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Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5t

by ajkjk 9y ago

Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5th grade? in my (typical, I think) American elementary school. It was nerdy boys, almost entirely (I remember one exception), who wanted to stay after school playing games on the iMacs in our classroom, and I am pretty sure that it would only be the boys in my class who might have, for instance, received and gotten excited about a copy of "C++ for dummies" in ~2000 (granted, the book was terrible and I didn't really start coding for 6 more years, but the spark was already there). Sure, video-game-interest is not the same as going into tech, but it correlated a lot as I grew up -- these kids ended up being the ones who were, like, coding on graphics calculators or in HTML/CSS a couple years later. There were a few more girls involved by then, but the ratio was still very skewed.

nicoburns 9y ago
An interesting data point here ia that girls at all-girls schools tend to take much more interest in STEM subjects, which suggests that he issue might be more to do with social percpetions of what is for girls and boys rather than inherent interest differing between genders.
- vowelless 9y ago
  Can you share sources on this? I'd be very curious to see how this changes relative to coed schools.
- Zarath 9y ago
  Maybe, but there is selection bias when looking at just girls who go to all-girls schools. Assuming they are mostly private, this would likely select for wealthier families, which may have a correlation with STEM careers. Furthermore, girls from all-girls schools have parents that are willing to enroll them in all-girls schools, which likely correlates with a certain personality type, whatever that may be.
  - wskinner 9y ago
    Not sure why this is getting downvotes. The point that all girls schools are not even close to a random sample seems pretty uncontroversial.
- modbait 9y ago
  NB: "computers" != "STEM" In many science fields, women have reached near parity or are even in the majority now. Computer programming is much different.
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Bio, Chem, (and Bio E, Chem E) and Med seemed to have good gender balance when I was in college 10 years ago. Physics, Mathematics, and the other Engineering disciplines seemed to have much more skew (my EE class was something like 40 men and 3 women). Stanford CS was apparently 70:30 in 2015, an improvement over 80:20 just 3 years prior. As CS is increasingly seen as a pragmatic, lucrative career, we will likely continue to see the gender gap shrink. https://medium.com/@jcueto/race-and-gender-among-computer-science-majors-at-stanford-3824c4062e3a https://medium.com/@jcueto/race-and-gender-among-computer-sc...
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  This is really interesting. Would you mind sharing a link?
commandlinefan 9y ago
I keep reading about a "women in tech" gap, but if it exists, it must be regional. I've lived and worked, as a programmer, in the Dallas, TX area for over 20 years across 5 different employers. There have always been _lots_ of women in technology-related roles, everywhere. The vast majority of them (as well as the vast majority of the men) have been Indian, though. Is this different in San Francisco/Silicon Valley?
- deleted 9y ago
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- octorian 9y ago
  I think the gap varies dramatically by ethnicity. Its possible, perhaps likely, that different cultures have different biases towards women in tech fields. If you add that as a variable to all these charts, I think things may look significantly more skewed than they already do.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- panopticon 9y ago
  I've held a few software jobs in Iowa, Kansas, and the valley. Between the three places I worked at in the midwest, I worked alongside a total of four women doing engineering work (the numbers get much, much larger if you include support and QA roles). I've worked with many more women in engineering roles here in Silicon Valley, but the percentages are still low.
typomatic 9y ago
> Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5th grade? in my (typical, I think) American elementary school. I think your experiences are typical, thanks for sharing. I'm curious what theory-of-the-gap you've found that you like more than the ones you've seen? You were (intentionally or not) a little cagey about your ultimate position. :) For my part, I usually see that young girls are the ones who are pressured the most to stay out of STEM. I'm sure that by the time they got to 10, the little girls in your class already "knew" that afterschool computer games weren't really "for girls". Kids are very impressionable to even off-handed comments, and they will self-censor if they think they don't belong. Anyways, it's all to say that I think there's no secret--if you actually make little girls believe they can do math or code, they'll do it. It's just that as a society we spend a lot of time telling them they can't.
- ajkjk 9y ago
  Ah, it's really complicated. My hunch is that that's part of it but not the full story. I think it takes a mix of factors to make a person self-define as a 'computer geek' by high school, which is -- imo -- a point at which the gender divide in college is already determined. Various efforts blend the categories later on, but they're fighting against the categories that already exist by HS-age. Some factors: 1a. being socially allowed to love computers, OR 1b. not caring what's socially allowed <- me 2. obsessiveness (3rd-grade me would happily play videogames for 12 hours straight if allowed. Or read, legos, etc. Other kids would, like, learn everything about airplanes.) 3. not caring very much about socializing. 'play over people', if you will. 4. being intelligent 5. having 'growth mindset', the idea that you could go learn something if you wanted to. (I think I got this from books and RPGs and from not being demoralized early on.) 6. not caring very much about pop culture (in my case, because I didn't know about it. sports and music weren't on my radar). 7. being competitive: wanting to learn cool things to, basically, seem cool to other nerdy kids. 8. an innate desire to build things I would characterize (1b) and (2) and (3) together as being, basically, the 'autism spectrum' angle, which is (I perceive) more prevalent in boys, and I think that's where the main difference comes from. I think what the social effect you mention exists, but it might come before these categories -- ie, from a young age I was constructed so as to not care what was socially allowed and to want to obsessively play, and so I was basically destined to be obsessed with computers. I don't know how much is nature vs. nurture though. I also think that on average girls are less (7) naturally competitive and (8) naturally motivated to build things (citation needed), but that very well could be a social effect also. I think lots of people of any gender have their (5) 'growth mindset' squashed from a young ago. I also think lots of boys have almost everything on the list except for '(8) desire to build things', so instead of learning to make games, they get really good at Halo and play every day in college, or whatever. I also think that by the time college rolls around, these categories are all smeared together, and people end up going into tech or STEM (and I guess I mean specifically CS/Math/Physics) for lots of reasons. I'm only trying to describe the commonalities across the nerdy kids in HS. Disclaimer: all of this is hunches and is from ~2000-2008 and is probably not correct or true and if it was it probably isn't anymore.
eli 9y ago
Girls aren't interested in playing games?
- ajkjk 9y ago
  No, that's an uncharitable simplification. I'm talking about statistical trends, and specifically about games- and nerdery- _in lieu of all socialization_.
  - eli 9y ago
    And I'm rejecting it as unfounded. What specific statistical trend are you talking about?
    - ajkjk 9y ago
      It's a bit more complicated than that. First: it's 'founded' in the sense that it's my opinion based on my experiences. Yes, it's subjective. I meant trends in my own anecdata / observations of the world. But I share them because I expect that many people have seen the same trends and might agree if they see them in words, which seems to be true. Second, lumping all video games into one category and then talking about statistical trends among them is going to drastically misrepresent the actual picture of who's playing games and how much. But beyond that I'm not really talking about 'playing games at all' so much as playing in an obsessive, anti-social style -- like 12 hour sprints, all night, instead of playing outside, etc. Third, I'm talking about ~10-15 years ago, not today. Not sure what things are like since then. I assume it has evened out somewhat as gaming became more normal.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  I think in the 80's,90's and early 00's this was true because very few computer and console games were targeted towards women.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
d1zzy 9y ago
Actually that's one possible explanation for why boys tend to grow more interested into tech today, that they become interested in videogames at early age, videogames that are mostly targeted for boys, so in order to "fix" this we'd have to have more diversity in videogames target market. https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago/ https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...
Kluny 9y ago
> It was nerdy boys, almost entirely (I remember one exception), who wanted to stay after school playing games on the iMacs in our classroom I wanted to as well. I used to sort of hover behind the boys playing Oregon Trail or making stuff in Hypercard or whatever, trying to participate. They ignored me like I wasn't even there. Gave up after a while.
- ajkjk 9y ago
  It wouldn't surprise me that both angles are true: that the divide exists by ~elementary school, but still for the same reasons commonly cited (social pressures / etc). Sorry that happened to you, though. In my school we had 1 girl in our nerd group. I like to think we weren't exclusive; there just weren't many people interested. But I was 10 so I dunno.

by ajkjk 9y ago

nicoburns 9y ago

An interesting data point here ia that girls at all-girls schools tend to take much more interest in STEM subjects, which suggests that he issue might be more to do with social percpetions of what is for girls and boys rather than inherent interest differing between genders.

vowelless 9y ago
Can you share sources on this? I'd be very curious to see how this changes relative to coed schools.
Zarath 9y ago
Maybe, but there is selection bias when looking at just girls who go to all-girls schools. Assuming they are mostly private, this would likely select for wealthier families, which may have a correlation with STEM careers. Furthermore, girls from all-girls schools have parents that are willing to enroll them in all-girls schools, which likely correlates with a certain personality type, whatever that may be.
- wskinner 9y ago
  Not sure why this is getting downvotes. The point that all girls schools are not even close to a random sample seems pretty uncontroversial.
modbait 9y ago
NB: "computers" != "STEM" In many science fields, women have reached near parity or are even in the majority now. Computer programming is much different.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Bio, Chem, (and Bio E, Chem E) and Med seemed to have good gender balance when I was in college 10 years ago. Physics, Mathematics, and the other Engineering disciplines seemed to have much more skew (my EE class was something like 40 men and 3 women). Stanford CS was apparently 70:30 in 2015, an improvement over 80:20 just 3 years prior. As CS is increasingly seen as a pragmatic, lucrative career, we will likely continue to see the gender gap shrink. https://medium.com/@jcueto/race-and-gender-among-computer-science-majors-at-stanford-3824c4062e3a https://medium.com/@jcueto/race-and-gender-among-computer-sc...
JamesBarney 9y ago
This is really interesting. Would you mind sharing a link?

commandlinefan 9y ago

I keep reading about a "women in tech" gap, but if it exists, it must be regional. I've lived and worked, as a programmer, in the Dallas, TX area for over 20 years across 5 different employers. There have always been _lots_ of women in technology-related roles, everywhere. The vast majority of them (as well as the vast majority of the men) have been Indian, though. Is this different in San Francisco/Silicon Valley?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
octorian 9y ago
I think the gap varies dramatically by ethnicity. Its possible, perhaps likely, that different cultures have different biases towards women in tech fields. If you add that as a variable to all these charts, I think things may look significantly more skewed than they already do.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
panopticon 9y ago
I've held a few software jobs in Iowa, Kansas, and the valley. Between the three places I worked at in the midwest, I worked alongside a total of four women doing engineering work (the numbers get much, much larger if you include support and QA roles). I've worked with many more women in engineering roles here in Silicon Valley, but the percentages are still low.

typomatic 9y ago

> Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5th grade? in my (typical, I think) American elementary school. I think your experiences are typical, thanks for sharing. I'm curious what theory-of-the-gap you've found that you like more than the ones you've seen? You were (intentionally or not) a little cagey about your ultimate position. :) For my part, I usually see that young girls are the ones who are pressured the most to stay out of STEM. I'm sure that by the time they got to 10, the little girls in your class already "knew" that afterschool computer games weren't really "for girls". Kids are very impressionable to even off-handed comments, and they will self-censor if they think they don't belong. Anyways, it's all to say that I think there's no secret--if you actually make little girls believe they can do math or code, they'll do it. It's just that as a society we spend a lot of time telling them they can't.

ajkjk 9y ago
Ah, it's really complicated. My hunch is that that's part of it but not the full story. I think it takes a mix of factors to make a person self-define as a 'computer geek' by high school, which is -- imo -- a point at which the gender divide in college is already determined. Various efforts blend the categories later on, but they're fighting against the categories that already exist by HS-age. Some factors: 1a. being socially allowed to love computers, OR 1b. not caring what's socially allowed <- me 2. obsessiveness (3rd-grade me would happily play videogames for 12 hours straight if allowed. Or read, legos, etc. Other kids would, like, learn everything about airplanes.) 3. not caring very much about socializing. 'play over people', if you will. 4. being intelligent 5. having 'growth mindset', the idea that you could go learn something if you wanted to. (I think I got this from books and RPGs and from not being demoralized early on.) 6. not caring very much about pop culture (in my case, because I didn't know about it. sports and music weren't on my radar). 7. being competitive: wanting to learn cool things to, basically, seem cool to other nerdy kids. 8. an innate desire to build things I would characterize (1b) and (2) and (3) together as being, basically, the 'autism spectrum' angle, which is (I perceive) more prevalent in boys, and I think that's where the main difference comes from. I think what the social effect you mention exists, but it might come before these categories -- ie, from a young age I was constructed so as to not care what was socially allowed and to want to obsessively play, and so I was basically destined to be obsessed with computers. I don't know how much is nature vs. nurture though. I also think that on average girls are less (7) naturally competitive and (8) naturally motivated to build things (citation needed), but that very well could be a social effect also. I think lots of people of any gender have their (5) 'growth mindset' squashed from a young ago. I also think lots of boys have almost everything on the list except for '(8) desire to build things', so instead of learning to make games, they get really good at Halo and play every day in college, or whatever. I also think that by the time college rolls around, these categories are all smeared together, and people end up going into tech or STEM (and I guess I mean specifically CS/Math/Physics) for lots of reasons. I'm only trying to describe the commonalities across the nerdy kids in HS. Disclaimer: all of this is hunches and is from ~2000-2008 and is probably not correct or true and if it was it probably isn't anymore.

eli 9y ago

Girls aren't interested in playing games?

ajkjk 9y ago
No, that's an uncharitable simplification. I'm talking about statistical trends, and specifically about games- and nerdery- _in lieu of all socialization_.
- eli 9y ago
  And I'm rejecting it as unfounded. What specific statistical trend are you talking about?
  - ajkjk 9y ago
    It's a bit more complicated than that. First: it's 'founded' in the sense that it's my opinion based on my experiences. Yes, it's subjective. I meant trends in my own anecdata / observations of the world. But I share them because I expect that many people have seen the same trends and might agree if they see them in words, which seems to be true. Second, lumping all video games into one category and then talking about statistical trends among them is going to drastically misrepresent the actual picture of who's playing games and how much. But beyond that I'm not really talking about 'playing games at all' so much as playing in an obsessive, anti-social style -- like 12 hour sprints, all night, instead of playing outside, etc. Third, I'm talking about ~10-15 years ago, not today. Not sure what things are like since then. I assume it has evened out somewhat as gaming became more normal.
JamesBarney 9y ago
I think in the 80's,90's and early 00's this was true because very few computer and console games were targeted towards women.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

d1zzy 9y ago

Actually that's one possible explanation for why boys tend to grow more interested into tech today, that they become interested in videogames at early age, videogames that are mostly targeted for boys, so in order to "fix" this we'd have to have more diversity in videogames target market. https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago/ https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...

Kluny 9y ago

> It was nerdy boys, almost entirely (I remember one exception), who wanted to stay after school playing games on the iMacs in our classroom I wanted to as well. I used to sort of hover behind the boys playing Oregon Trail or making stuff in Hypercard or whatever, trying to participate. They ignored me like I wasn't even there. Gave up after a while.

ajkjk 9y ago
It wouldn't surprise me that both angles are true: that the divide exists by ~elementary school, but still for the same reasons commonly cited (social pressures / etc). Sorry that happened to you, though. In my school we had 1 girl in our nerd group. I like to think we weren't exclusive; there just weren't many people interested. But I was 10 so I dunno.