4 ms·

Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity" ? And I know that there are competent

by speeder 14y ago

Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity" ? And I know that there are competent women out there, but I find very hard to believe that a sharp increase of women in your company will make your team better. Even them end admitting that the women they are hiring are junior engineers, and that they could not find senior engineers (probably because the few that exist are already happy where they are and won't switch jobs).

protomyth 14y ago
To be honest, given the legal system and the prejudice of a lot of parents, you would have to be a fool or have 100% coverage surveillance cameras to hire a man to do child care / early childhood education. If you worry the male child care provider might change your child's diapers or be the one to clean up your child incase of accidents, then you are part of that problem.
jbattle 14y ago
How much time do you spend weekly on forums dedicated to 'female dedicated industries'?
- speeder 14y ago
  What do you mean? I mentioned male dominated industries (in terms of workers) not male dedicated industries. I don't get it.
  - jbattle 14y ago
    Ah yes - I read too fast, sorry
  - leeb 14y ago
    I think jbattle might have meant that you're exposed to a lot of articles about promoting gender diversity in CS since you follow CS/startup sites (such as HN). If you followed sites or news aggregators for fields where the gender distribution is reversed (nursing or psychology both come to mind), you might see some of the same concerns raised about the lack of male participants. ETA: Just saw jbattle's post - guess that's not what he meant! Sorry to have spoken for you :)
ericabiz 14y ago
Probably because you don't regularly read news websites for those industries. Here's a quick example: http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing-today/105-hospital-leads-in-hiring-male-nurses.html http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing-today/105-hospital-leads... FTA: "Pitt County Memorial Hospital...boasts one of the best records nationally at hiring men as nurses. About 10.5 percent of the hospital's registered nurses are male -- a stellar showing considering that men make up only about 5.7 percent of registered nurses nationally. Attracting more men to nursing is seen as one way to extend the supply of registered nurses, who perform much of the hands-on patient care in hospitals."
- speeder 14y ago
  First, nursing is female dominated (and I said I don't see other male dominated industries complaining of lack of diversity). And second, they talk there about expanding supply of workers, not having more diversity.
  - jacalata 14y ago
    First, name a male dominated industry and I bet I can find you a group working to make it more diverse. For instance, finance: http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-a-female-leader.jhtml http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-a... Second, people here talk about that too. In an article that you should have read just recently: "hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting opportunities. Consider Harvard’s graduating computer science class: forty-one percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."
    - speeder 14y ago
      I don't said that they did not talked about more pool of people. I said that what was mentioned was specifically talking about that, not wanting more diversity.
      - jacalata 14y ago
rjknight 14y ago
Some industries or professions are male-dominated because the industry itself has been around for a long time and thus has historically been male-dominated. Weirdly, those industries are probably diversifying faster than IT because they were the first obvious targets for women wanting to "break the glass ceiling" - being the first female lawyer, professor or general in a particular firm/university/country is quite a prestigious achievement, and books and movies are made about those kinds of people (though actually this makes me realise that I'd love to read a book or watch a movie about a woman who does something cool as a software developer - and no, Hackers doesn't count). It's easier to bring external political pressure on those industries partly because everyone regards them as important, and locking women out of 'important' industries was probably regarded as a major problem to solve for politicians. Also, the first women to achieve something close to workplace equality with men were probably relatively high-status women to begin with, and they would have wanted to break into prestigious professions. Programming and IT has not, until recently, been regarded as particularly high-status, and it was not regarded as a problem for society at large that most of the people doing it were men. But now people regard software and IT as very important - people like Steve Jobs or Aaron Swartz or Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Berners-Lee have a similar order of influence in society as, say, senior judges, politicians or scientists. It now seems unreasonable that, if "code is law" (in Larry Lessig's phrase), the law is being written mostly by men. I guess those are the political reasons why people regard the gender balance in software as 'problematic'. There are other reasons too - greater gender diversity may lead to greater diversity of thought, and this is generally a good thing; women may bring different skills and attitudes which may be beneficial (though this is by no means guaranteed, and certainly doesn't mean that any given woman is going to do this); purely personally, I've worked well with women in project management, business analysis and other roles and I'd like to see similarly talented women doing programming too. The question of why Etsy are doing what they're doing is intriguing though. If one believes that sexism is rife, and that self-interest of the firm concerned argues against spending money training female developers who aren't necessarily even going to work for you, then it is almost impossible to explain the behaviour described in the OP. One of the assumptions must be wrong, I guess.
- speeder 14y ago
  I never considered highly bureaucratic industries male dominated, where I live, 60% of middle managers, lawyers, etc... are women. Also women dominate retail, and the service sector in general. I see male dominated industries that don't bother with gender balance, being construction (and I am not talking only about the field workers, but also engineers, architects, etc...), automobiles, metallurgy, window cleaning (I never saw a woman window cleaner!), sports equipment manufacturing, fishing, farming (I know personally a female farmer that is bloody rich, but she is a exception, and she inherited her farm from her late husband... she is a good farmer though), electricity, telco (excepting call centers and support system of course).
philwelch 14y ago
It's a question of social status. Programming used to be a low social status occupation. Skyrocketing pay and the second tech bubble changed that, so now there's an emphasis on hiring women programmers just like the emphasis on women doctors and women lawyers. Garbage collection is still low status, so women garbage collectors are a lower priority.
- speeder 14y ago
  So, if I am getting it right, the point is not that diversity is important to a job. The point is that women want more status, thus people see that status giving jobs with few women have a "problem"
  - rjknight 14y ago
    That's kinda true. It explains why women outside of the tech industry would look at the tech industry and say "there should be more women doing that kind of thing", when they wouldn't say that about garbage collection or being in prison. But I don't think the opinions of people outside of the industry are really what we're talking about here - this thread is discussing efforts within the industry to recruit more women. I'd see it like this: 20 years ago, being a geek was Not Cool. Being a female geek was Very Not Cool, and it's still not something that society feels able to celebrate in the way that, say, being a female lawyer or doctor or CEO is regarded as good. 20 years ago, the average man would have been given shit by people for being a software developer, and some of these stereotypes still linger. Now things are different. Software developers are now highly paid, influential and respected. We've removed a lot of the stigma from being geeks, and this is a good thing, but the program is not complete yet. Being a proud, successful geek is still hard for women, in a similar way to how it used to be for men. What people are trying to do here is not harm the interests of men in favour of the interests of women, but advance the interest of geeks against those who think that being a geek is something bad, and that being a female geek is unacceptable according to their idea of what women should be like.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Being excluded from high status professions hurts the social status of women as a whole. It's a legitimate concern if you're interested in raising the social status of women. As far as the profession is concerned, there are probably a lot of women with the potential to become good programmers and it would be a shame to exclude them. So there is an argument from both sides. What changed is the status part of the question.
rmc 14y ago
Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity" Sure you do. Often the industries tackled this years ago, and is a acknoledged problem. Just picture the TV show Mad Men, set in the 1960s USA. The advertising industry moved from being male dominated then to a better now. How do you think that happened?

by speeder 14y ago

protomyth 14y ago

To be honest, given the legal system and the prejudice of a lot of parents, you would have to be a fool or have 100% coverage surveillance cameras to hire a man to do child care / early childhood education. If you worry the male child care provider might change your child's diapers or be the one to clean up your child incase of accidents, then you are part of that problem.

jbattle 14y ago

How much time do you spend weekly on forums dedicated to 'female dedicated industries'?

speeder 14y ago
What do you mean? I mentioned male dominated industries (in terms of workers) not male dedicated industries. I don't get it.
- jbattle 14y ago
  Ah yes - I read too fast, sorry
- leeb 14y ago
  I think jbattle might have meant that you're exposed to a lot of articles about promoting gender diversity in CS since you follow CS/startup sites (such as HN). If you followed sites or news aggregators for fields where the gender distribution is reversed (nursing or psychology both come to mind), you might see some of the same concerns raised about the lack of male participants. ETA: Just saw jbattle's post - guess that's not what he meant! Sorry to have spoken for you :)

ericabiz 14y ago

Probably because you don't regularly read news websites for those industries. Here's a quick example: http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing-today/105-hospital-leads-in-hiring-male-nurses.html http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing-today/105-hospital-leads... FTA: "Pitt County Memorial Hospital...boasts one of the best records nationally at hiring men as nurses. About 10.5 percent of the hospital's registered nurses are male -- a stellar showing considering that men make up only about 5.7 percent of registered nurses nationally. Attracting more men to nursing is seen as one way to extend the supply of registered nurses, who perform much of the hands-on patient care in hospitals."

speeder 14y ago
First, nursing is female dominated (and I said I don't see other male dominated industries complaining of lack of diversity). And second, they talk there about expanding supply of workers, not having more diversity.
- jacalata 14y ago
  First, name a male dominated industry and I bet I can find you a group working to make it more diverse. For instance, finance: http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-a-female-leader.jhtml http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-a... Second, people here talk about that too. In an article that you should have read just recently: "hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting opportunities. Consider Harvard’s graduating computer science class: forty-one percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."
  - speeder 14y ago
    I don't said that they did not talked about more pool of people. I said that what was mentioned was specifically talking about that, not wanting more diversity.
    - jacalata 14y ago

rjknight 14y ago

Some industries or professions are male-dominated because the industry itself has been around for a long time and thus has historically been male-dominated. Weirdly, those industries are probably diversifying faster than IT because they were the first obvious targets for women wanting to "break the glass ceiling" - being the first female lawyer, professor or general in a particular firm/university/country is quite a prestigious achievement, and books and movies are made about those kinds of people (though actually this makes me realise that I'd love to read a book or watch a movie about a woman who does something cool as a software developer - and no, Hackers doesn't count). It's easier to bring external political pressure on those industries partly because everyone regards them as important, and locking women out of 'important' industries was probably regarded as a major problem to solve for politicians. Also, the first women to achieve something close to workplace equality with men were probably relatively high-status women to begin with, and they would have wanted to break into prestigious professions. Programming and IT has not, until recently, been regarded as particularly high-status, and it was not regarded as a problem for society at large that most of the people doing it were men. But now people regard software and IT as very important - people like Steve Jobs or Aaron Swartz or Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Berners-Lee have a similar order of influence in society as, say, senior judges, politicians or scientists. It now seems unreasonable that, if "code is law" (in Larry Lessig's phrase), the law is being written mostly by men. I guess those are the political reasons why people regard the gender balance in software as 'problematic'. There are other reasons too - greater gender diversity may lead to greater diversity of thought, and this is generally a good thing; women may bring different skills and attitudes which may be beneficial (though this is by no means guaranteed, and certainly doesn't mean that any given woman is going to do this); purely personally, I've worked well with women in project management, business analysis and other roles and I'd like to see similarly talented women doing programming too. The question of why Etsy are doing what they're doing is intriguing though. If one believes that sexism is rife, and that self-interest of the firm concerned argues against spending money training female developers who aren't necessarily even going to work for you, then it is almost impossible to explain the behaviour described in the OP. One of the assumptions must be wrong, I guess.

speeder 14y ago
I never considered highly bureaucratic industries male dominated, where I live, 60% of middle managers, lawyers, etc... are women. Also women dominate retail, and the service sector in general. I see male dominated industries that don't bother with gender balance, being construction (and I am not talking only about the field workers, but also engineers, architects, etc...), automobiles, metallurgy, window cleaning (I never saw a woman window cleaner!), sports equipment manufacturing, fishing, farming (I know personally a female farmer that is bloody rich, but she is a exception, and she inherited her farm from her late husband... she is a good farmer though), electricity, telco (excepting call centers and support system of course).

philwelch 14y ago

It's a question of social status. Programming used to be a low social status occupation. Skyrocketing pay and the second tech bubble changed that, so now there's an emphasis on hiring women programmers just like the emphasis on women doctors and women lawyers. Garbage collection is still low status, so women garbage collectors are a lower priority.

speeder 14y ago
So, if I am getting it right, the point is not that diversity is important to a job. The point is that women want more status, thus people see that status giving jobs with few women have a "problem"
- rjknight 14y ago
  That's kinda true. It explains why women outside of the tech industry would look at the tech industry and say "there should be more women doing that kind of thing", when they wouldn't say that about garbage collection or being in prison. But I don't think the opinions of people outside of the industry are really what we're talking about here - this thread is discussing efforts within the industry to recruit more women. I'd see it like this: 20 years ago, being a geek was Not Cool. Being a female geek was Very Not Cool, and it's still not something that society feels able to celebrate in the way that, say, being a female lawyer or doctor or CEO is regarded as good. 20 years ago, the average man would have been given shit by people for being a software developer, and some of these stereotypes still linger. Now things are different. Software developers are now highly paid, influential and respected. We've removed a lot of the stigma from being geeks, and this is a good thing, but the program is not complete yet. Being a proud, successful geek is still hard for women, in a similar way to how it used to be for men. What people are trying to do here is not harm the interests of men in favour of the interests of women, but advance the interest of geeks against those who think that being a geek is something bad, and that being a female geek is unacceptable according to their idea of what women should be like.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Being excluded from high status professions hurts the social status of women as a whole. It's a legitimate concern if you're interested in raising the social status of women. As far as the profession is concerned, there are probably a lot of women with the potential to become good programmers and it would be a shame to exclude them. So there is an argument from both sides. What changed is the status part of the question.

rmc 14y ago

Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity" Sure you do. Often the industries tackled this years ago, and is a acknoledged problem. Just picture the TV show Mad Men, set in the 1960s USA. The advertising industry moved from being male dominated then to a better now. How do you think that happened?