8 ms·

Women equal men in computing skill, but are less confident

47 points by zwieback 6y ago

The_Founder 6y ago
So this is the reason women need to get paid more and deserve to take the jobs from more qualified men, because they lack confidence? Cool.
blippage 6y ago
Tricky. Are we talking about using a computer, or programming a computer? It seems that the article conflates the two as being the same. The former is basically just an administrative function, hardly justifying the use of the word "STEM". The overwhelming majority of computer programmers are men, at least from what I've seen. My explanation for this? In general, men are simply more interested in computers than women.
- alleyshack 6y ago
  I would argue that men are not "simply" more interested in computers than women. Computing was originally a female-dominated field[1]. However, as computing became more and more important and presigious a field, more men entered it, kicking off the "glass escalator" phenomenon[2] and eventually pushing women out almost entirely. Nowadays, girls are socially discouraged from showing interest in STEM[3], and women who make it past all that to go into STEM fields are still strongly discriminated against[4]. You're right that the article isn't clear about what it means by "computing skill". However, its foundational conclusion - that simple tests show no difference in basic computer literacy but do show significant confidence differences - is unsurprising and reflects what women have anecdotally reported as their experience for years. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-computers-180972202/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_escalator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_escalator [3] https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/the-stem-gap/ https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/the-stem-gap/ [4] https://www.fastcompany.com/90548817/why-so-many-women-in-tech-get-told-theyre-not-strategic https://www.fastcompany.com/90548817/why-so-many-women-in-te...
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    > Computing was originally a female dominated field From allyshack's source: > sitting at tables and doing math laboriously by hand Yea thats not computer programming or electrical engineering so please don't conflate that with modern computing. > as computing became a more prestigious field more men entered it No, as men invented electronic computers the armies of female laborers were replaced with a smaller number of overwhelmingly male engineers and programmers. > Girls are socially discouraged from showing interest in stem And now we get to the patriarchy arguments. No; women have much easier and more personally fulfilling life options than sitting behind a computer screen all day, and so they chose not to. All of these feminist arguments have been made and rebutted hundreds of times here on hackernews and anywhere else that allows critical discussion of feminism so it gets very tiresome after a while and should probably fall under flamebait at this point.
    - nradov 6y ago
      Programming was female dominated in 1967. IBM hired the first generation of programmers based on aptitude tests because there weren't really any university CS degrees yet. https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/how-bias-pushed-the-computer-girls-out-of-tech-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/how-bias-pushed-the-compu...
      - bz33t 6y ago
        Does anybody know how successful this aptitude test was in hiring women? The (sponsored by IBM) article mentions that 349 companies hired 20,000 women based on this test, but they do not mention how many programmers in total were hired based on this test.
  - foepys 6y ago
    There is a paradox that with increasing gender equality, fewer women get into STEM. That indicates that women are in general not so interested in STEM if they have a choice. 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...
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >My explanation for this? In general, men are simply more interested in computers than women. to a degree possibly but the extreme skew in engineering disciplines makes that hard to believe. In almost all other fields with a gender bias that could be put down to preference there's usually still a sizeable amount of the opposite sex. In psychology where women outnumber men it's like 30-70, even women in the national guard on active duty are more common than in CS departments. Even other adjacent STEM fields like maths usually look more diverse than CS. And in the workplace compared to academia it arguably gets worse. Just from personal experience in software development jobs, I put a lot of it on culture. Just look at how 'boys summer camp' like startups are run, with frequent stories of drinking at the workplace and stories that sound more like out of a fraternity than an actual job. Emily Chang wrote a good book about, 'Brotopia' https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-valley-secretive-orgiastic-inner-sanctum https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-val...
  - look_lookatme 6y ago
    Aren't nursing and teaching essentially 90% female?
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      teaching is 60-75% female depending on what country you're looking at. For nursing you can make a pretty strong cultural case. One of the founders of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, insisted that men's hands are too "hard and horny" to be a nurse, in the UK male nurses were not even admitted to schools until the 1960s. In character the job of a proffesional nurse these days is not much different from that of a physician so gender differences are probably less of an issue than class. Nursing for a long time was simply a 'women's only' job, by cultural norm rather than free choice. Male nurse rates are actually rising pretty fast.
      - look_lookatme 6y ago
        I'm talking about the united states, but if we are talking global shares: Early childhood education is over 90% female teachers. Primary school education is 70%-95 female teaechers. Secondary education is 60-75% female teachers. Source: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EAG_PERS_SHARE_AGE https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EAG_PERS_SHARE... I don't know Florence Nightengale has to do with this discussion. As a percentage of new nurses it is true that more males are going into nursing, but many of the traditionally male working class jobs have disappeared in the United States. This alone could account for the increase in male nurses over the last 10 years, though I do think it is also cultural to some degree. The numbers we are talking about are like 15% of new nurses being male instead of 5%. I would be surprised if this growth doesn't level off in the next decade and hold steady for decades to come.
mikelyons 6y ago
I would love to meet women who are examples confirming this, but it is next to impossible to find women in my experience that are anywhere near the level of skill I was at a decade ago ...
- tstrimple 6y ago
  I can't imagine why women chose not to work in environments like this.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Friend of mine is a Mechanical Engineer. Oh the stories she tells when she gets a couple of drinks in her.
  - mikelyons 6y ago
    I don't mean at work, I just mean in my personal life I rarely meet women who even use computers in their own freetime beyond social media. Is it offensive to give an anecdote about having met thousands of woman and only a handful who are above intermediate computing skill? It's not a value judgement of them as people I'm just saying it's very rare to encounter. I would defo be interested to find some social event or organization where I can meet more women who are. At the moment I am teaching my SO how to power use her computer, use unix, write code, and she's making incredible strides, she just never had anyone in her life who was patient and willing to teach her. I imagine the only reason I was able to auto-didact it was because our culture fosters the initiative with technology for boys but not for girls when we're growing up. I also realized just now that my perspective may be skewed thinking I'm average skill level when really I may be above that and dunning-kruegered.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Has any study ever correlated computer usage with programming ability? It wouldn't surprise me if low computer usage is the primary cause.
      - 6y ago
juped 6y ago
Well, you can't get a job with skill. You see a lot of women in e.g. university math departments, where jobs still aren't really skill-based, but are a lot closer to being that. In tech, where jobs are based on how similar you are to a rich California tech bro? It's no surprise we see the patterns we do.
kartoolOz 6y ago
I feel the whole woke culture has led to lesser mentorship opportunities for women, most senior guys I know are too afraid to mentor in this climate.
fancythat 6y ago
Who cares, really? I lead a 13+ member software development team and two women that I work with are almost the best developers we have. As with everything in life, in practical sense, it all boils down on how long are you willing to work on something to become good at it. Those two are both smart, result driven, hardworking individuals that are not treated in any shape or form differently. They are also not shy and are very good communicators, with one of them being our go-to communicator to business users that we develop for and the other being the best paid developer in my team. Throughout the years we also had other women working with us and level of their "skill" was once again proven to be the result of their willingness to focus their time on honing their skills rather than spend it on other pursuits such as hobbies, sports, etc. In my case, time has shown that gender discussion in this particular case is pretty much useless and is often used only by weaker participants to avoid responsibility - and yes, I have seen it used both ways, even by males saying that someone was privileged because she was a woman and vice versa. Under performers in addition to this excuse use anything else People should stop finding excuses for their weak performance and focus on task in front of them or change their goals. That's the whole wisdom of it.
wileyknowsbest 6y ago
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(19970728)384:2%3C312::AID-CNE10%3E3.0.CO;2-K https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(... This seems to suggest that there is a difference between heterogametic and homogametic brains.

47 points by zwieback 6y ago

So this is the reason women need to get paid more and deserve to take the jobs from more qualified men, because they lack confidence? Cool.

blippage 6y ago

Tricky. Are we talking about using a computer, or programming a computer? It seems that the article conflates the two as being the same. The former is basically just an administrative function, hardly justifying the use of the word "STEM". The overwhelming majority of computer programmers are men, at least from what I've seen. My explanation for this? In general, men are simply more interested in computers than women.

alleyshack 6y ago
I would argue that men are not "simply" more interested in computers than women. Computing was originally a female-dominated field[1]. However, as computing became more and more important and presigious a field, more men entered it, kicking off the "glass escalator" phenomenon[2] and eventually pushing women out almost entirely. Nowadays, girls are socially discouraged from showing interest in STEM[3], and women who make it past all that to go into STEM fields are still strongly discriminated against[4]. You're right that the article isn't clear about what it means by "computing skill". However, its foundational conclusion - that simple tests show no difference in basic computer literacy but do show significant confidence differences - is unsurprising and reflects what women have anecdotally reported as their experience for years. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-computers-180972202/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_escalator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_escalator [3] https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/the-stem-gap/ https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/the-stem-gap/ [4] https://www.fastcompany.com/90548817/why-so-many-women-in-tech-get-told-theyre-not-strategic https://www.fastcompany.com/90548817/why-so-many-women-in-te...
- sthnblllII 6y ago
  > Computing was originally a female dominated field From allyshack's source: > sitting at tables and doing math laboriously by hand Yea thats not computer programming or electrical engineering so please don't conflate that with modern computing. > as computing became a more prestigious field more men entered it No, as men invented electronic computers the armies of female laborers were replaced with a smaller number of overwhelmingly male engineers and programmers. > Girls are socially discouraged from showing interest in stem And now we get to the patriarchy arguments. No; women have much easier and more personally fulfilling life options than sitting behind a computer screen all day, and so they chose not to. All of these feminist arguments have been made and rebutted hundreds of times here on hackernews and anywhere else that allows critical discussion of feminism so it gets very tiresome after a while and should probably fall under flamebait at this point.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Programming was female dominated in 1967. IBM hired the first generation of programmers based on aptitude tests because there weren't really any university CS degrees yet. https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/how-bias-pushed-the-computer-girls-out-of-tech-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/how-bias-pushed-the-compu...
    - bz33t 6y ago
      Does anybody know how successful this aptitude test was in hiring women? The (sponsored by IBM) article mentions that 349 companies hired 20,000 women based on this test, but they do not mention how many programmers in total were hired based on this test.
- foepys 6y ago
  There is a paradox that with increasing gender equality, fewer women get into STEM. That indicates that women are in general not so interested in STEM if they have a choice. 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...
Barrin92 6y ago
>My explanation for this? In general, men are simply more interested in computers than women. to a degree possibly but the extreme skew in engineering disciplines makes that hard to believe. In almost all other fields with a gender bias that could be put down to preference there's usually still a sizeable amount of the opposite sex. In psychology where women outnumber men it's like 30-70, even women in the national guard on active duty are more common than in CS departments. Even other adjacent STEM fields like maths usually look more diverse than CS. And in the workplace compared to academia it arguably gets worse. Just from personal experience in software development jobs, I put a lot of it on culture. Just look at how 'boys summer camp' like startups are run, with frequent stories of drinking at the workplace and stories that sound more like out of a fraternity than an actual job. Emily Chang wrote a good book about, 'Brotopia' https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-valley-secretive-orgiastic-inner-sanctum https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-val...
- look_lookatme 6y ago
  Aren't nursing and teaching essentially 90% female?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    teaching is 60-75% female depending on what country you're looking at. For nursing you can make a pretty strong cultural case. One of the founders of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, insisted that men's hands are too "hard and horny" to be a nurse, in the UK male nurses were not even admitted to schools until the 1960s. In character the job of a proffesional nurse these days is not much different from that of a physician so gender differences are probably less of an issue than class. Nursing for a long time was simply a 'women's only' job, by cultural norm rather than free choice. Male nurse rates are actually rising pretty fast.
    - look_lookatme 6y ago
      I'm talking about the united states, but if we are talking global shares: Early childhood education is over 90% female teachers. Primary school education is 70%-95 female teaechers. Secondary education is 60-75% female teachers. Source: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EAG_PERS_SHARE_AGE https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EAG_PERS_SHARE... I don't know Florence Nightengale has to do with this discussion. As a percentage of new nurses it is true that more males are going into nursing, but many of the traditionally male working class jobs have disappeared in the United States. This alone could account for the increase in male nurses over the last 10 years, though I do think it is also cultural to some degree. The numbers we are talking about are like 15% of new nurses being male instead of 5%. I would be surprised if this growth doesn't level off in the next decade and hold steady for decades to come.

mikelyons 6y ago

I would love to meet women who are examples confirming this, but it is next to impossible to find women in my experience that are anywhere near the level of skill I was at a decade ago ...

tstrimple 6y ago
I can't imagine why women chose not to work in environments like this.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Friend of mine is a Mechanical Engineer. Oh the stories she tells when she gets a couple of drinks in her.
- mikelyons 6y ago
  I don't mean at work, I just mean in my personal life I rarely meet women who even use computers in their own freetime beyond social media. Is it offensive to give an anecdote about having met thousands of woman and only a handful who are above intermediate computing skill? It's not a value judgement of them as people I'm just saying it's very rare to encounter. I would defo be interested to find some social event or organization where I can meet more women who are. At the moment I am teaching my SO how to power use her computer, use unix, write code, and she's making incredible strides, she just never had anyone in her life who was patient and willing to teach her. I imagine the only reason I was able to auto-didact it was because our culture fosters the initiative with technology for boys but not for girls when we're growing up. I also realized just now that my perspective may be skewed thinking I'm average skill level when really I may be above that and dunning-kruegered.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Has any study ever correlated computer usage with programming ability? It wouldn't surprise me if low computer usage is the primary cause.
    - 6y ago

juped 6y ago

Well, you can't get a job with skill. You see a lot of women in e.g. university math departments, where jobs still aren't really skill-based, but are a lot closer to being that. In tech, where jobs are based on how similar you are to a rich California tech bro? It's no surprise we see the patterns we do.

kartoolOz 6y ago

I feel the whole woke culture has led to lesser mentorship opportunities for women, most senior guys I know are too afraid to mentor in this climate.

fancythat 6y ago

Who cares, really? I lead a 13+ member software development team and two women that I work with are almost the best developers we have. As with everything in life, in practical sense, it all boils down on how long are you willing to work on something to become good at it. Those two are both smart, result driven, hardworking individuals that are not treated in any shape or form differently. They are also not shy and are very good communicators, with one of them being our go-to communicator to business users that we develop for and the other being the best paid developer in my team. Throughout the years we also had other women working with us and level of their "skill" was once again proven to be the result of their willingness to focus their time on honing their skills rather than spend it on other pursuits such as hobbies, sports, etc. In my case, time has shown that gender discussion in this particular case is pretty much useless and is often used only by weaker participants to avoid responsibility - and yes, I have seen it used both ways, even by males saying that someone was privileged because she was a woman and vice versa. Under performers in addition to this excuse use anything else People should stop finding excuses for their weak performance and focus on task in front of them or change their goals. That's the whole wisdom of it.

wileyknowsbest 6y ago

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(19970728)384:2%3C312::AID-CNE10%3E3.0.CO;2-K https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(... This seems to suggest that there is a difference between heterogametic and homogametic brains.