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> it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women... it's hard to argue a s

> it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women... it's hard to argue a systemic push against women in science degrees when CS is pretty much the only one with an increasing gender imbalance This is a bad premise. What sets CS apart from most sciences, and correlates perfectly with the 80s, is that it became a professional path to vast wealth (the rise of software giants like Microsoft). This supports the article which details some of the mechanisms by which the composition of CS was engineered to shift from women to men through a series of professional and cultural obstacles, once it was clear that software would be a high-paying career.

mdorazio 9y ago
Sorry, I don't see how that's a bad premise. Men are more drawn to career paths with prestige and high earnings than are women. That's one reason in the "variety of reasons" I said. You seem to be saying that because CS became a path to a lucrative profession, therefore women were forced out en mass via artificial obstacles. But that's assuming ill intent when there doesn't need to be any to explain the difference. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I do think that the degree to which the current gender imbalance is due to the mechanisms in the article is largely overstated. Let's shift it around another way and do a thought experiment. Public school teachers in the US today are overwhelmingly female and also rather poorly paid. What if tomorrow all the states decided that the starting salary for new teachers would be a minimum of $100k, and you would no longer need a teaching license. Do you think we wouldn't see more men suddenly entering the profession of public school teaching and dropping the percentage of women? I certainly think we would. Does that necessarily mean that men would be actively sabotaging women to keep them out of teaching entirely?
- abalone 9y ago
  Your thought experiment doesn't go far enough. The issue is not merely that men entered the previously female-dominated programming profession, it is that they now dominate it overwhelmingly. Consider that if as you believe men are more motivated to seek higher-paying positions, that would actually incentivize them to throw up obstacles to female competition. If the teaching profession suddenly shifted to mostly-male upon raising salaries, it would be correct to examine if sexism was at work. If we found marketing campaigns like "are you the man to command a classroom", "aptitude" tests that discriminated against women, and male-dominated professional societies acting as gatekeepers (to use some historical examples from our industry), they could very well lead to a significant gender imbalance. A much more plausible explanation, at least, than women magically becoming disinterested in teaching because they have an aversion to making lots of money...
  - mdorazio 9y ago
    I feel like we're talking about different things here. I'm saying that it's entirely plausible for one gender to come to dominate a profession simply because that profession aligns with their interests moreso than do the alternative professions available. More interest from one gender means more individuals of that gender, in absolute numbers, seeking to make themselves qualified candidates for the profession. More qualified candidates from one gender applying to open positions means statistically you're going to end up hiring more of that gender on average. The starting gender ratio has nothing to do with it if the profession is small in the beginning and expands massively in just a few decades. Again, I'm not saying women were not discriminated against (and continue to be subject to bias), but I don't buy that this is the primary reason why we have a large gender imbalance today. Here's another question for you - medicine and law were massively male-dominated for a very long time, and yet both of those professions are now far closer to gender parity than tech is. Are we to believe that the anti-women practices that forced women out of tech were simply never applied to these other professions to keep women out? If so, why is tech a unique industry for this?
    - abalone 9y ago
      Sexism is far from unique to the tech industry. See for example [1][2]. You note that "medicine and law were massively male-dominated for a very long time," yet confusingly you wonder whether "the anti-women practices that forced women out of tech were simply never applied to these other professions" (emphasis mine). Another possibility comes to mind: That anti-women practices were in fact applied to these professions, and some modicum of progress has been made in dismantling them, with varying degrees of success. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/26/pf/gender-pay-gap-doctors/ http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/26/pf/gender-pay-gap-doctors/ [2] https://www.lawcareers.net/Information/Features/06062017-Feminist-lawyers-the-fight-for-gender-equality-in-the-legal-profession https://www.lawcareers.net/Information/Features/06062017-Fem... "Although junior lawyers are split roughly equally between male and female, the senior positions at law firms, barristers’ chambers and in the judiciary are still overwhelmingly dominated by one demographic – white, upper-class men"
      - 9y ago

mdorazio 9y ago

Sorry, I don't see how that's a bad premise. Men are more drawn to career paths with prestige and high earnings than are women. That's one reason in the "variety of reasons" I said. You seem to be saying that because CS became a path to a lucrative profession, therefore women were forced out en mass via artificial obstacles. But that's assuming ill intent when there doesn't need to be any to explain the difference. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I do think that the degree to which the current gender imbalance is due to the mechanisms in the article is largely overstated. Let's shift it around another way and do a thought experiment. Public school teachers in the US today are overwhelmingly female and also rather poorly paid. What if tomorrow all the states decided that the starting salary for new teachers would be a minimum of $100k, and you would no longer need a teaching license. Do you think we wouldn't see more men suddenly entering the profession of public school teaching and dropping the percentage of women? I certainly think we would. Does that necessarily mean that men would be actively sabotaging women to keep them out of teaching entirely?

abalone 9y ago
Your thought experiment doesn't go far enough. The issue is not merely that men entered the previously female-dominated programming profession, it is that they now dominate it overwhelmingly. Consider that if as you believe men are more motivated to seek higher-paying positions, that would actually incentivize them to throw up obstacles to female competition. If the teaching profession suddenly shifted to mostly-male upon raising salaries, it would be correct to examine if sexism was at work. If we found marketing campaigns like "are you the man to command a classroom", "aptitude" tests that discriminated against women, and male-dominated professional societies acting as gatekeepers (to use some historical examples from our industry), they could very well lead to a significant gender imbalance. A much more plausible explanation, at least, than women magically becoming disinterested in teaching because they have an aversion to making lots of money...
- mdorazio 9y ago
  I feel like we're talking about different things here. I'm saying that it's entirely plausible for one gender to come to dominate a profession simply because that profession aligns with their interests moreso than do the alternative professions available. More interest from one gender means more individuals of that gender, in absolute numbers, seeking to make themselves qualified candidates for the profession. More qualified candidates from one gender applying to open positions means statistically you're going to end up hiring more of that gender on average. The starting gender ratio has nothing to do with it if the profession is small in the beginning and expands massively in just a few decades. Again, I'm not saying women were not discriminated against (and continue to be subject to bias), but I don't buy that this is the primary reason why we have a large gender imbalance today. Here's another question for you - medicine and law were massively male-dominated for a very long time, and yet both of those professions are now far closer to gender parity than tech is. Are we to believe that the anti-women practices that forced women out of tech were simply never applied to these other professions to keep women out? If so, why is tech a unique industry for this?
  - abalone 9y ago
    Sexism is far from unique to the tech industry. See for example [1][2]. You note that "medicine and law were massively male-dominated for a very long time," yet confusingly you wonder whether "the anti-women practices that forced women out of tech were simply never applied to these other professions" (emphasis mine). Another possibility comes to mind: That anti-women practices were in fact applied to these professions, and some modicum of progress has been made in dismantling them, with varying degrees of success. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/26/pf/gender-pay-gap-doctors/ http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/26/pf/gender-pay-gap-doctors/ [2] https://www.lawcareers.net/Information/Features/06062017-Feminist-lawyers-the-fight-for-gender-equality-in-the-legal-profession https://www.lawcareers.net/Information/Features/06062017-Fem... "Although junior lawyers are split roughly equally between male and female, the senior positions at law firms, barristers’ chambers and in the judiciary are still overwhelmingly dominated by one demographic – white, upper-class men"
    - 9y ago