8 ms·
Why women make gifted coders
- dozzie 11y ago> Currently, 80 per cent of software programmers in America are male [...] Liukas believes that the profession only became dominated by men after people realised that it was well paid and highly creative. Well, no. It became male-dominated when it became a subject of tinkering, so one could do that at home. Now that it's established that it pays good, it started to gain attention from women.
- mauricemir 11y agoprobably because home computers became much more gendered and i suspect the change to IT being an engineering graduate entry might have something to do with it
- dozzie 11y agoPossibly. But still, it's women who are interested in IT now that it's an eligible occupation, not men back in '70s and '80s; programming was not sexy back then. So, Liukas is simply wrong here.
- icebraining 11y agoIn 1984, women earned 37% of the CS bachelor degrees and were 38% of the CS workforce. How does the "sexyness" theory explain this? I agree with you that home computers where the turning point, but it has nothing to do with being "sexy", but with the gender roles prejudices in families, which heavily biased who got computers for birthday and Christmas, while before it was purely an academic activity, therefore more accessible to women (by that time).
- dozzie 11y agoYou got it totally wrong. Programming wasn't sexy until late '90s, when internet bubble happened. Earlier it was just another occupation that was boring, like electronics or mechanical engineering (to non-tinkering people, of course). By now it should be clear that by "sexy" I mean "desired to profess". All combined, "the 'sexyness' theory" doesn't need to explain why at the peak 38% of the CS workforce were women. It's not meant to explain anything, it's meant as merely an observation that it's untrue that men only got to IT when it paid well. It was the opposite: IT was already a male-dominated field when it started to pay well.
- icebraining 11y agoFair enough; I understood you meant women went into it now because it's "sexy". That said, back in '84 when women still composed a good chunk of the workforce, programmers and system analysts earned $60-$100k/year (2015 dollars), which is close to the current average ($80k in 2013). So it seems to me that it already paid well when it became male-dominated - even if that wasn't the reason it did so.
- apetresc 11y agoWhat does it mean for a home computer to become "gendered"?
- mauricemir 11y agoSorry I meant that some toys / gadgets have a perceived gender. Home computers became seen as boys toys.
- icebraining 11y agoThe concept of a home computer and for whom it was for was biased towards a certain gender.
- jerven 11y agoIt used to be ladies job. Then after ww2 they where fired to become house wives and make place for men coming back from war. Until the 80's women in the few programming jobs and courses in the US used to be in the 40% only when home pcs and gaming became common did the gender disparity start to become more extreme. Short rely because on phone did not read article her
- Jem 11y agoYes, you're right. All male progammers are in it for the tinkering and the women are just in it for the money.
- jbob2000 11y agoWell they weren't complaining about it when we were just nerds in our parent's garages and basements.
- dvdcxn 11y agoIt seems your sarcasm has gone over some heads.
- Jem 11y agoMy poor misunderstood British sense of humour :)
- kamaal 11y agoActually if you are in for the money, feeding your family and if your life depended on it you will more likely succeed at doing it. Because the sheer focus, seriousness and commitment you will throw towards it will make it happen. If you in for tinkering, you will move on to something else once the clots of curiosity are gone.
- Jem 11y agoI'm not really sure what your point is?
- meric 11y agoLiukas believes that the profession only became dominated by men after people realised that it was well paid and highly creative. Might be projection on her part - there are professions she could see herself wanting to do, because they paid well - Assumes all the men are the same. My parents wanted me to be in Finance, Accounting or in Medicine because those jobs paid well and had prestige. I went in Software Engineering because I tinkered with programming since I was 13. I'm sure she'd be similarly offended by reading same sexist remarks from the article, switching genders: "Why men make gifted coders" "Liukas believes that the profession only became dominated by women after people realised that it was well paid and highly creative."
- mauricemir 11y agoRemember that Liukas is not a native English speaker and she might not have understood how that will be understood. Secondly when you talk to any journalist you have to be ultra careful they don't twist what you say into some thing that fits their agenda or their own biases.
- jacquesm 11y agoIt doesn't matter how careful you are they will twist it anyway.
- mauricemir 11y agoIt always was a relatively well paid job.
- zzalpha 11y agoIt became male-dominated when it became a subject of tinkering, so one could do that at home Ugh, you were so close to making the right point. 1. It became a subject of tinkering. 2. Boys are socialized to be tinkerers. 3. Girls are not socialized to be tinkerers. 4. It became male dominated. The fundamental, underlying problem is with the way girls are socialized in the home to be pretty caregivers instead of intelligent problem solvers.
- hoopd 11y agoDo boys tinker because they're socialized to tinker, or is the socialization process built around natural tendencies of boys to tinker? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
- zzalpha 11y agoSure, as the article states: "We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans." So yes, there may be some biological/neurological biases, but that they are then socially reinforced, which is exactly my point. And last I checked, one of the things that makes humans humans is our ability to grow beyond our basic wired-in instincts. So I fail to see how that article can be seen as a pass for what is clearly a cultured gender bias.
- hoopd 11y agoYour point couldn't be that biological underpinnings are being socially reinforced because you didn't mention the biological underpinnings at all. Your 4-point history is also off because it implies there was a gender neutral computer science that was then taken out of balance by socialization. The only thing you seem intersted in addressing is that girls aren't encouraged to tinker with things - that in and of itself is a fair point. You don't need to create a false history and a false biology to address it. Focusing purely on socialization, while it will make you friends, will also prevent you from seeing the other reasons STEM fields are predominantly male.
- j-pb 11y ago> You wouldn’t expect a petite, fair-haired, 28-year-old woman to be one of the most powerful people in coding. Its weird to see how the field gets divided into "computer science" and "coding". In coding the act of typing code, networking, and teaching Joe Shmoe how to build a website is paramount. It doesn't require any real skill, doesn't solve hard or important problems, but everybody can feel good afterwards.
- mauricemir 11y agoIf your looking for a site to discuss full on technical programming (aka real Programming) your on the wrong site here. And back in the day CS was considered the soft option real Engineers had done physics or EE Degrees.
- j-pb 11y agoThis is not a critique of HN. Just the realisation that there exist some sub community in the computer world where you can be "one of the most powerful people in coding" without any history of contributing to open source projects whatsoever. https://github.com/lindaliukas https://github.com/lindaliukas
- leereeves 11y ago> You wouldn’t expect a petite, fair-haired, 28-year-old woman to be one of the most powerful people in coding. Why not?
- forgottenpass 11y agoWhy not? Writer Rebecca Burn-Callander couldn't find a good angle for her article, so you're now a sexist.
- collyw 11y agoBecause its a male dominated profession.
- akerl_ 11y agoWe're unlikely to improve that by leading into articles by "reminding" the reader that women usually can't code. The fact that more men work in most tech offices today doesn't mean that I, the reader, should be shocked to learn that coding ability isn't based on gender.
- mrits 11y agoI also found that odd. This is programming, not Batman. http://tinyurl.com/p6jb2p6 http://tinyurl.com/p6jb2p6
- aikah 11y agoBecause it's a bullshit article that works on sensationalism. Instead of relying on facts it uses emotion to make a point and manipulate the reader. The use of the word "petite" is in my opinion not appropriate to describe a woman.
- danellis 11y agoBecause I wouldn't have expected to see a bizarre phrase like "one of the most powerful people in coding".
- lucozade 11y agoBecause the journalists' "Big Book of Stereotypes" says "see Mark Zuckerberg" when you look up coder.
- ExpiredLink 11y agoBut what is a 'coder' and why should someone - male or female - want to become one?
- mauricemir 11y agoIts a synonym for Developers in the UK.
- ExpiredLink 11y agoI doubt that very much.
- mauricemir 11y agoWhy? I have a lot of experience in the UK and that is how I would see it
- rjsw 11y agoDo you work in the UK ? The term "coder" is pretty common in the mainstream press. It helps to make it clear that a developer isn't as important as a business person or journalist.
- mauricemir 11y agoYes keep the oily engineers outside other wise they might start wanting the same status as us :-(
- whoisthemachine 11y agoI agree that women can be gifted programmers; it's generally accepted that the first programmer was a woman, Ada Lovelace. But this article has all sorts of attention-grabbing, unrelated links (for example, the link on "open source" that proclaims Heartblead was the end for open source) in it that I had an incredibly hard time staying on the topic of reading the article. However, I did find the link to what I assume is her website, helloruby.com. It's very nice and I admire what she's doing. Now where's the article for why men are gifted coders? Or is it just because we're monsters?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- peterfirefly 11y ago> it's generally accepted that the first programmer was a woman, Ada Lovelace. Really? Babbage couldn't program his own machine? In any case, Heron is a much better bet: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/07/programmable-robot-from-60ad.html http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/07/programm... Of course, he wasn't likely to have been the first, either.
- lucozade 11y agoMore precisely, Lady Lovelace wrote programs for the machine Babbage designed. Whether Babbage could or couldn't write them isn't, to my knowledge, recorded (presumably he could if he wanted to). The fact that Lady Lovelace did, is.
- peterfirefly 11y agoIt is recorded that Babbage more or less had to spoon feed her. She is way overrated. Which is dumb, when there actually were women who did impressive things in maths, physics, and engineering. Émilie du Châtelet or Philippa Fawcet, for example.
- peterfirefly 11y ago
- dvdcxn 11y agoI feel like articles like these are not helping the problem they attempt to solve but rather reinforcing it. An article named "what makes people gifted programmers" and then a profile of this talented person who just happens to be a women would do far more good for enforcing the idea that anyone can be a programmer if they develop the right skillset. Rather than frame the subject as someone beating the statistics, fighting the institution, frame as someone who is just a straight up talented person whose skills speak for themselves. Let the reader infer that this talented developer is female, as if it was a totally normal, acceptable thing, which it should be. All this article does say is "LOOK EVERYONE THIS IS A WOMEN THAT HAPPENS TO CODE", as if the only thing that makes a female programmer valuable is their gender.
- meric 11y agoAgreed. It's certainly putting me on the defensive.
- forgottenpass 11y agoWhen I was 10 I watched a episode of Scooby Doo where all the characters took turns looking at the camera to say "ick, drugs" to really drive home the point that drugs are bad. I remember it well because it was the most hamfisted writing I've ever seen. Until I started reading the tech press, that is. The coverage of social issues in tech is a case study of writers snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Which isn't surprising, they're just following the lead of outlets like Jezebel who have done more to set women back than the C-suite of the Fortune 500 ever could.
- makeitsuckless 11y agoThis isn't the tech press. If anything, it's the dead opposite of the tech press. This is the mainstream press, and this is what they have been doing for decades. Including the "ick, drugs" part.
- dvdcxn 11y agoIn my experience, a lot of the left-leaning tech press is guilty of the same thing as this article. Horseshoe theory in action.
- icebraining 11y agoThis is offtopic, but I have to say it's the first time I've seen Bush Jr. described as "suave"!
- dvdcxn 11y agoWelcome to right wing UK Journalism. They have generally have a weirdly fantastical obsession with republican party icons.
- jstedfast 11y agoAgreed. I had to go back and re-read that sentence when I was reading the article. I was sure I must have misread it. Bush is about as suave as heavy grit sandpaper.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dghf 11y ago> The problem is that the software industry doesn’t reflect the needs of society as a whole, she argues. ‘Twentysomething-year-old boys are solving their problems with dating or meeting friends, but there are different problems in the world,’ she says. I very much hope Linda Liukas has been quoted out of context, because this is one of the most ignorantly reductionist portrayals of the role of IT that I've read. I can scarcely imagine any social problem that hasn't had software applied to it in some shape or form, even if it's just collecting statistics on said problem. I also question the implicit assumption that the majority demographic for users of dating websites and social media is "twentysomething-year-old boys".
- icebraining 11y agoOf course IT has been applied to everything, but that doesn't mean the investment in the industry reflects the needs of society. I also question the implicit assumption that the majority demographic for users of dating websites and social media is "twentysomething-year-old boys". That's not actually what it says, though. It just means the problems that get solved are the most common problems affecting 20-year-old boys, not that those problems aren't shared by must vaster demographics.
- k__ 11y agoAre you implying stuff like Tinder, Instagram, Pinterest or Etsy aren't used by women?
- icebraining 11y agoNot, I was specifically saying that wasn't what was implied by that statement. I'll try again with an analogy. Say the biggest problems for society are feeding and clothing their children, getting a job after hitting fifty and paying for medical care, with dating much further down their priorities. On the other hand, 20-year-olds USUALLY don't have kids or major medical problems, and so dating is much more important for them than those things. Now if the 20-year-olds build a dating app, of course most users will not be from their demographics, simply because there are many more non-20-year-olds than them. But it doesn't mean that the time and money investments in that dating app reflects the needs of society as a whole.
- wumbernang 11y agoWhat really makes the difference in how gifted someone is[1], comes down to wanting to do the job because they enjoy it and being able to improve themselves. Not gender, race, socio-politics, genderists or media pressure. [1] Is that even measurable?
- dcre 11y agoBecause they're people, and people make gifted coders? Liukas is doing great work, but this headline is garbage.
- danellis 11y ago> Because they're people, and people make gifted coders? Generally not, no. The headline is garbage because most women, being people, do not make good programmers.
- A_COMPUTER 11y agoGood article, lousy title. Immediately made me think "why women make uniquely gifted coders" rather than "women make gifted coders too".
- ian012 11y agoThe initial statement that women are creative applies to men too. In fact, history would show men are far more creative in all fields. But also, being creative isn't that much use in programming. The idea that men got involved just to make money is more feminist claptrap.