10 ms·

So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations for the

by beat 12y ago

So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. Most of us would agree that it's the latter. So the question is, what do we do about it? Whinging about how terrible it is that we are even talking about this isn't it - that's just wrapping bias in silence. Any good engineer can tell you that a problem doesn't go away just because you stop acknowledging it. The author makes an excellent point... that "Thanks for showing up" awards aren't a solution, either. We love our craft because it's hard, because it measures us against hard reality rather than the soft vagaries of social politics. We cannot bring gender equality into software engineering by trying to turn it into social rather than technical victories. But complaining about the "assault on the technology industry" in the form of pointing out that we have a sexism problem? That's not good engineering, bro.

jseliger 12y ago
So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from It's not at all obvious that it exists: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14.... More men may work in tech because on average men are more interested in the subject. The key word in the preceding sentence is "may." "Bias" is complex and hard to prove and in the case of the tech industry there may be bias or there may not be. Even the phrase "tech industry" is odd. Does that include academic scientists? Where does tech end and other industries start? See also e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science.
- beat 12y ago
  The WP article dances around a problem... that the reason there are fewer women in STEM is because they avoid it from childhood. Which begs the genetics vs socialization question. Are women not as good, or are they discouraged at an early age? A lack of good candidates is a serious problem (this even more obvious racially than by gender - where are the black and latino engineers?). But the way women are treated relative to their male peers is a massive problem within software, as opposed to the broader STEM fields. Don't believe me? Sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with experienced female software engineers about it sometime. Ask them what sexism they've experienced at work, how it's hampered their careers and their job satisfaction.
  - philh 12y ago
    > that the reason there are fewer women in STEM is because they avoid it from childhood This would seem to be a third explanation for something you said had only two explanations.
    - beat 12y ago
      It just means one of my explanations is far deeper than it looks on the surface - that the discrimination and discouragement against women in engineering starts at childhood.
      - philh 12y ago
        Remark: There are two possible interpretations of "a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry". One is that this industry is culturally biased against women. The other is that there exists a cultural bias, possibly outside this industry, against women-in-this-industry. I don't think you'd say that the first one doesn't exist, and when you say discrimination starts at childhood, that sounds a lot like the second. One needs to be careful not to equivocate between the two, because they're different problems that have different causes and different solutions that need to be implemented by different people. When you describe the two of them together, as a single possible cause, you seem to be making this mistake.
        beat 12y ago
        Yes, my initial phrasing was problematic. But the intent of the initial phrasing wasn't to blame IT culture for the problem, but rather to get people to consciously reject female inferiority as the cause of the problem.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Just a tip - "begs the question" refers to form of logical fallacy where one forms a conclusion that lacks support. Just a tip: the use of "begs the question" to which you refer is always intransitive. The transitive use, as by the poster you responded to, is distinct, and unambiguously a different use than the intransitive use. AFAICT, its inspired by the transitive use, which is an odd (from the point of view of the meanings of the individual words in modern English) translation of a Latin phrase into English, and -- unlike the intransitive use -- actually uses the individual words in something like their usual definitions. It also provides a convenient rationalization of the older intransitive use as a specialization of the transitive use where the question for which an answer is demanded is that of the support for the premise under discussion, so that the transitive use turns the intransitive use from an idiom that is detached from the meanings of the words in the language outside of the idiom to one connected to it in a clear way. Accepting the transitive use, which is widely established and whose meaning is immediately clear to anyone who encounters it and which is completely unambiguously differentiated from the intransitive use, does nothing but make life better for everyone. Opposing it isn't merely pedantry, its pedantry that ignores clear grammatical distinctions and seeks to find confusion where there is none to be found.
- lmorris84 12y ago
  I've often thought the same thing. On the other side of this, according to the NMC[0] only 10.69% of Nurses in 2008 were men (UK). I've personally never seen anyone highlight this as a diversity issue. This is just a guess but I'd say men in general aren't as interested in nursing as women, or just don't consider it when deciding what to do with their careers. I think specific instances of sexism or discrimination should be stamped out, but I don't think we should be "helping" anyone to a specific career - I'd rather credit everyone with a little intelligence and assume if they want to be a nurse or work in tech, then they will strive to do so without the artificial leg-up. [0] http://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/siteDocuments/Statistical-analysis-of-the-register/NMC-Statistical-analysis-of-the-register-2007-2008.pdf http://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/siteDocuments/Statistical...
  - magicalist 12y ago
    > On the other side of this, according to the NMC[0] only 10.69% of Nurses in 2008 were men (UK). I've personally never seen anyone highlight this as a diversity issue Yes, this always comes up in these discussions, and as is always pointed out, you haven't heard of it because you aren't in that industry and you haven't done even a cursory google search of the topic. Seriously, there are a ton of efforts to bring better diversity to the nursing field.
borgia 12y ago
>One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. What about option three: They've less of an interest in the area. When these topics come up there seems to be this weird suspension of the fact that men and women, or girls and boys, are different in many ways. They've different interests, they're driven differently, they've different skills, etc. They're not perfectly aligned bell curves across the board. We also don't need them to be. We don't need men and women to be identical save for what is between their legs in terms of their interests, or how they perform, or their desires, or whatever else. We simply need to make the same opportunities available to everyone regardless of what is between their legs. If a man wants to become a nurse, he should have the opportunity to and he does. If a woman wants to become a programmer, she should have the same opportunity and graduate employment rates would show that they do. Women dominate many professions. Men dominate many professions. As a society we don't need to have an equal number of penises and vaginas present in all professions. Leave the opportunities open and let people develop their own interests.
- neilk 12y ago
  I know you probably think you're being a skeptical and intelligent speaker of uncomfortable truths. But you're a lot more like a climate change denier. You're going with your gut and not the facts. This graph says it all, I think. Is it really conceivable that women were more interested in computing when it was all about hand-coding assembly for a modest amount of money, and less interested now that you can make >$100K/year doing Rails from home? http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom... There's tons of evidence that women are excluded from our industry, at every level -- high school, university, and even the ones that graduate and go on to work in the industry drop out at a very high rate. Other scientific or mathematical fields do not have the same problem. You will probably now try to bury me with various quibbles, because you can argue against any statistic. but maybe you could try ASKING A WOMAN. Anecdotally, I know many women who have since found coding later in life. I've heard several times that they wandered into some science or computer club early on and had horrible experiences and left. They're coming into it now, mostly due to the high demand for engineers such that the industry is (reluctantly) hiring people who don't have the ideal background, and actually training them. So these women are finding out, for the first time, that they aren't bad at technical things. It was just that the field was so gendered, and they came from environments that were strongly biased.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. Only if you make the assumption that people make career choices that organically fit into equilibrium and as rational actors. Drawing a dichotomy seems naive.
- beat 12y ago
  I find that people are rational actors. If you observe social behavior at scale that doesn't suit your theory, then the theory is wrong, not the facts. Irrational behavior should show up as noise in the system, not the order-of-magnitude bias we're observing. That strongly suggests that the bias is the result of rational actors, not the irrationality of their behavior.
  - nine_k 12y ago
    Was considering black-skinned people inferior to white-skinned people purely rational? It was well above the noise level for centuries. I don't even touch religious practices here. Find out why Daniel Kaneman received his Nobel prize. OTOH preferring a job that pays $100k to a job that pays $50k would take a lot of irrationality. I suspect that most women are not that irrational at all, so there must be something very unpleasant that prevents them from landing these jobs in a reasonably equal proportion with men.
    - beat 12y ago
      This is a broader question... is racism and other discrimination a rational act, or not? We need to be sure to not conflate individual behavior and group behavior here. Now, as a group behavior, discrimination is rational. If my side is strong, oppressing the other side keeps my side strong and makes it stronger, and then weakens the other side. The moral dilemmas can then be rationalized away with fancy words. As an individual member of a group that practices discrimination, it's also rational. I can go along with my peers, accept the fancy words even though I realize they're probably nonsense, and benefit from the superior strength of my side. Or, I can call out the immorality and nonsense, and get shunned and locked out of the benefits of my position. Once you take morality out of it, discrimination is rational behavior. Making up ridiculous lies to justify discrimination is rational behavior. It's one thing to not believe it, another thing to act against it.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
Beats me what causes it. Whatever it is, perhaps it's similar to what causes "impostor syndrome" and various self-referential crises we see people having. I got in before this really started. Sure, the PC was changing the world, but people tended to be a lot humbler about things. It was the domain of autodiadicts, not prizewinning blue-ribbon specialists. Perhaps the sheer amount of money going into tech ( and leaving other fields of endeavor ) both raised the stakes and "attracted the wrong element." I saw an interview - onstage - with the playwright Arthur Miller, and he thought the sheer quantity of money has destroyed the ecosystem around Broadway. It's become risk averse. I suspect the same applies to movies, music, maybe even books.
tomjen3 12y ago
Counterpoint: women may not be as interested in technology as men are. This would explain quite a few other things as well (such as more women becomes nurses than men). Either way the gender bias shows up way earlier than CS starts, let alone the industry. So don't blame the industry, blame HS.
habitue 12y ago
> There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. Whoah, that's definitely not true. What you mean is "I can only think of two explanations"
67726e 12y ago
Well, when one considers that programming was once seen as secretarial, "womens' work", and over time morphed into something of an "engineering" discipline, you could posit that societal pressures would have some role. I would reckon more than anything, that it's cultural bias more than an industry bias You claim a cultural bias in this industry, yet how true is that? Maybe Charleston, SC is just too small, but I've yet to see any real exclusionary practices in the area, nor have I heard any. I hear the brogrammer tropes, I hear the stories, and I see the numbers, so sure, there is some issue among the industry, but how much of this shift has come from everyday expectations. As a male, I certainly have preconceived notions of male nurses, not to say that I have a problem with male nurses personally, but that I realize society at large has its perception and so that is not a career I would readily have considered. The source of the problem is more than the binary you present, and almost certainly has larger factors at play than "brogrammer exclusionary practices" - no matter how comfortable it is to point at that one boogeyman, things in life are rarely so black and white. There are myriad causes and thus there will always be many changes to fix the problem.
throwaway30943 12y ago
"There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry." Another is that society has a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women being technical. It seems that women are choosing not to go into this industry before they even have any contact with the industry. Though the industry can have a role in improving the situation.
- beat 12y ago
  Absolutely agree. Your phrasing is much better.
rverghes 12y ago
> So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. Option 3: Women see tech as a "risky" field compared to their other options, and choose not to go into it. See: http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2014/10/women-in-computer-science.html http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2014/10/women-in-compute...
- LanceH 12y ago
  Option 4: A whole generation of women openly mocked those who chose to spend time on computers or in the lab.
parennoob 12y ago
What about the explanation I usually advance on HN (openly, this is a hypothesis, but one I haven't heard strong cogent arguments against) that this is a reflection of these facts: 1. Tech is lowest on the totem pole in middle and high school. Nerds are bullied, ostracized, and generally considered uncool. 2. Girls in school are more susceptible to social pressure than boys. I think 1) and 2) together reliably explain why there aren't many women in the tech industry. It's not the industry's bias, it's society's bias. So the correct steps (in my opinion) would be 1. Stop glorifying sports and start glorifying tech more. The math olympiad team at high schools should be lionized more than the football team. 2. There is no step 2)
- mcantelon 12y ago
  It's weird that what you're pointing out doesn't get mentioned more as it seems (to me) a likely factor. The stigma of tech has definitely lessened over time (as the economy has less room for the non-technical), but valuing physical/social prowess is deeply rooted in biology so being intellectual/less social may always have some kind of stigma.
- amyjess 12y ago
  This. So much this. This comic should be required reading: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic The presence of trans people backs this up: MtFs are overrepresented in tech, and the ratio of MtFs to FtMs in tech is about the same as the ratio of cis men to cis women in tech (I am MtF myself, and it's a running "joke" in the trans community that trans girls are all programmers). If you have the tech skills and the drive to work in the industry, you'll do fine here regardless of whether you're male or female. It's just that if you spent your childhood and teenage years being perceived as a girl, then you're supremely unlikely to even be an applicant to a tech position. At that point, there's nothing the tech industry can do to change anything. Also, one thing I've observed is that if you're a nerd, non-nerdy boys are more likely to say "whatever floats your boat", and non-nerdy girls are more likely to say "eww, gross!". Peer pressure is the worst kind of pressure.
paulhauggis 12y ago
"So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better." In terms of what? I have worked at many different small and mid-sized companies and they all had women employed as developers, designers, and other positions. I know this is just my own personal experience, but if this were really as big of an issue, I would think I would see much less women in these positions. "One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry." So there are only two explanations? In what world are there only two explanations? Especially with something as complicated as human interactions and culture. "But complaining about the "assault on the technology industry" in the form of pointing out that we have a sexism problem? That's not good engineering, bro." If the 'stats' and 'information' against the tech. industry are intentionally biased and used to mislead a reader into believing a specific viewpoint, then yes, it's an assault. I think one of the reasons that there are less women in silicon valley is because the 70 hour+ per week lifestyle doesn't work very well when you want to have a family/children. It's the same for men with children. You will not get as many promotions (or raises) in a company if you have to leave early often for appointments or just want to spend time with your children. I've seen it too often in practice to not believe it. It's also something that isn't even talked about in all of those studies about women and men salary comparisons. When you account for the women that leave to raise kids (which interrupts many careers during a time when you gain the most experience), salaries are almost the same for both men and women.
pekk 12y ago
I won't ever argue that women aren't as good at programming as men (and it doesn't make any sense to suppose they've gotten worse since the 1980s...) If it's gotten worse since the 1980s solely due to cultural bias, you can't explain that by a cultural bias remaining the same throughout that period, you have to assume that the cultural bias changed. Out of curiosity, what's the accepted explanation for that?

by beat 12y ago

jseliger 12y ago

So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from It's not at all obvious that it exists: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14.... More men may work in tech because on average men are more interested in the subject. The key word in the preceding sentence is "may." "Bias" is complex and hard to prove and in the case of the tech industry there may be bias or there may not be. Even the phrase "tech industry" is odd. Does that include academic scientists? Where does tech end and other industries start? See also e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science.

beat 12y ago
The WP article dances around a problem... that the reason there are fewer women in STEM is because they avoid it from childhood. Which begs the genetics vs socialization question. Are women not as good, or are they discouraged at an early age? A lack of good candidates is a serious problem (this even more obvious racially than by gender - where are the black and latino engineers?). But the way women are treated relative to their male peers is a massive problem within software, as opposed to the broader STEM fields. Don't believe me? Sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with experienced female software engineers about it sometime. Ask them what sexism they've experienced at work, how it's hampered their careers and their job satisfaction.
- philh 12y ago
  > that the reason there are fewer women in STEM is because they avoid it from childhood This would seem to be a third explanation for something you said had only two explanations.
  - beat 12y ago
    It just means one of my explanations is far deeper than it looks on the surface - that the discrimination and discouragement against women in engineering starts at childhood.
    - philh 12y ago
      Remark: There are two possible interpretations of "a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry". One is that this industry is culturally biased against women. The other is that there exists a cultural bias, possibly outside this industry, against women-in-this-industry. I don't think you'd say that the first one doesn't exist, and when you say discrimination starts at childhood, that sounds a lot like the second. One needs to be careful not to equivocate between the two, because they're different problems that have different causes and different solutions that need to be implemented by different people. When you describe the two of them together, as a single possible cause, you seem to be making this mistake.
      - beat 12y ago
        Yes, my initial phrasing was problematic. But the intent of the initial phrasing wasn't to blame IT culture for the problem, but rather to get people to consciously reject female inferiority as the cause of the problem.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Just a tip - "begs the question" refers to form of logical fallacy where one forms a conclusion that lacks support. Just a tip: the use of "begs the question" to which you refer is always intransitive. The transitive use, as by the poster you responded to, is distinct, and unambiguously a different use than the intransitive use. AFAICT, its inspired by the transitive use, which is an odd (from the point of view of the meanings of the individual words in modern English) translation of a Latin phrase into English, and -- unlike the intransitive use -- actually uses the individual words in something like their usual definitions. It also provides a convenient rationalization of the older intransitive use as a specialization of the transitive use where the question for which an answer is demanded is that of the support for the premise under discussion, so that the transitive use turns the intransitive use from an idiom that is detached from the meanings of the words in the language outside of the idiom to one connected to it in a clear way. Accepting the transitive use, which is widely established and whose meaning is immediately clear to anyone who encounters it and which is completely unambiguously differentiated from the intransitive use, does nothing but make life better for everyone. Opposing it isn't merely pedantry, its pedantry that ignores clear grammatical distinctions and seeks to find confusion where there is none to be found.
lmorris84 12y ago
I've often thought the same thing. On the other side of this, according to the NMC[0] only 10.69% of Nurses in 2008 were men (UK). I've personally never seen anyone highlight this as a diversity issue. This is just a guess but I'd say men in general aren't as interested in nursing as women, or just don't consider it when deciding what to do with their careers. I think specific instances of sexism or discrimination should be stamped out, but I don't think we should be "helping" anyone to a specific career - I'd rather credit everyone with a little intelligence and assume if they want to be a nurse or work in tech, then they will strive to do so without the artificial leg-up. [0] http://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/siteDocuments/Statistical-analysis-of-the-register/NMC-Statistical-analysis-of-the-register-2007-2008.pdf http://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/siteDocuments/Statistical...
- magicalist 12y ago
  > On the other side of this, according to the NMC[0] only 10.69% of Nurses in 2008 were men (UK). I've personally never seen anyone highlight this as a diversity issue Yes, this always comes up in these discussions, and as is always pointed out, you haven't heard of it because you aren't in that industry and you haven't done even a cursory google search of the topic. Seriously, there are a ton of efforts to bring better diversity to the nursing field.

borgia 12y ago

>One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. What about option three: They've less of an interest in the area. When these topics come up there seems to be this weird suspension of the fact that men and women, or girls and boys, are different in many ways. They've different interests, they're driven differently, they've different skills, etc. They're not perfectly aligned bell curves across the board. We also don't need them to be. We don't need men and women to be identical save for what is between their legs in terms of their interests, or how they perform, or their desires, or whatever else. We simply need to make the same opportunities available to everyone regardless of what is between their legs. If a man wants to become a nurse, he should have the opportunity to and he does. If a woman wants to become a programmer, she should have the same opportunity and graduate employment rates would show that they do. Women dominate many professions. Men dominate many professions. As a society we don't need to have an equal number of penises and vaginas present in all professions. Leave the opportunities open and let people develop their own interests.

neilk 12y ago
I know you probably think you're being a skeptical and intelligent speaker of uncomfortable truths. But you're a lot more like a climate change denier. You're going with your gut and not the facts. This graph says it all, I think. Is it really conceivable that women were more interested in computing when it was all about hand-coding assembly for a modest amount of money, and less interested now that you can make >$100K/year doing Rails from home? http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom... There's tons of evidence that women are excluded from our industry, at every level -- high school, university, and even the ones that graduate and go on to work in the industry drop out at a very high rate. Other scientific or mathematical fields do not have the same problem. You will probably now try to bury me with various quibbles, because you can argue against any statistic. but maybe you could try ASKING A WOMAN. Anecdotally, I know many women who have since found coding later in life. I've heard several times that they wandered into some science or computer club early on and had horrible experiences and left. They're coming into it now, mostly due to the high demand for engineers such that the industry is (reluctantly) hiring people who don't have the ideal background, and actually training them. So these women are finding out, for the first time, that they aren't bad at technical things. It was just that the field was so gendered, and they came from environments that were strongly biased.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. Only if you make the assumption that people make career choices that organically fit into equilibrium and as rational actors. Drawing a dichotomy seems naive.

beat 12y ago
I find that people are rational actors. If you observe social behavior at scale that doesn't suit your theory, then the theory is wrong, not the facts. Irrational behavior should show up as noise in the system, not the order-of-magnitude bias we're observing. That strongly suggests that the bias is the result of rational actors, not the irrationality of their behavior.
- nine_k 12y ago
  Was considering black-skinned people inferior to white-skinned people purely rational? It was well above the noise level for centuries. I don't even touch religious practices here. Find out why Daniel Kaneman received his Nobel prize. OTOH preferring a job that pays $100k to a job that pays $50k would take a lot of irrationality. I suspect that most women are not that irrational at all, so there must be something very unpleasant that prevents them from landing these jobs in a reasonably equal proportion with men.
  - beat 12y ago
    This is a broader question... is racism and other discrimination a rational act, or not? We need to be sure to not conflate individual behavior and group behavior here. Now, as a group behavior, discrimination is rational. If my side is strong, oppressing the other side keeps my side strong and makes it stronger, and then weakens the other side. The moral dilemmas can then be rationalized away with fancy words. As an individual member of a group that practices discrimination, it's also rational. I can go along with my peers, accept the fancy words even though I realize they're probably nonsense, and benefit from the superior strength of my side. Or, I can call out the immorality and nonsense, and get shunned and locked out of the benefits of my position. Once you take morality out of it, discrimination is rational behavior. Making up ridiculous lies to justify discrimination is rational behavior. It's one thing to not believe it, another thing to act against it.

ArkyBeagle 12y ago

Beats me what causes it. Whatever it is, perhaps it's similar to what causes "impostor syndrome" and various self-referential crises we see people having. I got in before this really started. Sure, the PC was changing the world, but people tended to be a lot humbler about things. It was the domain of autodiadicts, not prizewinning blue-ribbon specialists. Perhaps the sheer amount of money going into tech ( and leaving other fields of endeavor ) both raised the stakes and "attracted the wrong element." I saw an interview - onstage - with the playwright Arthur Miller, and he thought the sheer quantity of money has destroyed the ecosystem around Broadway. It's become risk averse. I suspect the same applies to movies, music, maybe even books.

tomjen3 12y ago

Counterpoint: women may not be as interested in technology as men are. This would explain quite a few other things as well (such as more women becomes nurses than men). Either way the gender bias shows up way earlier than CS starts, let alone the industry. So don't blame the industry, blame HS.

habitue 12y ago

> There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. Whoah, that's definitely not true. What you mean is "I can only think of two explanations"

67726e 12y ago

Well, when one considers that programming was once seen as secretarial, "womens' work", and over time morphed into something of an "engineering" discipline, you could posit that societal pressures would have some role. I would reckon more than anything, that it's cultural bias more than an industry bias You claim a cultural bias in this industry, yet how true is that? Maybe Charleston, SC is just too small, but I've yet to see any real exclusionary practices in the area, nor have I heard any. I hear the brogrammer tropes, I hear the stories, and I see the numbers, so sure, there is some issue among the industry, but how much of this shift has come from everyday expectations. As a male, I certainly have preconceived notions of male nurses, not to say that I have a problem with male nurses personally, but that I realize society at large has its perception and so that is not a career I would readily have considered. The source of the problem is more than the binary you present, and almost certainly has larger factors at play than "brogrammer exclusionary practices" - no matter how comfortable it is to point at that one boogeyman, things in life are rarely so black and white. There are myriad causes and thus there will always be many changes to fix the problem.

throwaway30943 12y ago

"There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry." Another is that society has a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women being technical. It seems that women are choosing not to go into this industry before they even have any contact with the industry. Though the industry can have a role in improving the situation.

beat 12y ago
Absolutely agree. Your phrasing is much better.

rverghes 12y ago

> So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. Option 3: Women see tech as a "risky" field compared to their other options, and choose not to go into it. See: http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2014/10/women-in-computer-science.html http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2014/10/women-in-compute...

LanceH 12y ago
Option 4: A whole generation of women openly mocked those who chose to spend time on computers or in the lab.

parennoob 12y ago

What about the explanation I usually advance on HN (openly, this is a hypothesis, but one I haven't heard strong cogent arguments against) that this is a reflection of these facts: 1. Tech is lowest on the totem pole in middle and high school. Nerds are bullied, ostracized, and generally considered uncool. 2. Girls in school are more susceptible to social pressure than boys. I think 1) and 2) together reliably explain why there aren't many women in the tech industry. It's not the industry's bias, it's society's bias. So the correct steps (in my opinion) would be 1. Stop glorifying sports and start glorifying tech more. The math olympiad team at high schools should be lionized more than the football team. 2. There is no step 2)

mcantelon 12y ago
It's weird that what you're pointing out doesn't get mentioned more as it seems (to me) a likely factor. The stigma of tech has definitely lessened over time (as the economy has less room for the non-technical), but valuing physical/social prowess is deeply rooted in biology so being intellectual/less social may always have some kind of stigma.
amyjess 12y ago
This. So much this. This comic should be required reading: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic The presence of trans people backs this up: MtFs are overrepresented in tech, and the ratio of MtFs to FtMs in tech is about the same as the ratio of cis men to cis women in tech (I am MtF myself, and it's a running "joke" in the trans community that trans girls are all programmers). If you have the tech skills and the drive to work in the industry, you'll do fine here regardless of whether you're male or female. It's just that if you spent your childhood and teenage years being perceived as a girl, then you're supremely unlikely to even be an applicant to a tech position. At that point, there's nothing the tech industry can do to change anything. Also, one thing I've observed is that if you're a nerd, non-nerdy boys are more likely to say "whatever floats your boat", and non-nerdy girls are more likely to say "eww, gross!". Peer pressure is the worst kind of pressure.

paulhauggis 12y ago

"So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better." In terms of what? I have worked at many different small and mid-sized companies and they all had women employed as developers, designers, and other positions. I know this is just my own personal experience, but if this were really as big of an issue, I would think I would see much less women in these positions. "One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry." So there are only two explanations? In what world are there only two explanations? Especially with something as complicated as human interactions and culture. "But complaining about the "assault on the technology industry" in the form of pointing out that we have a sexism problem? That's not good engineering, bro." If the 'stats' and 'information' against the tech. industry are intentionally biased and used to mislead a reader into believing a specific viewpoint, then yes, it's an assault. I think one of the reasons that there are less women in silicon valley is because the 70 hour+ per week lifestyle doesn't work very well when you want to have a family/children. It's the same for men with children. You will not get as many promotions (or raises) in a company if you have to leave early often for appointments or just want to spend time with your children. I've seen it too often in practice to not believe it. It's also something that isn't even talked about in all of those studies about women and men salary comparisons. When you account for the women that leave to raise kids (which interrupts many careers during a time when you gain the most experience), salaries are almost the same for both men and women.

pekk 12y ago

I won't ever argue that women aren't as good at programming as men (and it doesn't make any sense to suppose they've gotten worse since the 1980s...) If it's gotten worse since the 1980s solely due to cultural bias, you can't explain that by a cultural bias remaining the same throughout that period, you have to assume that the cultural bias changed. Out of curiosity, what's the accepted explanation for that?