8 ms·

Gender gap in tech jobs narrows across advanced economies

34 points by sylvainkalache 3y ago

smcg 3y ago
https://archive.ph/fFRZN https://archive.ph/fFRZN
swagasaurus-rex 3y ago
Some of these statistical shifts can be explained by fewer men graduating colleges entirely.
- Juicyy 3y ago
  My classes were like 30:1 or worse male to female. Gender gap being close will always look like hiring bias to me...
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    Most of the inroads are attributed to flexible schedules which reduces the attrition from women after the entry level alongside the role not being ruled out entirely by the candidate this is something I hear from other women for other career choices too, from nursing to dancing to undiagnosed mental disorders (BPD, autism), the flexible scheduling draws them over 9-5 in person office work for tech there are more pipelines than university and an entire decade has been spent addressing that already whats happening is likely not just what you’re sensitive to
  - IncreasePosts 3y ago
    Well then, some enterprising corporation can pick up those forgotten young men for a song, and have a huge competitive advantage if that is really the case
    - cjbgkagh 3y ago
      Then they’ll get sued for disparate impact.
      - IncreasePosts 3y ago
        There's a business necessity defense, and in sure a case could be made that a below median salary is a business necessity, considering addressing those marginal costs is exactly the intent of the business.
        lupusreal 3y ago
        > There's a business necessity defense, How do you figure? According to the law, race is never a BFOQ. Even if that weren't the case, this wouldn't be a BFOQ situation anyway.
        IncreasePosts 3y ago
        Why would race makeup be affected? We're talking about the gender gap not the race gap. Unless women in tech are more diverse race-wise than men in tech. And, BFOQ isn't relevant here because there is qualification that is relevant - it's just that if men are getting under paid/left behind, then merely offering a low salary would be enough to attract them.
        lupusreal 3y ago
        Any business that doesn't make an effort to hire more women than is strictly economically efficient is begging to get sued. "We have very few women because men are cheaper" won't get them out of trouble. The mere fact that women are underrepresented in that company will be taken as proof of illegal discrimination.
        cjbgkagh 3y ago
        The world you are describing no longer exists and has not existed for some time.
        3y ago
    - newserr 3y ago
      Would you apply the same logic if the male-female gender ratio here was say 80-20%, 95-5%, or 100-0%, or is it only applied selectively?
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > My classes were like 30:1 or worse male to female. Gender gap being close will always look like hiring bias to me... How do your personal classes represent the labor supply? The fact is that most college students now are female.
    - almatabata 3y ago
      Yes but they are not really spread out evenly across majors. Certain majors are overwhelmingly female and others are still majority male. See this statistic from 2017: https://inside.collegefactual.com/stories/the-most-popular-majors-for-women-men https://inside.collegefactual.com/stories/the-most-popular-m...
    - leereeves 3y ago
      Close to 60% of college students are female. Why don't we see that as a problem? Why is acceptable to deny young men equity in education?
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        Maybe start by saying what you think ...
        leereeves 3y ago
        Ok: I think people who are genuinely working toward equity would advocate equity for all people. Those who only advocate for equity when it favors certain groups aren't really working toward equity at all. What do you think? Shouldn't university DEI programs be trying to recruit more young men to reduce the gender gap in higher education?
        wolverine876 3y ago
        Great, thanks for making a clear assertion. IME, that particular assertion has been discussed at length for years. Is it intellectually curious or interesting to start over again? Why would you want to have the discussion again? But I asked for it, so I'll go along with it a little. ... Imagine a wealthy hedge fund manager's white male kid, a graduate of Exeter and a reasonably qualfied candidate, is denied admission to Harvard. How does and doesn't that implicate equity? Imagine a bicycle delivery person's Latina female kid, a graduate of an underfunded public school and similarly qualified to the other kid, is denied admission to Harvard, or is admitted but can't afford it. How do those situations differ? White billionaires and Latinx poor - an extreme example used for simplicity (skipping the real-life complexity of, for example, Latinx billionaires) - are both 'groups', and each individual in both groups should have equal rights and something like equal opportunity. But to infer that the two situations are therefore the same with regard to equity is, IMHO, obviously false - to the point of being dishonest and just disruptive, demanding we spend our time explaining it. So I'm going to skip the explanation and assume we all understand those parts. ... ... A few thoughts on the issues: Discrimination x Power = Harm The harm caused by discrimination is some of the worst in human history. To cause harm, discrimination requires power. Imagine Native American businesses in Los Angeles refused to hire white people. It would be discriminatory but mostly harmless - the white person's job market is statistically unaffected because Native Americans as a group have little power. But if white people decided not to hire Native Americans, there would be lots of harm; it would effectively end careers and economic opportunity for many Native Americans because white people have enormous power (and such things have happened). Using a ten point scale, (1) 10D x 0P = 0H (2) 10D x 1P = 10H (3) 1D x 10P = 10H (1) The truly powerless can cause no harm, ipso facto - they are powerless. (2) Even with maximum discrimination, the weak are limited. (3) Even minimal discrimination by the powerful can cause significant harm. Young male education: IMHO it is a real problem that isn't getting enough attention. I doubt it's tied to race (is there evidence that it varies by race?) and while I suspect it's tied to family wealth, I'm not sure - that is, I could imagine that wealthy males and low-wealth males both perform at 80% of female economic peers, but that still lands wealthy males in college because of economic inequity. Still, I don't know those gender differences are an issue of equity - not every problem is an issue of equity. > I think people who are genuinely working toward equity would advocate it for all people. Groups who only advocate for equity when it favors certain groups aren't really working toward equity at all. I agree to a point. First, people have limited resources; they can't solve every problem for everyone; you can't tell a brain surgeon that they are discriminating against cardiac patients. Second, sans harm (see above), there is no issue of equity; nobody needs to advocate for white billionaires (though it seems that more HN commenters advocate for Elon Musk than for poor people in disadvantaged groups). Most importantly, IME people who raise the parent comment's well-worn question advocate against equity measures for black people, women, and other disadvantaged groups. I don't recall any of them (I don't know you) supporting equity measures for those groups and arguing to add, for example, measures for poor white males.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  > fewer men graduating colleges entirely. That may be true in general, but in STEM, twice as many men graduate as women at all levels of degrees. [1] [1]https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=899 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=899
  - idontpost 3y ago
    It used to be 10x.
  - twosdai 3y ago
    Side comment on that link. What's going on with female pacific islanders getting a graduate degree. Like it's 20k over the males in the same category. My guess is that it's an error since the total only adds up to ~600
    - darth_avocado 3y ago
      Looks like a copy pasta from the Hispanic number.
- crackercrews 3y ago
  Only certain majors would affect tech job hiring. Are men now lagging women in those majors? It's not especially relevant that there are tons more women than men getting degrees in social sciences etc.
dauertewigkeit 3y ago
It would be interesting to know if this is explained by the status gain of tech jobs (w.r.t more traditionally prestigious jobs). This is one of the theories that tries to explain some of the gap in preferences between man and women of equally high aptitudes.
cedws 3y ago
DEI initiatives are inherently sexist and racist and to date I have seen zero solid scientific evidence proving that diversity is a strategic advantage. When adjusted for factors such as lifestyle choices, women's salaries are on average 95-99% of men's[0] - a negligible difference. Intervening to enforce exact equality between men and women without taking into account lifestyle choices is in fact giving preference to women. Women are already outperforming men in education[1]. Is it really valid to claim women are not on a level playing field anymore? We're not in the 20th century. In the UK, women outnumber men in universities[2]. White, working class British boys are one of the poorest performing demographics in education but I have rarely seen it discussed. As a British lad who left school less than a decade ago, I don't think the education system is suited to engage boys whatsoever. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/girls-outperform-boys-from-primary-school-to-university https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/girls-outperform... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/how-many-men-and-women-are-studying-at-my-university https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/h... Addendum: I'm located in London and work in the tech scene. I have worked with people from all over the world and many different cultures. At no point have I observed a distinct advantage from this diversity.
- giantg2 3y ago
  "I have seen zero solid scientific evidence proving that diversity is a strategic advantage." It depends on what you define as solid. There are some compelling case studies on diversity effects, at least when going from almost zero diversity to a little diversity. I don't think there's any solid research on what levels of diversity are beneficial or detrimental. In additon to your points, one thing about DEI initiatives that I don't like is how they ignore other types of diversity, including people with disabilities. It seems to be all about gender and ethnicity.
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    > In additon to your points, one thing about DEI initiatives that I don't like is how they ignore other types of diversity, including people with disabilities This varies. I've led DEI initiatives and one of the points I make is "there's diversity in diversity". Meaning it isn't just gender and ethnicity. I do believe that actually caring about people is the most important thing, and I've found that people who do care about others generally share the trait that they want diversity in their environment -- at least certain types of diversity that aren't inherently detrimental to the work they do (e.g., you probably don't want small/light offensive linemen). The reason for this is because I think most rational people who care realize they have major gaps in their understanding and want to bring in more people, in whatever capacity makes sense. While I don't have anything near conclusive data, the people most against DEI tend to be the most insular in general. That said, often those the most extreme for "DEI initiatives" aren't really pro-DEI -- rather they are just pro their specific group, which just reduces to being the same as those that are against DEI.
vehemenz 3y ago
There are smaller gaps between the sexes for high-paying jobs in general. See law and medicine. I started at top ten CS program almost 25 years ago, and there were only a handful of women there at all. Today's grads weren't born much later, so when tech jobs began to pay better and became high-status, it's not a big surprise that everyone else flocked to them. I'm not discounting the advantages women get in the hiring process, which plays its own part, but I think it's a lesser factor in all of this.
- giantg2 3y ago
  About 15 years ago at a state school, it was still like 10-15 males to 1 female in my CS classes. My masters classes at a bigger school about 7 years ago were more evenly split. I'm not sure if there was a massive increase during that time. In my experience it seems like there was a slight increase in undergrad but that a much higher percentage of females went on to a masters program than did males.
- nradov 3y ago
  Harvey Mudd College has a top undergrad CS program with gender parity. It's a small school so unclear whether they have expanded the pool, or are just better at recruiting women than other schools. https://www.hmc.edu/about/2018/05/15/harvey-mudd-graduates-highest-ever-percentage-of-women-physics-and-computer-science-majors/ https://www.hmc.edu/about/2018/05/15/harvey-mudd-graduates-h... The gender ratio was actually more even in the early days of computing. One hypothesis is that it became skewed largely because in the 1980s the consumer electronics industry marketed video games and home computers almost exclusively to boys. I don't know whether that entirely accounts for the change but it could have been a factor. https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...
  - vundercind 3y ago
    1980s is when "programmer" and "analyst" became a combined role instead of two distinct ones, as well, IIRC.
swader999 3y ago
I just think it's ridiculous to even be discussing gender or color when hiring. I'll interview and hire anyone capable, that's all that matters. And diversity to me is have they done anything interesting with their life, education, career, overcome adversity, something hard, creative, helpful.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  Are you actually responsible for living with the decision to make a good or bad hire? Or are you speaking in hypotheticals?
  - swader999 3y ago
    I've hired about a hundred people over a couple of decades. Recruited for Boards too but don't really count that. I guess I should say that a lot of these hires have been 'diverse' but that wasn't a factor in the decision. I've only had two white males out of eight of my last hires and I had to really think about this.
- 0_____0 3y ago
  Historically (and I suspect your stance is to mostly ignore history and try to make good decisions going forward) people have done a great job of hiring people that resemble themselves. Social in-group is a powerful thing to fight against. If you can cut off the header of a resume and make hiring decisions based on that, that's awesome, but otherwise it's reasonable to be aware of and resist implicit bias in hiring.
  - swader999 3y ago
    I don't really have that luxury in almost every situation. More often than not a candidate far surpasses anyone else in areas that are very objective to the role at hand.
  - threatofrain 3y ago
    Sometimes doing blind interviews can lead to more lopsided gender outcomes.
evantbyrne 3y ago
It is important to note that they appear to be grouping workers together based on industry, not job title. For example, the US data (https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceseeb5a.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceseeb5a.htm) lists >35% of workers in "Custom computer programming services" to be women. So while that is a perfectly valid statistic for analyzing industries as a whole, data organized in this way tells us nothing about what percentage of professional developers in the US are women. I haven't looked at the EU data.
countrymile 3y ago
I think this is a positive, but the article needs more data on what women are actually doing, beyond a few annecdotes. It says: "Employees in computer programming and related services” what are these related services? For example data on faang and gender looks bad but not that bad. But when you actually look at the roles women are doing within the organisations, there is a massive imbalance when you look at programming, compared to Comms.
alienicecream 3y ago
Why is this desirable again?
bradlys 3y ago
> In the US, the proportion of female workers in tech rose from 31 per cent in 2019 to 35 per cent by the end of 2023, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. It rose by an absolute 4 percent during the incredible rise of the fake email job. To me, it means that we're completely tapped on the amount of women that are willing to join tech. If you look at college admissions, you'd think, "Hey, we're actually seeing an increased interest in women joining CS. Look at the percent of women graduating from top CS colleges over the last 15 years." What you're not seeing is the admissions statistics broken down by gender. Almost all admissions statistics that are publicly available are aggregated. I've seen how the meat is made on the admissions side and have had access to the statistics broken down by gender. There is a drastic difference in the admissions process based on gender. Often the only admitted male candidates have a GPA of 3.9+/4.0 to these top programs whereas the average on the female candidates have much lower at 3.4/4.0. That's the difference between perfect academic performance and above average. It takes a lot of effort to achieve a perfect score in some of these intense majors. It doesn't even account for the grading bias that these men will be experiencing in addition. What's interesting to me is that you see very few women as ICs in later stages of their career. Most transition to management or out of the workforce. Straight women in tech typically marry someone else who makes same or much more. It's often plausible for the woman to become a SAHP and opt out of working as long as they're fine with either husband grinding insane hours to make 7 figures or moving to Dublin/Boulder Creek. In addition, I think the outsourcing of tech jobs will be another way that companies will "improve" the statistics here in the USA. Engineering is overwhelmingly male. Companies love to outsource expensive software engineers to other countries (where they are also still overwhelmingly male but won't be accounted for in company stats!). I think this is the next move for DEI/anti-labor consultants. Expect your job to be outsourced not because it's saving the company money but because it improves the company's demographic numbers. I remember a company I worked at bragged about their wildly high POC/black workforce. Everyone they were hiring in those roles wasn't making much money. They were just customer service roles that didn't pay a ton but this was peak fake email job time. The HR side of the company would then trash the engineering org because it was 75%+ asian (one would think it was 95%+ depending on org you joined) and most of the remaining <25% was a mix of white/middle eastern with a few token Nigerians spread in. (Not a single black american in over 1000+ employees in USA employer) Almost always the female IC engineers were under 35 - and none had kids yet. As soon as kids happened - transition to management or quitting. I never thought I'd see it so blatantly. I don't know why we have to fixate on such a stupid non-problem. Women and a lot of minorities just have no interest in tech because it has the lowest social status of all white collar professions and it's an incredibly taxing job on top of that. The competitive jobs require an insane amount of effort to get into that requires nothing short of methamphetamine or autism. The only reason most women I know get into these jobs is because the hiring bar is lower for them. A lot of women get completely shellshocked whenever they encounter an interview that is at the level of a typical male candidate.

smcg 3y ago

https://archive.ph/fFRZN https://archive.ph/fFRZN

swagasaurus-rex 3y ago

Some of these statistical shifts can be explained by fewer men graduating colleges entirely.

Juicyy 3y ago
My classes were like 30:1 or worse male to female. Gender gap being close will always look like hiring bias to me...
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Most of the inroads are attributed to flexible schedules which reduces the attrition from women after the entry level alongside the role not being ruled out entirely by the candidate this is something I hear from other women for other career choices too, from nursing to dancing to undiagnosed mental disorders (BPD, autism), the flexible scheduling draws them over 9-5 in person office work for tech there are more pipelines than university and an entire decade has been spent addressing that already whats happening is likely not just what you’re sensitive to
- IncreasePosts 3y ago
  Well then, some enterprising corporation can pick up those forgotten young men for a song, and have a huge competitive advantage if that is really the case
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    Then they’ll get sued for disparate impact.
    - IncreasePosts 3y ago
      There's a business necessity defense, and in sure a case could be made that a below median salary is a business necessity, considering addressing those marginal costs is exactly the intent of the business.
      - lupusreal 3y ago
        > There's a business necessity defense, How do you figure? According to the law, race is never a BFOQ. Even if that weren't the case, this wouldn't be a BFOQ situation anyway.
        IncreasePosts 3y ago
        Why would race makeup be affected? We're talking about the gender gap not the race gap. Unless women in tech are more diverse race-wise than men in tech. And, BFOQ isn't relevant here because there is qualification that is relevant - it's just that if men are getting under paid/left behind, then merely offering a low salary would be enough to attract them.
        lupusreal 3y ago
        Any business that doesn't make an effort to hire more women than is strictly economically efficient is begging to get sued. "We have very few women because men are cheaper" won't get them out of trouble. The mere fact that women are underrepresented in that company will be taken as proof of illegal discrimination.
        cjbgkagh 3y ago
        The world you are describing no longer exists and has not existed for some time.
      - 3y ago
  - newserr 3y ago
    Would you apply the same logic if the male-female gender ratio here was say 80-20%, 95-5%, or 100-0%, or is it only applied selectively?
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > My classes were like 30:1 or worse male to female. Gender gap being close will always look like hiring bias to me... How do your personal classes represent the labor supply? The fact is that most college students now are female.
  - almatabata 3y ago
    Yes but they are not really spread out evenly across majors. Certain majors are overwhelmingly female and others are still majority male. See this statistic from 2017: https://inside.collegefactual.com/stories/the-most-popular-majors-for-women-men https://inside.collegefactual.com/stories/the-most-popular-m...
  - leereeves 3y ago
    Close to 60% of college students are female. Why don't we see that as a problem? Why is acceptable to deny young men equity in education?
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Maybe start by saying what you think ...
      - leereeves 3y ago
        Ok: I think people who are genuinely working toward equity would advocate equity for all people. Those who only advocate for equity when it favors certain groups aren't really working toward equity at all. What do you think? Shouldn't university DEI programs be trying to recruit more young men to reduce the gender gap in higher education?
        wolverine876 3y ago
        Great, thanks for making a clear assertion. IME, that particular assertion has been discussed at length for years. Is it intellectually curious or interesting to start over again? Why would you want to have the discussion again? But I asked for it, so I'll go along with it a little. ... Imagine a wealthy hedge fund manager's white male kid, a graduate of Exeter and a reasonably qualfied candidate, is denied admission to Harvard. How does and doesn't that implicate equity? Imagine a bicycle delivery person's Latina female kid, a graduate of an underfunded public school and similarly qualified to the other kid, is denied admission to Harvard, or is admitted but can't afford it. How do those situations differ? White billionaires and Latinx poor - an extreme example used for simplicity (skipping the real-life complexity of, for example, Latinx billionaires) - are both 'groups', and each individual in both groups should have equal rights and something like equal opportunity. But to infer that the two situations are therefore the same with regard to equity is, IMHO, obviously false - to the point of being dishonest and just disruptive, demanding we spend our time explaining it. So I'm going to skip the explanation and assume we all understand those parts. ... ... A few thoughts on the issues: Discrimination x Power = Harm The harm caused by discrimination is some of the worst in human history. To cause harm, discrimination requires power. Imagine Native American businesses in Los Angeles refused to hire white people. It would be discriminatory but mostly harmless - the white person's job market is statistically unaffected because Native Americans as a group have little power. But if white people decided not to hire Native Americans, there would be lots of harm; it would effectively end careers and economic opportunity for many Native Americans because white people have enormous power (and such things have happened). Using a ten point scale, (1) 10D x 0P = 0H (2) 10D x 1P = 10H (3) 1D x 10P = 10H (1) The truly powerless can cause no harm, ipso facto - they are powerless. (2) Even with maximum discrimination, the weak are limited. (3) Even minimal discrimination by the powerful can cause significant harm. Young male education: IMHO it is a real problem that isn't getting enough attention. I doubt it's tied to race (is there evidence that it varies by race?) and while I suspect it's tied to family wealth, I'm not sure - that is, I could imagine that wealthy males and low-wealth males both perform at 80% of female economic peers, but that still lands wealthy males in college because of economic inequity. Still, I don't know those gender differences are an issue of equity - not every problem is an issue of equity. > I think people who are genuinely working toward equity would advocate it for all people. Groups who only advocate for equity when it favors certain groups aren't really working toward equity at all. I agree to a point. First, people have limited resources; they can't solve every problem for everyone; you can't tell a brain surgeon that they are discriminating against cardiac patients. Second, sans harm (see above), there is no issue of equity; nobody needs to advocate for white billionaires (though it seems that more HN commenters advocate for Elon Musk than for poor people in disadvantaged groups). Most importantly, IME people who raise the parent comment's well-worn question advocate against equity measures for black people, women, and other disadvantaged groups. I don't recall any of them (I don't know you) supporting equity measures for those groups and arguing to add, for example, measures for poor white males.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
darth_avocado 3y ago
> fewer men graduating colleges entirely. That may be true in general, but in STEM, twice as many men graduate as women at all levels of degrees. [1] [1]https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=899 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=899
- idontpost 3y ago
  It used to be 10x.
- twosdai 3y ago
  Side comment on that link. What's going on with female pacific islanders getting a graduate degree. Like it's 20k over the males in the same category. My guess is that it's an error since the total only adds up to ~600
  - darth_avocado 3y ago
    Looks like a copy pasta from the Hispanic number.
crackercrews 3y ago
Only certain majors would affect tech job hiring. Are men now lagging women in those majors? It's not especially relevant that there are tons more women than men getting degrees in social sciences etc.

dauertewigkeit 3y ago

It would be interesting to know if this is explained by the status gain of tech jobs (w.r.t more traditionally prestigious jobs). This is one of the theories that tries to explain some of the gap in preferences between man and women of equally high aptitudes.

cedws 3y ago

DEI initiatives are inherently sexist and racist and to date I have seen zero solid scientific evidence proving that diversity is a strategic advantage. When adjusted for factors such as lifestyle choices, women's salaries are on average 95-99% of men's[0] - a negligible difference. Intervening to enforce exact equality between men and women without taking into account lifestyle choices is in fact giving preference to women. Women are already outperforming men in education[1]. Is it really valid to claim women are not on a level playing field anymore? We're not in the 20th century. In the UK, women outnumber men in universities[2]. White, working class British boys are one of the poorest performing demographics in education but I have rarely seen it discussed. As a British lad who left school less than a decade ago, I don't think the education system is suited to engage boys whatsoever. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/girls-outperform-boys-from-primary-school-to-university https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/girls-outperform... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/how-many-men-and-women-are-studying-at-my-university https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/h... Addendum: I'm located in London and work in the tech scene. I have worked with people from all over the world and many different cultures. At no point have I observed a distinct advantage from this diversity.

giantg2 3y ago
"I have seen zero solid scientific evidence proving that diversity is a strategic advantage." It depends on what you define as solid. There are some compelling case studies on diversity effects, at least when going from almost zero diversity to a little diversity. I don't think there's any solid research on what levels of diversity are beneficial or detrimental. In additon to your points, one thing about DEI initiatives that I don't like is how they ignore other types of diversity, including people with disabilities. It seems to be all about gender and ethnicity.
- kenjackson 3y ago
  > In additon to your points, one thing about DEI initiatives that I don't like is how they ignore other types of diversity, including people with disabilities This varies. I've led DEI initiatives and one of the points I make is "there's diversity in diversity". Meaning it isn't just gender and ethnicity. I do believe that actually caring about people is the most important thing, and I've found that people who do care about others generally share the trait that they want diversity in their environment -- at least certain types of diversity that aren't inherently detrimental to the work they do (e.g., you probably don't want small/light offensive linemen). The reason for this is because I think most rational people who care realize they have major gaps in their understanding and want to bring in more people, in whatever capacity makes sense. While I don't have anything near conclusive data, the people most against DEI tend to be the most insular in general. That said, often those the most extreme for "DEI initiatives" aren't really pro-DEI -- rather they are just pro their specific group, which just reduces to being the same as those that are against DEI.

vehemenz 3y ago

There are smaller gaps between the sexes for high-paying jobs in general. See law and medicine. I started at top ten CS program almost 25 years ago, and there were only a handful of women there at all. Today's grads weren't born much later, so when tech jobs began to pay better and became high-status, it's not a big surprise that everyone else flocked to them. I'm not discounting the advantages women get in the hiring process, which plays its own part, but I think it's a lesser factor in all of this.

giantg2 3y ago
About 15 years ago at a state school, it was still like 10-15 males to 1 female in my CS classes. My masters classes at a bigger school about 7 years ago were more evenly split. I'm not sure if there was a massive increase during that time. In my experience it seems like there was a slight increase in undergrad but that a much higher percentage of females went on to a masters program than did males.
nradov 3y ago
Harvey Mudd College has a top undergrad CS program with gender parity. It's a small school so unclear whether they have expanded the pool, or are just better at recruiting women than other schools. https://www.hmc.edu/about/2018/05/15/harvey-mudd-graduates-highest-ever-percentage-of-women-physics-and-computer-science-majors/ https://www.hmc.edu/about/2018/05/15/harvey-mudd-graduates-h... The gender ratio was actually more even in the early days of computing. One hypothesis is that it became skewed largely because in the 1980s the consumer electronics industry marketed video games and home computers almost exclusively to boys. I don't know whether that entirely accounts for the change but it could have been a factor. https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...
- vundercind 3y ago
  1980s is when "programmer" and "analyst" became a combined role instead of two distinct ones, as well, IIRC.

swader999 3y ago

I just think it's ridiculous to even be discussing gender or color when hiring. I'll interview and hire anyone capable, that's all that matters. And diversity to me is have they done anything interesting with their life, education, career, overcome adversity, something hard, creative, helpful.

syndicatedjelly 3y ago
Are you actually responsible for living with the decision to make a good or bad hire? Or are you speaking in hypotheticals?
- swader999 3y ago
  I've hired about a hundred people over a couple of decades. Recruited for Boards too but don't really count that. I guess I should say that a lot of these hires have been 'diverse' but that wasn't a factor in the decision. I've only had two white males out of eight of my last hires and I had to really think about this.
0_____0 3y ago
Historically (and I suspect your stance is to mostly ignore history and try to make good decisions going forward) people have done a great job of hiring people that resemble themselves. Social in-group is a powerful thing to fight against. If you can cut off the header of a resume and make hiring decisions based on that, that's awesome, but otherwise it's reasonable to be aware of and resist implicit bias in hiring.
- swader999 3y ago
  I don't really have that luxury in almost every situation. More often than not a candidate far surpasses anyone else in areas that are very objective to the role at hand.
- threatofrain 3y ago
  Sometimes doing blind interviews can lead to more lopsided gender outcomes.

evantbyrne 3y ago

It is important to note that they appear to be grouping workers together based on industry, not job title. For example, the US data (https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceseeb5a.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceseeb5a.htm) lists >35% of workers in "Custom computer programming services" to be women. So while that is a perfectly valid statistic for analyzing industries as a whole, data organized in this way tells us nothing about what percentage of professional developers in the US are women. I haven't looked at the EU data.

countrymile 3y ago

I think this is a positive, but the article needs more data on what women are actually doing, beyond a few annecdotes. It says: "Employees in computer programming and related services” what are these related services? For example data on faang and gender looks bad but not that bad. But when you actually look at the roles women are doing within the organisations, there is a massive imbalance when you look at programming, compared to Comms.

alienicecream 3y ago

Why is this desirable again?

bradlys 3y ago

> In the US, the proportion of female workers in tech rose from 31 per cent in 2019 to 35 per cent by the end of 2023, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. It rose by an absolute 4 percent during the incredible rise of the fake email job. To me, it means that we're completely tapped on the amount of women that are willing to join tech. If you look at college admissions, you'd think, "Hey, we're actually seeing an increased interest in women joining CS. Look at the percent of women graduating from top CS colleges over the last 15 years." What you're not seeing is the admissions statistics broken down by gender. Almost all admissions statistics that are publicly available are aggregated. I've seen how the meat is made on the admissions side and have had access to the statistics broken down by gender. There is a drastic difference in the admissions process based on gender. Often the only admitted male candidates have a GPA of 3.9+/4.0 to these top programs whereas the average on the female candidates have much lower at 3.4/4.0. That's the difference between perfect academic performance and above average. It takes a lot of effort to achieve a perfect score in some of these intense majors. It doesn't even account for the grading bias that these men will be experiencing in addition. What's interesting to me is that you see very few women as ICs in later stages of their career. Most transition to management or out of the workforce. Straight women in tech typically marry someone else who makes same or much more. It's often plausible for the woman to become a SAHP and opt out of working as long as they're fine with either husband grinding insane hours to make 7 figures or moving to Dublin/Boulder Creek. In addition, I think the outsourcing of tech jobs will be another way that companies will "improve" the statistics here in the USA. Engineering is overwhelmingly male. Companies love to outsource expensive software engineers to other countries (where they are also still overwhelmingly male but won't be accounted for in company stats!). I think this is the next move for DEI/anti-labor consultants. Expect your job to be outsourced not because it's saving the company money but because it improves the company's demographic numbers. I remember a company I worked at bragged about their wildly high POC/black workforce. Everyone they were hiring in those roles wasn't making much money. They were just customer service roles that didn't pay a ton but this was peak fake email job time. The HR side of the company would then trash the engineering org because it was 75%+ asian (one would think it was 95%+ depending on org you joined) and most of the remaining <25% was a mix of white/middle eastern with a few token Nigerians spread in. (Not a single black american in over 1000+ employees in USA employer) Almost always the female IC engineers were under 35 - and none had kids yet. As soon as kids happened - transition to management or quitting. I never thought I'd see it so blatantly. I don't know why we have to fixate on such a stupid non-problem. Women and a lot of minorities just have no interest in tech because it has the lowest social status of all white collar professions and it's an incredibly taxing job on top of that. The competitive jobs require an insane amount of effort to get into that requires nothing short of methamphetamine or autism. The only reason most women I know get into these jobs is because the hiring bar is lower for them. A lot of women get completely shellshocked whenever they encounter an interview that is at the level of a typical male candidate.