8 ms·

Women in tech - Stop talking, start coding

100 points by twampss 16y ago

asimjalis 16y ago
Interesting counterpoint to the recently submitted NYT article, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711
- DrSprout 16y ago
  Doesn't seem like a real counterpoint. The NYT article was a news piece, as such it was descriptive, not prescriptive.
jcnnghm 16y ago
This whole premise is stupid. We don't seem to have a problem with the lack of female linesmen, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, HVAC specialists, or garbage men. There isn't a pest control or sewage treatment Barbie. There also isn't a problem when 57% of college graduates are female. If women want to work in tech, nothing is stopping them. They can learn to program, and write code. This is something that you can teach yourself, you don't need to deal with or rely upon anyone else. It seems that the problem is, at least as described by the New York Times, that women don't want to log the hours, and they want to do something that's more social. That's fine, there is nothing wrong with that. But they may be better off doing something other than writing code if that's the case. Women log fewer hours in other areas as well. Female doctors see fewer patients than male doctors, and female lawyers are much less likely to make partner because they log far fewer hours than male lawyers. There is nothing wrong with this. Men and women are different. This isn't inherently bad or wrong. Disclaimer: My staff is 80% female. We received more qualified female applicants than male applicants, so that's who we hired.
- mattm 16y ago
  I just finished reading the book "Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell. He does a good job of going into more depth about the gender differences among different industries.
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    My guess is that it's simply a rapidly fading anachronism. Young women in urban areas now make more than their male peers. Women now outnumber men in the work force and more men than women are unemployed. With women dominating college enrollments and graduation, for men to continue to earn more than women means that the positive correlation of income to level of education has to be reversed. As happens in military strategy, worrying about men out-earning women in the future seems an instance of fighting the last war.
    - whimsy 16y ago
      This is not something I'm well-educated in, but it's something I'm interested in. Do you have references to these statistics that you can share/cite/etc? I'd like to read more about what you've outlined.
      - jimbokun 16y ago
        Urban young women earn more than male counterparts: http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/wages/young_women_earn_more_than_men_in_big_cities.html http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/wages/young_women_... Women outnumber men in the workplace: http://www.electwomen.com/?p=3123 http://www.electwomen.com/?p=3123 Women outnumber men in college enrollment: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html (article about implications on dating) There are a ton more links on Google for each of these.
- vog 16y ago
  The fact that most women don't want to engage in programming is not a natural phenomenon - it's a big part of the problem. Far too many girls don't even consider trying to program, and regret that later in their lives. The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women, but something badly changed since then. So the missing women in computer science and programming can't be explained that way. This phenomenon is far more likely to be a problem (and also a shame) of our society. We'll have to work hard to fix it. However, fixing a problem is only possible if you don't deny it.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    > "The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women" I'd argue that "programming" in Ada Lovelace's age is more closely related to modern-day science than computer-science. Note also that scientific fields today are in no real shortage of women. I think the possibility needs to be raised that there's something fundamentally wrong with our field, or at least the people in it - an uncomfortable thought to be sure, but the sheer number of women (growing at that) in every "geeky" field but CS should be an indicator of something. This reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday... I'm just going to throw something out there: I know a lot of CS majors, and a lot of science majors. The science majors are a geeky bunch, but are normal, functioning people for the most part. They will just as easily gab all day about some biological principle as they will the latest pop sensation. Their geekiness complements their personality. Contrast this with the CS majors I know, where their geekiness is their personality. It's almost as if we try too hard to be the stereotype that it is, in the end, all that's left. Not to say all CS majors are like this, but the loudest, most visible ones certainly are, at least where I came from. I know it's a turnoff for me (and I'm a guy), I can't imagine how annoying that'd be for women.
    - patio11 16y ago
      Is there an objective standard for "normal, functioning people" or is this a slightly more sophisticated High School 2.0 way of partitioning hobbies or personality quirks into ones which are socially acceptable and ones which are not?
- stse 16y ago
  The US isn't exactly the most gender equal country in the world, so I'll be pretty surprised if women aren't being discriminated against in the tech industry.
- scotty79 16y ago
  > This whole premise is stupid. We don't seem to have a problem with the lack of female linesmen, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, HVAC specialists, or garbage men. Computer science and engineering has inherent research component in it. We do our little own discoveries on daily basis while researching annoying bugs. For research there is much value in diversity of approaches. That't why some people pity severe lack of women in computer science. They believe that this could increase diversity of approaches and give us better solutions. Also there is no lack of electricians today but the need for computer scientists is exploding. During the war electricians and other factory workers were needed so there was push for women to take these professions. We don't have a war now but soon development of our civilization might be capped by lack of competent people to program our machines. That would be severe waste of time.
- bct 16y ago
  > This whole premise is stupid. We don't seem to have a problem with the lack of female linesmen, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, HVAC specialists, or garbage men. So why do you think that is? It sounds to me like evidence that women don't want those jobs! Which would imply that the jobs that people make a fuss about - e.g. programming and other tech jobs - are ones that a significant portion of women do want, and feel discouraged from.
- elptacek 16y ago
  Here's an experiment: start shaving your legs, plucking your eyebrows and having other bits waxed. I suspect that the amount of time required to keep one's appendages hairless would fill up some of that delta of hours worked. Then there's matching shoes to outfits, struggling into hose... ...I'm joking, and yet I'm not. grin
  - vog 16y ago
    According to the classic article on that topic, it's exactly that kind of comments that contributes most to the discomfort of women in male-dominated groups: Sexist jokes are the number one way to drive women out of any group, and they are more common than many people realize. [...] Sometimes he tells me that it's okay to make a sexist joke if it's true, or it's funny (funny to whom?). What some people fail to realize is that jokes about gender of any sort almost always make fun of women, and will make most women angry, regardless of the context. It doesn't help to first make a sexist joke about men and then one about women. [...] your comments and jokes are driving women away. If that's not what you want, then don't make sexist jokes. If you're not sure if your joke is sexist, find something else to say. [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/] (The title suggests that the article is just about LUGs, but it's really about the whole computer-tech scene.)
- Dove 16y ago
  Thank you for saying this. As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners; I saw them as programmers first. I never lacked for role models and heroes because it never occurred to me to ask that they be women. I never had any requirements beyond 'great hacker'. What I did find frustrating was the obsequious encouragement to stay. Extra scholarships I qualified for. My pick of lab partners. Professional societies just for women. The expectation that enrolling or hiring me would make some bean counter somewhere very happy. It's frustrating because it leaves me wondering if I'm held to a lower standard. Would my work actually stand out if I weren't a woman? When people tell me I've done a good job, are they silently adding, ". . . for a girl" ? Am I going to get upvotes on this comment just for being a woman, and not necessarily for being insightful? Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of people trying to artificially import women into the field is that sometimes they succeed. There were always women who were there because they got extra attention and extra help. Women who wouldn't shut up about what it was like to be a developer and -- holy crap -- a woman! At the same time! It was, like, worth running a whole blog about! The more women like that there were running around, the harder I felt I had to work to differentiate myself from them. I don't want to be "second rate, but that's okay because thank God somebody got a woman to stick around." I don't want to be, "wow, that's awesome work and--HEY IT'S A WOMAN, THIS IS FRONT PAGE MATERIAL!" I want to do first rate work and be criticized and compete and fight obscurity right along with everyone else. There aren't many women in tech. And there are even fewer of them in the really upper echelons. Then again, that's true in general. Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. It's not a justification for hamstringing the women who are the exceptions--and no one throughout history has ever said it is. But treating it like a problem just makes problems for people like me. Seriously, just let people do what they want to do and be who they want to be and stop worrying about why they choose what they choose.
  - vog 16y ago
    > As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners It is great to hear that this is possible. In my area, the only way to ensure that women aren't discriminated in a group is to 1) make the group consist of at least 30%-40% women, or 2) have a women as an authority in the group (presenter, boss, teacher, ...) Sometimes, even that doesn't help. So although you suffer from positive discrimination, I think it is really great that you don't suffer from any negative dicrimination. > Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. If I understand you correctly, you don't care because you are part of the elite. But what about the women who are just "average" in tech?
- tjgabbour 16y ago
  I do have a problem with going to say a programming conference and seeing that all the programmers are men, while those serving them (like receptionists and waitresses) are women. And generally these women are managed by men...
nihilocrat 16y ago
Every time my wife says something about biology or chemistry I realize how easy I have it because I only ever studied and worked with shifting bits around to create an imaginary world. Actually having to deal with physical limitations at every step, as well as understanding processes outside of the control of human beings must be hard as hell to understand, meaning it's even harder to learn and apply. So yes, that original paragraph quoted really is bullshit.
eplanit 16y ago
Articles like these always make the same inference, and then lead to a similar conclusion: If a woman CEO gets rejected over and over, then it _must_ be sexism (and/or racism); and, then a gender- (or race-) biased investment firm steps in to promote business based on the gender of the CEOS/Founders, and a moral transgression is set straight. The article asserts that the recession somehow makes investors stupid and frightened, wherein they think via 'templates' or some archetypal response. I think the word they apply is something more like 'scrutiny' -- at least I sure hope so. It's 2010 -- let's start focusing on merit. I don't care what letters the woman carries from name-brand institutions. It just might be possible that her business ideas don't attract investment. Has that been considered? How many males from these fine institutions also fail in business? I know the number isn't zero.
- hassenben 16y ago
  Did you just copy paste your comment from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711?
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Maybe he recomposed it, word by word, in a slightly different context. Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote, would be proud.
- endtime 16y ago
  I don't disagree with your premise, but I think you may have missed this part of the NYT article: >But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.” >Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan. That sounds pretty, uh, sexist.
yason 16y ago
Most men have not ever considered becoming a cosmetologist. How is that not a problem? And why is it somehow a problem that women don't consider becoming a programmer? Both sexes could make those choices and that's far more important than whether they actually do it.
- dgabriel 16y ago
  It's not a problem in cosmetology, but it's a huge problem in nursing and elementary education. Qualified people are being discouraged from fields that would benefit greatly from their participation, based solely on their gender.
  - bobbyi 16y ago
    I can't ever remember being "discouraged" from nursing or teaching. When does this happen? Did you have an experience in school where you were literally told that you shouldn't become a nurse or teacher?
    - sfk 16y ago
      http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=333168 http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=333168
    - akeefer 16y ago
      The discrimination against male nurses isn't overt, it's much more subtle: male nurses are the subject of jokes and people act as if there's something inherently effeminate and un-masculine about the profession. There's a general societal attitude that "nursing is for women" that certainly discourages men from entering the profession.
      - moultano 16y ago
        The profession's title literally means "to suckle at the breast." If it were commonly called something like "doctor's aid" I'd bet it wouldn't be as pronounced a problem.
mdasen 16y ago
I think I'm going to cut against the grain here a little, but bare with me. A lack of women can still be a problem even if no one in computer science is creating the problem. For a small theoretical basis, let's assume that people are a product of their genes and their upbringing/social context. So, some people are genetically smarter and will grok computer science better on an inherent level. Likewise, some people will have a parent who is a computer programmer or fall in with a nerdy friend group and that social context will get them more familiar with computer science and get them headed in that direction. The problem can occur if society is telling women that they shouldn't do computer science. Then we're missing out on people who are inherently gifted computer scientists who have been learned from their social context that they should pursue something else. That's a problem. When people put themselves into sub-optimal careers because of what society tells them they should be like, that's bad. Think about it: what if Einstein had continued just working as a patent clerk? Our world would be worse for it. The inventor of the birth control pill (Gregory Goodwin Pincus) was a Jew born in Russia. His career path would have never happened due to institutional barriers. Heck, Sergey Brin's father saw that his family wouldn't have such advancement there and left for the US because of it - and now we have Google. But what we're talking about aren't institutional barriers - in fact, I'd say most of us probably welcome women. We would like more women in computer science and are hugely open to it within the computer science community. But greater society is often telling girls (and boys) to pursue certain things from a young age. Girls are potentially being socialized away from computer science. That's a problem. Even without institutional barriers, there can still be social barriers imposed by our society. And, while I respect jcnnghm's position (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276946 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276946), I have to disagree. The fact that 57% of college graduates are female could point to a problem. If males are being socialized against learning, that's problematic. The problem is figuring out whether something is inherent or socialized. If something is inherent, fine - life isn't fair or equal. However, socialization matters a lot. Many people overcome socialization. Many others do not. If society has organized itself in such a way that brilliant female potential computer programmers are choosing a different path because they feel it isn't for them, that's a problem. If society has organized itself in such a way that brilliant male potential interior designers are choosing a different path, that's a problem. And our world is socially gendered - we're encouraged to act in certain patterns based on our sex. If society is losing out on brilliant people because they're in positions that aren't their optimal positions due to being socialized not to pursue that position, that's bad for all of us. Just think if Marie Curie had listened to people telling her "what girls should do" and hadn't pursued physics and chemistry. Then think about all the women who did and the knowledge we all lost out on.
JCThoughtscream 16y ago
In response to some of the comments made in this page, doesn't the very fact that some jobs seem more "natural" to one gender or another actually only serve to magnify the problem here? Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it - feats of strength and endurance kind of go out of the window when we're all utilizing tools to minimize the job's physical impact. Lawyers certainly aren't reliant on any gender-specific genetic traits to perform their job. It seems as if most readers here seem to be missing the picture: much of these biases, and they are biases, are entirely cultural, not sex-specific. There is a /cultural/ problem with programming that causes the field to innately repel most potential female programmers. Saying that there's some things women do and some thing men do, and never the two shall meet, isn't just an obsolete 1950s attitude - it's like a bunch of schoolchildren whining about cooties. Asserting that the field /shouldn't/ try and attract a more diverse workforce has all sorts of nasty underlying implications that I'm sure most of you don't mean. The tech industry isn't and shouldn't be a boys-only club - it should be an industry that prizes intelligence and capability above all other factors, especially gender.
- modoc 16y ago
  Some fields, plumbing, auto mechanic, HVAC, etc... tend to require significant physical strength which will naturally select toward men. You say "tools to minimize the job's physical impact", but the reality is that when you're trying to loosen a corroded pipe fitting in a small space with a pipe wrench, you have to apply massive torque to a very small lever in a small space, when a lug nut is frozen beyond the ability of your impact wrench, it's time to get out the breaker bar and put your back into it, when you and your co-worker need to lift the furnace up onto the stand/base you need to lift several hundred pounds. I've done all of those things, and there's countless times where if I wasn't 6'2" and pretty strong, there's no way I could have accomplished the task.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it How do you know that? Male and female minds are certainly constructed differently, and appear to be interested in different things. Cosmetology, for instance: most girls and most women are fascinated by makeup, and the opportunities it provides to look marginally prettier. Men care much less... of course men don't wear makeup, but for the most part they don't even care much whether their women do. Just ask any man who has spent twenty minutes waiting for a woman to put on her face, only to find that she looks hardly different when she comes out from the bathroom than she did when she went in. (Protip: don't tell her this). As for plumbing, well, I don't think anyone is really interested in plumbing, but men are much less deterred by the prospect of getting their hands dirty than women are. Are these differences cultural? They might be, but there's pretty good reasons to think they're innate. It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking and men to invest heavily in, y'know, accomplishing actual stuff.
moron4hire 16y ago
You might want to edit the title, because when I first read it, it seemed as if it were a statement "Stop talking, start coding" directed at "[the] women in tech". I was immediately reminded of a particularly misogynistic line: "quit all your bitchin', get back in the kitchen", so pretty anathema to the purpose of the article. Back to the topic: I don't think it's an issue of just lacking women in the tech industry. We lack men too. When I was going through college, computer science enrollment and matriculation were at all-time lows; it's going to take years to see the full effects of not being able to replace the first major wave of retiring programmers with enough people of high enough quality. I've had non-programmer coworkers, including managers, call me names like "nerd" and shoot down my ideas without really listening because they assumed I was proposing something "too technical, not practical", and it all really came down to a lack of respect from my coworkers. How can we have people graduating with four-year degrees studying one of the most difficult human endeavors in history entering the workplace in positions that are treated barely better than burger-flipper? In my mind, the issue is not just women not getting the respect and support they deserve in IT, but everyone not getting the respect and support they deserve. And I think the problem is largely cultural, and in part to blame on programmers themselves. The culture of programmers, especially the idealized startup culture that tries to differentiate itself from standard corporate imagery, is defined by people with the emotional maturity level of children. The pinball-machines-in-the-break-room, jeans-and-snarky-t-shirts environment is conducive to attracting geeks and only geeks. Most people in general don't want to be associated with this environment, there just happens to be slightly more men than women who fall into that minority of SciFi-and-comic-books fanatics. I have struggled for years to find the level of respect for my work that I feel I deserve, rather than being "just a code monkey." The epiphany for me was to realize that, if I wanted to be treated like a professional, I needed to act like one. I haven't worn a printed t-shirt to work since. Some days I even wear a suit. There's nothing wrong with wearing a suit to work. I even like wearing a suit now, as I realized that I look much better than just jeans-and-t-shirt. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I definitely feel like my voice is heard more often and other, "non-technical" coworkers approach me more freely now. Everyone wants a work environment based on mutual respect. Somehow, slightly more men are just capable of putting up with being treated like crap. This is not in any way a good thing.
- 16y ago
rythie 16y ago
I don't think that the deepest technical roles in computing, including programming are social enough for most women. Programming requires you to work without talking to anyone and even when you've finished many non-tech people won't understand what you did, so you can't even talk about it then. There are clearly lots of benefits to having women in the tech industury, but if they don't want to program that cuts the number at least in half on that point alone.
DuncanIdaho 16y ago
I don't know if anybody already made the remark. But I find this issue very similar to the issue of women in science, here is an out of box article: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science The general theme is, what if women avoid (computer)science because that kind of career sucks? The question to ask is... why would women want to work 80+ hour workweeks with unpaid overtime - effectively getting a similar salary to a maid (yes I exaggerate a bit!) - they can just go working as maids with less stress. Lets face it. Most of CS companies ain't no Google or Microsoft. And most of CS people don't stand any chance of gaining access to that kind of company - ever. Most of computer people work for retarded PHB's. Any sane person can see that it's much better to be a PHB than Dilbert.

100 points by twampss 16y ago

Interesting counterpoint to the recently submitted NYT article, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711

DrSprout 16y ago
Doesn't seem like a real counterpoint. The NYT article was a news piece, as such it was descriptive, not prescriptive.

jcnnghm 16y ago

This whole premise is stupid. We don't seem to have a problem with the lack of female linesmen, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, HVAC specialists, or garbage men. There isn't a pest control or sewage treatment Barbie. There also isn't a problem when 57% of college graduates are female. If women want to work in tech, nothing is stopping them. They can learn to program, and write code. This is something that you can teach yourself, you don't need to deal with or rely upon anyone else. It seems that the problem is, at least as described by the New York Times, that women don't want to log the hours, and they want to do something that's more social. That's fine, there is nothing wrong with that. But they may be better off doing something other than writing code if that's the case. Women log fewer hours in other areas as well. Female doctors see fewer patients than male doctors, and female lawyers are much less likely to make partner because they log far fewer hours than male lawyers. There is nothing wrong with this. Men and women are different. This isn't inherently bad or wrong. Disclaimer: My staff is 80% female. We received more qualified female applicants than male applicants, so that's who we hired.

mattm 16y ago
I just finished reading the book "Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell. He does a good job of going into more depth about the gender differences among different industries.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  My guess is that it's simply a rapidly fading anachronism. Young women in urban areas now make more than their male peers. Women now outnumber men in the work force and more men than women are unemployed. With women dominating college enrollments and graduation, for men to continue to earn more than women means that the positive correlation of income to level of education has to be reversed. As happens in military strategy, worrying about men out-earning women in the future seems an instance of fighting the last war.
  - whimsy 16y ago
    This is not something I'm well-educated in, but it's something I'm interested in. Do you have references to these statistics that you can share/cite/etc? I'd like to read more about what you've outlined.
    - jimbokun 16y ago
      Urban young women earn more than male counterparts: http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/wages/young_women_earn_more_than_men_in_big_cities.html http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/wages/young_women_... Women outnumber men in the workplace: http://www.electwomen.com/?p=3123 http://www.electwomen.com/?p=3123 Women outnumber men in college enrollment: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html (article about implications on dating) There are a ton more links on Google for each of these.
vog 16y ago
The fact that most women don't want to engage in programming is not a natural phenomenon - it's a big part of the problem. Far too many girls don't even consider trying to program, and regret that later in their lives. The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women, but something badly changed since then. So the missing women in computer science and programming can't be explained that way. This phenomenon is far more likely to be a problem (and also a shame) of our society. We'll have to work hard to fix it. However, fixing a problem is only possible if you don't deny it.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  > "The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women" I'd argue that "programming" in Ada Lovelace's age is more closely related to modern-day science than computer-science. Note also that scientific fields today are in no real shortage of women. I think the possibility needs to be raised that there's something fundamentally wrong with our field, or at least the people in it - an uncomfortable thought to be sure, but the sheer number of women (growing at that) in every "geeky" field but CS should be an indicator of something. This reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday... I'm just going to throw something out there: I know a lot of CS majors, and a lot of science majors. The science majors are a geeky bunch, but are normal, functioning people for the most part. They will just as easily gab all day about some biological principle as they will the latest pop sensation. Their geekiness complements their personality. Contrast this with the CS majors I know, where their geekiness is their personality. It's almost as if we try too hard to be the stereotype that it is, in the end, all that's left. Not to say all CS majors are like this, but the loudest, most visible ones certainly are, at least where I came from. I know it's a turnoff for me (and I'm a guy), I can't imagine how annoying that'd be for women.
  - patio11 16y ago
    Is there an objective standard for "normal, functioning people" or is this a slightly more sophisticated High School 2.0 way of partitioning hobbies or personality quirks into ones which are socially acceptable and ones which are not?
stse 16y ago
The US isn't exactly the most gender equal country in the world, so I'll be pretty surprised if women aren't being discriminated against in the tech industry.
scotty79 16y ago
> This whole premise is stupid. We don't seem to have a problem with the lack of female linesmen, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, HVAC specialists, or garbage men. Computer science and engineering has inherent research component in it. We do our little own discoveries on daily basis while researching annoying bugs. For research there is much value in diversity of approaches. That't why some people pity severe lack of women in computer science. They believe that this could increase diversity of approaches and give us better solutions. Also there is no lack of electricians today but the need for computer scientists is exploding. During the war electricians and other factory workers were needed so there was push for women to take these professions. We don't have a war now but soon development of our civilization might be capped by lack of competent people to program our machines. That would be severe waste of time.
bct 16y ago
> This whole premise is stupid. We don't seem to have a problem with the lack of female linesmen, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, HVAC specialists, or garbage men. So why do you think that is? It sounds to me like evidence that women don't want those jobs! Which would imply that the jobs that people make a fuss about - e.g. programming and other tech jobs - are ones that a significant portion of women do want, and feel discouraged from.
elptacek 16y ago
Here's an experiment: start shaving your legs, plucking your eyebrows and having other bits waxed. I suspect that the amount of time required to keep one's appendages hairless would fill up some of that delta of hours worked. Then there's matching shoes to outfits, struggling into hose... ...I'm joking, and yet I'm not. grin
- vog 16y ago
  According to the classic article on that topic, it's exactly that kind of comments that contributes most to the discomfort of women in male-dominated groups: Sexist jokes are the number one way to drive women out of any group, and they are more common than many people realize. [...] Sometimes he tells me that it's okay to make a sexist joke if it's true, or it's funny (funny to whom?). What some people fail to realize is that jokes about gender of any sort almost always make fun of women, and will make most women angry, regardless of the context. It doesn't help to first make a sexist joke about men and then one about women. [...] your comments and jokes are driving women away. If that's not what you want, then don't make sexist jokes. If you're not sure if your joke is sexist, find something else to say. [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/] (The title suggests that the article is just about LUGs, but it's really about the whole computer-tech scene.)
Dove 16y ago
Thank you for saying this. As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners; I saw them as programmers first. I never lacked for role models and heroes because it never occurred to me to ask that they be women. I never had any requirements beyond 'great hacker'. What I did find frustrating was the obsequious encouragement to stay. Extra scholarships I qualified for. My pick of lab partners. Professional societies just for women. The expectation that enrolling or hiring me would make some bean counter somewhere very happy. It's frustrating because it leaves me wondering if I'm held to a lower standard. Would my work actually stand out if I weren't a woman? When people tell me I've done a good job, are they silently adding, ". . . for a girl" ? Am I going to get upvotes on this comment just for being a woman, and not necessarily for being insightful? Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of people trying to artificially import women into the field is that sometimes they succeed. There were always women who were there because they got extra attention and extra help. Women who wouldn't shut up about what it was like to be a developer and -- holy crap -- a woman! At the same time! It was, like, worth running a whole blog about! The more women like that there were running around, the harder I felt I had to work to differentiate myself from them. I don't want to be "second rate, but that's okay because thank God somebody got a woman to stick around." I don't want to be, "wow, that's awesome work and--HEY IT'S A WOMAN, THIS IS FRONT PAGE MATERIAL!" I want to do first rate work and be criticized and compete and fight obscurity right along with everyone else. There aren't many women in tech. And there are even fewer of them in the really upper echelons. Then again, that's true in general. Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. It's not a justification for hamstringing the women who are the exceptions--and no one throughout history has ever said it is. But treating it like a problem just makes problems for people like me. Seriously, just let people do what they want to do and be who they want to be and stop worrying about why they choose what they choose.
- vog 16y ago
  > As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners It is great to hear that this is possible. In my area, the only way to ensure that women aren't discriminated in a group is to 1) make the group consist of at least 30%-40% women, or 2) have a women as an authority in the group (presenter, boss, teacher, ...) Sometimes, even that doesn't help. So although you suffer from positive discrimination, I think it is really great that you don't suffer from any negative dicrimination. > Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. If I understand you correctly, you don't care because you are part of the elite. But what about the women who are just "average" in tech?
tjgabbour 16y ago
I do have a problem with going to say a programming conference and seeing that all the programmers are men, while those serving them (like receptionists and waitresses) are women. And generally these women are managed by men...

nihilocrat 16y ago

Every time my wife says something about biology or chemistry I realize how easy I have it because I only ever studied and worked with shifting bits around to create an imaginary world. Actually having to deal with physical limitations at every step, as well as understanding processes outside of the control of human beings must be hard as hell to understand, meaning it's even harder to learn and apply. So yes, that original paragraph quoted really is bullshit.

eplanit 16y ago

Articles like these always make the same inference, and then lead to a similar conclusion: If a woman CEO gets rejected over and over, then it _must_ be sexism (and/or racism); and, then a gender- (or race-) biased investment firm steps in to promote business based on the gender of the CEOS/Founders, and a moral transgression is set straight. The article asserts that the recession somehow makes investors stupid and frightened, wherein they think via 'templates' or some archetypal response. I think the word they apply is something more like 'scrutiny' -- at least I sure hope so. It's 2010 -- let's start focusing on merit. I don't care what letters the woman carries from name-brand institutions. It just might be possible that her business ideas don't attract investment. Has that been considered? How many males from these fine institutions also fail in business? I know the number isn't zero.

hassenben 16y ago
Did you just copy paste your comment from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Maybe he recomposed it, word by word, in a slightly different context. Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote, would be proud.
endtime 16y ago
I don't disagree with your premise, but I think you may have missed this part of the NYT article: >But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.” >Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan. That sounds pretty, uh, sexist.

yason 16y ago

Most men have not ever considered becoming a cosmetologist. How is that not a problem? And why is it somehow a problem that women don't consider becoming a programmer? Both sexes could make those choices and that's far more important than whether they actually do it.

dgabriel 16y ago
It's not a problem in cosmetology, but it's a huge problem in nursing and elementary education. Qualified people are being discouraged from fields that would benefit greatly from their participation, based solely on their gender.
- bobbyi 16y ago
  I can't ever remember being "discouraged" from nursing or teaching. When does this happen? Did you have an experience in school where you were literally told that you shouldn't become a nurse or teacher?
  - sfk 16y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=333168 http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=333168
  - akeefer 16y ago
    The discrimination against male nurses isn't overt, it's much more subtle: male nurses are the subject of jokes and people act as if there's something inherently effeminate and un-masculine about the profession. There's a general societal attitude that "nursing is for women" that certainly discourages men from entering the profession.
    - moultano 16y ago
      The profession's title literally means "to suckle at the breast." If it were commonly called something like "doctor's aid" I'd bet it wouldn't be as pronounced a problem.

mdasen 16y ago

I think I'm going to cut against the grain here a little, but bare with me. A lack of women can still be a problem even if no one in computer science is creating the problem. For a small theoretical basis, let's assume that people are a product of their genes and their upbringing/social context. So, some people are genetically smarter and will grok computer science better on an inherent level. Likewise, some people will have a parent who is a computer programmer or fall in with a nerdy friend group and that social context will get them more familiar with computer science and get them headed in that direction. The problem can occur if society is telling women that they shouldn't do computer science. Then we're missing out on people who are inherently gifted computer scientists who have been learned from their social context that they should pursue something else. That's a problem. When people put themselves into sub-optimal careers because of what society tells them they should be like, that's bad. Think about it: what if Einstein had continued just working as a patent clerk? Our world would be worse for it. The inventor of the birth control pill (Gregory Goodwin Pincus) was a Jew born in Russia. His career path would have never happened due to institutional barriers. Heck, Sergey Brin's father saw that his family wouldn't have such advancement there and left for the US because of it - and now we have Google. But what we're talking about aren't institutional barriers - in fact, I'd say most of us probably welcome women. We would like more women in computer science and are hugely open to it within the computer science community. But greater society is often telling girls (and boys) to pursue certain things from a young age. Girls are potentially being socialized away from computer science. That's a problem. Even without institutional barriers, there can still be social barriers imposed by our society. And, while I respect jcnnghm's position (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276946 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276946), I have to disagree. The fact that 57% of college graduates are female could point to a problem. If males are being socialized against learning, that's problematic. The problem is figuring out whether something is inherent or socialized. If something is inherent, fine - life isn't fair or equal. However, socialization matters a lot. Many people overcome socialization. Many others do not. If society has organized itself in such a way that brilliant female potential computer programmers are choosing a different path because they feel it isn't for them, that's a problem. If society has organized itself in such a way that brilliant male potential interior designers are choosing a different path, that's a problem. And our world is socially gendered - we're encouraged to act in certain patterns based on our sex. If society is losing out on brilliant people because they're in positions that aren't their optimal positions due to being socialized not to pursue that position, that's bad for all of us. Just think if Marie Curie had listened to people telling her "what girls should do" and hadn't pursued physics and chemistry. Then think about all the women who did and the knowledge we all lost out on.

JCThoughtscream 16y ago

In response to some of the comments made in this page, doesn't the very fact that some jobs seem more "natural" to one gender or another actually only serve to magnify the problem here? Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it - feats of strength and endurance kind of go out of the window when we're all utilizing tools to minimize the job's physical impact. Lawyers certainly aren't reliant on any gender-specific genetic traits to perform their job. It seems as if most readers here seem to be missing the picture: much of these biases, and they are biases, are entirely cultural, not sex-specific. There is a /cultural/ problem with programming that causes the field to innately repel most potential female programmers. Saying that there's some things women do and some thing men do, and never the two shall meet, isn't just an obsolete 1950s attitude - it's like a bunch of schoolchildren whining about cooties. Asserting that the field /shouldn't/ try and attract a more diverse workforce has all sorts of nasty underlying implications that I'm sure most of you don't mean. The tech industry isn't and shouldn't be a boys-only club - it should be an industry that prizes intelligence and capability above all other factors, especially gender.

modoc 16y ago
Some fields, plumbing, auto mechanic, HVAC, etc... tend to require significant physical strength which will naturally select toward men. You say "tools to minimize the job's physical impact", but the reality is that when you're trying to loosen a corroded pipe fitting in a small space with a pipe wrench, you have to apply massive torque to a very small lever in a small space, when a lug nut is frozen beyond the ability of your impact wrench, it's time to get out the breaker bar and put your back into it, when you and your co-worker need to lift the furnace up onto the stand/base you need to lift several hundred pounds. I've done all of those things, and there's countless times where if I wasn't 6'2" and pretty strong, there's no way I could have accomplished the task.
hugh3 16y ago
Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it How do you know that? Male and female minds are certainly constructed differently, and appear to be interested in different things. Cosmetology, for instance: most girls and most women are fascinated by makeup, and the opportunities it provides to look marginally prettier. Men care much less... of course men don't wear makeup, but for the most part they don't even care much whether their women do. Just ask any man who has spent twenty minutes waiting for a woman to put on her face, only to find that she looks hardly different when she comes out from the bathroom than she did when she went in. (Protip: don't tell her this). As for plumbing, well, I don't think anyone is really interested in plumbing, but men are much less deterred by the prospect of getting their hands dirty than women are. Are these differences cultural? They might be, but there's pretty good reasons to think they're innate. It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking and men to invest heavily in, y'know, accomplishing actual stuff.

moron4hire 16y ago

You might want to edit the title, because when I first read it, it seemed as if it were a statement "Stop talking, start coding" directed at "[the] women in tech". I was immediately reminded of a particularly misogynistic line: "quit all your bitchin', get back in the kitchen", so pretty anathema to the purpose of the article. Back to the topic: I don't think it's an issue of just lacking women in the tech industry. We lack men too. When I was going through college, computer science enrollment and matriculation were at all-time lows; it's going to take years to see the full effects of not being able to replace the first major wave of retiring programmers with enough people of high enough quality. I've had non-programmer coworkers, including managers, call me names like "nerd" and shoot down my ideas without really listening because they assumed I was proposing something "too technical, not practical", and it all really came down to a lack of respect from my coworkers. How can we have people graduating with four-year degrees studying one of the most difficult human endeavors in history entering the workplace in positions that are treated barely better than burger-flipper? In my mind, the issue is not just women not getting the respect and support they deserve in IT, but everyone not getting the respect and support they deserve. And I think the problem is largely cultural, and in part to blame on programmers themselves. The culture of programmers, especially the idealized startup culture that tries to differentiate itself from standard corporate imagery, is defined by people with the emotional maturity level of children. The pinball-machines-in-the-break-room, jeans-and-snarky-t-shirts environment is conducive to attracting geeks and only geeks. Most people in general don't want to be associated with this environment, there just happens to be slightly more men than women who fall into that minority of SciFi-and-comic-books fanatics. I have struggled for years to find the level of respect for my work that I feel I deserve, rather than being "just a code monkey." The epiphany for me was to realize that, if I wanted to be treated like a professional, I needed to act like one. I haven't worn a printed t-shirt to work since. Some days I even wear a suit. There's nothing wrong with wearing a suit to work. I even like wearing a suit now, as I realized that I look much better than just jeans-and-t-shirt. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I definitely feel like my voice is heard more often and other, "non-technical" coworkers approach me more freely now. Everyone wants a work environment based on mutual respect. Somehow, slightly more men are just capable of putting up with being treated like crap. This is not in any way a good thing.

16y ago

rythie 16y ago

I don't think that the deepest technical roles in computing, including programming are social enough for most women. Programming requires you to work without talking to anyone and even when you've finished many non-tech people won't understand what you did, so you can't even talk about it then. There are clearly lots of benefits to having women in the tech industury, but if they don't want to program that cuts the number at least in half on that point alone.

DuncanIdaho 16y ago

I don't know if anybody already made the remark. But I find this issue very similar to the issue of women in science, here is an out of box article: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science The general theme is, what if women avoid (computer)science because that kind of career sucks? The question to ask is... why would women want to work 80+ hour workweeks with unpaid overtime - effectively getting a similar salary to a maid (yes I exaggerate a bit!) - they can just go working as maids with less stress. Lets face it. Most of CS companies ain't no Google or Microsoft. And most of CS people don't stand any chance of gaining access to that kind of company - ever. Most of computer people work for retarded PHB's. Any sane person can see that it's much better to be a PHB than Dilbert.