3 ms·

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 a

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
    Well, that's the thing. You can't even prove that any factor has any effect at all. All I know is that from my anecdotal experience a lot of my male peers got into programming tangentially through gaming because they liked playing games and wanted to learn how to make games. And there's a fair amount of proof that young boys are more likely to play video games than young girls. As for whether or not it'll rectify itself, I'm a little more skeptical. Girls are more likely to be casual gamers, and casual gamers are less likely to like games enough to want to build their own. Of course, this could easily be my projection bias showing, as I am a casual gamer who has never felt a strong passion to build my own game.
    - chrishynes 12y ago
      Right, and again, my case shows a difference even there: I went into software. But my brother went into carpentry and animal husbandry. Same family, same environment -- gaming, coding with dad, etc. He's just as smart and could've done tech if he wanted, but he had different interests. That's an interesting point on casual gaming. However, it's also balanced by the fact that casual games are the only games you can easily create as a one man band or hobbyist. If you're into puzzle games, say, you can probably put together your own with a bit of HTML/JS. Or use one of the puzzle game builders. If you're into Call of Duty, though, you've got no chance of writing your own version of that until you've graduated and gotten a job somewhere. Even the ubiquitous modding community that used to be a path into development has diminished as games are increasingly locked down.

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
  Well, that's the thing. You can't even prove that any factor has any effect at all. All I know is that from my anecdotal experience a lot of my male peers got into programming tangentially through gaming because they liked playing games and wanted to learn how to make games. And there's a fair amount of proof that young boys are more likely to play video games than young girls. As for whether or not it'll rectify itself, I'm a little more skeptical. Girls are more likely to be casual gamers, and casual gamers are less likely to like games enough to want to build their own. Of course, this could easily be my projection bias showing, as I am a casual gamer who has never felt a strong passion to build my own game.
  - chrishynes 12y ago
    Right, and again, my case shows a difference even there: I went into software. But my brother went into carpentry and animal husbandry. Same family, same environment -- gaming, coding with dad, etc. He's just as smart and could've done tech if he wanted, but he had different interests. That's an interesting point on casual gaming. However, it's also balanced by the fact that casual games are the only games you can easily create as a one man band or hobbyist. If you're into puzzle games, say, you can probably put together your own with a bit of HTML/JS. Or use one of the puzzle game builders. If you're into Call of Duty, though, you've got no chance of writing your own version of that until you've graduated and gotten a job somewhere. Even the ubiquitous modding community that used to be a path into development has diminished as games are increasingly locked down.