5 ms·

While the autism imbalance may play a factor, I 100% believe it is mostly marketing driving the gender gap. Early on computers were marketed to men, because the

While the autism imbalance may play a factor, I 100% believe it is mostly marketing driving the gender gap. Early on computers were marketed to men, because they were tools which were a "man thing". And now still video games are predominately marketed towards males, and I would be shocked if there isn't a strong correlation between interest in video games and computers in general. So if I understand correctly, I am with you, its a pipeline problem due to historical factors which are rapidly fading.

throw9991 9y ago
>predominately marketed towards males Why though? Why would a company want to limit sales of video games by only marketing to one demographic?
jasode 9y ago
>Early on computers were marketed to men, >, and I would be shocked if there isn't a strong correlation between interest in video games and computers in general. Video games are marketed more to males but that didn't stop females from participating in large numbers.[1] Why would "male marketing" dissuade females from computer programming but at the same time, it doesn't affect computer gaming? https://www.google.com/search?q=more+women+play+video+games+than+men https://www.google.com/search?q=more+women+play+video+games+...
- ryukafalz 9y ago
  The types of games primarily marketed to men are indeed primarily played by men.[0] [0] http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/ http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/
  - jasode 9y ago
    Genre specific games that appeal to different genders is not relevant to my point. I was responding specifically to the cause/effect of historical marketing -- specifically OP's sentence: "Early on computers were marketed to men," So "early on", we're talking about 1960s/1970s advertisements for mainframes of IBM, DEC, VAX, Burroughs, etc and the 1980s ads for personal computers like IBM PC (original), Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Radio Shack TRS-80, etc. If we want to blame early period "marketing" for women's lake of interest in computer _programming_, we have to also explain the counterexample of early marketing for PacMan, DonkeyKong, Missile Command not having the same decades long suppression of female computer _gaming_. The video gaming magazines and its ads in the 1980s/1990s were heavily male-dominated. (Arguably, the videogames ads were more male-themed than mainframes' ads. The videogames' ads often had abundant cleavage and skin. The mainframe ads did not.)
shrewduser 9y ago
that's actually bullshit, companies would love to sell their product to the other half of the population, it's all about money after all name a company that would turn away half the worlds population for no benefit. indeed many tried to make computers appeal to women especially in the early days of computing before giving up or going bankrupt.
- maehwasu 9y ago
  > name a company that would turn away half the worlds population for no benefit. A company that had internalized misogyny to such a degree that it couldn't function. All companies are sexist.
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    No, all companies are not sexist. Do you have anything to back up that extreme claim?
sudosteph 9y ago
That makes a lot of sense from my perspective as well. Playing video games and having the desire to make my own was a huge factor for me getting into tech personally. I had a subscription to "Nintendo Power" magazine, and I still remember reading an article in there about a programming school called "Digipen", and just being enthralled by the concept of going there and building my own games. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't have the patience to stick with game development. My career is probably better off for it. My real gateway into a tech career was when I got put into a Cisco networking class by accident. I learned there that Linux live-boot usbs were excellent for getting around permissions restrictions on school computers. I also learned that the school firewall could be bypassed by using IPs instead of hostnames. I never looked back from there.
- ufo 9y ago
  Like your friends, I started out focusing on the sciences before switching to CS. But now that I think about it, if someone had told me that trick for bypassing the school firewall I would probably have landed on CS much sooner hahaha.
nyxtom 9y ago
This right here ^. Though I would go further to argue that women were predominantly portrayed in advertising as not being able to understand how to use technology to begin with. I think it goes beyond video gaming but rather addresses the toxic gender stereotyping in marketing. As a result, you have a generation of women being told what things are meant for boys despite the decades of prior women involved in computer science. Not to mention years of hostility towards women being in the workforce at all.
vilmosi 9y ago
>>> now still video games are predominately marketed towards males, and I would be shocked if there isn't a strong correlation between interest in video games and computers in general I don't buy that. If you include mobile games, women outnumber men but female mobile game developers don't. I don't think there's a causation between video games and programming. Correlation, sure. But not causation (Cod is insanely popular among non-programmers)
theptip 9y ago
It's really hard for me to believe that this is the driving cause, but I cannot come up with a better solution. This theory is advanced convincingly in a Planet Money episode -- the graph here is incredibly striking, and for me strongly challenges any talk about the gender gap being primarily genetic/trait-base: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... The shift from tracking progress with other STEM fields up to >35% female workforce participation in 1985, then suddenly breaking with their progress and going in the other direction is astounding. That's a clear exogenous change, nothing 'trait-based' could occur on that timescale. The only other vaguely plausible explanation I've heard (but am unable to find anymore sadly) was a suggestion that in the late 70s, IBM changed their recruitment guidelines for programmers to rigidly select for what we'd now call autistic-spectrum / raw analytical personality types, which biased hiring towards males. According to this theory, other companies just followed IBM's lead, and this triggered the paradigm shift. However that doesn't really explain why there was another massive dip from a fairly stable 10yr rate of ~26-27% down to ~18% in 2003; I can't recall anything particular in the news around then but wonder if there was another scandal or news cycle highlighting negative experiences of women in tech.

throw9991 9y ago

>predominately marketed towards males Why though? Why would a company want to limit sales of video games by only marketing to one demographic?

jasode 9y ago

>Early on computers were marketed to men, >, and I would be shocked if there isn't a strong correlation between interest in video games and computers in general. Video games are marketed more to males but that didn't stop females from participating in large numbers.[1] Why would "male marketing" dissuade females from computer programming but at the same time, it doesn't affect computer gaming? https://www.google.com/search?q=more+women+play+video+games+than+men https://www.google.com/search?q=more+women+play+video+games+...

ryukafalz 9y ago
The types of games primarily marketed to men are indeed primarily played by men.[0] [0] http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/ http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/
- jasode 9y ago
  Genre specific games that appeal to different genders is not relevant to my point. I was responding specifically to the cause/effect of historical marketing -- specifically OP's sentence: "Early on computers were marketed to men," So "early on", we're talking about 1960s/1970s advertisements for mainframes of IBM, DEC, VAX, Burroughs, etc and the 1980s ads for personal computers like IBM PC (original), Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Radio Shack TRS-80, etc. If we want to blame early period "marketing" for women's lake of interest in computer _programming_, we have to also explain the counterexample of early marketing for PacMan, DonkeyKong, Missile Command not having the same decades long suppression of female computer _gaming_. The video gaming magazines and its ads in the 1980s/1990s were heavily male-dominated. (Arguably, the videogames ads were more male-themed than mainframes' ads. The videogames' ads often had abundant cleavage and skin. The mainframe ads did not.)

shrewduser 9y ago

that's actually bullshit, companies would love to sell their product to the other half of the population, it's all about money after all name a company that would turn away half the worlds population for no benefit. indeed many tried to make computers appeal to women especially in the early days of computing before giving up or going bankrupt.

maehwasu 9y ago
> name a company that would turn away half the worlds population for no benefit. A company that had internalized misogyny to such a degree that it couldn't function. All companies are sexist.
- Neliquat 9y ago
  No, all companies are not sexist. Do you have anything to back up that extreme claim?

sudosteph 9y ago

That makes a lot of sense from my perspective as well. Playing video games and having the desire to make my own was a huge factor for me getting into tech personally. I had a subscription to "Nintendo Power" magazine, and I still remember reading an article in there about a programming school called "Digipen", and just being enthralled by the concept of going there and building my own games. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't have the patience to stick with game development. My career is probably better off for it. My real gateway into a tech career was when I got put into a Cisco networking class by accident. I learned there that Linux live-boot usbs were excellent for getting around permissions restrictions on school computers. I also learned that the school firewall could be bypassed by using IPs instead of hostnames. I never looked back from there.

ufo 9y ago
Like your friends, I started out focusing on the sciences before switching to CS. But now that I think about it, if someone had told me that trick for bypassing the school firewall I would probably have landed on CS much sooner hahaha.

nyxtom 9y ago

This right here ^. Though I would go further to argue that women were predominantly portrayed in advertising as not being able to understand how to use technology to begin with. I think it goes beyond video gaming but rather addresses the toxic gender stereotyping in marketing. As a result, you have a generation of women being told what things are meant for boys despite the decades of prior women involved in computer science. Not to mention years of hostility towards women being in the workforce at all.

vilmosi 9y ago

>>> now still video games are predominately marketed towards males, and I would be shocked if there isn't a strong correlation between interest in video games and computers in general I don't buy that. If you include mobile games, women outnumber men but female mobile game developers don't. I don't think there's a causation between video games and programming. Correlation, sure. But not causation (Cod is insanely popular among non-programmers)

theptip 9y ago

It's really hard for me to believe that this is the driving cause, but I cannot come up with a better solution. This theory is advanced convincingly in a Planet Money episode -- the graph here is incredibly striking, and for me strongly challenges any talk about the gender gap being primarily genetic/trait-base: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... The shift from tracking progress with other STEM fields up to >35% female workforce participation in 1985, then suddenly breaking with their progress and going in the other direction is astounding. That's a clear exogenous change, nothing 'trait-based' could occur on that timescale. The only other vaguely plausible explanation I've heard (but am unable to find anymore sadly) was a suggestion that in the late 70s, IBM changed their recruitment guidelines for programmers to rigidly select for what we'd now call autistic-spectrum / raw analytical personality types, which biased hiring towards males. According to this theory, other companies just followed IBM's lead, and this triggered the paradigm shift. However that doesn't really explain why there was another massive dip from a fairly stable 10yr rate of ~26-27% down to ~18% in 2003; I can't recall anything particular in the news around then but wonder if there was another scandal or news cycle highlighting negative experiences of women in tech.