The lack of a Y chromosome doesn't help or hinder any given task, but the best teams seem to have people who look at the big pictures differently. Having diff

The lack of a Y chromosome doesn't help or hinder any given task, but the best teams seem to have people who look at the big pictures differently. Having different points of view means having different ways of looking at problems, and will (I feel) lead to stronger teams. The solution isn't to optimize the process to hire more women, it's to look at the reasons why women avoid tech. Getting more qualified people into the hiring pool can only help. When I started off in CS, the introductory class was 60/40 (approximately the same as the school) at the start. By the end it was 85/15 - women dropped it at a far higher rate then the men. Why? I don't think it has to do with men being better at it than women, I think a lot of it has to do with what we're told to expect of ourselves. Everyone in that class was smart, and almost everyone was used to getting A's throughout high school. A guy who got a B or C would look at it as they we're doing well enough and work harder, a woman would be more likely to think that "they" were right and this field wasn't for them. In high school, my guidance counselor told me not to bother applying to MIT, and if it wasn't for my parents standing up for me, I likely wouldn't have. I know other women who heard the same sorts of things growing up. That's where the problem lies, it's not something that can be fixed easily. Maybe it's too deeply rooted in our society to be fixed any time soon, but I think that if we at least can help women over that hump and get them to realize that they can do it, that the numbers will come up, and everyone will benefit from it.