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Do you realize that they are tech companies and need engineers, and only 16% of CS graduates are female? Where will they find the balanced ratio if the supply

Do you realize that they are tech companies and need engineers, and only 16% of CS graduates are female? Where will they find the balanced ratio if the supply is so bad? You can't just wave a magical wand and suddenly make more women engineers. Most tech companies genuinely want to have balanced gender ratio in their workforce, but they can't as there are just not enough women that graduate on CS. "By dividing the school's number of female graduates by this overall average, we discovered the average percentage of women in computer science programs; 16%."

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Ya, and with limited supply, as more bigger richer companies strongly focus on gender diversity, it will make it worse than it was before for the rest of the industry. The problem will have to be corrected in the universities before it is in the industry. Many higher end CS programs are making great strides here, so I think it will happen in a couple of generations.
- thorell 9y ago
  But you're presupposing a problem. It's possible that women don't enter CS due to personal preference. Not because CS is hostile to women but because the subject matter isn't interesting to them. I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.
  - ScottBurson 9y ago
    Yet somehow we don't see the same self-sorting phenomenon in other cultures. Russia, for instance. Maybe the one good thing communism accomplished was to create a culture in which everyone knows women can be technical. (Maybe that was part of the culture before -- I wouldn't know -- but the Soviets certainly encouraged it.)
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      To be clear, china has the same problem, perhaps even worse despite its reputation of gender diversity. Our big boss when I was working in china made it abundantly clear to us that we had to hire more women, and that there were supply issues from the universities, etc.... Maybe India does better? Also, I find it weird that while I’ve met many Russian developers, I’ve never met a female Russian developer. That is just anecdata of course, take it with a grain of salt.
      - ScottBurson 9y ago
        I do know two very good female Russian developers. I know a lot more male Russian developers, but few of them are as good as these two. I also know a couple of good female Russian QA engineers.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Stanford has done wonders getting is to almost parity between male and female. Now, CS was already oversubscribed, so I’m not sure how much shaping is going on, but many departments don’t have a shortage of female applicants if they are competitive. I do wish there was more research on how the gender gap arose in the first place, e.g. why that drop occurred in the mid/late 80s.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

Ya, and with limited supply, as more bigger richer companies strongly focus on gender diversity, it will make it worse than it was before for the rest of the industry. The problem will have to be corrected in the universities before it is in the industry. Many higher end CS programs are making great strides here, so I think it will happen in a couple of generations.

thorell 9y ago
But you're presupposing a problem. It's possible that women don't enter CS due to personal preference. Not because CS is hostile to women but because the subject matter isn't interesting to them. I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  Yet somehow we don't see the same self-sorting phenomenon in other cultures. Russia, for instance. Maybe the one good thing communism accomplished was to create a culture in which everyone knows women can be technical. (Maybe that was part of the culture before -- I wouldn't know -- but the Soviets certainly encouraged it.)
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    To be clear, china has the same problem, perhaps even worse despite its reputation of gender diversity. Our big boss when I was working in china made it abundantly clear to us that we had to hire more women, and that there were supply issues from the universities, etc.... Maybe India does better? Also, I find it weird that while I’ve met many Russian developers, I’ve never met a female Russian developer. That is just anecdata of course, take it with a grain of salt.
    - ScottBurson 9y ago
      I do know two very good female Russian developers. I know a lot more male Russian developers, but few of them are as good as these two. I also know a couple of good female Russian QA engineers.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Stanford has done wonders getting is to almost parity between male and female. Now, CS was already oversubscribed, so I’m not sure how much shaping is going on, but many departments don’t have a shortage of female applicants if they are competitive. I do wish there was more research on how the gender gap arose in the first place, e.g. why that drop occurred in the mid/late 80s.