4 ms·

I do believe there are unique challenges to being a woman in tech, but the odds seem in favor of women doing well both back in the 70's and today with todays st

by toolz 3y ago

I do believe there are unique challenges to being a woman in tech, but the odds seem in favor of women doing well both back in the 70's and today with todays stats having roughly 20% of CS grads being female while some 23% of SWEs are female. That suggests there are more women in software jobs than women who have been pursing that career academically. What stats do you see that suggest the odds are against women in tech? I frequently recommend tech as a good field for young girls, but I'll probably not do that anymore if the odds are truly against them.

leononame 3y ago
How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low. Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the women in those places notice that even if it's behind their backs.
- toolz 3y ago
  well I'm not making a value judgement, but we're talking about odds, not "good" or "bad"...if 20% of women go after a software job and the field is made up of an even higher %, that suggests the odds are amazing for women. Odds don't tell the whole story, but the odds seem in women's favor at the moment.
  - leononame 3y ago
    If you define odds being good as "the odds are good for the ones that choose to study CS", sure. But if you define the odds as "women overall", 20% is a relatively poor number in my opinion. Yes, we're getting better and yes, it takes time. But I don't think we can pat ourselves on the back here. That the women who decide to work on tech do well is (in my very unscientific and unproven) opinion just an indicator that the women who do join tech are on average more skilled than the men who decide to join tech. That's for a myriad of reasons, but the main one being that men gravitate to tech more, so even if they're not a huge talent they still might choose a career in tech, whereas women might prefer a different career unless they have a very strong calling.
    - trimethylpurine 3y ago
      These assumptions and stats are virtually meaningless. Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges. Classifying these challenges by sex ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness for one career or another, or lack there of. More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech or any other career (tech might be saturated), encourage them to learn how to interview aggressively, and how to ask for raises. Encourage them to be fearless. And do the same for your sons.
      - AlecSchueler 3y ago
        > Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges. Have you faced sex based discrimination, intimidation or othering in your workplace? > ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness The issue is that the capacity of women is backgrounded to the point that they have to do more to be seen as talented as their male counterparts. I'm sure every woman in tech would love to focus on skills instead of sex but that's just not the world they're presented with. > More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech More than this teach your sons about bias against women, how to have empathy for historically marginalised groups, how to give space for quieter voices, the broader cultural norms that lead to inequality etc You can teach generations of daughters whatever you like but the weight of solving these issues is far from resting only on women, and the idea that it is is ironically hostile in itself.
        trimethylpurine 3y ago
        Women are kicking ass because they kick ass, not because men are "helping" by viewing them as disabled. Ask any successful woman if she needs your help. Lol. Individuality is more important than your labeling by a huge margin.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        Recognising and actively working to dismantle issues of systemic bias against women isn't viewing women as disabled. I've spoken with many women about this and volunteered alongside many others on various projects aiming to help tackle these issues such as Women in Tech Netherlands. The women I've encountered have universally recognised the importance of allyship. Who are the women you spoke with who laughed? You can read about that's importance of allyship here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-tech-why-allyship-important-jessica-batty https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-tech-why-allyship-impor... You might disagree with what she says but you'll struggle you convince me that I should give more weight to your views on this than the actual women involved.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Would be nice if it were higher, for sure. And it will become that way, because more women go to college now than men. Will we care about young men being under represented in college before they get down to 20%? I'd like to think so, but I won't take that bet.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > Will we care about young men being under represented in college before they get down to 20%? We won't care about men being under represented, but colleges may worry that they are losing out on customers if the male population of college buyers swings that low. That may prompt marketing campaigns to try and attract men into college. I mean, it is not like we care about women being under represented either. Nobody is ever bothered by just 5% of firefighters being female. Tech was only ever concerned about women in tech because the industry was desperate for a larger pool of workers and women looked like an untapped source of people.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    > go to college now than men. Will we care about young men This is called whataboutery. The fact that we are still de-railing conversations about women's representation to centre men's issues shows exactly why there's still so much work to be done.
- ekms 3y ago
  23% > 20% which means if someone goes into the field of computer programming they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman than if they are a man. "remain in the field" is used as a proxy for success. You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear to be true
  - leononame 3y ago
    Does it really say that or are women just slightly more probable to enter the field without a degree? And I'd argue it's a pretty bad proxy. Because the field might be growing (or shrinking) and percentages don't mean anything. 23% of 10k is less than 20% of 5k, for example. The percentage numbers don't really indicate whether someone will stay in the field, it's just a number that's highly dependent on a lot of variables and a very bad indicator for "people are staying in the field". I'm happy to be corrected, it's just how I read this. Additionally, if your assumption is that 23%>20%, that would kind of mean that it's capped at 23%, right? Once more the CS degree quota is higher than 23%, following your logic, that would be an indicator that women are more likely to leave the field because it naturally gravitates towards 23%. But that's not based on anything, you could argue just as well that it's an indicator that more women are starting to take interest in CS as a career.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    consider that a lot of the culture in tech is also there for the first four years of undergrad, and so 23% often represents the people who basically made it through four years. are people who have experienced it for four years likelier to put up with more of the same?
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman Top earning fields (+most fields) were rife with strong resistance to hiring women. For women who'd managed jobs in top-earning professions (<pay) - this was constant, persuasive pressure to stay where they were. source: grew up around professional women born early 1920s (budget analyst, peace corps, navy intel, usvp sec).
laurex 3y ago
Perhaps rather than simply looking at numbers for SWEs, we might also look at numbers for CEOs of successful companies?
dosinga 3y ago
That's one explanation. The other is women just have to be better to survive the CS education so if they do, they are going to be better than average. Certainly true for a bunch of female SWEs I have worked with
IncreasePosts 3y ago
You need to look at dropout rate...what if women are 50% of freshmen CS majors and only 20% of graduates?
- petesergeant 3y ago
  I'd like to see that rate adjusted for people who were hobby programmers before they started. I suspect more boys than girls do programming before college, and that having done programming before college helps people not to drop out. I believe that the key to increasing diversity in tech is to increase the diversity in kids who are programming for fun. I have previously supported Black Girls Code for this reason.
AlecSchueler 3y ago
Can you see that you've completely dismissed the lived experiences of many many women, brushing them aside with whatever statistics you could find? And what do those statistics show, only that women are vastly under-represented in work and education. There's very heavy cultural reasons for that and your comment actually feels reflective of them.
- trimethylpurine 2y ago
  This is you a couple of posts later: >This is called whataboutery. He brought up the plight of another group, and you're saying, "What about women?" I'm sure your goals are pure, and you really want to help women, but you're studying schools of thought that serve to dismantle your efforts. A solution that treats one group as lesser than another will never be free from hypocrisy, just as it is not free from it here. Fair for only me isn't fair. No one thinks so. Think about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973233

by toolz 3y ago

leononame 3y ago

How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low. Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the women in those places notice that even if it's behind their backs.

toolz 3y ago
well I'm not making a value judgement, but we're talking about odds, not "good" or "bad"...if 20% of women go after a software job and the field is made up of an even higher %, that suggests the odds are amazing for women. Odds don't tell the whole story, but the odds seem in women's favor at the moment.
- leononame 3y ago
  If you define odds being good as "the odds are good for the ones that choose to study CS", sure. But if you define the odds as "women overall", 20% is a relatively poor number in my opinion. Yes, we're getting better and yes, it takes time. But I don't think we can pat ourselves on the back here. That the women who decide to work on tech do well is (in my very unscientific and unproven) opinion just an indicator that the women who do join tech are on average more skilled than the men who decide to join tech. That's for a myriad of reasons, but the main one being that men gravitate to tech more, so even if they're not a huge talent they still might choose a career in tech, whereas women might prefer a different career unless they have a very strong calling.
  - trimethylpurine 3y ago
    These assumptions and stats are virtually meaningless. Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges. Classifying these challenges by sex ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness for one career or another, or lack there of. More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech or any other career (tech might be saturated), encourage them to learn how to interview aggressively, and how to ask for raises. Encourage them to be fearless. And do the same for your sons.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      > Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges. Have you faced sex based discrimination, intimidation or othering in your workplace? > ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness The issue is that the capacity of women is backgrounded to the point that they have to do more to be seen as talented as their male counterparts. I'm sure every woman in tech would love to focus on skills instead of sex but that's just not the world they're presented with. > More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech More than this teach your sons about bias against women, how to have empathy for historically marginalised groups, how to give space for quieter voices, the broader cultural norms that lead to inequality etc You can teach generations of daughters whatever you like but the weight of solving these issues is far from resting only on women, and the idea that it is is ironically hostile in itself.
      - trimethylpurine 3y ago
        Women are kicking ass because they kick ass, not because men are "helping" by viewing them as disabled. Ask any successful woman if she needs your help. Lol. Individuality is more important than your labeling by a huge margin.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        Recognising and actively working to dismantle issues of systemic bias against women isn't viewing women as disabled. I've spoken with many women about this and volunteered alongside many others on various projects aiming to help tackle these issues such as Women in Tech Netherlands. The women I've encountered have universally recognised the importance of allyship. Who are the women you spoke with who laughed? You can read about that's importance of allyship here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-tech-why-allyship-important-jessica-batty https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-tech-why-allyship-impor... You might disagree with what she says but you'll struggle you convince me that I should give more weight to your views on this than the actual women involved.
rootusrootus 3y ago
Would be nice if it were higher, for sure. And it will become that way, because more women go to college now than men. Will we care about young men being under represented in college before they get down to 20%? I'd like to think so, but I won't take that bet.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > Will we care about young men being under represented in college before they get down to 20%? We won't care about men being under represented, but colleges may worry that they are losing out on customers if the male population of college buyers swings that low. That may prompt marketing campaigns to try and attract men into college. I mean, it is not like we care about women being under represented either. Nobody is ever bothered by just 5% of firefighters being female. Tech was only ever concerned about women in tech because the industry was desperate for a larger pool of workers and women looked like an untapped source of people.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  > go to college now than men. Will we care about young men This is called whataboutery. The fact that we are still de-railing conversations about women's representation to centre men's issues shows exactly why there's still so much work to be done.
ekms 3y ago
23% > 20% which means if someone goes into the field of computer programming they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman than if they are a man. "remain in the field" is used as a proxy for success. You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear to be true
- leononame 3y ago
  Does it really say that or are women just slightly more probable to enter the field without a degree? And I'd argue it's a pretty bad proxy. Because the field might be growing (or shrinking) and percentages don't mean anything. 23% of 10k is less than 20% of 5k, for example. The percentage numbers don't really indicate whether someone will stay in the field, it's just a number that's highly dependent on a lot of variables and a very bad indicator for "people are staying in the field". I'm happy to be corrected, it's just how I read this. Additionally, if your assumption is that 23%>20%, that would kind of mean that it's capped at 23%, right? Once more the CS degree quota is higher than 23%, following your logic, that would be an indicator that women are more likely to leave the field because it naturally gravitates towards 23%. But that's not based on anything, you could argue just as well that it's an indicator that more women are starting to take interest in CS as a career.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  consider that a lot of the culture in tech is also there for the first four years of undergrad, and so 23% often represents the people who basically made it through four years. are people who have experienced it for four years likelier to put up with more of the same?
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman Top earning fields (+most fields) were rife with strong resistance to hiring women. For women who'd managed jobs in top-earning professions (<pay) - this was constant, persuasive pressure to stay where they were. source: grew up around professional women born early 1920s (budget analyst, peace corps, navy intel, usvp sec).

laurex 3y ago

Perhaps rather than simply looking at numbers for SWEs, we might also look at numbers for CEOs of successful companies?

dosinga 3y ago

That's one explanation. The other is women just have to be better to survive the CS education so if they do, they are going to be better than average. Certainly true for a bunch of female SWEs I have worked with

IncreasePosts 3y ago

You need to look at dropout rate...what if women are 50% of freshmen CS majors and only 20% of graduates?

petesergeant 3y ago
I'd like to see that rate adjusted for people who were hobby programmers before they started. I suspect more boys than girls do programming before college, and that having done programming before college helps people not to drop out. I believe that the key to increasing diversity in tech is to increase the diversity in kids who are programming for fun. I have previously supported Black Girls Code for this reason.

AlecSchueler 3y ago

Can you see that you've completely dismissed the lived experiences of many many women, brushing them aside with whatever statistics you could find? And what do those statistics show, only that women are vastly under-represented in work and education. There's very heavy cultural reasons for that and your comment actually feels reflective of them.

trimethylpurine 2y ago
This is you a couple of posts later: >This is called whataboutery. He brought up the plight of another group, and you're saying, "What about women?" I'm sure your goals are pure, and you really want to help women, but you're studying schools of thought that serve to dismantle your efforts. A solution that treats one group as lesser than another will never be free from hypocrisy, just as it is not free from it here. Fair for only me isn't fair. No one thinks so. Think about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973233