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I've always maintained that women seem to me subtly more susceptible to peer pressure for most things, and a bigger part of that seems to be representation than

I've always maintained that women seem to me subtly more susceptible to peer pressure for most things, and a bigger part of that seems to be representation than for men. This is grounded in the massive shift in how the population of US "programmers" changed from majority women to majority men. "In 1967, there were so many female programmers that Cosmopolitan magazine published an article about “The Computer Girls,” accompanied by pictures of beehived women at work on computers that evoked the control deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise" [1] But in the next decade, there was a massive cultural shift – PCs were sold, and its ad campaigns targeted the image of a young geeky boy playing with toys. The campaigns were successful, so "By the mid-’80s, some college freshmen were showing up for their first class already proficient as programmers." Those were boys who had bought PCs and tinkered with them at home – excluded from ad campaigns, young girls never asked for a PC for Christmas, and they would show up to these freshmen courses like they did before but find themselves already terribly behind. So the number of women in programming started dropping around this time [1]. This was not seen in, say, Russia, which was not subject to the same ad campaigns, and so the number of women in programming stayed about the same. You might note that a lot of the female programmers you find in SV are Eastern European – this is not an accident. I do also have a citation that showed how the number of women signing up for archery was minuscule prior to the Hunger Games series, but subsequently ballooned and stayed high since. So the above assumption – that visible token women in a particular field makes a huge impact on the number of girls in that field – is based in some fairly well-known effects. [1] – https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-com... [2] – https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/anne-arundel/bs-exho-the-katniss-effect-archery-in-howard-county-gets-a-boost-from-popular-books-movies-20121205-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/anne-arundel/bs-exho-t...

Grustaf 6y ago
> women seem to me subtly more susceptible to peer pressure for most things Isn't the basic assumption behind this entire movement that women are NOT different from men? In any case, if what you need is "token women", then why not highlight the presumably very competent women that already work in finance (my co-founder is one), rather than forcing quotas? If your assumption is correct then it's not about the percentage that are women, it's about having a few well known role-models.
- tropdrop 6y ago
  No, the basic assumption is that women have equal rights. Most of the movement acknowledges real differences from men, aside from a subset of the movement that subscribes to the gender assignment idea, and its mutability. I would say it's a loud and educated minority, since the lived lives of most women includes childbirth and insisting "NOT different" runs into some pretty obvious problems here. But yes, if my hunch is correct, it is about having a few powerful role models so that the image of pursuing this option becomes viable. It's also about removing patent ideological blocks (she's just not a "culture fit"), lessening the barrier to entry (she needs to have a proper engineering degree), etc. But doing the latter without the former yields poorer results.
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    The problem is of course that if you open up for the possibility that women and men are different then it could simply be that women are less interested in launching startups, rather than a plot to keep women down.
    - tropdrop 6y ago
      Have you been to a dry-cleaner's? A bakery? A hair-dresser's? All of those were startups. Actually, South Korea has recently seen an influx of female entrepreneurs because their barriers to entry in tech were so high, it encouraged a lot of highly educated women to pivot into the start-up scene (12% of all working age women! [1]) So it seems at least a modicum of women are somewhat interested in "launching startups," and many of them already do in domains outside of tech. But the hostility to them in tech in the west is tricky. It's not overt, which is easier to protest, but subtle, sometimes even well-intentioned – for instance, your claim in this very comment, when spoken "around the water cooler" during a lunch hour with many coworkers present will make many of the women in the room question themselves – is this true? ("Is there something wrong with me that I am interested in this?") Those instances aggregate – how often do you think that your personal failure might be a failure of your entire demographic? How debilitating is that for productivity? They'll think of the lack of female Elon Musks and hang their head in shame, and many who were considering doing something like that will be a little more discouraged, despite many powerful figures in domains outside of tech. Again, this is encapsulated into my theory of greater acquiescence to social acceptance for this group of people, and greater measures needed to fight it. 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-women-startups-entrepreneurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-wome...
alpaca128 6y ago
You make some good points, but role models and peer pressure are two different things. In my subjective experience the latter tends to have a significantly larger impact. Role models are probably relevant in the first step to make people realise this kind of job is a possible choice. But I doubt it's enough to motivate anyone to stick to it and go through the whole learning process. And afaik the reason female programmers were the majority in the beginning was mostly sexism combined with the view that writing the programs was a trivial task comparable to simple data entry jobs. Which inevitably was proven wrong after a while.

Grustaf 6y ago

> women seem to me subtly more susceptible to peer pressure for most things Isn't the basic assumption behind this entire movement that women are NOT different from men? In any case, if what you need is "token women", then why not highlight the presumably very competent women that already work in finance (my co-founder is one), rather than forcing quotas? If your assumption is correct then it's not about the percentage that are women, it's about having a few well known role-models.

tropdrop 6y ago
No, the basic assumption is that women have equal rights. Most of the movement acknowledges real differences from men, aside from a subset of the movement that subscribes to the gender assignment idea, and its mutability. I would say it's a loud and educated minority, since the lived lives of most women includes childbirth and insisting "NOT different" runs into some pretty obvious problems here. But yes, if my hunch is correct, it is about having a few powerful role models so that the image of pursuing this option becomes viable. It's also about removing patent ideological blocks (she's just not a "culture fit"), lessening the barrier to entry (she needs to have a proper engineering degree), etc. But doing the latter without the former yields poorer results.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  The problem is of course that if you open up for the possibility that women and men are different then it could simply be that women are less interested in launching startups, rather than a plot to keep women down.
  - tropdrop 6y ago
    Have you been to a dry-cleaner's? A bakery? A hair-dresser's? All of those were startups. Actually, South Korea has recently seen an influx of female entrepreneurs because their barriers to entry in tech were so high, it encouraged a lot of highly educated women to pivot into the start-up scene (12% of all working age women! [1]) So it seems at least a modicum of women are somewhat interested in "launching startups," and many of them already do in domains outside of tech. But the hostility to them in tech in the west is tricky. It's not overt, which is easier to protest, but subtle, sometimes even well-intentioned – for instance, your claim in this very comment, when spoken "around the water cooler" during a lunch hour with many coworkers present will make many of the women in the room question themselves – is this true? ("Is there something wrong with me that I am interested in this?") Those instances aggregate – how often do you think that your personal failure might be a failure of your entire demographic? How debilitating is that for productivity? They'll think of the lack of female Elon Musks and hang their head in shame, and many who were considering doing something like that will be a little more discouraged, despite many powerful figures in domains outside of tech. Again, this is encapsulated into my theory of greater acquiescence to social acceptance for this group of people, and greater measures needed to fight it. 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-women-startups-entrepreneurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-wome...

alpaca128 6y ago

You make some good points, but role models and peer pressure are two different things. In my subjective experience the latter tends to have a significantly larger impact. Role models are probably relevant in the first step to make people realise this kind of job is a possible choice. But I doubt it's enough to motivate anyone to stick to it and go through the whole learning process. And afaik the reason female programmers were the majority in the beginning was mostly sexism combined with the view that writing the programs was a trivial task comparable to simple data entry jobs. Which inevitably was proven wrong after a while.