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We'll probably settle for 40% as well if that seems like a natural distribution. The thing is that these initiatives aren't born out of thin air; they're in re
by mtrimpe 13y ago
We'll probably settle for 40% as well if that seems like a natural distribution.
The thing is that these initiatives aren't born out of thin air; they're in response to a lot of women coders expressing that it took a lot of dedication to overcome the societal stigma of women coders.
Can you imagine anybody ever saying to you as a kid: "You're programming computers?? But you're a guy!"
Virtually every girl that codes has heard this numerous times.
- sdegutis 13y agoWhat I heard as a kid: - Nobody likes programmers ("computer nerds") and nobody will befriend me - Nobody will ever date me because I'm into computers ("boring") and I'll always be alone - As a programmer, I will live a very unfulfilling and boring life - Because I'm into computer programming, I'm not normal. But you're right, nobody ever said to me: "You're programming computers?? But you're a guy!"
- mtrimpe 13y agoIndeed; every geek/programmer already faces quite a bit of societal pushback and being a women adds even more on top of that.
- sdegutis 13y agoI don't believe that. Don't get me wrong. I'm very sympathetic to anyone who is facing oppression. Any kind of oppression, especially that which is systematic and encouraged, should be done away with. I just don't believe this whole narrative that's been given lately. Call me a skeptic, but it looks like there are a lot more variables and moving parts to this story than just the typical female-oppression factor.
- mtrimpe 13y agoWhat exactly don't you believe though? That it's harder for women to thrive in tech than men? That more girls would get into tech if it was as less of a "boys thing"? Or perhaps more interestingly: What do you believe?
- sdegutis 13y agoCredo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, et cetera, et cetera. (Kinda off-topic, I'm aware. But I'm too tired. Good night.)
- mtrimpe 13y agoI don't get it. Do you mean that you actually believe that all this women in tech stuff is nonsense and the reason there are so few women in tech has nothing to do with culture but is due to innate biological differences but that you feel that your opinion is not given space in modern day discourse and hence you're forced to toe the party line; just like how your parents made you recite this prair which you grudgingly went along with but actually didn't believe in? It's the only interpretation I can find, although equating a belief in gender-distribution in tech being non-cultural with atheism seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Whatever it was; sleep tight.
- sdegutis 13y agoNope. It was just a really sleepy half-joke, where "what do you believe?" is answered with something that starts with "I believe in ..."
- sdegutis 13y ago(Now that I'm not so sleepy, I'll try to answer this better.) It's much more probable that males and females experience fundamentally different kinds of pushback against learning programming. It seems naive to say that females experience a simple superset of what males experience. In which case, it stands to reason that they probably don't necessarily have a harder time getting into it, just a different set of social obstacles. But I'm no professor of sociology. I don't know these things for a fact. I'm just saying that I approach this topic with a bit of skepticism when someone else (who also is not a professor of sociology) comes out claiming that females have more social obstacles to getting into computer programming than males do.
- mtrimpe 13y ago