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Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science.

by DBYCZ 8y ago

Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science. If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.

ajross 8y ago
What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents' generation. So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.
- henryaj 8y ago
  > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" also seems like a hard-to-believe hypothesis. See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... for an outline of the 'interest' hypothesis - essentially, women are stronger than men in both verbal and math/science domains, but prefer the former, so will pick subjects that more closely align with their interests when society lets them do so. In countries with worse egalitarianism and social security, they'll gravitate towards subjects that bring them more economic freedom.
- QualityReboot 8y ago
  > If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.
  - anisppp 8y ago
    The same can be said about medicine.
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      Doctors are not socially awkward, it’s much more fun for a normal person to hang out with medical students than with programmers. Who could possibly feel welcome in an industry filled with awkward, mostly introverted geeks?
      - epicureanideal 8y ago
        The "awkward" stereotype does not describe most software engineers I've encountered in my career. Even "introverted" only applies to somewhat more than the average percentage in the rest of society, in my experience.
        Grustaf 8y ago
        I don’t know where you work but I’ve worked with close to a dozen software teams and in all cases the vast majority of coders have been very awkward. The contrast with other fields I’ve worked in, such as business or finance is sharp. Maybe it’s different in other countries but i doubt it, based on conferences I’ve attended.
        chillacy 8y ago
        I don’t know who you work with but I don’t find that true at all, so either we have a different definition of awkward or our companies select engineers differently.
      - deleted 8y ago
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  - Valmar 8y ago
    Probably because in tech, merit is what matters quite a bit. Merit is... what skills can you personally bring to the table that can help? In a meritocracy, no-one cares about your race, gender, or sexual orientation. Diversity of skillsets matter more than diversity of <biological attribute>. The former is useful, the latter is basically meaningless.
- manfredo 8y ago
  The gender equality paradox is one strong example. Contrary to the narrative that women don't go into tech because of restrictive gender roles, the countries with the greatest amounts of gender equality, the highest male child rearing participation, the most generous parental leave, the smallest wage gap, etc. actually have the lowest rates of women in tech. By comparison the countries that have the most restrictive gender roles and worst gender inequality have some of the highest percentages of women in tech. The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech. Many gender- oppressive middle eastern and southeast Asian countries have a figure in the 30% or even 40% ballpark. Edit, here's an article explaining this since judging by subsequent comments I may have done a poor job: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/553592/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
  - ajross 8y ago
    Why is that "tech" and not just "time"? Tech careers have only been spoken of as such for about a quarter century. Where were scandanavian female doctors as far as representation in the 1970s? I mean, you're still sort of sidestepping the issue, but you brought up the analogy: what is it about tech that is fundamentally more gender-selective than medicine?
    - manfredo 8y ago
      I think you're missing the core point. It's not that industries are selective of gender. It's that people are selective of the industry they work in, and on average women select things other than tech. The agency is on the part of people. So the less restrictions there are on gender roles, the more agency people have to select fields based on their own preferences.
      - ajross 8y ago
        No no, I get your point. I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument. Basically, you're saying "chicks don't like tech", and I'm saying "prove it". And you won't. And then you try to tell me that I'm missing the point because I failed to note that chicks don't like tech.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  There's some evidence of gender preferences here, that, broadly speaking, women prefer people, men prefer things. This post goes into it more (see section 4): https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... > What is this “object vs. people” distinction? > It’s pretty relevant. Meta-analyses have shown a very large (d = 1.18) difference in healthy men and women (ie without CAH) in this domain. It’s traditionally summarized as “men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people”. I would flesh out “things” to include both physical objects like machines as well as complex abstract systems; I’d also add in another finding from those same studies that men are more risk-taking and like danger. And I would flesh out “people” to include communities, talking, helping, children, and animals. > So this theory predicts that men will be more likely to choose jobs with objects, machines, systems, and danger; women will be more likely to choose jobs with people, talking, helping, children, and animals. In there, there's a link to a study, though that link appears to be dead right now. Here's the study's abstract and a different link https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004.... > How big are gender differences in personality and interests, and how stable are these differences across cultures and over time? To answer these questions, I summarize data from two meta‐analyses and three cross‐cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men). > In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people‐oriented and less thing‐oriented than men. Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender‐egalitarian societies than in gender‐inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences. Anyway, while it's not an open and shut case, it's very hard to explain why these preferences are stronger in more egalitarian/less sexist societies, rather than weaker, using conventional social progressive thinking. If the idea behind these preferences and decisions is "well, that's because of societal sexism", why are the least sexist societies doing the worst there, and the most sexist societies the best? I'm socially progressive on most issues, but I find much of the arguments and reasoning from other social progressives for this topic to be fairly disingenuous. They often strongly give the impression of having decided that basically all strong gender preferences must be because of some kind of oppression or stereotyping, any scientific inquiry that indicates otherwise is morally unacceptable, facts be damned.
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- camelNotation 8y ago
  It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.
  - krastanov 8y ago
    Is it not important to understand where these choices come from? Not because we have to enforce any particular distribution of genders, rather because it is useful to understand any differences that exist and whether they are truly personal choices.
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      Surely the reason is obvious, as it pervades all of society. Women are, generally speaking, more interested in people than men are, and men are more interested in things. Yes there is a big overlap, and yes there are plenty of exceptions, but the trend is very clear. And yes it is present from birth, so it can’t be just society.
      - UncleMeat 8y ago
        > Surely the reason is obvious Most human behavior is not obvious on close inspection. And when what seems "obvious" happens to align with traditional expectations of historically oppressed groups we should be very very skeptical of our personal gut feelings.
        Grustaf 8y ago
        It’s not just a gut feeling though, there is plenty of scientific evidence. And given our evolutionary history and the fact that women give birth, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that women are more interested in people. I really don’t see the point in denying this, it certainly doesn’t benefit women. Most women probably wouldn’t like to be men.
- krastanov 8y ago
  A lot of sibling comments stick to the "gender equality paradox" while forgetting all the other research on the topic (this is already a heavy selection bias). Yes, women in Scandinavia and women is Bangladesh, given the chance to pursue a career in STEM, might make choices that superficially support the notion that women self-select out of tech. But this line of reasoning forgets to compare what other choices/opportunities the women in those two countries have and similarly does not compare this to the background rates for these choices in the population at large. It is rife with interesting statistical fallacies that are worthwhile to discuss.
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    Well but that is the point isn’t it. Women in poor, unfree countries go into tech because it makes a huge difference to their personal finances and comfort. In Scandinavia everyone lives in freedom and comfort, so you can work with something you actually enjoy instead.
    - krastanov 8y ago
      Certainly, that is a big part of it. But this should be carefully compared to the "background signal" in these cultures. To take it to an extreme: how certain are you that men go into STEM for reasons different than boys being told "STEM is for boys". Both young boys and young girls have that "common sense" imposed on them by our culture, so it is very unreliable to claim that any choice is unrelated to that cultural experience as a child.
      - Grustaf 8y ago
        Nobody says “STEM is for boys”. Maybe in the 50’s, but certainly not when I grew up in the 80’s.
        krastanov 8y ago
        Maybe that is true where you are. But I have seen it first hand in parents and teachers in the US, France, and Bulgaria.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" > This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind. Women's inclusion dropped in medicine between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, and came up after that, IIRC, so it could well be the same curve just 100 years or so behind.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      Hmm...do you have evidence for that? Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#History seems to say quite the opposite.
- nadam 8y ago
  I don't have evidence why they do not choose tech carriers. But I know that as a kid I was fascinated by being able to program a computer. I have seen many-many likeminded boys in the demoscene (in eastern Europe), but not a single girl. (Entrance was free for girls on demo parties, while boys needed to pay.) And it was absolutely not a career choice, we did not care about the money or a career, we just enjoyed to program, or more precisely we just could not imagine not to program. I never knew why girls do not program but I assumed that they are not that interested. And not just not interested in programming, but also not interested in boys who program. This was 30 years ago. (Things changed since then, it is more cool to be a programmer nowadays.)
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? Every study that actually bothered to ask that question? 1. For example, there was an ACM study that asked both men and women (most studies do not). To their surprise, they found that women reported greater levels of support from their management than the men did. One of the few things they asked in terms of attitudes where there was a statistically significant difference between men and women was, drumroll, "interest in technology". And that's for people actually in the profession! https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-the-it-profession/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-... 2. Then there was the study that looked at why women leave engineering. #1 reason? "Didn't like the work/not interested in engineering". #2 reason was starting a family, #3 was didn't like the environment. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tide%20Why%20Women%20Leave%20Engineering.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid... (Note: look at the actual numbers, not the headlines, because the headlines are very, very selective and do not reflect the actual numbers) 3. There was a study about high school students taking (or not taking) CS in Israel. They looked at all the factors that are usually trotted out, support, role-models, etc. No difference. The one point that showed a difference: "interest in CS", with the boys taking the class at 100% and the girls at 43%. For kids not taking the class the level of interest was gender-neutrally low. Interestingly, this was reported as "no statistical difference", which is...odd. (Semanticscholar actually has the table in question, it's table 7 in the gallery) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issues-in-high-school%3A-gender-and-Gal-Ezer-Shahak/3533bf4824633d894a04c8862fd24db847d7122f https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issue... 4. The ROSE project showed that non-interest in science and engineering starts at a very early age. It also shows that interest dropping generally in countries with higher HDI, not just for girls, though for girls it drops even more quickly. So it's not just the Gender Equality Paradox already mentioned quite a bit here, but also a more general Development vs. interest in STEM issue. https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjoberg-Schreiner-overview-2010.pdf https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjob... And of course there are the more general studies that show that a difference between people vs. things (empathising vs. systematising) is one of the largest and most robust gender differences that has been found (in the same category as the difference in aggression).
- Grustaf 8y ago
  Most people get interested in computers early on in life, when there is nothing at all stopping them. You can’t blame society that many more 12 year old boys than 12 year old girls are obsessed with computers. It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this. Surely this is a more plausible explanation why there are more women in medicine than in programming?
  - wsy 8y ago
    Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the girls want to become pilot. Excerpts from this feature are available here (only in German): https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/no-more-boys-and-girls/berufe-100.html https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/no-more-boys-and-girls/beru...
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pretty significant difference between what men and women like, on average, it will just become ridiculous otherwise. For example, especially young men are much much more risk loving than women. They are also much more aggressive and competitive. This is true for a lot of social animals, but definitely for humans. You can imagine that there used to be strong evolutionary advantages from this. These differences may have arisen in a very different world, but they are still here today, in men and women born in 2019. Testosterone is real. Why insist on denying and fighting these biological realities? Better to accept them, let people make their choices and make the best of the situation? No matter how many awareness campaings and female coding scholarships you launch, women will still prefer to work with people rather than computers if they can help it. And that’s not a bad thing. The issue if anything is that some people centric jobs are underpaid. Nurses and kindergarten teachers do some of the most valuable work in society.
- jrs95 8y ago
  Personally I think an even bigger factor than not feeling welcome, if we're talking about getting people in the door in the first place, is the negative connotations associated with being in this industry to begin with. As far as social status goes, it's probably below average. Men who work in tech have a pretty negative stereotype. But because we're men, we can't even explore the possibility that this could have an impact because the immediate outrage and accusations of sexism it would cause.
- MarkMc 8y ago
  To say that "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" suggests that the percentage of women in tech is slowly growing from a low base, on a similar trajectory to women in medicine a generation or two ago. But that is not the case. In 1984, 37% graduates of computer science were women but in 2017 only 12% were women [0]. How can it be that with so much more focus on diversity and inclusion today so many women are choosing a non-computing career than in 1984? The tech industry does seem to be on a fundamentally different path to medicine and law in this regard. A second point is that writing computer code seems to have a strong appeal to people close to the autism spectrum - people who love to close the door to their private office, put on their headphones and write code for 6 hours without any interaction with another human being. And men tend to be greatly overrepresented on the autism spectrum. [0] https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse/ https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse...
- rdtsc 8y ago
  Not GP. But I have seen these kind of studies are often suggested: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th... --- We synthesized evidence from interest inventories over four decades and found large sex differences in vocational interests, with men preferring working with things and women preferring working with people. --- Engineering can be said to be involved with "things" and "med schools" with people? Informally we could perhaps translate that to "Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees (a small pun on Google's hiring practices https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en) that everyone else, namely women, should enjoy doing same". I mean, they might and many do, but it is not an obvious thing like it is often presented and it should be discussed. Of course, we can then ask where do those interests come from and some will say because of how people are socialized and others will say because of hormones and other biological differences.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    > Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees Yes. Except that even most men don't want to do this. It's just that of the fairly small percentage of people overall that enjoy this, more are men than women. I still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      > still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue 1) we don't know if it's true or not. 2) population level statistics are used to deny women jobs, so they're losing out on work and companies are losing out on best talent for a job.
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        > population level statistics are used to deny women jobs I have never heard of this happening in tech. Can you elaborate? I have seen population level statistics used to deny men jobs, not the other way around.
- Udik 8y ago
  > If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence Ha. Anecdotal evidence? I thought we had better than that (especially when talking about stuff such as other people's subtle, unconscious biases, as judged by someone who has had a job application accepted or rejected..)
- black-tea 8y ago
  > What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? There are fewer women doing coding despite no barriers to entry, more opportunities (like this one) and preferential selection (thanks to people like you). Just look around you for the evidence. Men spend their free time on hobbies, building things, playing with machines. Women call men boys for doing this. They do not want to do it. They do not understand why men do it.
zzzeek 8y ago
"Anyone who argues there should be "More women in medical school" needs to go visit a secretarial school. Completely filled with super smart women interested in typing and being secretaries." "If secretarial school women found being doctors as interesting as they did being Secretaries, we wouldn't have any shortage of women being doctors." same comment in 1950 when only 6% of doctors in the US were women (surprisingly, a lower number than in 1890), which was due to, surprise! male hostility to women in such a career, as we are seeing on gala display in this thread. in the case of medicine, the barriers were only broken through more forceful means than we see in tech, e.g. class action lawsuits and federal legislation. lots of great background at https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/01/fight-women-doctors/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/01/fight-women-doct...
- DBYCZ 8y ago
  I disagree with your comparison saying Medicine is to Tech, as Secretarial Work is to Medicine. The entry to tech is extremely forgiving and easy compared to Medicine. I believe Medicine is much more important to society on an individual level than tech ever will be. A more accurate comparison would have been Law. My sister works in an O.R. performing heart surgeries, saving lives. I make websites. We both like what we do. She thinks my job is dreadfully boring. I would hate the hours she works, and the finality (lack of version control/ctrl-z) that comes with working in the medical field would stress me out every day. Different strokes for different folks.
- adamisom 8y ago
  I think relative status is implicit in your analogy. But doctors are higher status than software engineers... I think almost everyone would agree with that. Except maybe the HN crowd - but only if that software engineer is also an entrepreneur, because that's the trump card. But most devs aren't.
- sqrt17 8y ago
  The difference being, being a doctor is (in many parts of the world) both more challenging/competitive and better paid than programming. You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being responsible for modules of code is). Your secretarial school figure is a strawman to make the parent post look like a strawman. There's a legitimate discussion to be had on why women nowadays are found in a higher proportion in medical school and to law school than to CS, and there is a multitude of reasons that are more plausible than purely discrimination. Let's start to tease them apart without merely stopping at the clichés.
austincheney 8y ago
> Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" I don't think there is any problem (shortage) of women in tech, but this is a substantial deficit of women in startup tech. There could be many reasons for this, but I suspect this is due to the personalities needed at an early stage startup and some degree of narcissism or self-interest that many developers (particularly women developers) find less appealing.
- RandomInteger4 8y ago
  Perhaps this is also due to risk aversion?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Women tend to be more risk averse in part because they are capable of getting pregnant and women are generally expected to put their kids first. A man puts his career first and hardly sees his kids, he's a good provider. A woman puts her career first and misses a birthday party, she's a bad mother and a monster. In order to raise a child with someone so you can make parenting a priority, you need to put their career first. In order to raise a child alone, you need to make so much money that you can afford a nanny and that still is tough because good childcare you trust is tough to find. (A US senator recently gave a speech about how the challenges of finding good childcare nearly derailed her career and her aunt resolved it by showing up to do the childcare.)
    - RandomInteger4 8y ago
      Yes, this is what I meant. I should have been more clear in my statement. Maybe I'm mistaken, but being in a startup seems like a riskier career move than taking a job with an established player in tech, which is why women would be more averse to joining a startup.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        I'm a woman. I was agreeing with you and expanding on some of the why. It's all good. I saw nothing wrong with you bringing this up. I'm very aware of the children angle because of having kids. I didn't think it would impact my life in the way it did. So I've thought a lot about it and read up. I try to add some female perspective to the HN discussion because it's an overwhelmingly male environment. Carry on.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Jessica Livingston, an investor who happens to be female, isn't saying "There should be more women in tech." She's saying "If women want to found tech companies, they need to learn to code. Not coding is a barrier to successfully founding a tech company that trips up lots of women interested in founding a company of this sort." and putting her money where her mouth is and offering women an opportunity to learn to code.
- DBYCZ 8y ago
  A scholarship for a CS program seems a much more worthy cause, as everyone with an internet connection has access to learn everything needed to begin a career in tech.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465743 For those folks downvoting me, please note that the thing I replied to was substantially edited. I don't recall the exact original wording. But this was a reasonable reply to the original text. No, I'm not removing it to accommodate someone's else's bad faith shenanigans and help them look good at my expense. The topic here is sexism. I'm a woman. I'm probably the most "prominent" woman here in terms of participation on HN. I'm leaving the link here.
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  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    It's funny how the same people who argue that there are real differences between men and women that are biological in origin which produce all of the differences in representation in tech can't imagine that there might be real, at least on-average, differences between men and women (whether of biological or socialization-rooted origin) that affect what learning methods and contexts they are most successful with and in.
moffet2018 8y ago
And you don't hear men asking for more men in nursing school! Or you don't hear women asking for equal number of women in mining or oil field work ,despite being well paid. A lot of posturing with no intellectual rigor or honesty.
gcheong 8y ago
That may be how it is now in medical colleges but it was a long road in getting there, starting with being allowed to even attend medical school in the first place, and some would say we're still on it. It didn't just go from 0 to where it is now overnight.
- ketzo 8y ago
  Yeah, I don't see how the example of medicine is anything except further reason to encourage women to join tech fields.

by DBYCZ 8y ago

ajross 8y ago

What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents' generation. So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.

henryaj 8y ago
> "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" also seems like a hard-to-believe hypothesis. See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... for an outline of the 'interest' hypothesis - essentially, women are stronger than men in both verbal and math/science domains, but prefer the former, so will pick subjects that more closely align with their interests when society lets them do so. In countries with worse egalitarianism and social security, they'll gravitate towards subjects that bring them more economic freedom.
QualityReboot 8y ago
> If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.
- anisppp 8y ago
  The same can be said about medicine.
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    Doctors are not socially awkward, it’s much more fun for a normal person to hang out with medical students than with programmers. Who could possibly feel welcome in an industry filled with awkward, mostly introverted geeks?
    - epicureanideal 8y ago
      The "awkward" stereotype does not describe most software engineers I've encountered in my career. Even "introverted" only applies to somewhat more than the average percentage in the rest of society, in my experience.
      - Grustaf 8y ago
        I don’t know where you work but I’ve worked with close to a dozen software teams and in all cases the vast majority of coders have been very awkward. The contrast with other fields I’ve worked in, such as business or finance is sharp. Maybe it’s different in other countries but i doubt it, based on conferences I’ve attended.
        chillacy 8y ago
        I don’t know who you work with but I don’t find that true at all, so either we have a different definition of awkward or our companies select engineers differently.
    - deleted 8y ago
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- Valmar 8y ago
  Probably because in tech, merit is what matters quite a bit. Merit is... what skills can you personally bring to the table that can help? In a meritocracy, no-one cares about your race, gender, or sexual orientation. Diversity of skillsets matter more than diversity of <biological attribute>. The former is useful, the latter is basically meaningless.
manfredo 8y ago
The gender equality paradox is one strong example. Contrary to the narrative that women don't go into tech because of restrictive gender roles, the countries with the greatest amounts of gender equality, the highest male child rearing participation, the most generous parental leave, the smallest wage gap, etc. actually have the lowest rates of women in tech. By comparison the countries that have the most restrictive gender roles and worst gender inequality have some of the highest percentages of women in tech. The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech. Many gender- oppressive middle eastern and southeast Asian countries have a figure in the 30% or even 40% ballpark. Edit, here's an article explaining this since judging by subsequent comments I may have done a poor job: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/553592/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
- ajross 8y ago
  Why is that "tech" and not just "time"? Tech careers have only been spoken of as such for about a quarter century. Where were scandanavian female doctors as far as representation in the 1970s? I mean, you're still sort of sidestepping the issue, but you brought up the analogy: what is it about tech that is fundamentally more gender-selective than medicine?
  - manfredo 8y ago
    I think you're missing the core point. It's not that industries are selective of gender. It's that people are selective of the industry they work in, and on average women select things other than tech. The agency is on the part of people. So the less restrictions there are on gender roles, the more agency people have to select fields based on their own preferences.
    - ajross 8y ago
      No no, I get your point. I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument. Basically, you're saying "chicks don't like tech", and I'm saying "prove it". And you won't. And then you try to tell me that I'm missing the point because I failed to note that chicks don't like tech.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
There's some evidence of gender preferences here, that, broadly speaking, women prefer people, men prefer things. This post goes into it more (see section 4): https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... > What is this “object vs. people” distinction? > It’s pretty relevant. Meta-analyses have shown a very large (d = 1.18) difference in healthy men and women (ie without CAH) in this domain. It’s traditionally summarized as “men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people”. I would flesh out “things” to include both physical objects like machines as well as complex abstract systems; I’d also add in another finding from those same studies that men are more risk-taking and like danger. And I would flesh out “people” to include communities, talking, helping, children, and animals. > So this theory predicts that men will be more likely to choose jobs with objects, machines, systems, and danger; women will be more likely to choose jobs with people, talking, helping, children, and animals. In there, there's a link to a study, though that link appears to be dead right now. Here's the study's abstract and a different link https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004.... > How big are gender differences in personality and interests, and how stable are these differences across cultures and over time? To answer these questions, I summarize data from two meta‐analyses and three cross‐cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men). > In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people‐oriented and less thing‐oriented than men. Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender‐egalitarian societies than in gender‐inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences. Anyway, while it's not an open and shut case, it's very hard to explain why these preferences are stronger in more egalitarian/less sexist societies, rather than weaker, using conventional social progressive thinking. If the idea behind these preferences and decisions is "well, that's because of societal sexism", why are the least sexist societies doing the worst there, and the most sexist societies the best? I'm socially progressive on most issues, but I find much of the arguments and reasoning from other social progressives for this topic to be fairly disingenuous. They often strongly give the impression of having decided that basically all strong gender preferences must be because of some kind of oppression or stereotyping, any scientific inquiry that indicates otherwise is morally unacceptable, facts be damned.
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camelNotation 8y ago
It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.
- krastanov 8y ago
  Is it not important to understand where these choices come from? Not because we have to enforce any particular distribution of genders, rather because it is useful to understand any differences that exist and whether they are truly personal choices.
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    Surely the reason is obvious, as it pervades all of society. Women are, generally speaking, more interested in people than men are, and men are more interested in things. Yes there is a big overlap, and yes there are plenty of exceptions, but the trend is very clear. And yes it is present from birth, so it can’t be just society.
    - UncleMeat 8y ago
      > Surely the reason is obvious Most human behavior is not obvious on close inspection. And when what seems "obvious" happens to align with traditional expectations of historically oppressed groups we should be very very skeptical of our personal gut feelings.
      - Grustaf 8y ago
        It’s not just a gut feeling though, there is plenty of scientific evidence. And given our evolutionary history and the fact that women give birth, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that women are more interested in people. I really don’t see the point in denying this, it certainly doesn’t benefit women. Most women probably wouldn’t like to be men.
krastanov 8y ago
A lot of sibling comments stick to the "gender equality paradox" while forgetting all the other research on the topic (this is already a heavy selection bias). Yes, women in Scandinavia and women is Bangladesh, given the chance to pursue a career in STEM, might make choices that superficially support the notion that women self-select out of tech. But this line of reasoning forgets to compare what other choices/opportunities the women in those two countries have and similarly does not compare this to the background rates for these choices in the population at large. It is rife with interesting statistical fallacies that are worthwhile to discuss.
- Grustaf 8y ago
  Well but that is the point isn’t it. Women in poor, unfree countries go into tech because it makes a huge difference to their personal finances and comfort. In Scandinavia everyone lives in freedom and comfort, so you can work with something you actually enjoy instead.
  - krastanov 8y ago
    Certainly, that is a big part of it. But this should be carefully compared to the "background signal" in these cultures. To take it to an extreme: how certain are you that men go into STEM for reasons different than boys being told "STEM is for boys". Both young boys and young girls have that "common sense" imposed on them by our culture, so it is very unreliable to claim that any choice is unrelated to that cultural experience as a child.
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      Nobody says “STEM is for boys”. Maybe in the 50’s, but certainly not when I grew up in the 80’s.
      - krastanov 8y ago
        Maybe that is true where you are. But I have seen it first hand in parents and teachers in the US, France, and Bulgaria.
mpweiher 8y ago
> "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" > This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind. Women's inclusion dropped in medicine between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, and came up after that, IIRC, so it could well be the same curve just 100 years or so behind.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    Hmm...do you have evidence for that? Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#History seems to say quite the opposite.
nadam 8y ago
I don't have evidence why they do not choose tech carriers. But I know that as a kid I was fascinated by being able to program a computer. I have seen many-many likeminded boys in the demoscene (in eastern Europe), but not a single girl. (Entrance was free for girls on demo parties, while boys needed to pay.) And it was absolutely not a career choice, we did not care about the money or a career, we just enjoyed to program, or more precisely we just could not imagine not to program. I never knew why girls do not program but I assumed that they are not that interested. And not just not interested in programming, but also not interested in boys who program. This was 30 years ago. (Things changed since then, it is more cool to be a programmer nowadays.)
mpweiher 8y ago
> What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? Every study that actually bothered to ask that question? 1. For example, there was an ACM study that asked both men and women (most studies do not). To their surprise, they found that women reported greater levels of support from their management than the men did. One of the few things they asked in terms of attitudes where there was a statistically significant difference between men and women was, drumroll, "interest in technology". And that's for people actually in the profession! https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-the-it-profession/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-... 2. Then there was the study that looked at why women leave engineering. #1 reason? "Didn't like the work/not interested in engineering". #2 reason was starting a family, #3 was didn't like the environment. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tide%20Why%20Women%20Leave%20Engineering.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid... (Note: look at the actual numbers, not the headlines, because the headlines are very, very selective and do not reflect the actual numbers) 3. There was a study about high school students taking (or not taking) CS in Israel. They looked at all the factors that are usually trotted out, support, role-models, etc. No difference. The one point that showed a difference: "interest in CS", with the boys taking the class at 100% and the girls at 43%. For kids not taking the class the level of interest was gender-neutrally low. Interestingly, this was reported as "no statistical difference", which is...odd. (Semanticscholar actually has the table in question, it's table 7 in the gallery) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issues-in-high-school%3A-gender-and-Gal-Ezer-Shahak/3533bf4824633d894a04c8862fd24db847d7122f https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issue... 4. The ROSE project showed that non-interest in science and engineering starts at a very early age. It also shows that interest dropping generally in countries with higher HDI, not just for girls, though for girls it drops even more quickly. So it's not just the Gender Equality Paradox already mentioned quite a bit here, but also a more general Development vs. interest in STEM issue. https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjoberg-Schreiner-overview-2010.pdf https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjob... And of course there are the more general studies that show that a difference between people vs. things (empathising vs. systematising) is one of the largest and most robust gender differences that has been found (in the same category as the difference in aggression).
Grustaf 8y ago
Most people get interested in computers early on in life, when there is nothing at all stopping them. You can’t blame society that many more 12 year old boys than 12 year old girls are obsessed with computers. It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this. Surely this is a more plausible explanation why there are more women in medicine than in programming?
- wsy 8y ago
  Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the girls want to become pilot. Excerpts from this feature are available here (only in German): https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/no-more-boys-and-girls/berufe-100.html https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/no-more-boys-and-girls/beru...
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pretty significant difference between what men and women like, on average, it will just become ridiculous otherwise. For example, especially young men are much much more risk loving than women. They are also much more aggressive and competitive. This is true for a lot of social animals, but definitely for humans. You can imagine that there used to be strong evolutionary advantages from this. These differences may have arisen in a very different world, but they are still here today, in men and women born in 2019. Testosterone is real. Why insist on denying and fighting these biological realities? Better to accept them, let people make their choices and make the best of the situation? No matter how many awareness campaings and female coding scholarships you launch, women will still prefer to work with people rather than computers if they can help it. And that’s not a bad thing. The issue if anything is that some people centric jobs are underpaid. Nurses and kindergarten teachers do some of the most valuable work in society.
jrs95 8y ago
Personally I think an even bigger factor than not feeling welcome, if we're talking about getting people in the door in the first place, is the negative connotations associated with being in this industry to begin with. As far as social status goes, it's probably below average. Men who work in tech have a pretty negative stereotype. But because we're men, we can't even explore the possibility that this could have an impact because the immediate outrage and accusations of sexism it would cause.
MarkMc 8y ago
To say that "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" suggests that the percentage of women in tech is slowly growing from a low base, on a similar trajectory to women in medicine a generation or two ago. But that is not the case. In 1984, 37% graduates of computer science were women but in 2017 only 12% were women [0]. How can it be that with so much more focus on diversity and inclusion today so many women are choosing a non-computing career than in 1984? The tech industry does seem to be on a fundamentally different path to medicine and law in this regard. A second point is that writing computer code seems to have a strong appeal to people close to the autism spectrum - people who love to close the door to their private office, put on their headphones and write code for 6 hours without any interaction with another human being. And men tend to be greatly overrepresented on the autism spectrum. [0] https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse/ https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse...
rdtsc 8y ago
Not GP. But I have seen these kind of studies are often suggested: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th... --- We synthesized evidence from interest inventories over four decades and found large sex differences in vocational interests, with men preferring working with things and women preferring working with people. --- Engineering can be said to be involved with "things" and "med schools" with people? Informally we could perhaps translate that to "Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees (a small pun on Google's hiring practices https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en) that everyone else, namely women, should enjoy doing same". I mean, they might and many do, but it is not an obvious thing like it is often presented and it should be discussed. Of course, we can then ask where do those interests come from and some will say because of how people are socialized and others will say because of hormones and other biological differences.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees Yes. Except that even most men don't want to do this. It's just that of the fairly small percentage of people overall that enjoy this, more are men than women. I still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    > still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue 1) we don't know if it's true or not. 2) population level statistics are used to deny women jobs, so they're losing out on work and companies are losing out on best talent for a job.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      > population level statistics are used to deny women jobs I have never heard of this happening in tech. Can you elaborate? I have seen population level statistics used to deny men jobs, not the other way around.
Udik 8y ago
> If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence Ha. Anecdotal evidence? I thought we had better than that (especially when talking about stuff such as other people's subtle, unconscious biases, as judged by someone who has had a job application accepted or rejected..)
black-tea 8y ago
> What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? There are fewer women doing coding despite no barriers to entry, more opportunities (like this one) and preferential selection (thanks to people like you). Just look around you for the evidence. Men spend their free time on hobbies, building things, playing with machines. Women call men boys for doing this. They do not want to do it. They do not understand why men do it.

zzzeek 8y ago

"Anyone who argues there should be "More women in medical school" needs to go visit a secretarial school. Completely filled with super smart women interested in typing and being secretaries." "If secretarial school women found being doctors as interesting as they did being Secretaries, we wouldn't have any shortage of women being doctors." same comment in 1950 when only 6% of doctors in the US were women (surprisingly, a lower number than in 1890), which was due to, surprise! male hostility to women in such a career, as we are seeing on gala display in this thread. in the case of medicine, the barriers were only broken through more forceful means than we see in tech, e.g. class action lawsuits and federal legislation. lots of great background at https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/01/fight-women-doctors/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/01/fight-women-doct...

DBYCZ 8y ago
I disagree with your comparison saying Medicine is to Tech, as Secretarial Work is to Medicine. The entry to tech is extremely forgiving and easy compared to Medicine. I believe Medicine is much more important to society on an individual level than tech ever will be. A more accurate comparison would have been Law. My sister works in an O.R. performing heart surgeries, saving lives. I make websites. We both like what we do. She thinks my job is dreadfully boring. I would hate the hours she works, and the finality (lack of version control/ctrl-z) that comes with working in the medical field would stress me out every day. Different strokes for different folks.
adamisom 8y ago
I think relative status is implicit in your analogy. But doctors are higher status than software engineers... I think almost everyone would agree with that. Except maybe the HN crowd - but only if that software engineer is also an entrepreneur, because that's the trump card. But most devs aren't.
sqrt17 8y ago
The difference being, being a doctor is (in many parts of the world) both more challenging/competitive and better paid than programming. You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being responsible for modules of code is). Your secretarial school figure is a strawman to make the parent post look like a strawman. There's a legitimate discussion to be had on why women nowadays are found in a higher proportion in medical school and to law school than to CS, and there is a multitude of reasons that are more plausible than purely discrimination. Let's start to tease them apart without merely stopping at the clichés.

austincheney 8y ago

> Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" I don't think there is any problem (shortage) of women in tech, but this is a substantial deficit of women in startup tech. There could be many reasons for this, but I suspect this is due to the personalities needed at an early stage startup and some degree of narcissism or self-interest that many developers (particularly women developers) find less appealing.

RandomInteger4 8y ago
Perhaps this is also due to risk aversion?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Women tend to be more risk averse in part because they are capable of getting pregnant and women are generally expected to put their kids first. A man puts his career first and hardly sees his kids, he's a good provider. A woman puts her career first and misses a birthday party, she's a bad mother and a monster. In order to raise a child with someone so you can make parenting a priority, you need to put their career first. In order to raise a child alone, you need to make so much money that you can afford a nanny and that still is tough because good childcare you trust is tough to find. (A US senator recently gave a speech about how the challenges of finding good childcare nearly derailed her career and her aunt resolved it by showing up to do the childcare.)
  - RandomInteger4 8y ago
    Yes, this is what I meant. I should have been more clear in my statement. Maybe I'm mistaken, but being in a startup seems like a riskier career move than taking a job with an established player in tech, which is why women would be more averse to joining a startup.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I'm a woman. I was agreeing with you and expanding on some of the why. It's all good. I saw nothing wrong with you bringing this up. I'm very aware of the children angle because of having kids. I didn't think it would impact my life in the way it did. So I've thought a lot about it and read up. I try to add some female perspective to the HN discussion because it's an overwhelmingly male environment. Carry on.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Jessica Livingston, an investor who happens to be female, isn't saying "There should be more women in tech." She's saying "If women want to found tech companies, they need to learn to code. Not coding is a barrier to successfully founding a tech company that trips up lots of women interested in founding a company of this sort." and putting her money where her mouth is and offering women an opportunity to learn to code.

DBYCZ 8y ago
A scholarship for a CS program seems a much more worthy cause, as everyone with an internet connection has access to learn everything needed to begin a career in tech.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465743 For those folks downvoting me, please note that the thing I replied to was substantially edited. I don't recall the exact original wording. But this was a reasonable reply to the original text. No, I'm not removing it to accommodate someone's else's bad faith shenanigans and help them look good at my expense. The topic here is sexism. I'm a woman. I'm probably the most "prominent" woman here in terms of participation on HN. I'm leaving the link here.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- dragonwriter 8y ago
  It's funny how the same people who argue that there are real differences between men and women that are biological in origin which produce all of the differences in representation in tech can't imagine that there might be real, at least on-average, differences between men and women (whether of biological or socialization-rooted origin) that affect what learning methods and contexts they are most successful with and in.

moffet2018 8y ago

And you don't hear men asking for more men in nursing school! Or you don't hear women asking for equal number of women in mining or oil field work ,despite being well paid. A lot of posturing with no intellectual rigor or honesty.

gcheong 8y ago

That may be how it is now in medical colleges but it was a long road in getting there, starting with being allowed to even attend medical school in the first place, and some would say we're still on it. It didn't just go from 0 to where it is now overnight.

ketzo 8y ago
Yeah, I don't see how the example of medicine is anything except further reason to encourage women to join tech fields.