[JoeCoder_]

> to get more women in CS

As a single male I admit it would be nice if there were more women in CS, but ultimately why does it really matter? Men and women are interested in different things and most women I know just aren't very interested in CS. Is there also a push to get more men into French language culture or studio art drawing? Even though most men would find it boring.

[hackuser]

> most women I know just aren't very interested in CS

That makes an assumption about their motivation. Much evidence exists that women aren't "interested" becuase they face exclusion and discrimination in CS and pressure to study more 'feminine" subjects. Why do more women take the Statistics AP exam than men? Also, I think there are now more female math majors in colleges than male (but I don't have the data in front of me).

The same arguments were used, AFAIK, when women were exluded from most of the workforce and from much of higher education: Women just aren't interested in those things. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, first in her class at Columbia Law School, couldn't get a job at top law firms (and Justice Frankfurter turned her down because of her gender, per Wikipedia) at the beginning of her legal career. Now the majority of law school graduates are female - I guess they were interested after all.

But perhaps most telling is that we are talking about women in the third person - this is exactly the problem with a lack of diversity: A bunch of guys are sitting around drawing conclusions about what women experience and think. If only HN was half female - could you imagine the difference?

[sawthat]

Or perhaps when a woman hears someone say "as a single man I would like more women in my field" she runs as fast as she can in the other direction?

[arthur_pryor]

good point. and i say that as a guy who, back in the day, made similar jokes about why the lack of gender balance in the CS dept was a bad thing.

[JoeCoder_]

I find this response rather surprising.

I can't speak about law, or the way things used to be, but in software dev I've worked with several women and more men. In my own experience the men sometimes chide with each other to the point I've seen other men complain to management about bullying. But I don't see the women being treated that way at all.

In my personal life I often talk about programming to non-devs. Both genders have some people that are completely uninterested, but it's usually the women. Likewise I have little interest in most female-dominated fields. And that's ok.

Maybe things are different beyond my own limited perspective, but that's what I've seen. It may be different in other fields.

[Jtsummers]

A large part of this is culture. My ex-girlfriend grew up with parents who coddled her and her sister, protecting them from many things (a common behavior with female children from what I've seen). The consequence is two very fearful women (nominally) who have strong aversions to technical fields. They were told it was ok they weren't good at math because they were girls.

On the other hand, I've worked with and known many women in adult life, and either they overcame that attitude from their parents and teachers or they weren't presented with that attitude growing up. I can speak with many of them about programming topics (watered down in the same manner I'd water it down with men who don't have a programming background) and bore or interest them to the same degree.

If we, as a society, stop telling people "this is feminine" and "this is masculine" (particularly with respect to fields of study, both technical and non-technical) you'd likely see these things even out quite a bit (though the implied feminine and masculine by observing people's roles in society will still be present).

[hackuser]

There is a lot of reporting and research about it. Look up Gamergate, for instance.

[grahamburger]

That's the big question, isn't it? The follow up is always "sure, but how do we know that the reason women aren't interested in tech is because it's perceived as a 'guy thing?'" Nature vs. nurture, and the reality is despite all of our hand-wringing we just don't know. But we do know that there are identifiable biases in our industry (and others) and we should address those regardless of the outcome.

[Retra]

Do you think those subjects are boring? What do you know about them that would imply they must be boring? Everything is boring when you don't understand it. Try watching a game of baseball when you don't know the rules. Or maybe a game of Go. How boring books must be for the illiterate.

[sawthat]

Can't tell if trolling or just incredibly clueless.