6 ms·

Here Are No Women On StackOverflow… Or Are There?

30 points by phwd 14y ago

cantastoria 14y ago
So there’s good news, there are women on StackOverflow. The visible ones are far below the representative % of women in the industry. So you can safely determine that it’s an unfriendly-to-women place.* Oy vey...
kristofferR 14y ago
I honestly think that a lot of the perceived sexism on anonymous places, like the supposed gender downvotes in this instance, just is the Internet being the Internet. Okay, this may be a little sexist, but my impression is that women take negative stuff on the Internet (wether it's a mean comment or a downvote) more personal than men does. It may be because the emotional part of the brain is more developed in women's brains or just because they often don't have the same Internet experience as many men does. Stack Overflow can be a tough and ruthless place, but that doesn't make it sexist at all, even if some women are turned off by it. Anyway, by looking for a meaning for something that doesn't make sense, like the downvotes in internet communities like in this case, you'll most likely find something (but often not the real reason). It's easy to "see" ghosts - that doesn't make them real. Sexism is real and should try to be prevented, but unfortunately sometimes it seems to go a little bit overboard - either by actively looking for it (and finding it everywhere) or making it sound like there aren't any differences between men and women.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  I think you make a good point, I don't know why you're being downvoted. After all, the author of the article specifically mentions: "They don’t want the grief of getting downvoted (because they are a woman)" But the constructive question this leads to is: suppose the upvote/downvote/karma/etc. model is fundamentally "competitive" and men find themselves more comfortable with it than women do. (I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just saying "suppose".) Then, is there an alternate model that could be used which women would find more rewarding, and participate more in? That would still promote good content and behavior, and be able to counteract negative influences like vandalsim, garbage answers, etc.? I don't have the answer, but would love to hear insights.
modarts 14y ago
I'm starting to get tired of the hand wringing around the issue of an anti-woman bias surrounding the software development/tech space. Out of curiosity, does the same standards of equal representation exist for predominantly woman dominated communities in the case of men?
- heretohelp 14y ago
  There's some occasional hand-wringing about it in nursing and teaching but it's very much in the minority. None of the incessant navel-gazing that occurs here.
- kelseyinnis 14y ago
  Men tend to do better than women in female-dominated fields, it's been called by some the glass escalator: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-obstacle-for-professional-women-the-glass-escalator/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-o...
karinqe 14y ago
If most of the SO community was female but you didn't know about it, would your observations somehow differ from these? Would you notice?
drhowarddrfine 14y ago
I have better things to do than try and force men to be what they aren't and force women into things they don't want to do.
breadbox 14y ago
"StackOverflow is a meritocracy, therefore women should feel just as welcome as men." Some women tell you that it's not. Is your first reaction: [a] we should honestly try to listen to their feedback , or [b] publicly hypothesize that they're probably just whining because they can't take the heat? One of these answers leads to change, the other demonstrates how an egalitarian space turns unwelcoming. Sick of hearing how sexist Internet forums are? Good! Let's keep working to change that. Other than discouraging people from pointing it out I mean.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  To whom are you responding? I cannot find your quotation anywhere else in the discussion, but I used the word "meritocracy" and I'm worried you interpreted my comment elsewhere in the thread as hostile.
  - breadbox 14y ago
    Not at all. It's a rhetorical quotation; I'm not responding to any one person. (I suppose that's part of the issue: it's rarely any one person that's behaving badly; it's the cumulative effect.)
codenerdz 14y ago
I for one dont care who answers my question, man, woman, member of long lost indian tribe from amazon or a teapot, as long as the question is answered and i can get on with my work. In fact, I fail to see the point of this article. Even its title fails to make a point. It does succeed in producing headline-baiting effect which implies sexism in StackOverflow community.
- streptomycin 14y ago
  If the goal is to get the most and best answers, and you're not engaging all demographics, then you can get more and better answers by doing that.
  - codenerdz 14y ago
    It seems that there are 3 types of people answering question on StackOverflow: 1) People genuinely wishing to share their knowledge 2) People that are chasing gamified elements of the reputation system 3) People that belong somewhere between #1 & #2 I dont see anything that prevents any demographic from participating as long as fall into one of these 3 categories. And i dont see how being of a particular gender or race or ethnicity precludes one from sharing their knowledge on StackOverflow
    - streptomycin 14y ago
      Then you're not paying attention to the society around you. You really think women and men have equal proclivities for engaging in public competition?
- Produce 14y ago
  >or a teapot Whoa, let's not go overboard here.
MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
This article is interesting because I had never considered gender to be a component of the community at StackOverflow. To me, it is about questions and answers, both of which are measured for quality. It seems to be a pure meritocracy. In the end, I don't think it matters what the gender of the participants is. But if for some reason the site could better serve people of either gender, it'd be interesting to know what tactics could accomplish that.
- sp332 14y ago
  It's important to have a diverse group of people asking and answering questions. If the diversity is so low that the site can't even attract a non-minority like women, that doesn't bode well for the quality of the community.
  - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
    That is understandable, but are there issues with Stack Overflow which can be changed which are not tied to the purpose of the site? For example, one problem reported by the women that were asked about Stack Overflow was that one-upsmanship was an unpleasant theme. In what way could it be made less competitive without lowering the quality of the submissions?
    - sp332 14y ago
      In the US at least, men use one-upsmanship as part of friendly social interaction. Women are generally not exposed to light-hearted competition in the same way, so they feel more put down by it then the men really intend. You could see it as a socialization problem (women have little experience with friendly competition) or a communication problem (men don't realize that their actions seem overly aggressive to women).
  - cantastoria 14y ago
    Why? If I'm able to get quality answers what advantage does racial/sex "diversity" in and of itself bring to the table. Should I feel extra good about getting a quality answer from a black female programmer over a white male one? If so why? It would seem to me that using diversity to assess community quality on a programming Q&A site is a poor measure given it has no bearing on programming ability. Unless of course one is purely interested in aesthetics.
maybird 14y ago
This might be a crazy idea, but if more men posed as women, women would feel less intimidated to participate, and douchebags would have less effect on the actual women in the community.
- sj4nz 14y ago
  If more men posed as women online, they'd know how bad men are to women online.
  - codenerdz 14y ago
    define online plz There are plenty of venues where this is true, i just dont believe SO is one.
- codenerdz 14y ago
  douchebags can profess their douchebaggery across the gender lines. Furthermore, douchebags can be of either gender. The only way to fight douchebags is to call them on their douchebaggery and to down-vote them into oblivion. Lets not fight evil with fake, Lets fight evil with real.
chrislomax 14y ago
I know I shouldn't feel this way but I never see the poster of questions or answers as women? I'm not saying at all that I think the value of a woman programmer is any less than a mans, I just do not encounter women in programming, full stop. I actually started reading that post then as if it was from a man and I thought they were making a sexist remark about "are my women here". When I discovered it was a woman, I read it again in a different context completely. I don't know what other peoples regions are like but whenever I encounter a programmer anywhere, they are male?
- gms7777 14y ago
  Wow, at all? That's surprising. Certainly there are more males in tech, but that's still unusual. If you don't mind me asking, what region are you from? Sadly, even as a woman, I myself am often guilty of assuming other programmers are men, if I don't have any evidence to the contrary. There was a new york times article recently about the same problem in a different, and far more gender-balanced, field: medicine. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-doctors-a-he/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-doctor...
  - chrislomax 14y ago
    I have never in my years encountered a woman developer, ever. I live in UK near Manchester. I have encountered my fair share of female SEO's but never actually a developer? I don't think from my point of view it can even be classed as stereotypical when it's just the way it appears to be? (Where I am at least) I don't think it matters either way but it is equally something that I have ever thought about.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      One of the best coders I know is female. She left the UK to work out in the far east where she is considered less of an oddity.
      - chrislomax 14y ago
hexagonal 14y ago
Typo in title. Here -> There
droithomme 14y ago
We have had article after article claiming it is obvious women are being oppressed in the tech industry. Every week there is one of these. Many make bigoted claims about male engineers, enforcing stereotypes of male geeks I have never actually seen in industry. Where are the technical articles written by women? There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression, while attacking men and claiming absurd stereotypes. Where are the technical contributions?
- sp332 14y ago
  Here's Lady Ada (real name Limor Fried) who runs a $1M+/year tech company out of a live/work space in NYC. https://www.adafruit.com/about/ https://www.adafruit.com/about/ And here's her story about ridiculous levels of harassment in the tech scene. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165434
- Produce 14y ago
  More than that, where is the defense of masculinity? Why should anyone, men and women included, have to apologise for their nature? Yeah, men, on average, are more to the point when they speak. Yeah, women, on average, are more in touch with their emotions. Let's pull our collective heads out of our asses, admit that we're not identical and learn to respect each others' differences, the fact that those differences are based averages and that exceptions occur both ways. Not to mention that we're on the fucking internet. There is no gender, race, colour or creed here. Everybody pick a neutral username and, hey, presto! Problem solved. I'm a woman. Or am I... Ooooh! Who gives a shit.
- ktizo 14y ago
  Where are the technical contributions? A selection of some of the major early contributions in chronological order; first programmer - Ada Lovelace foundational paper for computerized algebra - Grete Hermann original programmers of the ENIAC - Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Fran Bilas, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, and Ruth Lichterman first compiler written - Grace Hopper first person to use a computer in a private home & first developer of an operating system (LAP) for the first minicomputer - Mary Allen Wilkes And all of this was done before Mary Keller became the first American woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science, in 1965, and it wasn't until 1989 that IBM had their first female fellow, Frances E. Allen. If you are claiming to be finding it hard to find technical contributions to computer science by women and that you see no evidence of discrimination, it means you are being willfully blind, at best.
codenerdz 14y ago
Lets put this all to rest: @spolsky says that 24% of SO visitors are women https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528 https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528

30 points by phwd 14y ago

So there’s good news, there are women on StackOverflow. The visible ones are far below the representative % of women in the industry. So you can safely determine that it’s an unfriendly-to-women place.* Oy vey...

kristofferR 14y ago

I honestly think that a lot of the perceived sexism on anonymous places, like the supposed gender downvotes in this instance, just is the Internet being the Internet. Okay, this may be a little sexist, but my impression is that women take negative stuff on the Internet (wether it's a mean comment or a downvote) more personal than men does. It may be because the emotional part of the brain is more developed in women's brains or just because they often don't have the same Internet experience as many men does. Stack Overflow can be a tough and ruthless place, but that doesn't make it sexist at all, even if some women are turned off by it. Anyway, by looking for a meaning for something that doesn't make sense, like the downvotes in internet communities like in this case, you'll most likely find something (but often not the real reason). It's easy to "see" ghosts - that doesn't make them real. Sexism is real and should try to be prevented, but unfortunately sometimes it seems to go a little bit overboard - either by actively looking for it (and finding it everywhere) or making it sound like there aren't any differences between men and women.

crazygringo 14y ago
I think you make a good point, I don't know why you're being downvoted. After all, the author of the article specifically mentions: "They don’t want the grief of getting downvoted (because they are a woman)" But the constructive question this leads to is: suppose the upvote/downvote/karma/etc. model is fundamentally "competitive" and men find themselves more comfortable with it than women do. (I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just saying "suppose".) Then, is there an alternate model that could be used which women would find more rewarding, and participate more in? That would still promote good content and behavior, and be able to counteract negative influences like vandalsim, garbage answers, etc.? I don't have the answer, but would love to hear insights.

modarts 14y ago

I'm starting to get tired of the hand wringing around the issue of an anti-woman bias surrounding the software development/tech space. Out of curiosity, does the same standards of equal representation exist for predominantly woman dominated communities in the case of men?

heretohelp 14y ago
There's some occasional hand-wringing about it in nursing and teaching but it's very much in the minority. None of the incessant navel-gazing that occurs here.
kelseyinnis 14y ago
Men tend to do better than women in female-dominated fields, it's been called by some the glass escalator: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-obstacle-for-professional-women-the-glass-escalator/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-o...

karinqe 14y ago

If most of the SO community was female but you didn't know about it, would your observations somehow differ from these? Would you notice?

drhowarddrfine 14y ago

I have better things to do than try and force men to be what they aren't and force women into things they don't want to do.

breadbox 14y ago

"StackOverflow is a meritocracy, therefore women should feel just as welcome as men." Some women tell you that it's not. Is your first reaction: [a] we should honestly try to listen to their feedback , or [b] publicly hypothesize that they're probably just whining because they can't take the heat? One of these answers leads to change, the other demonstrates how an egalitarian space turns unwelcoming. Sick of hearing how sexist Internet forums are? Good! Let's keep working to change that. Other than discouraging people from pointing it out I mean.

MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
To whom are you responding? I cannot find your quotation anywhere else in the discussion, but I used the word "meritocracy" and I'm worried you interpreted my comment elsewhere in the thread as hostile.
- breadbox 14y ago
  Not at all. It's a rhetorical quotation; I'm not responding to any one person. (I suppose that's part of the issue: it's rarely any one person that's behaving badly; it's the cumulative effect.)

codenerdz 14y ago

I for one dont care who answers my question, man, woman, member of long lost indian tribe from amazon or a teapot, as long as the question is answered and i can get on with my work. In fact, I fail to see the point of this article. Even its title fails to make a point. It does succeed in producing headline-baiting effect which implies sexism in StackOverflow community.

streptomycin 14y ago
If the goal is to get the most and best answers, and you're not engaging all demographics, then you can get more and better answers by doing that.
- codenerdz 14y ago
  It seems that there are 3 types of people answering question on StackOverflow: 1) People genuinely wishing to share their knowledge 2) People that are chasing gamified elements of the reputation system 3) People that belong somewhere between #1 & #2 I dont see anything that prevents any demographic from participating as long as fall into one of these 3 categories. And i dont see how being of a particular gender or race or ethnicity precludes one from sharing their knowledge on StackOverflow
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    Then you're not paying attention to the society around you. You really think women and men have equal proclivities for engaging in public competition?
Produce 14y ago
>or a teapot Whoa, let's not go overboard here.

MiguelHudnandez 14y ago

This article is interesting because I had never considered gender to be a component of the community at StackOverflow. To me, it is about questions and answers, both of which are measured for quality. It seems to be a pure meritocracy. In the end, I don't think it matters what the gender of the participants is. But if for some reason the site could better serve people of either gender, it'd be interesting to know what tactics could accomplish that.

sp332 14y ago
It's important to have a diverse group of people asking and answering questions. If the diversity is so low that the site can't even attract a non-minority like women, that doesn't bode well for the quality of the community.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  That is understandable, but are there issues with Stack Overflow which can be changed which are not tied to the purpose of the site? For example, one problem reported by the women that were asked about Stack Overflow was that one-upsmanship was an unpleasant theme. In what way could it be made less competitive without lowering the quality of the submissions?
  - sp332 14y ago
    In the US at least, men use one-upsmanship as part of friendly social interaction. Women are generally not exposed to light-hearted competition in the same way, so they feel more put down by it then the men really intend. You could see it as a socialization problem (women have little experience with friendly competition) or a communication problem (men don't realize that their actions seem overly aggressive to women).
- cantastoria 14y ago
  Why? If I'm able to get quality answers what advantage does racial/sex "diversity" in and of itself bring to the table. Should I feel extra good about getting a quality answer from a black female programmer over a white male one? If so why? It would seem to me that using diversity to assess community quality on a programming Q&A site is a poor measure given it has no bearing on programming ability. Unless of course one is purely interested in aesthetics.

maybird 14y ago

This might be a crazy idea, but if more men posed as women, women would feel less intimidated to participate, and douchebags would have less effect on the actual women in the community.

sj4nz 14y ago
If more men posed as women online, they'd know how bad men are to women online.
- codenerdz 14y ago
  define online plz There are plenty of venues where this is true, i just dont believe SO is one.
codenerdz 14y ago
douchebags can profess their douchebaggery across the gender lines. Furthermore, douchebags can be of either gender. The only way to fight douchebags is to call them on their douchebaggery and to down-vote them into oblivion. Lets not fight evil with fake, Lets fight evil with real.

chrislomax 14y ago

I know I shouldn't feel this way but I never see the poster of questions or answers as women? I'm not saying at all that I think the value of a woman programmer is any less than a mans, I just do not encounter women in programming, full stop. I actually started reading that post then as if it was from a man and I thought they were making a sexist remark about "are my women here". When I discovered it was a woman, I read it again in a different context completely. I don't know what other peoples regions are like but whenever I encounter a programmer anywhere, they are male?

gms7777 14y ago
Wow, at all? That's surprising. Certainly there are more males in tech, but that's still unusual. If you don't mind me asking, what region are you from? Sadly, even as a woman, I myself am often guilty of assuming other programmers are men, if I don't have any evidence to the contrary. There was a new york times article recently about the same problem in a different, and far more gender-balanced, field: medicine. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-doctors-a-he/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-doctor...
- chrislomax 14y ago
  I have never in my years encountered a woman developer, ever. I live in UK near Manchester. I have encountered my fair share of female SEO's but never actually a developer? I don't think from my point of view it can even be classed as stereotypical when it's just the way it appears to be? (Where I am at least) I don't think it matters either way but it is equally something that I have ever thought about.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    One of the best coders I know is female. She left the UK to work out in the far east where she is considered less of an oddity.
    - chrislomax 14y ago

hexagonal 14y ago

Typo in title. Here -> There

droithomme 14y ago

We have had article after article claiming it is obvious women are being oppressed in the tech industry. Every week there is one of these. Many make bigoted claims about male engineers, enforcing stereotypes of male geeks I have never actually seen in industry. Where are the technical articles written by women? There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression, while attacking men and claiming absurd stereotypes. Where are the technical contributions?

sp332 14y ago
Here's Lady Ada (real name Limor Fried) who runs a $1M+/year tech company out of a live/work space in NYC. https://www.adafruit.com/about/ https://www.adafruit.com/about/ And here's her story about ridiculous levels of harassment in the tech scene. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165434
Produce 14y ago
More than that, where is the defense of masculinity? Why should anyone, men and women included, have to apologise for their nature? Yeah, men, on average, are more to the point when they speak. Yeah, women, on average, are more in touch with their emotions. Let's pull our collective heads out of our asses, admit that we're not identical and learn to respect each others' differences, the fact that those differences are based averages and that exceptions occur both ways. Not to mention that we're on the fucking internet. There is no gender, race, colour or creed here. Everybody pick a neutral username and, hey, presto! Problem solved. I'm a woman. Or am I... Ooooh! Who gives a shit.
ktizo 14y ago
Where are the technical contributions? A selection of some of the major early contributions in chronological order; first programmer - Ada Lovelace foundational paper for computerized algebra - Grete Hermann original programmers of the ENIAC - Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Fran Bilas, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, and Ruth Lichterman first compiler written - Grace Hopper first person to use a computer in a private home & first developer of an operating system (LAP) for the first minicomputer - Mary Allen Wilkes And all of this was done before Mary Keller became the first American woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science, in 1965, and it wasn't until 1989 that IBM had their first female fellow, Frances E. Allen. If you are claiming to be finding it hard to find technical contributions to computer science by women and that you see no evidence of discrimination, it means you are being willfully blind, at best.

codenerdz 14y ago

Lets put this all to rest: @spolsky says that 24% of SO visitors are women https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528 https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528