5 ms·

Struggling with the Gender Gap

22 points by garlicbreadftw 15y ago

microarchitect 15y ago
Some female academics in the STEM fields have started wildly successful blogs that talk about gender issues in an academic environment. A few I recommend to academics/grad students/postdocs of both genders are Female Science Professor, Academic Jungle and Female Computer Scientist. My impression is that these and other blogs have been tremendously successful in letting young female scientists learn about extremely successful female role models in academia. They've also been extremely illuminating personally to me (a male engineer) because they call out instances where folks are "innocuously" sexist, and helped me understand how even certain cases of well-intentioned male behavior is actually discouraging from a female PoV. All I can say to the OP is: (1) she should keep writing so that young women entering CS know that successful female s/w engineers exist. (2) encourage other successful female s/w engineers to start blogging. (3) don't ever hesitate to blog about instances of sexism - well-intentioned or otherwise - because at the very least this can help clueless male engineers learn how to behave. (4) Don't ever hesitate to confront people for sexist speech or actions. The problem is only going to away if we create a culture where sexism would be career suicide and the first step to this is confronting the sexists.
ctide 15y ago
Her opening statement closely resembles what I felt seeing another jeanhsu article about gender. I also thought it was woefully ironic when she mentioned that she has tried to avoid the topic of gender, when in actuality, that's the only correlation I have to her at this point. Jean -- if you don't want to be known as the person who only talks about gender issues, at the very least, try to intersperse some technical discussions into your gender articles. Or, better yet, write articles about tech instead of the fact that you're female.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jeanhsu 15y ago
  Thanks for the comment. If you check out my blog you will see that I do write about other topics, but it seems like the ones that are most popular on HN (or in general?) are the ones about gender.
- fleitz 15y ago
  It's selection bias because it's a hot topic. There are articles in between those to posts and I don't believe she posted the article to HN. It's just a selection of her blog that the HN userbase likes. I don't particularly agree with her POV but I think it's unfair to characterize her blog as about the gender gap. As an aside, it's not like men are actively encouraged to become programmers by their social peers. There are a small group of men who program and support each other in that vein, in the general population it doesn't exactly represent the hopes and dreams of parents of male children. (Eg. Mom and Dad statistically would encourage becoming a lawyer or doctor much more than a programmer). I think as a society we should encourage women and men to do what they want rather than that they should fill some predefined gap that we think needs filling. I could care less about the gender gap in computing or the gender gap in nursing.
  - pyre 15y ago
    I think that the line of thought goes something like: * There's a variance between the number of men and women in field X. * This gap does not correlate with the number of men and women in the general population. * Therefore field X must be discouraging women from going into the field that would otherwise be interested in the field. I believe the thinking is that if everyone did what they wanted to do, then the gender balance in any random field would probably be relatively close to the gender balance of the general populace.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  > at the very least, try to intersperse some technical discussions into your gender articles Maybe you should check the actual contents of her blog before you post condescending BS like this? Only two of the eight most recent articles are about gender, less if you go further back.
auganov 15y ago
If she [the author] cares so much about the social aspects of being in IT industry then I don't know why she cannot accept the way it is. All I see is "Look how cool and special I am! I'm a girl and I can navigate in the men's world!". She tries to bring up a problem but I cannot quiet see a real problem there. "Already at a disadvantage, they are playing a seemingly impossible game of catchup with very little positive feedback or support. The culture, the standards, and the norms are all male-centric, and the book talks about women in computing being guests in a male-hosted world." It's a big problem if you want to become an average programmer that has to rely on that feedback and support. Guess what? Most truly skilled people learned almost everything by themselves. Generally speaking most intelligent people learn by themselves (if there are means to do it) and find themselves a little alienated from the general culture. My point is simply if you want to achieve exceptional results you will most likely be an exceptional person too. And being a woman, being ugly being whatever will not have much influence. In some situations it will help, in some it might do the opposite, it's random. If you want to be average then yea, as a woman it will be harder in IT, but if you want to be average why not pick a job average woman does?
- rachelbythebay 15y ago
  The gender gap means that you can have someone who is absolutely amazing due to her own strengths, but cannot realize them because of the vicious and mean environment around her. One way to deal with this is to strike out at the environment, and I encourage anyone so inclined to give it a shot. They will call you evil things, and you will feel really badly for it. Another way is to reject that environment and build your own, and I suspect that explains a certain number of startups which have been surfacing of late. The alternative is continuing to power the hate engines of the Valley, and that's just not going to work.
  - auganov 15y ago
    "you can have someone who is absolutely amazing due to her own strengths, but cannot realize them because of the vicious and mean environment around her" Really? Have you seen a case of somebody that had truly amazing, useful strengths and was still somehow being "blocked" from success by the environment as a whole? It sounds like a huge conspiracy to me (the way I rephrased it, of course it might not be what you meant). Like I said amazing people will always have trouble fitting in, but if they can produce amazing results there's always a way to reap rewards from that. There's nothing that's only exclusive to the "gender gap". It's a general fact that being different is not being average. I don't even see a problem! For me it's like saying 10 sticks out amongst 2s and that it's a problem. Well no wonder it does as 10!=2. It's a fact not a problem. Either accept that you're different or make yourself more similar, you cannot have both.
gaius 15y ago
From the same author: http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/02/28/the-benefits-of-being-a-female-software-engineer/ http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/02/28/the-benefits-of-being-a-fe... The odds are really freaking good, and only some of the goods are odd. Sure there are a bunch of socially awkward engineers, but because of the sheer scarcity of women in the field, if you are a single female you can have first pick of a lot of really nice available guys. I thought the days were past when women only got jobs to find husbands, seems not!
- britta 15y ago
  Attaching a sexist comment to a post about the challenges of being a female engineer is not cute or helpful.
  - pyre 15y ago
    I think that post is trying to point out the irony of the fact that the same author was promoting the female stereotype of "just getting a job to find a husband" in her other post, while lamenting the gender issues associated with being a woman in computer science in this post.
    - gaius 15y ago
      Exactly. She's the sort of person who will use being female to her advantage when she can - and when not, she'll use it as an excuse. Me, all I care about is the work, same as everyone else who's not got an agenda of their own.

Some female academics in the STEM fields have started wildly successful blogs that talk about gender issues in an academic environment. A few I recommend to academics/grad students/postdocs of both genders are Female Science Professor, Academic Jungle and Female Computer Scientist. My impression is that these and other blogs have been tremendously successful in letting young female scientists learn about extremely successful female role models in academia. They've also been extremely illuminating personally to me (a male engineer) because they call out instances where folks are "innocuously" sexist, and helped me understand how even certain cases of well-intentioned male behavior is actually discouraging from a female PoV. All I can say to the OP is: (1) she should keep writing so that young women entering CS know that successful female s/w engineers exist. (2) encourage other successful female s/w engineers to start blogging. (3) don't ever hesitate to blog about instances of sexism - well-intentioned or otherwise - because at the very least this can help clueless male engineers learn how to behave. (4) Don't ever hesitate to confront people for sexist speech or actions. The problem is only going to away if we create a culture where sexism would be career suicide and the first step to this is confronting the sexists.

ctide 15y ago

Her opening statement closely resembles what I felt seeing another jeanhsu article about gender. I also thought it was woefully ironic when she mentioned that she has tried to avoid the topic of gender, when in actuality, that's the only correlation I have to her at this point. Jean -- if you don't want to be known as the person who only talks about gender issues, at the very least, try to intersperse some technical discussions into your gender articles. Or, better yet, write articles about tech instead of the fact that you're female.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jeanhsu 15y ago
Thanks for the comment. If you check out my blog you will see that I do write about other topics, but it seems like the ones that are most popular on HN (or in general?) are the ones about gender.
fleitz 15y ago
It's selection bias because it's a hot topic. There are articles in between those to posts and I don't believe she posted the article to HN. It's just a selection of her blog that the HN userbase likes. I don't particularly agree with her POV but I think it's unfair to characterize her blog as about the gender gap. As an aside, it's not like men are actively encouraged to become programmers by their social peers. There are a small group of men who program and support each other in that vein, in the general population it doesn't exactly represent the hopes and dreams of parents of male children. (Eg. Mom and Dad statistically would encourage becoming a lawyer or doctor much more than a programmer). I think as a society we should encourage women and men to do what they want rather than that they should fill some predefined gap that we think needs filling. I could care less about the gender gap in computing or the gender gap in nursing.
- pyre 15y ago
  I think that the line of thought goes something like: * There's a variance between the number of men and women in field X. * This gap does not correlate with the number of men and women in the general population. * Therefore field X must be discouraging women from going into the field that would otherwise be interested in the field. I believe the thinking is that if everyone did what they wanted to do, then the gender balance in any random field would probably be relatively close to the gender balance of the general populace.
jamesaguilar 15y ago
> at the very least, try to intersperse some technical discussions into your gender articles Maybe you should check the actual contents of her blog before you post condescending BS like this? Only two of the eight most recent articles are about gender, less if you go further back.

auganov 15y ago

If she [the author] cares so much about the social aspects of being in IT industry then I don't know why she cannot accept the way it is. All I see is "Look how cool and special I am! I'm a girl and I can navigate in the men's world!". She tries to bring up a problem but I cannot quiet see a real problem there. "Already at a disadvantage, they are playing a seemingly impossible game of catchup with very little positive feedback or support. The culture, the standards, and the norms are all male-centric, and the book talks about women in computing being guests in a male-hosted world." It's a big problem if you want to become an average programmer that has to rely on that feedback and support. Guess what? Most truly skilled people learned almost everything by themselves. Generally speaking most intelligent people learn by themselves (if there are means to do it) and find themselves a little alienated from the general culture. My point is simply if you want to achieve exceptional results you will most likely be an exceptional person too. And being a woman, being ugly being whatever will not have much influence. In some situations it will help, in some it might do the opposite, it's random. If you want to be average then yea, as a woman it will be harder in IT, but if you want to be average why not pick a job average woman does?

rachelbythebay 15y ago
The gender gap means that you can have someone who is absolutely amazing due to her own strengths, but cannot realize them because of the vicious and mean environment around her. One way to deal with this is to strike out at the environment, and I encourage anyone so inclined to give it a shot. They will call you evil things, and you will feel really badly for it. Another way is to reject that environment and build your own, and I suspect that explains a certain number of startups which have been surfacing of late. The alternative is continuing to power the hate engines of the Valley, and that's just not going to work.
- auganov 15y ago
  "you can have someone who is absolutely amazing due to her own strengths, but cannot realize them because of the vicious and mean environment around her" Really? Have you seen a case of somebody that had truly amazing, useful strengths and was still somehow being "blocked" from success by the environment as a whole? It sounds like a huge conspiracy to me (the way I rephrased it, of course it might not be what you meant). Like I said amazing people will always have trouble fitting in, but if they can produce amazing results there's always a way to reap rewards from that. There's nothing that's only exclusive to the "gender gap". It's a general fact that being different is not being average. I don't even see a problem! For me it's like saying 10 sticks out amongst 2s and that it's a problem. Well no wonder it does as 10!=2. It's a fact not a problem. Either accept that you're different or make yourself more similar, you cannot have both.

gaius 15y ago

From the same author: http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/02/28/the-benefits-of-being-a-female-software-engineer/ http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/02/28/the-benefits-of-being-a-fe... The odds are really freaking good, and only some of the goods are odd. Sure there are a bunch of socially awkward engineers, but because of the sheer scarcity of women in the field, if you are a single female you can have first pick of a lot of really nice available guys. I thought the days were past when women only got jobs to find husbands, seems not!

britta 15y ago
Attaching a sexist comment to a post about the challenges of being a female engineer is not cute or helpful.
- pyre 15y ago
  I think that post is trying to point out the irony of the fact that the same author was promoting the female stereotype of "just getting a job to find a husband" in her other post, while lamenting the gender issues associated with being a woman in computer science in this post.
  - gaius 15y ago
    Exactly. She's the sort of person who will use being female to her advantage when she can - and when not, she'll use it as an excuse. Me, all I care about is the work, same as everyone else who's not got an agenda of their own.