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I find the outrage over this so disingenuous. It looks to me like it's more about punishing someone for being a high-profile member of a hated, perceived-oppres

by krstck 13y ago

I find the outrage over this so disingenuous. It looks to me like it's more about punishing someone for being a high-profile member of a hated, perceived-oppressor group than actually caring about women being programmers. To think that pg actually believes that there are no female programmers was the least charitable possible interpretation, and the only reason to have picked that one in particular was to confirm your own bias.

MrZongle2 13y ago
Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, plumbing or cartooning. Likewise, not much hubbub about the gender imbalance in the fashion industry. Could it possibly be that men and women think differently, and those minor differences are reflected in their career preferences? Could it be that these preferences play a bigger role in gender imbalances in career fields than sexism in a modern society? Nah. That's crazy talk.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, Yes there is, and examples of programmes to get men into. Ursing or women into construction have been posted to HN before. Someone always always makes the same point as you and for some reason it always manages to infuriate me. I've had to re-write this 4 times because it was so vicious at first. But it does feel tbat a person must be deliberately trollin when they trot out the same tired bullshit that other idiots spout, especially when that bullshit has been debunked on the same forum that they're posting to and when it is so easy to debunk with a simple websearch. It feels as if some people like living their lives with the blinkers on.
  - MrZongle2 13y ago
    'But it does feel tbat a person must be deliberately trollin when they trot out the same tired bullshit that other idiots spout, especially when that bullshit has been debunked on the same forum that they're posting to and when it is so easy to debunk with a simple websearch. It feels as if some people like living their lives with the blinkers on.' Well then, since I'm spouting "bullshit" (your words): Educate me. Let me play the "Citation Needed" card.
    - logjam 13y ago
      Uh since you made the assertion that women "think differently", you provide the peer-reviewed citations. Until we see what you are basing your silly assertion on, yeah, you are the one spouting bullshit.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Just search HN for [women construction] and you'll see a bunch of MRAs making the point that there are no programmes to get women into construction, and people giving examples of such programmes across a range of countries. Your inability, or unwillingness, to perform a simple websearch even when given suitable search terms tells me all I need to know about your desire to find facts and make corrections to your weong statements.
      - MrZongle2 13y ago
        "Your inability, or unwillingness, to perform a simple websearch even when given suitable search terms tells me all I need to know about your desire to find facts and make corrections to your weong statements." And your hair-trigger temper and vitriol tell me all I need to know about you.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Someone always always makes the same point as you and for some reason it always manages to infuriate me It has been so thoroughly brought up and smacked down that at this point, I'm going to be charitable (?) and assume that this guy is just trolling and/or meta-trolling at this point. Take a deep breath and let it go.
  - glenra 13y ago
    The fact that you know of programs "to get men into nursing or women into construction" that have been "posted to HN before" or have seen some claim "debunked" in the past doesn't mean the person you're writing to has. FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction. Not to say that they don't exist, but I'd agree with your interlocutor that the level of hand-wringing on that subject doesn't seem at all similar to the level seen in tech. As for whether that sort of claim is "easy to debunk with a simple websearch", it's probably much easier for you. Keep in mind that google tailors its results to return the sort of sites you've looked for before, so what you see in response to a given search is different from what others would see. (Not to mention that not knowing that something exists makes it hard to know what phrase one might google to find it.) So instead of saying "it's easy to debunk this with a web search", it's far more productive if you do that search yourself and provide an actual link to the references that YOU think debunk it.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      > FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction. Here there actually is a government program to get women into trades, simply because there's a shortage of skilled tradespeople in general, and nearly every other demographic is 'tapped out' if you will. Construction, while it can be lucrative, is simply not 'aspirational', so anyone looking to improve their social status steers clear of the profession.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      The women into construction line seems to be specific to a certain type of poster. It's a trope that gets trotted out by people who have seen it somewhere else.
    - rmc 13y ago
      I haven't seen much talk about construction at all here on HN. It's a tech site, full of techies, talking about tech. Of course tech will be an overwhelmingly popular topic here.
    - CJefferson 13y ago
      Do you spend time on construction forums every day, hearing about the latest trends in construction? I would guess not, which is why you don't hear much about what is going on there.
- krstck 13y ago
  Well, a couple thoughts. 1. It is possible that men and women do think differently and therefore have different career preferences, so the optimal gender ratio is not 1:1. 2. Just because the optimal gender ratio may not be 1:1 does not mean that the current expression is the optimal one. I think we absolutely need to make this field more friendly to women. I don't think we'll ever see 50% participation, but I don't want to see any person (man, woman, or anyone identifying otherwise) turn away from this field because they found it hostile. I do believe that this happens, and that sucks.
  - MrZongle2 13y ago
    'I think we absolutely need to make this field more friendly to women.' And I completely agree. I guess my point is: how much of this outrage is manufactured? Is the gender imbalance truly a "crisis" or is it an artifact of something else entirely?
    - krstck 13y ago
      Certain parties like to fuel the outrage flame because they make money on clickbait. There are also just people with an axe to grind that get off on starting fights. Then you have people that will swear up and down that there is no gender problem in tech, nothing wrong with 'brogrammer' culture, etc. The reasonable people in the middle all think they are arguing against the extreme views, but just end up fighting each other because they misunderstand each others' view points. You have people that have directly experienced sexism in tech thinking they are arguing with the deniers when in actuality they are arguing with people who think their interlocutors are just the angry people looking for a fight. Messy. And no women are persuaded to learn programming, and no one wins but those websites making money on advertising. Everyone comes away angry.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
- gizmo 13y ago
  Oppressed minorities have historically been excluded from highly desirable fields. As a consequence even today you see few black people in, say, Princeton or investment banking. This is most certainly not because black people (or women) think differently. The status quo just takes a long time to improve, especially when people pigheadedly deny there's a societal problem.
  - bzbarsky 13y ago
    I can't speak to investment banking, but Princeton student demographic data is available at http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/ http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate... and the numbers actually surprised me a bit. Looking at the hard data from 2012-13, we have 10.7% international students. So of the US students, 7.4/.897 = 8.2% identified as African American. It's true that this is under-represented compared to the 12.2% of the US population for that demographic cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat... and in fact the ratio of the two percentages is about 0.67, so you could argue that about 33% of African American students who ought to be at Princeton if the student body were strictly proportional to population are missing. If we look at the corresponding numbers of non-Hispanic whites, we see 72.4% of the population, and 56.7% (100 - 10.7 - 38.4)/.897 of Princeton's student body. The ratio is .78, which is definitely higher than 0.67, but not nearly as much higher as I was expecting when I saw the Princeton numbers. For one thing, I recalled the US as being 15-16% African American, but it looks like in the last 20-some years the demographics have shifted markedly... The upshot is that you see fewer black people in Princeton than you might expect based on general population but way more than you used to even in the recent past. It would be interesting to see what US demographics for college-age folks look like, though; they may be significantly different from overall demographics. For comparison with the above numbers, American Indian students are underrepresented at Princeton by a factor of 4 or so, and Pacific Islanders by a factor of 1.8. Hispanics are presumably underrepresented by a factor of 2 or so, but it's hard to tell with the complexities of the classifications there. Asian Americans are overrepresented by a factor of 4. I'm not actually sure I have a point here, other than attempting to quantify "few"...
- logjam 13y ago
  Your silly attempt at sarcasm notwithstanding, it's not crazy talk, it's ordinary, commonplace, irrational sexist horseshit. But please proceed. Other groups are underrepresented in tech. Let's hear how they think differently.
- derefr 13y ago
  I think a major argument against this, in the field of programming in particular, is that most of those other field-related imbalances are culture-neutral. You'll find more male sanitation workers, construction workers, plumbers, etc. everywhere from the US, to Brazil, to China, to Russia, to Pakistan. (Controlling, of course, for the more general inequities in employment-by-gender that those cultures face.) But the "no female programmers" thing is specific to western culture. There are plenty of female programmers in India, and in Russia. So this is likely something about western culture, that has caused this difference.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    >But the "no female programmers" thing is specific to western culture. There are plenty of female programmers in India, and in Russia. So this is likely something about western culture, that has caused this difference. i'd be very curious to hear from a female programmer from Russia. I just find it hard to believe in overturning of the sexist culture there, and my impression that we have more females in hi-tech here in SV.
  - jdbernard 13y ago
    Do you have any statistics for your claim about female programmers in India? I have yet to meet a single Indian programmer who was female in the decade and a half I have been programming. In fact, the only females in tech of Indian heritage that I know have been US-born.
    - erichocean 13y ago
      I don't have statistics, but Apple sent me to India/Infosys in 2009 to train their programmers, and it seemed about 50/50 to me (I worked with a few hundred people). I have no idea if that's representative, but I have no reason to think it isn't.
      - kops 13y ago
        For a girl in India, studying computer science is one of the best options. Jobs are abound, pay relatively well and work environment is thousand times better and safer when compared to other industries. This I guess, explains what you observed on your trip.
- rmc 13y ago
  Yes they do. But y'know this is a techy site, so people are gonna talk about tech.
- prutschman 13y ago
  You won't find what you're not looking for. There is in actually an immense amount of discussion online about the representation of women in the cartooning and comic book professions. It's not an open-and-shut case that women are unambiguously respected within the fashion industry: http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2013/11/05/why-arent-women-in-fashion-taken-as-seriously-as-men/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2013/11/05/why-arent-women-i... As I don't read sanitation, construction, or plumbing forums, I haven't run into much discussion of the subject there.
- esperluette 13y ago
  Actually, the lack of women in cartooning/comics is a topic that has been written about quite often, here's an example: http://comicsalliance.com/superhero-comics-women-sexism/ http://comicsalliance.com/superhero-comics-women-sexism/ There are also many apprenticeships for women in construction/plumbing, because they are 1) good-paying jobs (at least in housing booms) and 2) ones where historically women have been denied apprenticeships/union membership. Oddly enough, there is also gender imbalance in the fashion industry, but not the way you're thinking of it. Sure, women models make WAY more money than male models, but more top designers are men: (http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/02/06/gender-imbalance/ http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/02/06/gender-imbalance...) Maybe you should do a little googling before you sound off about the lack of hand-wringing? Maybe it's just you who don't care.
eigenvector 13y ago
An assertion that female behaviour or aptitude differs from male behaviour or aptitude in a way that casts women in a positive light is valid.[1] An assertion that female behaviour or aptitude differs from male behaviour or aptitude in a way that casts women in a negative or possibly negative light is evidence of sexism and something that must be fixed.[2] [1] http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-news-blog/2013/feb/05/girls-science-gender-gap-fix http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-news-blog/2013/feb/05/gi...
- krstck 13y ago
  Usually when people are making the argument that "men and women think differently", it is an excuse for why the status quo should remain so. Yes, we all know that men and women have different brains and may not be interested in programming in the same percentages. That doesn't mean that programmer culture can't often be hostile to women, and doesn't deserve scrutiny. But that also doesn't mean that pg and YC need to be crucified for not immediately ridding the world of all "Cowboy Developer" wanted ads.

by krstck 13y ago

MrZongle2 13y ago

Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, plumbing or cartooning. Likewise, not much hubbub about the gender imbalance in the fashion industry. Could it possibly be that men and women think differently, and those minor differences are reflected in their career preferences? Could it be that these preferences play a bigger role in gender imbalances in career fields than sexism in a modern society? Nah. That's crazy talk.

DanBC 13y ago
> Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, Yes there is, and examples of programmes to get men into. Ursing or women into construction have been posted to HN before. Someone always always makes the same point as you and for some reason it always manages to infuriate me. I've had to re-write this 4 times because it was so vicious at first. But it does feel tbat a person must be deliberately trollin when they trot out the same tired bullshit that other idiots spout, especially when that bullshit has been debunked on the same forum that they're posting to and when it is so easy to debunk with a simple websearch. It feels as if some people like living their lives with the blinkers on.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  'But it does feel tbat a person must be deliberately trollin when they trot out the same tired bullshit that other idiots spout, especially when that bullshit has been debunked on the same forum that they're posting to and when it is so easy to debunk with a simple websearch. It feels as if some people like living their lives with the blinkers on.' Well then, since I'm spouting "bullshit" (your words): Educate me. Let me play the "Citation Needed" card.
  - logjam 13y ago
    Uh since you made the assertion that women "think differently", you provide the peer-reviewed citations. Until we see what you are basing your silly assertion on, yeah, you are the one spouting bullshit.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Just search HN for [women construction] and you'll see a bunch of MRAs making the point that there are no programmes to get women into construction, and people giving examples of such programmes across a range of countries. Your inability, or unwillingness, to perform a simple websearch even when given suitable search terms tells me all I need to know about your desire to find facts and make corrections to your weong statements.
    - MrZongle2 13y ago
      "Your inability, or unwillingness, to perform a simple websearch even when given suitable search terms tells me all I need to know about your desire to find facts and make corrections to your weong statements." And your hair-trigger temper and vitriol tell me all I need to know about you.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Someone always always makes the same point as you and for some reason it always manages to infuriate me It has been so thoroughly brought up and smacked down that at this point, I'm going to be charitable (?) and assume that this guy is just trolling and/or meta-trolling at this point. Take a deep breath and let it go.
- glenra 13y ago
  The fact that you know of programs "to get men into nursing or women into construction" that have been "posted to HN before" or have seen some claim "debunked" in the past doesn't mean the person you're writing to has. FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction. Not to say that they don't exist, but I'd agree with your interlocutor that the level of hand-wringing on that subject doesn't seem at all similar to the level seen in tech. As for whether that sort of claim is "easy to debunk with a simple websearch", it's probably much easier for you. Keep in mind that google tailors its results to return the sort of sites you've looked for before, so what you see in response to a given search is different from what others would see. (Not to mention that not knowing that something exists makes it hard to know what phrase one might google to find it.) So instead of saying "it's easy to debunk this with a web search", it's far more productive if you do that search yourself and provide an actual link to the references that YOU think debunk it.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    > FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction. Here there actually is a government program to get women into trades, simply because there's a shortage of skilled tradespeople in general, and nearly every other demographic is 'tapped out' if you will. Construction, while it can be lucrative, is simply not 'aspirational', so anyone looking to improve their social status steers clear of the profession.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    The women into construction line seems to be specific to a certain type of poster. It's a trope that gets trotted out by people who have seen it somewhere else.
  - rmc 13y ago
    I haven't seen much talk about construction at all here on HN. It's a tech site, full of techies, talking about tech. Of course tech will be an overwhelmingly popular topic here.
  - CJefferson 13y ago
    Do you spend time on construction forums every day, hearing about the latest trends in construction? I would guess not, which is why you don't hear much about what is going on there.
krstck 13y ago
Well, a couple thoughts. 1. It is possible that men and women do think differently and therefore have different career preferences, so the optimal gender ratio is not 1:1. 2. Just because the optimal gender ratio may not be 1:1 does not mean that the current expression is the optimal one. I think we absolutely need to make this field more friendly to women. I don't think we'll ever see 50% participation, but I don't want to see any person (man, woman, or anyone identifying otherwise) turn away from this field because they found it hostile. I do believe that this happens, and that sucks.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  'I think we absolutely need to make this field more friendly to women.' And I completely agree. I guess my point is: how much of this outrage is manufactured? Is the gender imbalance truly a "crisis" or is it an artifact of something else entirely?
  - krstck 13y ago
    Certain parties like to fuel the outrage flame because they make money on clickbait. There are also just people with an axe to grind that get off on starting fights. Then you have people that will swear up and down that there is no gender problem in tech, nothing wrong with 'brogrammer' culture, etc. The reasonable people in the middle all think they are arguing against the extreme views, but just end up fighting each other because they misunderstand each others' view points. You have people that have directly experienced sexism in tech thinking they are arguing with the deniers when in actuality they are arguing with people who think their interlocutors are just the angry people looking for a fight. Messy. And no women are persuaded to learn programming, and no one wins but those websites making money on advertising. Everyone comes away angry.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
gizmo 13y ago
Oppressed minorities have historically been excluded from highly desirable fields. As a consequence even today you see few black people in, say, Princeton or investment banking. This is most certainly not because black people (or women) think differently. The status quo just takes a long time to improve, especially when people pigheadedly deny there's a societal problem.
- bzbarsky 13y ago
  I can't speak to investment banking, but Princeton student demographic data is available at http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/ http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate... and the numbers actually surprised me a bit. Looking at the hard data from 2012-13, we have 10.7% international students. So of the US students, 7.4/.897 = 8.2% identified as African American. It's true that this is under-represented compared to the 12.2% of the US population for that demographic cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat... and in fact the ratio of the two percentages is about 0.67, so you could argue that about 33% of African American students who ought to be at Princeton if the student body were strictly proportional to population are missing. If we look at the corresponding numbers of non-Hispanic whites, we see 72.4% of the population, and 56.7% (100 - 10.7 - 38.4)/.897 of Princeton's student body. The ratio is .78, which is definitely higher than 0.67, but not nearly as much higher as I was expecting when I saw the Princeton numbers. For one thing, I recalled the US as being 15-16% African American, but it looks like in the last 20-some years the demographics have shifted markedly... The upshot is that you see fewer black people in Princeton than you might expect based on general population but way more than you used to even in the recent past. It would be interesting to see what US demographics for college-age folks look like, though; they may be significantly different from overall demographics. For comparison with the above numbers, American Indian students are underrepresented at Princeton by a factor of 4 or so, and Pacific Islanders by a factor of 1.8. Hispanics are presumably underrepresented by a factor of 2 or so, but it's hard to tell with the complexities of the classifications there. Asian Americans are overrepresented by a factor of 4. I'm not actually sure I have a point here, other than attempting to quantify "few"...
logjam 13y ago
Your silly attempt at sarcasm notwithstanding, it's not crazy talk, it's ordinary, commonplace, irrational sexist horseshit. But please proceed. Other groups are underrepresented in tech. Let's hear how they think differently.
derefr 13y ago
I think a major argument against this, in the field of programming in particular, is that most of those other field-related imbalances are culture-neutral. You'll find more male sanitation workers, construction workers, plumbers, etc. everywhere from the US, to Brazil, to China, to Russia, to Pakistan. (Controlling, of course, for the more general inequities in employment-by-gender that those cultures face.) But the "no female programmers" thing is specific to western culture. There are plenty of female programmers in India, and in Russia. So this is likely something about western culture, that has caused this difference.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >But the "no female programmers" thing is specific to western culture. There are plenty of female programmers in India, and in Russia. So this is likely something about western culture, that has caused this difference. i'd be very curious to hear from a female programmer from Russia. I just find it hard to believe in overturning of the sexist culture there, and my impression that we have more females in hi-tech here in SV.
- jdbernard 13y ago
  Do you have any statistics for your claim about female programmers in India? I have yet to meet a single Indian programmer who was female in the decade and a half I have been programming. In fact, the only females in tech of Indian heritage that I know have been US-born.
  - erichocean 13y ago
    I don't have statistics, but Apple sent me to India/Infosys in 2009 to train their programmers, and it seemed about 50/50 to me (I worked with a few hundred people). I have no idea if that's representative, but I have no reason to think it isn't.
    - kops 13y ago
      For a girl in India, studying computer science is one of the best options. Jobs are abound, pay relatively well and work environment is thousand times better and safer when compared to other industries. This I guess, explains what you observed on your trip.
rmc 13y ago
Yes they do. But y'know this is a techy site, so people are gonna talk about tech.
prutschman 13y ago
You won't find what you're not looking for. There is in actually an immense amount of discussion online about the representation of women in the cartooning and comic book professions. It's not an open-and-shut case that women are unambiguously respected within the fashion industry: http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2013/11/05/why-arent-women-in-fashion-taken-as-seriously-as-men/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2013/11/05/why-arent-women-i... As I don't read sanitation, construction, or plumbing forums, I haven't run into much discussion of the subject there.
esperluette 13y ago
Actually, the lack of women in cartooning/comics is a topic that has been written about quite often, here's an example: http://comicsalliance.com/superhero-comics-women-sexism/ http://comicsalliance.com/superhero-comics-women-sexism/ There are also many apprenticeships for women in construction/plumbing, because they are 1) good-paying jobs (at least in housing booms) and 2) ones where historically women have been denied apprenticeships/union membership. Oddly enough, there is also gender imbalance in the fashion industry, but not the way you're thinking of it. Sure, women models make WAY more money than male models, but more top designers are men: (http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/02/06/gender-imbalance/ http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/02/06/gender-imbalance...) Maybe you should do a little googling before you sound off about the lack of hand-wringing? Maybe it's just you who don't care.

eigenvector 13y ago

An assertion that female behaviour or aptitude differs from male behaviour or aptitude in a way that casts women in a positive light is valid.[1] An assertion that female behaviour or aptitude differs from male behaviour or aptitude in a way that casts women in a negative or possibly negative light is evidence of sexism and something that must be fixed.[2] [1] http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-news-blog/2013/feb/05/girls-science-gender-gap-fix http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-news-blog/2013/feb/05/gi...

krstck 13y ago
Usually when people are making the argument that "men and women think differently", it is an excuse for why the status quo should remain so. Yes, we all know that men and women have different brains and may not be interested in programming in the same percentages. That doesn't mean that programmer culture can't often be hostile to women, and doesn't deserve scrutiny. But that also doesn't mean that pg and YC need to be crucified for not immediately ridding the world of all "Cowboy Developer" wanted ads.