect by my definition the answer would be "no", while by yours (which perhaps is just equivalent to STEM?) the answer would be "yes".
- happyslobro 10y ago
  TE: under represented, SM: over represented, at my uni, anyway. This whole thing is way overblown, imo. If, for some reason, far more women want to be doctors than engineers, then good for them. The last thing we need are grumpy doctors who treat their patients like machines, or bored engineers who make a special snowflake out of each server. Imagine how ridiculous it would be, if when I was enrolling in uni, an advisor had said something along the lines of "Are you sure you wouldn't rather be a doctor? Because we need more male doctors, and the engineering fields are way over their quota for males. In 4 years, you might not be able to get a job in that field, unless you discover that you are actually a woman in a man's body."

blhack 10y ago

Here is some relevant data for anybody trying to add some facts to this post: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-studies-what-men-women-and-college-majors http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-s... Conclusion: it's complicated. Women make up about half of science and business degrees, and relatively small percentage of engineering and computer science.

exit 10y ago

it would be interesting to know whether any societies don't have this bias in educating women.

nicklo 10y ago

This comment is mind-numbingly anecdotal and runs wildly contrary to reality. '"Happiness" at Mt Holyoke' - here's the list of majors at Mt Holyoke: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/majors https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/majors. 'Happiness' appears nowhere on the list. "bunch of women who didn't even go to college" - females outnumber men in college 55/45. Beyond the blatant disregard for facts, the comment is dangerously reductionist, attributing the diversity gap to a single cause- a lack of encouragement for females to pursue technical fields at a young age. Yes, this is part of the problem, but no matter how much the talent pool increases, women are going to continue to leave tech at alarming rates until tech culture issues are improved as well.

seattle_spring 10y ago
> '"Happiness" at Mt Holyoke' - here's the list of majors at Mt Holyoke Congratulations, you can Google! Maybe if you exercise that talent a little bit more, you'll realize that My Holyoke, not unlike the infamous Evergreen College, allows students to design their own major. > the comment is dangerously reductionist, attributing the diversity gap to a single cause- a lack of encouragement for females to pursue technical fields at a young age. How is that any different than the OP suggesting that hostile work environments are the single cause of poor diversity?
- achompas 10y ago
  > How is that any different than the OP suggesting that hostile work environments are the single cause of poor diversity? I'm baffled by how this could possibly be your impression of the article. The WSJ is reporting on a recruiting push that failed to hire minorities and women. It's the only thing they talk about for the first five paragraphs, then they immediately reference the pipeline problem (emphasis mine): > The move shows how Facebook is applying its trademark data-driven approach to one of the tech industry’s most stubborn problems: the homogeneity of its nearly 15,000-person workforce. But its lackluster results reflect the limits of that method when tackling deep-rooted issues such as inequality. The article raises the pipeline problem again in multiple places: > Facebook says it wants its workforce to better reflect the diversity of its 1.7 billion monthly users—85% of which are outside the U.S. and Canada. But last month, it said it couldn’t substantially increase the diversity of its workforce because there weren’t enough qualified women or minority candidates. That drew fire from tech diversity and inclusion leaders on social media. > The extra incentive points—awarded in job categories that are too homogenous—are an unusual effort to expand Facebook’s “pipeline,” which is the pool of candidates recruiters identify to interview for a position.