7 ms·
Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
Hi HN,
I had a great chat today with a researcher studying different online communities, their users, and their rules.
During that discussion, it occurred to me that while HN does not specifically ask for gender in the profile (which is a good thing, IMO, since it's not necessary for the discussions), it would nevertheless be interesting to learn who is hanging out here. Maybe we are in for a pleasant surprise in terms of demographics?
(This question is not affiliated with any research and is just posed to sate my own curiosity! I cannot see your votes unless you specifically comment)
Thus, dear HN user, what's your gender?
- somsak2 3y agoEver since I've started seeing outright discrimination against males in tech, I've adjusted by always answering prefer not to say / other.
- jsbisviewtiful 3y ago> outright discrimination against males in tech I'm sure you've seen some things here and there, but truly, saying "discrimination against males in tech" is a problem is quite ridiculous.
- kbelder 3y agoIt's vastly male dominated, so you could argue that if there's discrimination against men it's not very effective. Probably there's discrimination for and against women, and for and against men, in all sorts of ways. But I'd bet that discrimination against hiring men into a tech position is probably the norm.
- jsbisviewtiful 3y agoI talked with some hiring managers about this a few years ago. About 5 years ago, female devs with an undergrad degree made up less than 20% of the available hiring pool. There's a preference to hire female developers, but finding them is incredibly difficult - which is partly why there's a preference. I wouldn't call that discrimination in hiring when it's simply trying to balance a dev team that's 4/5ths males.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dTal 3y agoAs of this comment, there are 465 poll votes in total, but the poll itself has only received 76 votes. Odd that most people who considered it interesting enough to participate in, did not consider it interesting enough to reward or signal-boost.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ruiisnwn 3y ago[flagged]
- NKosmatos 3y agoBeing a “data junkie” myself, I would also like to have access to various anonymized statistics for HN users just out of curiosity, but this isn’t possible. See some previous posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4397332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4397332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567986
- Jensson 3y agoGender poll from 2009 seems very relevant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309 About 5% women, it is interesting how little things change.
- tipiirai 3y agoHere's the most recent gender poll made just few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38031363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38031363 Still only 5% woman
- silisili 3y agoFull demo would probably be more interesting. If I had to guess, the vast majority are males in the 35-50 range.
- 3c6bYDXLMj 3y agoWe aren’t in for a pleasant surprise. If this userbase is anything less than 70% male I’d eat my hat. Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive. But HN, being a community of old farts lamenting about the good old days (if I have to read another comment about how great it is that the site hasn’t changed in 20 years I’lll scream), as well as techno-libertarians wanting to tell you about their new startup, would IMO rightfully be subject to a fair degree of lag.
- paulddraper 3y agoI think it's safe to say your hat is just fine
- akomtu 3y agoA modern inclusion preacher begins his sermon with excluding all the groups he doesn't like, which are numerous.
- KptMarchewa 3y agoI would feel safe about making that bet with 90%...
- zer8k 3y ago> Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive Ah yes the old and tired argument comes out again. Since there are 50% men and 50% women in the world why doesn't tech look the same? Cool opinion though...it's so 2015. Almost vintage! I particularly enjoyed the part where you imply it's a bad thing. Why don't we hear about that with welding, house building, firefighting, policing, the military, or any other male dominated field Dr. Inclusion?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Why don't we hear about that with welding, house building, firefighting, policing, the military, or any other male dominated field Dr. Inclusion? I would guess that you don’t hear it because you don't pay attention to news concerning those domains, at least as it relates to gender inclusion, as gender inclusion is an active issue in each of them. https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/education/education-matters-getting-more-girls-into-welding/ https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/education/education-m... https://www.achrnews.com/articles/147486-welcome-women-into-hvac-and-the-skilled-trades https://www.achrnews.com/articles/147486-welcome-women-into-... https://www.hsaj.org/articles/21721 https://www.hsaj.org/articles/21721 https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/public-safety-career-expo-hopes-to-attract-women-to-field/ https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/public-safety-car... https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/21/hire-female-officers-fix-police/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/21/hire-fema... https://www.lexipol.com/resources/blog/police-culture-and-women-in-law-enforcement/ https://www.lexipol.com/resources/blog/police-culture-and-wo... https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/01/military-must-recruit-more-women-immigrants-future-force-experts-say/382317/ https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/01/military-must-recr... https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/12/19/barriers-still-preventing-women-from-joining-special-ops-watchdog-say/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/12/19/...
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoMore ground mystery meat in tube shape than a nightlight venue in Man Jose.
- mempko 3y agoI once went to an AWS conference and played a game, are there more women or more blind men. After 3 days, I counted more blind men. Nothing about the results above surprises me.
- pixxel 3y agoThe fundamental differences between men and women aren’t a surprise.
- grepLeigh 3y agoIf you haven't already, check out StackOverflow's Developer Survey. The historical data goes back to 2015. Strangely, it looks like the 2023 StackOverflow survey opted not to collect gender among their demographics responses. IIRC, the breakdown is approximately 90% male, 5% female, 1-2% non-binary, 1-2% prefer not to answer or prefer writing their own response. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/ https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/
- Pseudomanifold 3y agoThanks, will do! It is not relevant for the discussions as such, but still an interesting aspect of HN to study, IMO.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoAs of the time I write this post, the current vote distribution is not exactly what you outlined but it is extremely close. Almost surprisingly so given the current vote pool is only around 70 as I write this. I would have thought it would take a larger sample size to normalize
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- goodboyjojo 3y ago[flagged]
- jasonhansel 3y agoWell this is going to be depressing.
- decremental 3y ago[dead]
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- _8j50 3y agoThe one thing I valued most about online communities at least "back in the day" was not knowing this stuff. I could genuinely be interacting with people as persons without being biased about them. It was the great equalizer and part of what drew me towards "the hacker's manifesto". Most of us I think fail to understand what an immense treasure of justice anonymity or at least pseudonymity is. It sucks that the modern internet financially is surviving as a result of fighting against these values. I disagree with you about knowing people's gender's being a good thing. Look at what people say and do and get to know and then hate or like them to your heart's content. There are few places left where you can meet people and get to know them without a profile pic or a reddit post like this HN post tells you the same exact things that bias us in real life and result in so much strife and injustice.I hated places where people asked "A/S/L?" as you can tell, what do you think of petitioning to ban asking such info to the general HN audience?
- tcfhgj 3y agoNot knowing the gender (distribution) of commenters is not knowing the underlying bias in the replies of these commenters. Thus no, such info shouldn't be banned.
- Conscat 3y agoIt's vitally important to know the perspective from which somebody evaluates the gender wage gap when I'm reading their complaints about Node.
- _8j50 3y agoI disagree, the underlying bias a person has is irrelevant if they can prove to others the correctness of what they are saying. You are wanting to put people in boxes and stereotype as if they're not capable of compensating for bias or understanding others' perspective. If it is a subjective comment and personal experience is relevant, the commenter can disclose that detail there and then. However, where fact or analysis of information is involved, it is the correctness and quality of what is said that matters not who said it.
- heresie-dabord 3y agoI prefer to self-describe as Noybu -- none of your business. ^_^
- anonymoushn 3y agoAfter ThoughtWorks emailed me saying they wouldn't hire male candidates I've decided to move on from being male.
- tipiirai 3y agoWhy they don’t hire males?
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoWait, what?
- lolinder 3y agoIANAL, but if you have that in writing, it seems like you have a massive employment discrimination lawsuit just waiting for a lawyer.
- anonymoushn 3y agoAll the lawyers I talked to said it sounded great and I should look for some other lawyer who's willing to do it.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoI dislike their politics but this is exactly what America First Legal does
- deely3 3y agoMmm.. Strange, I have feeling that some faces on https://www.thoughtworks.com/about-us/leaders https://www.thoughtworks.com/about-us/leaders are AI generated. Honestly curious why downvotes?
- kdwikzncba 3y agoCan you please add furry to the options?
- Incipient 3y agoThe vast majority of women I've spoken to all take the same view of tech. "you sit on a computer all day and 'write code'?! How dull!" I'm not entirely sure that the gender discrepancy here is significantly more than reflective of gender preferences, from my very limited sample space. This poll will have a predictable outcome. I'd rather see a poll of women on why they're not in tech - no interest, peer pressure, "boys club", etc.
- qwerty456127 3y agoI don't care. Anybody can use whatever pronouns they want to me. Although I care about the feelings of others who may think different (so I avoid behaving in a way which might hurt them), I personally believe any (not just gender) self-identification is a pointless lie. I voted for non-binary but it isn't exactly what I mean, as far as I know. I would rather vote for N/A, NULL, ANY or something like that if there was an option.
- usgroup 3y agoNotes on survey bias. HN community is international and from [1] it is around 3.5M monthly unique users. A representative sample would need to be stratified since it is unlikely that — for example — the proportion of female readers will be the same across countries. The poll would need to run for a long time since the daily and monthly unique figures are different by order of magnitude. Further, there are many times more lurkers than posters [1], and only a fraction of posters will answer this poll (I will not, for example). I would expect something like a >99% non-response, implying strong self selection amongst responders. The upshot will be that inference from this poll to the HN population will likely be biased. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581
- Pseudomanifold 3y agoI agree that this will be biased and I don't think this should be used for any serious type of survey. I was literally just interested in the results. :-)
- DoreenMichele 3y agoCurrent figures: 14 non-binary 18 women (counting me) 329 men 3 prefer to self describe 364 total votes, about 5 percent female and 5 percent "other", so roughly 90 percent male. When I joined, polls showed it to be more like 98 percent male. So non-male membership/participation has possibly quintupled in the 14+ years I've been here. This fits with my general impression as a participant. Nice to have a little data. It's been a while since I've seen one of these polls.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoThis helps explain to me why, when there is a thread about a woman being mistreated in the workplace, there’s just loads and loads of comments dismissing the concerns and saying she’s overreacting. Quite unfortunately that’s exactly the reaction that leads to those problems persisting.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI have no idea how this helps explain that to you.
- SequoiaHope 3y agoI’ve spent enough time at places like google and spoken to other women about how they are treated by men in those workplaces to understand why I’m seeing the exact same behavior from most users here. Men in our culture are more trusting of other men and more dismissive of claims made by women, in my experience. When I see an article about a woman who was mistreated by men in her workplace and her claims were dismissed by other men, and then I see threads here filled with men dismissing her claims, everything falls in to place when I see that this place is 95% men. There just aren’t enough women’s voices here to explain what’s really happening, and the men here demographically are the same men that contribute to these problems in the workplace.
- smegsicle 3y agoi think he's pointing out how a male-dominated culture would respond with mansplaining about one's responsibility to adapt to the workplace, where a woman-dominated culture might focus more on the emotional toll of such failing to adapt edit: on second thought, your comment might be snarking about how a poll is unnecessary to assume that this is a male-dominated space, making me the fool
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago> HN does not specifically ask for gender in the profile (which is a good thing, IMO, since it's not necessary for the discussions) Agree. > Maybe we are in for a pleasant surprise in terms of demographics How can any such result be pleasant or unpleasant?
- smegsicle 3y agopeople's emotions and moods are influenced by their perception of the environment, including things they see, hear, or even think about therefore even the virtual presence of something wonderful* being in one's vicinity can have an impact on an individual's emotional state, making the environment feel more "pleasant" * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_are_wonderful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_are_wonderful
- Pseudomanifold 3y agoPleasant in the sense that I'd love to see some myths about this being a 'man-only' site dispelled. Should have clarified that!
- somsak2 3y ago"this site just has too many blacks on it" see how that's problematic?
- Pseudomanifold 3y agoFully agree with you there! As I said, I'm merely interested in getting a rough picture of the demographics (INB4: selection bias etc.). I find the statement you mention just as problematic as if you were to switch out the ethnic identity with _any_ form (self-identified) identity. That being said, I don't see anything problematic about looking at population demographics and then asking _why_ some identities are over- or under-represented. This poll should not be used for that, though :-)
- smegsicle 3y agowhy do you use the term 'myth' ?
- readthenotes1 3y agoIrrelevant