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The danger there is in trying to explain a complicated social phenomenon with "it's free, so why wouldn't they do it?" There's very little suggestion that the

The danger there is in trying to explain a complicated social phenomenon with "it's free, so why wouldn't they do it?" There's very little suggestion that the reason there aren't more women in tech is because they can't afford it. In reality, it's a thousand tiny factors from a thousand people, none/few of them actively trying to do harm. As an offhand, personal example, my sister isn't in tech because she was told CS "wouldn't be her thing" despite being just as good as any of the boys. Because of that, and similar discouragement, she ended up not going into tech whereas she otherwise _might_ have. It's all statistical, lots of "maybes", "mights", and "coulds", but it adds up over the population. There may well be dispositions which align primarily along gender bounds, but there's not much indication this is one - but neither is it an organized conspiracy. It's just the sum total of thousands of tiny factors.

peoplewindow 9y ago
Because of that, and similar discouragement, she ended up not going into tech whereas she otherwise _might_ have I realise it's your sister, but do you know that for sure? Or is that more like a hope you have yourself, based on your own beliefs about women in tech? It's quite possible that the person who told her CS "wouldn't be your thing" was giving genuine advice based on actually knowing her and her preferences, useful advice that stopped her making a mistake, and was not attempting to discourage her from CS specifically but rather, ensure she would study something she'd enjoy.
- annabellish 9y ago
  She _might_ have. She was into it at the time. She may well not have anyway, hence the might, but it's still additional discouragement the boys didn't get.
fouc 9y ago
I think a great many folks in software development would still have ended up with a software development job even if they were told that CS "wouldn't be their thing"
Tehnix 9y ago
Then that would more be a aspect of social expectations, no? Perhaps I've read to much malice into the word "systemic bias", as if people were actively working against someone doing the particular thing there is bias against, where it is more a result of social expectations on what is "proper" for each gender. Again, only speaking from my Danish perspective, but I've never met anyone thinking STEM of all things would not be fit for females, but you probably would get that reaction if you were to say, as a female, that you wanted to become a plumber or similar hands-on jobs. --- Slightly going off-topic: Personally, I think the disparity we see, currently, in STEM et al, is for historical reasons, as younger boys used e.g. computers as an escape from socialising, and thereby grew interested in that particular field. I also think this is why it is sometimes met with a bit of a scuff from some in the tech community, because what was previously viewed as a something nerdy, uncool and with a lot of negative stereotypes attached to it, is all of the sudden the new cool thing, and people that suffered through bullying for being "nerdy" and generally not having the time of their life in younger school life, are now being touted as if they were privileged all along, which very much undermines the struggles they had during their upbringing. This is mostly guesswork from intuition, since I personally did not have any trouble fitting in, yet even I got the "nerd" remark if I would tell people my interests, so I don't feel I was particularly encouraged or anything into this—in fact, most are probably here despite that.
- annabellish 9y ago
  >Perhaps I've read to much malice into the word "systemic bias" Bingo. There's no active malice there, which is why it's such a difficult problem to solve. There's no one force to fight against and no "enemy", just a lot of well meaning people who average out to a crummy result.
- always_good 9y ago
  Speaking of sisters, I'm a triplet with two sisters and I spent a lot of time on the computer as a teen mostly out of social destitution. But that's what got me into tech and programming. My sisters never had time to play video games with me, although they periodically enjoyed them and even bought a couple games, because they were always meeting up with friends. People were always inviting them out. I look at my tech-minded friends as a kid and there's a similar pattern of social deprivation. I wonder how much that plays a role in general.
monksy 9y ago
> "wouldn't be her thing" If that is the case, are you asserting that all of these displaced women are choosing fields of studies that they're not a good fit for?
- annabellish 9y ago
  No, not at all. To go back to my individual, circumstantial example, my sister is now a very good teacher. Things don't have to be evil to average out unfortunate.
ravenstine 9y ago
The problem is that the more you whittle down bigger arguments to "a thousand tiny factors", the less tangible and less useful arguments around gender inequality become. Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line. Frankly, there are far more reasons why a man would want to enter STEM than a woman. A man can put of devoting time to a family because he doesn't have the biological clock a woman has; STEM is a demanding set of fields that require a lot of thought and time, which becomes a challenge for an intelligent woman who also wants time to find a man she can not only relate to but is at least at the same class level as she is. Being in STEM also means being around a lot of unattractive, perhaps creepy men. STEM is competitive, and men and women compete in different ways, so a woman will likely always have to compete on the playing field of men. If I was a woman, I probably wouldn't bother, not because someone told me I couldn't do it, but because it makes no sense from a perspective of happiness and reproduction. There's a slim chance the kind of man I would want would also be attracted to me as a person, and I might not even meet such a man if I'm spending most of my time in a lab or behind a computer. As a man, there is a lot of incentive to go into STEM, probably more than ever. Actually, there's incentive to do just about anything so long as it provides a channel to move into the level of class one aspires to. Good luck attracting an intelligent woman who's going places if you're a cashier or a taxi driver. It's not to say that's impossible, but you put yourself at a huge disadvantage as a man when you don't work towards bigger things. Flip the sexes, and it's totally different; successful, intelligent men are far less likely to negatively judge a potential partner based on her career choice. Because of the tech revolution, working with technology can lead to greater levels of prestige than what used to be attainable. Men perceive prestige as a way of opening doors to the mating pool. For women, too much prestige can close doors because they appear more unattainable. (granted, both can experience levels of unattainableness, but it's all about perception at the end of the day) I would love for society to expose more girls to science and technology, and encourage them to explore those ideas, but we also need to accept that men and women aren't the same and they are going to have different motivations and perceptions on aggregate. Believing that women can and should behave more like men is fundamentally sexist.
- annabellish 9y ago
  >Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line. They're _children_. Girls or boys, having an authority figure saying "you don't want to do this" will mean most won't do it. It isn't about that girls are any more suggestible than boys, it's that in this area girls get more discouragement than boys do.
dominotw 9y ago
> she was told CS "wouldn't be her thing" Curious who told her that. Career counsellors?

peoplewindow 9y ago

Because of that, and similar discouragement, she ended up not going into tech whereas she otherwise _might_ have I realise it's your sister, but do you know that for sure? Or is that more like a hope you have yourself, based on your own beliefs about women in tech? It's quite possible that the person who told her CS "wouldn't be your thing" was giving genuine advice based on actually knowing her and her preferences, useful advice that stopped her making a mistake, and was not attempting to discourage her from CS specifically but rather, ensure she would study something she'd enjoy.

annabellish 9y ago
She _might_ have. She was into it at the time. She may well not have anyway, hence the might, but it's still additional discouragement the boys didn't get.

fouc 9y ago

I think a great many folks in software development would still have ended up with a software development job even if they were told that CS "wouldn't be their thing"

Tehnix 9y ago

Then that would more be a aspect of social expectations, no? Perhaps I've read to much malice into the word "systemic bias", as if people were actively working against someone doing the particular thing there is bias against, where it is more a result of social expectations on what is "proper" for each gender. Again, only speaking from my Danish perspective, but I've never met anyone thinking STEM of all things would not be fit for females, but you probably would get that reaction if you were to say, as a female, that you wanted to become a plumber or similar hands-on jobs. --- Slightly going off-topic: Personally, I think the disparity we see, currently, in STEM et al, is for historical reasons, as younger boys used e.g. computers as an escape from socialising, and thereby grew interested in that particular field. I also think this is why it is sometimes met with a bit of a scuff from some in the tech community, because what was previously viewed as a something nerdy, uncool and with a lot of negative stereotypes attached to it, is all of the sudden the new cool thing, and people that suffered through bullying for being "nerdy" and generally not having the time of their life in younger school life, are now being touted as if they were privileged all along, which very much undermines the struggles they had during their upbringing. This is mostly guesswork from intuition, since I personally did not have any trouble fitting in, yet even I got the "nerd" remark if I would tell people my interests, so I don't feel I was particularly encouraged or anything into this—in fact, most are probably here despite that.

annabellish 9y ago
>Perhaps I've read to much malice into the word "systemic bias" Bingo. There's no active malice there, which is why it's such a difficult problem to solve. There's no one force to fight against and no "enemy", just a lot of well meaning people who average out to a crummy result.
always_good 9y ago
Speaking of sisters, I'm a triplet with two sisters and I spent a lot of time on the computer as a teen mostly out of social destitution. But that's what got me into tech and programming. My sisters never had time to play video games with me, although they periodically enjoyed them and even bought a couple games, because they were always meeting up with friends. People were always inviting them out. I look at my tech-minded friends as a kid and there's a similar pattern of social deprivation. I wonder how much that plays a role in general.

monksy 9y ago

> "wouldn't be her thing" If that is the case, are you asserting that all of these displaced women are choosing fields of studies that they're not a good fit for?

annabellish 9y ago
No, not at all. To go back to my individual, circumstantial example, my sister is now a very good teacher. Things don't have to be evil to average out unfortunate.

ravenstine 9y ago

The problem is that the more you whittle down bigger arguments to "a thousand tiny factors", the less tangible and less useful arguments around gender inequality become. Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line. Frankly, there are far more reasons why a man would want to enter STEM than a woman. A man can put of devoting time to a family because he doesn't have the biological clock a woman has; STEM is a demanding set of fields that require a lot of thought and time, which becomes a challenge for an intelligent woman who also wants time to find a man she can not only relate to but is at least at the same class level as she is. Being in STEM also means being around a lot of unattractive, perhaps creepy men. STEM is competitive, and men and women compete in different ways, so a woman will likely always have to compete on the playing field of men. If I was a woman, I probably wouldn't bother, not because someone told me I couldn't do it, but because it makes no sense from a perspective of happiness and reproduction. There's a slim chance the kind of man I would want would also be attracted to me as a person, and I might not even meet such a man if I'm spending most of my time in a lab or behind a computer. As a man, there is a lot of incentive to go into STEM, probably more than ever. Actually, there's incentive to do just about anything so long as it provides a channel to move into the level of class one aspires to. Good luck attracting an intelligent woman who's going places if you're a cashier or a taxi driver. It's not to say that's impossible, but you put yourself at a huge disadvantage as a man when you don't work towards bigger things. Flip the sexes, and it's totally different; successful, intelligent men are far less likely to negatively judge a potential partner based on her career choice. Because of the tech revolution, working with technology can lead to greater levels of prestige than what used to be attainable. Men perceive prestige as a way of opening doors to the mating pool. For women, too much prestige can close doors because they appear more unattainable. (granted, both can experience levels of unattainableness, but it's all about perception at the end of the day) I would love for society to expose more girls to science and technology, and encourage them to explore those ideas, but we also need to accept that men and women aren't the same and they are going to have different motivations and perceptions on aggregate. Believing that women can and should behave more like men is fundamentally sexist.

annabellish 9y ago
>Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line. They're _children_. Girls or boys, having an authority figure saying "you don't want to do this" will mean most won't do it. It isn't about that girls are any more suggestible than boys, it's that in this area girls get more discouragement than boys do.

dominotw 9y ago

> she was told CS "wouldn't be her thing" Curious who told her that. Career counsellors?