6 ms·

It is the weekly females in tech industry time again? At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more women into programming? Isn't

by verroq 14y ago

It is the weekly females in tech industry time again? At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more women into programming? Isn't that just as misguided as trying to get more men into nursing? Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.

deleted 14y ago
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- deleted 14y ago
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simon 14y ago
Upvoted. It's worse than just females in tech, it's OMG men and women are different! Eeek! I kinda like the difference myself. Not because I don't want women in tech, but because women should be able to pursue whatever they want that makes sense when you consider their differences from men. I assume this makes me a bad person.
- raganwald 14y ago
  Blacks and Whites are different. There's no discrimination, it's just that Blacks are more interested in basketball and driving taxis and making music then getting into Harvard or practising law. We should celebrate these differences instead of trying to tear down barriers that don't exist.
  - JasonFruit 14y ago
    I know you're being sarcastic, but you bring up a point that I wonder about: there's certainly a difference in cultural values that contributes to the racial and gender profile of different occupations. Do we have a responsibility to change those values? Most ways of measuring progress on the problem have the unstated expectation that the difference in values doesn't exist, and you can't meet the measurement goals without eliminating that difference.
    - raganwald 14y ago
      Let's switch from talking about race and gender and use the words "Insiders" and "Outsiders" and think of a big structure, we'll callit "The Keep." I think the first and most urgent job is to change cultural assumptions amongst the insiders. If they are thinking that outsiders aren't biologically inclined towards living in a keep, not qualified to maintain a keep, &c., that's a huge barrier, a moat if you will. So we remove that. The next problem is that even with the moat gone, the outsiders fear being uncomfortable inside, whether from being one of a very few outsiders amongst a lot of insiders or from other outsiders resenting them moving into the keep. I think it's important to remove those sources of discomfort and to actively encourage outsiders to consider moving inside so that we get all of those who woud like to come inside but fear unpleasant consequences. After that, I don't think we need to try to convince people who like living outside to come in. Let them be happy outside! But I do think we should remove barriers to coming inside and encourage coming inside to counteract any fears of negative consequences for those who would otherwise like to come into the Keep.
ZoFreX 14y ago
I don't want to get more women into programming. I want to end the endemic and prolific discrimination against women in programming. The lack is a symptom. I also find it very weird that an entire industry went from being female dominated to male dominated and everyone defends it saying "it's always been this way! Equality isn't about enforcing even ratios!" Well no, it's not, but when you have these situations, where the number of people who could do something is vastly different to those that stick it out as a career, and those that do talk about systematic intolerance and abuse, there is a problem there.
- rmc 14y ago
  Appeals to history are silly aswell because the whole industry. Software has less history than Coca Cola! I mean, traditionally, there were less than 100 programmers world wide. No-one has any problem with ignoring that.
- verroq 14y ago
  As others have said, it's very hard to discriminate against women since it's is mostly based on problem solving/programming skill. But that is not to say there isn't a general air chauvinism and/or objectification in the tech industry. I agree that getting more women into tech is a solution, but this always operates under the assumption that women actually want to be in tech.
moistgorilla 14y ago
There is a huge stereotype that tech is for men. There is a ton of misogyny in the tech sector. The hope is that by bringing women into the tech sector this stereotype ceases to exist. This is important because there are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine. There is a ton of wasted potential out there.
- verroq 14y ago
  Most men didn't pick tech because it's for men, they picked it because they liked it. >There are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine I'm not sure if it's societal pressure that is the deciding factor for young women they picking a field of interest.
klaut 14y ago
Upvoted as well. I see more and more of these complaints lately and it just feels that people complain just for the sake of complaining. Perhaps for the rest of the women (me being a woman in tech) programming and tech just isn't interesting enough to pursue it? That could just be one of the reasons - like i have no interest in nursing, thus i am not pursuing that as a career. Stop looking for reasons for complaining and go and pursue stuff you love.
__alexs 14y ago
> Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios. Actually for pretty much any job not based on manual labour it does mean that. And even then it's mostly because we don't have enough robots.
- verroq 14y ago
  You are willing to accept physical differences but not psychological differences between men and women?
  - __alexs 14y ago
    Yes because there is no evidence that such differences are anything but a result of variables such as socio-economic status, how stable your upbringing was and the amount of calories you had as a child.
Pewpewarrows 14y ago
The point isn't to have exact same gender ratios in the tech industry. There are women out there who would make great programmers / sysadmins / etc, but never finish the process of becoming one, are dissuaded from ever starting, or flat-out quit the industry after N number of years, simply because of the barriers put in place by men assuming that the field is only for men.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  What sort of barriers? Most of this seems to come down to "Women feel uncomfortable in tech because there are too many men" which of course prevents there from being more Women in tech. It's also possible that some of the pressure comes from other women , not just men. A woman might be considered weird by other women for wanting to hang around in an environment dominated by geeky men. I know tech women who have been called dykes by their female pier group in the same way male nurses might be accused of being gay.
  - mitjak 14y ago
    Example from the article: at a conference, the audience thought the author is a recruiter because she's a woman.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I don't really see how that is a barrier to entry.
      - yarrel 14y ago
        You're not going to get hired if people think you're not there to get hired.
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        People will naturally make assumptions based on prior experiences and statistics , essentially "optimising for the common case". In the same way that I would make an assumption that somebody from say Pakistan is more likely to be a muslim than christian. This is simply how humans operate, probably because it has survival value and is more a function of evolution than prejudice. It's not a difficult assumption to get past anyway, talking knowledgeably about something a recruiter would probably not know or even wearing a tech related T shirt would make people change their assumptions. The only way to solve that particular problem properly would be to have more women in tech. An actual barrier would be a company or a CS programme deliberately discriminating against women by not employing them. Now I'm sure this does happen in some cases and would be difficult to gather evidence of because any company admitting to this practice would be open to law suits. Another example would be of creating a workplace that was somehow misogynistic in some way, but I actually find that more common in other industries than in tech. OTOH , many universities seem to actually discriminate in favour of women for CS, in some cases lowering entry requirements on giving a priority on placement. They still tend to end up with 80%+ men though. One observation I have made about women who work as developers or in an engineering/science field is that the majority I have met have tended to be chinese. This makes me wonder if there is in fact a stigma attached to western women going into tech but I don't necessarily think this stigma comes from the inside.
deleted 14y ago
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rmc 14y ago
What's wrong with men in nursing? Or are they just half men, a bunch of fairies for doing 'women's work'?
jacalata 14y ago
Because if there were more women in programming I might not have to deal with people doing a double take as they walk into my office and saying 'oh I expected you to be a guy!'
JackDanger 14y ago
The lack of women in the industry isn't the problem, it's the symptom. The problem is a monoculture of chauvinism and sexism.

by verroq 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

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deleted 14y ago
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simon 14y ago

Upvoted. It's worse than just females in tech, it's OMG men and women are different! Eeek! I kinda like the difference myself. Not because I don't want women in tech, but because women should be able to pursue whatever they want that makes sense when you consider their differences from men. I assume this makes me a bad person.

raganwald 14y ago
Blacks and Whites are different. There's no discrimination, it's just that Blacks are more interested in basketball and driving taxis and making music then getting into Harvard or practising law. We should celebrate these differences instead of trying to tear down barriers that don't exist.
- JasonFruit 14y ago
  I know you're being sarcastic, but you bring up a point that I wonder about: there's certainly a difference in cultural values that contributes to the racial and gender profile of different occupations. Do we have a responsibility to change those values? Most ways of measuring progress on the problem have the unstated expectation that the difference in values doesn't exist, and you can't meet the measurement goals without eliminating that difference.
  - raganwald 14y ago
    Let's switch from talking about race and gender and use the words "Insiders" and "Outsiders" and think of a big structure, we'll callit "The Keep." I think the first and most urgent job is to change cultural assumptions amongst the insiders. If they are thinking that outsiders aren't biologically inclined towards living in a keep, not qualified to maintain a keep, &c., that's a huge barrier, a moat if you will. So we remove that. The next problem is that even with the moat gone, the outsiders fear being uncomfortable inside, whether from being one of a very few outsiders amongst a lot of insiders or from other outsiders resenting them moving into the keep. I think it's important to remove those sources of discomfort and to actively encourage outsiders to consider moving inside so that we get all of those who woud like to come inside but fear unpleasant consequences. After that, I don't think we need to try to convince people who like living outside to come in. Let them be happy outside! But I do think we should remove barriers to coming inside and encourage coming inside to counteract any fears of negative consequences for those who would otherwise like to come into the Keep.

ZoFreX 14y ago

I don't want to get more women into programming. I want to end the endemic and prolific discrimination against women in programming. The lack is a symptom. I also find it very weird that an entire industry went from being female dominated to male dominated and everyone defends it saying "it's always been this way! Equality isn't about enforcing even ratios!" Well no, it's not, but when you have these situations, where the number of people who could do something is vastly different to those that stick it out as a career, and those that do talk about systematic intolerance and abuse, there is a problem there.

rmc 14y ago
Appeals to history are silly aswell because the whole industry. Software has less history than Coca Cola! I mean, traditionally, there were less than 100 programmers world wide. No-one has any problem with ignoring that.
verroq 14y ago
As others have said, it's very hard to discriminate against women since it's is mostly based on problem solving/programming skill. But that is not to say there isn't a general air chauvinism and/or objectification in the tech industry. I agree that getting more women into tech is a solution, but this always operates under the assumption that women actually want to be in tech.

moistgorilla 14y ago

There is a huge stereotype that tech is for men. There is a ton of misogyny in the tech sector. The hope is that by bringing women into the tech sector this stereotype ceases to exist. This is important because there are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine. There is a ton of wasted potential out there.

verroq 14y ago
Most men didn't pick tech because it's for men, they picked it because they liked it. >There are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine I'm not sure if it's societal pressure that is the deciding factor for young women they picking a field of interest.

klaut 14y ago

Upvoted as well. I see more and more of these complaints lately and it just feels that people complain just for the sake of complaining. Perhaps for the rest of the women (me being a woman in tech) programming and tech just isn't interesting enough to pursue it? That could just be one of the reasons - like i have no interest in nursing, thus i am not pursuing that as a career. Stop looking for reasons for complaining and go and pursue stuff you love.

__alexs 14y ago

> Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios. Actually for pretty much any job not based on manual labour it does mean that. And even then it's mostly because we don't have enough robots.

verroq 14y ago
You are willing to accept physical differences but not psychological differences between men and women?
- __alexs 14y ago
  Yes because there is no evidence that such differences are anything but a result of variables such as socio-economic status, how stable your upbringing was and the amount of calories you had as a child.

Pewpewarrows 14y ago

The point isn't to have exact same gender ratios in the tech industry. There are women out there who would make great programmers / sysadmins / etc, but never finish the process of becoming one, are dissuaded from ever starting, or flat-out quit the industry after N number of years, simply because of the barriers put in place by men assuming that the field is only for men.

jiggy2011 14y ago
What sort of barriers? Most of this seems to come down to "Women feel uncomfortable in tech because there are too many men" which of course prevents there from being more Women in tech. It's also possible that some of the pressure comes from other women , not just men. A woman might be considered weird by other women for wanting to hang around in an environment dominated by geeky men. I know tech women who have been called dykes by their female pier group in the same way male nurses might be accused of being gay.
- mitjak 14y ago
  Example from the article: at a conference, the audience thought the author is a recruiter because she's a woman.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I don't really see how that is a barrier to entry.
    - yarrel 14y ago
      You're not going to get hired if people think you're not there to get hired.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        People will naturally make assumptions based on prior experiences and statistics , essentially "optimising for the common case". In the same way that I would make an assumption that somebody from say Pakistan is more likely to be a muslim than christian. This is simply how humans operate, probably because it has survival value and is more a function of evolution than prejudice. It's not a difficult assumption to get past anyway, talking knowledgeably about something a recruiter would probably not know or even wearing a tech related T shirt would make people change their assumptions. The only way to solve that particular problem properly would be to have more women in tech. An actual barrier would be a company or a CS programme deliberately discriminating against women by not employing them. Now I'm sure this does happen in some cases and would be difficult to gather evidence of because any company admitting to this practice would be open to law suits. Another example would be of creating a workplace that was somehow misogynistic in some way, but I actually find that more common in other industries than in tech. OTOH , many universities seem to actually discriminate in favour of women for CS, in some cases lowering entry requirements on giving a priority on placement. They still tend to end up with 80%+ men though. One observation I have made about women who work as developers or in an engineering/science field is that the majority I have met have tended to be chinese. This makes me wonder if there is in fact a stigma attached to western women going into tech but I don't necessarily think this stigma comes from the inside.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rmc 14y ago

What's wrong with men in nursing? Or are they just half men, a bunch of fairies for doing 'women's work'?

jacalata 14y ago

Because if there were more women in programming I might not have to deal with people doing a double take as they walk into my office and saying 'oh I expected you to be a guy!'

JackDanger 14y ago

The lack of women in the industry isn't the problem, it's the symptom. The problem is a monoculture of chauvinism and sexism.