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Or is it possible, just possible, that freedom has increased in the past few decades? Women can now choose whatever they want to do rather than being guided dow

Or is it possible, just possible, that freedom has increased in the past few decades? Women can now choose whatever they want to do rather than being guided down the path of housewivery or a couple of other vocations? Maybe the underlying desires that were always there are being revealed, rather than "innate interests evolving". But no, you'd rather dismiss that possibility out of hand and presume that "subtle sexist microaggressions" halved the number of women in tech. Are you suggesting that women have it twice as bad in tech now as they had in the 80s?

joycey 12y ago
You are definitely right in that there are biological influences that have caused men and women to want to pursue different career paths. But you must be kidding if you don't believe this effect isn't exacerbated by cultural factors. Where do these underlying desires come from? Are they generated exclusively by biology, where not having a Y chromosome will make you more likely to pursue x, y, and z interests? Are these underlying desires not at all influenced by the environment kids grow up in--a world that depicts almost exclusively male programmers in the media, a world where the media glorifies young boy geniuses, a world where Lego's are marketed to boys and dolls are marketed to girls, a world where computer games are marketed almost exclusively to boys, a world where computer science role models are exclusively male? It's hard to call any of this "sexist" because it's so subtle and each individual thing isn't really a big deal, but it all contributes to an environment that makes tech less appealing to young girls.
- chrishynes 12y ago
  If there are biological influences on choice of profession based on gender, than a diversity goal of a 50/50 split of genders in a profession is misguided and artificial at best, and harmful at worst. I never said culture has zero effect. Obviously it does have some impact. But how big is that effect? If there are half as many women in tech today than 3 decades ago, and you argue that culture is the main driver of that effect, than you must also be arguing that sexism in tech has gotten dramatically worse since the 80s. Somehow I think we have made progress since the 80s, so there must be something else at work in the decrease of women in tech.
  - joycey 12y ago
    If you're curious, I can explain to you my personal theory for why there has been such a substantial decrease of women in tech. Most of the developers I know play video games. This is relevant for a couple reasons. Gaming (especially PC gaming) means that you're more likely to be tech-savvy because you might wonder why a game is running so slowly on your family PC, and then read cool stuff about why your CPU sucks or something. Video games also can be a "gateway" into tinkering with programming by writing bots or writing your own games. Playing the same game as one of your peers means that you have a common interest, and are more likely to be friends. The more friends you have that are also developers, the more likely you are to feel like you "belong" and that you are in the right field. Now, read this article on how the stereotype that video games are for boys was developed: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-a... It's pretty long, but the tl;dr is: Once upon a time, video games (like pong) were designed for the whole family to play. The video game industry bubble popped because people have short attention spans. To try to figure out how to survive, companies like nintendo did a lot of market research and found that more boys were playing video games than girls. It is easier for the marketing team to direct their resources to a specific demographic of people. Since there are more boys than girls who play video games, nintendo starts running marketing campaigns to explicitly target boys in the early 90's. Nintendo starts launching products that are literally named the gameboy. The article doesn't really go into this at all, but kids started experiencing heavily genderized video game marketing in the early 90's, and by the time they choose to major and graduate from college, that roughly maps to the sharp decrease in women in CS starting in the early 2000's. This obviously isn't the only factor, and also possibly doesn't even account for half of it, but I definitely think it's a significant factor that nobody really talks about.
    - chrishynes 12y ago
      That's an interesting theory. It's got to have some impact, but I'm not sure how much. That's how I started, though -- coding games with my dad, and just got the juices flowing there and kept doing little project after project. If it is a factor, hopefully it's being evened out, what with female gamers nearing 50% of the market over the past decade or so. I also wonder if the dot com bubble had anything to do with it. Recessions seem to hit women and men in different ways and influence different outcomes.

joycey 12y ago

You are definitely right in that there are biological influences that have caused men and women to want to pursue different career paths. But you must be kidding if you don't believe this effect isn't exacerbated by cultural factors. Where do these underlying desires come from? Are they generated exclusively by biology, where not having a Y chromosome will make you more likely to pursue x, y, and z interests? Are these underlying desires not at all influenced by the environment kids grow up in--a world that depicts almost exclusively male programmers in the media, a world where the media glorifies young boy geniuses, a world where Lego's are marketed to boys and dolls are marketed to girls, a world where computer games are marketed almost exclusively to boys, a world where computer science role models are exclusively male? It's hard to call any of this "sexist" because it's so subtle and each individual thing isn't really a big deal, but it all contributes to an environment that makes tech less appealing to young girls.

chrishynes 12y ago
If there are biological influences on choice of profession based on gender, than a diversity goal of a 50/50 split of genders in a profession is misguided and artificial at best, and harmful at worst. I never said culture has zero effect. Obviously it does have some impact. But how big is that effect? If there are half as many women in tech today than 3 decades ago, and you argue that culture is the main driver of that effect, than you must also be arguing that sexism in tech has gotten dramatically worse since the 80s. Somehow I think we have made progress since the 80s, so there must be something else at work in the decrease of women in tech.
- joycey 12y ago
  If you're curious, I can explain to you my personal theory for why there has been such a substantial decrease of women in tech. Most of the developers I know play video games. This is relevant for a couple reasons. Gaming (especially PC gaming) means that you're more likely to be tech-savvy because you might wonder why a game is running so slowly on your family PC, and then read cool stuff about why your CPU sucks or something. Video games also can be a "gateway" into tinkering with programming by writing bots or writing your own games. Playing the same game as one of your peers means that you have a common interest, and are more likely to be friends. The more friends you have that are also developers, the more likely you are to feel like you "belong" and that you are in the right field. Now, read this article on how the stereotype that video games are for boys was developed: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-a... It's pretty long, but the tl;dr is: Once upon a time, video games (like pong) were designed for the whole family to play. The video game industry bubble popped because people have short attention spans. To try to figure out how to survive, companies like nintendo did a lot of market research and found that more boys were playing video games than girls. It is easier for the marketing team to direct their resources to a specific demographic of people. Since there are more boys than girls who play video games, nintendo starts running marketing campaigns to explicitly target boys in the early 90's. Nintendo starts launching products that are literally named the gameboy. The article doesn't really go into this at all, but kids started experiencing heavily genderized video game marketing in the early 90's, and by the time they choose to major and graduate from college, that roughly maps to the sharp decrease in women in CS starting in the early 2000's. This obviously isn't the only factor, and also possibly doesn't even account for half of it, but I definitely think it's a significant factor that nobody really talks about.
  - chrishynes 12y ago
    That's an interesting theory. It's got to have some impact, but I'm not sure how much. That's how I started, though -- coding games with my dad, and just got the juices flowing there and kept doing little project after project. If it is a factor, hopefully it's being evened out, what with female gamers nearing 50% of the market over the past decade or so. I also wonder if the dot com bubble had anything to do with it. Recessions seem to hit women and men in different ways and influence different outcomes.